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BP's Deception in the Gulf : Part 1- The farcical 3 leaks on the broken riser story [10... - 0 views

  • 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.
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  • ince June 2010, we have illustrated many physics of impossibilities concocted by BP. Two years later, it seems the world has not awaken from its ignorantly blissful slumber. This disaster is more than just a disastrous mega oil spill. If the world's foremost scientists and investigators cannot figure out the many fundamental flaws in the simple “3 leaks-3 wells” fairy tale, how can there be any hope of ever solving problems beyond kindergarten level? Forget the carbon tax, the ban on hazardous gas emission and just about any anti-pollution measures designed to improve the global environment. All these schemes have sinister undertones with profiting on mass miseries of others.
  • In the Gulf disaster, you have the biggest environmental polluter in human history. The punishment for a crime of mass destruction that could have been averted, was just a slap on the wrist? If this is not the clearest proof of corruption at the highest level and biggest HSE (health, safety & environment) farce, then what is?
  • It was not the failure of safety regulations but the enforcement of regulations. The government admitted this much by sacking MMS's director and changing it to BOEMRE. It was not the failure of technology but the devious use of technology to cloak unfair business practices or safety farce at the very least. But would shrewd corporate criminals risk billions of investment dollars just to skimp on some daily operation expenses and safety devices? Just like the fairy tale of the 3 leaks, this was just the red herring. The oil industry will start on its decline just as the coal industry did, after its replacement by alternative cheaper and cleaner energy sources (The Future of Free Energy).
  • Giant global oil corporations may not have the next 10 years to recover their mega billion dollar investments. With the writings on the wall and their failures to control (prevent) the advent of free energy, the oil oligarchs had to devise emergency exit schemes before oil independence becomes public knowledge. High crude oil prices cannot be manipulated too high or long enough to recoup their billions of investment dollars globally. They risk becoming economic dinosaurs.
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    Lengthy article with lots of visuals, only partially annotated so read the entire article at the site
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Former U.S. Nuclear Chief Says Fukushima Leaks Uncontrollable [24Sep13] - 0 views

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    Former head of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Gregory Jaczko, says radioactive leaks from Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant mixed with ground water are impossible to control. [...] Jaczko: "What was unleashed was a force beyond human control. What you can do is try and mitigate that but you can't really control it. You cannot control groundwater." [...] Tepco has proposed to spend hundreds-of-millions of dollars on a "ice wall" to freeze soil surrounding the reactors and halt the flow of groundwater to the sea. [...]
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#Radioactive Compost Has Already Spread Wide [27Jul11] - 0 views

  • 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.
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  • Shimotsuke Shinbun (local Tochigi paper; 7/27/2011) reports that Tochigi Prefecture tested the leaves that went into the leaf compost bags, and they found 72,000 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium. The leaves were collected in the northern Tochigi in April, and was sold outside the prefecture from mid June to early July. The Tochigi prefectural government ordered the two sellers of leaf compost in Tochigi to recall what's been sold and refrain from shipping "voluntarily" (i.e. at the sellers' own cost, with no support from the government).Leaf composts are mainly used by the home gardeners. There may be many who hoped to grow their own, radiation-free vegetables and bought these bags to amend the soil for better growth of the seedlings. Well, that hope is dashed. The home gardeners may have ended up contaminating their own soil which may not have been contaminated before they put in the compost.
  • The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries couldn't even figure out that cattle farmers feed their cows with rice hay. What the individual home gardeners use for their small gardens was probably none of their concern, as the Ministry is there for the producers.
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    By allowing contamination to spread to the entire island, if not the country, epidemiological studies of the impact on health in the medium and long-term will be made impossible, as there will be no "control" group with which to compare that has not been exposed. The risk, of course, is to the export economy as eventually export products will become contaminated also and international trade with Japan may suffer. Who is going to buy a Japanese car, if they think it is likely to glow in the dark (for example)? And radioactive electronics will show higher failure rates. - comment from reader
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Hiroshima to Fukushima, Finishing the Job | Veterans Today [18Aug11] - 0 views

  • (San Francisco) Two 10,000 lb (4,545 kg) uranium poison gas “dirty” bombs with small nuclear  dispersion devises set Japan on the road to extinction on August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. A row of six modified and enlarged US Navy submarine reactors pioneered by US Navy Admiral Hyman Rickover and manufactured by the US based General Electric Corp (GE) finished the kill March 11, 2011. Thanks to the US Navy designed and GE built atomic reactors, the Japanese people are dying, the country of Japan is no more and the land is permanently uninhabitable.
  • Lethal nuclear vapors created by the destroyed Navy/GE reactors and thousands of tons of garbaged and burning old reactor cores are spreading invisible radioactive death and sickness all over the world. What’s more: the atomic reactors spilled their burning guts into the basements and there is evidence the melted reactor cores are still “reacting” 160 days out. Shutting them down is mostly just plain impossible. The burning, radioactive gates of hell are still open wide. Breathe deep everyone. Breathe your own poisoned Fuku tainted air.
  • The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) The best measure of population growth or shrinkage is a country’s Total Fertility Rate (TFR). It is, simply put, the average number of children women have in a society over their child bearing years. Two kids per woman is the “replacement value” for one woman and one male. Two kids per woman means the man and woman replace themselves and the next generation will be the same size as their preceding generation.
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  • The higher the TFR number, the more the population will grow and expand. On the other hand, a TFR number below 2 kids per woman means the population is shrinking for the next generation. Nuclear weaponeers who know about these things say it is impossible for a society to recover, or grow again, with a TFR below 1.3 kids per woman. In short, that society is doomed. Japan’s TFR plummeted to 1.2 since the detonation of the two 10,000 lb sperm and ovary destroying uranium poison gas bombs in August, 1945.
  • A few weeks after the atomic bombing, Australian journalist George Weller managed to sneak into occupied Japan and nuked Nagasaki in spite of US Army General Douglas MacArthur’s prohibition. Weller, an experienced war correspondent, was utterly stunned at the extent of the other worldly devastation and killing of the Atomic Bomb. Mr. Weller coined the term “Atomic Plague” which then swept around the world on a wave of revulsion at what the Americans had done. Diplomats and other people politically or militarily in-the-know knew the Japanese were eager to surrender and that President Truman lied in his bull shit speech about the Atomic Bomb “saving American lives” that would be forfeit if the US were to invade Japan.
  • What’s more, the dominant owners of the NYT, the Sultzberger family, like it that way. The family has had a slash and burn radiation policy ever since Hiroshima in 1945. No Lie was too Big, in fact, the Bigger and more Bizarre the better. Germany’s WWII Fuhrer Adolph Hitler may have coined the concept “The Big Lie;” but, the New York Times spun it out to a degree that would make even Hitler proud.
  • The Radiation Warfare Committee controlled Manhattan Project to build the Atomic Bomb got its name from its organizer, the Manhattan Engineering District of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The Sultzbergers’ NY Times was only too eager to help the fledgling CIA and the US War Department lie about the nuke bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan that incinerated hundreds of thousands of people. Many were literally vaporized into nothingness. The Big Lie Lives On with the NY Times
  • The coming Fuku Kid Disaster and Fuku Kill Off First and foremost will be the ever nasty New York Times (NYT.) When it comes to something really, vitally important to all our futures, our families and friends, we can always count on the NYT to lie through their teeth for the nuclear industry criminals and mass murderers. That is nothing new for the Times, they always have.
  • The six devastated US Navy/GE reactors at Fukushima Daiichi finished the Kill Truman ordered 65 years, 7 months, and 6 days later on March 3, 2011. Sayonara, Japan, you are history. “Who’s Next?” Good question. There are 438 big reactors, just stationary nuclear weapons really, in the world. 104 big nuke reactors are in America and many, like the Fuku reactors,  are by the sea due to the exorbitant, one billion gallons a day water demand of the reactors. Even the inland reactors are exquisitely vulnerable to becoming another Fukushima. If any lose electricity and off site feeds, a Fuku type meltdown is guaranteed.
  • The people in the Japanese NHK TV video below live in Northern Japan. They must evacuate and many are dying. Many won’t leave, preferring Denial as the better course to reality and Evacuation. After all, you can’t see, feel, hear or taste radiation as it liquefies your insides. Any of us could be next.
  • The US Military and probably Russia’s Military, the former Soviet Union, possess weapons that can accomplish this kind of devastation. They should, at least the US has devoted billions to controlling what the DOD calls “earth processes” for 60 years. That would be your basic hurricanes, tornadoes, rain, drought, earthquakes, tsunamis, rogue waves and volcanoes. Even a medium sized tropical storm, not even big enough to be a hurricane or typhoon, contains as much energy as 10,000 Hiroshima sized Atomic Bombs. If the War Department, later renamed to the Department of Defense to confuse the do-gooders, could control the weather or “Earth Processes” they would control the world. That’s the long held dream of Psychos and control freaks everywhere.
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    only a partial clipping so read article for more
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BC First Nations Unite To Ban Export Of Tar Sands Oil [07Dec11] - 0 views

  • For the first time in Canadian history, First Nations, whose territory encompasses the entire coastline of British Columbia, have publicly united to oppose the transport of tar sands crude oil through their land. Over 60 nations have signed the Save the Fraser Declaration, which bans tar sands oil pipelines throughout the Fraser River watershed, an area that was never ceded to the Canadian government, and therefore not legally under the government’s control. “North or south, it makes no difference. First Nations from every corner of BC are saying absolutely no tar sands pipelines or tankers in our territories,” said Chief Jackie Thomas of Saik’uz First Nation, a member of the Yinka Dene Alliance. “We have banned oil pipelines and tankers using our laws, and we will defend our decision using all the means at our disposal.” The First Nations’ refusal to allow tar sands oil extraction or transport through their would make it legally impossible for the Canadian government to move forward with many high price oil production projects. Monday’s announcement – on the first anniversary of the Save the Fraser Declaration – comes in response to recent calls from the Harper government and oil executives to push through pipeline and tanker projects against the wishes of British Columbians and First Nations.
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Real cause of nuclear crisis [13Dec11] - 0 views

  • t evidence is mounting that the meltdown at the nuclear power plant was actually caused by the earthquake itself.
  • According to a science journalist well versed in the matter, Tepco is afraid that if the earthquake were to be determined as the direct cause of the accident, the government would have to review its quake-resistance standards completely, which in turn would delay by years the resumption of the operation of existing nuclear power stations that are suspended currently due to regular inspections. The journalist is Mitsuhiko Tanaka, formerly with Babcock-Hitachi K.K. as an engineer responsible for designing the pressure vessel for the No. 4 reactor at the ill-fated Fukushima nuclear plant.
  • Such a review will require a number of years of study, making it impossible to restart the now suspended nuclear power stations next year as Tepco hopes.
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Fukushima Meltdown in Japan May Have Been Worse Than Thought [01Dec11] - 0 views

  • In the No. 1 reactor, the overheated fuel may have eroded the primary containment vessel’s thick concrete floor, and it may have gotten almost within a foot of a crucial steel barrier, the utility said the new simulation suggested. Beneath that steel layer is a concrete basement, which is the last barrier before the fuel would have begun to penetrate the earth. Some nuclear experts have warned that water from a makeshift cooling system now in place at the plant may not be able to properly cool any nuclear fuel that may have seeped into the concrete. The new simulation may call into question the efforts to cool and stabilize the reactor, but the Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, says it is not worried more than eight months after the accident.
  • The findings are the latest in a series of increasingly grave scenarios presented by Tepco about the state of the reactors. The company initially insisted that there was no breach at any of the three most-damaged reactors; it later said that there might have been a breach, but that most of the nuclear fuel had remained within the containment vessels. “This is still an overly optimistic simulation,” said Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor of physics at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, who has been a vocal critic of Tepco’s lack of disclosure of details of the disaster. Tepco would very much like to say that the outermost containment is not completely compromised and that the meltdown stopped before the outer steel barrier, he said, “but even by their own simulation, it’s very borderline.” “I have always argued that the containment is broken, and that there is the danger of a wider radiation leak,” Mr. Koide said. “In reality, it’s impossible to look inside the reactor, and most measurement instruments have been knocked out. So nobody really knows how bad it is.”
  • Still, a spokesman for Tepco, Junichi Matsumoto, said Wednesday that the nuclear fuel was no longer eating into the concrete, and that the new simulation would not affect efforts to bring the reactors to a stable state known as a “cold shutdown” by the end of the year.    “The containment vessel as a whole is being cooled, so there is no change to our outlook,” Mr. Matsumoto said at a news conference. 
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  • the simulation suggests that heat released as a result of radioactive decay “far overwhelmed” the effect of the cooling water,
  • Tepco now assumes that “100 percent of the fuel at Unit 1 has slumped” into the outer primary containment vessel. 
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Fukushima governor wants all reactors decommissioned [01Dec11] - 0 views

  • Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato on Nov. 30 said he will ask Tokyo Electric Power Co. and the central government to decommission all nuclear reactors in the prefecture. The request will be included in the prefectural government’s plan on recovering from the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake to be worked out by the end of this year. The prefectural government does not have the power to decommission nuclear reactors on its own, but the governor’s stance could make it impossible to operate all 10 reactors in the prefecture. Although not required by law, the governor’s approval is generally seen as needed to restart nuclear reactors. Sato is the first governor to seek a decommissioning of all reactors in a prefecture since the crisis started at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in March.
  • “The accidents have had (adverse) influences on all aspects, such as nature, society and education, failing to offset the financial benefits brought by the operation of nuclear power plants in our prefecture,” Sato said. End Extract http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201112010025
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Whistle-blower talks, container vessel is melting like honeycomb [03Jan11] - 0 views

  • 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.
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  • Probably the iron part of the core is uranium pellet unreacted – not sure yet because it’s still before the analysis. It’s beyond the max reading of 500X100 CPM. These yellow concrete slags come out from under the building one after one. It means that the container vessel is melting like honeycomb at least – doesn’t it? Otherwise why would metal uranium comes out of there ?
  • Taking a part of the concrete slag sample. Put it into the lead case (Chiyoda technol) and take it to a lab. I don’t know if it’s because they gave sea water to cool down or because it’s brackish area, if natrium (sodium salt) of sea water made a chemical reaction with calcium carbonate in the concrete to become diuranate natrium (sodium diuranate) or not, it looks yellow as yellow cake
  • made up my mind to take out the slags from the shelter to take pictures of them. wore protective clothing. When it’s taken out, it was over 400 ℃ but now it’s cooled down to 100 ℃. Can you see this big metal crystal (extremely radioactive) and the oxidized concrete looking like yellow cake? Can you believe it is out of the container vessel. It’s over 500 mSv/h, my geiger counter went over the limit. was scared so put it back to the shelter soon as I took a couple of the pictures.
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    Lots of good photos
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'Absolutely No Progress Being Made' at Fukushima Nuke Plant, Undercover Reporter Says [... - 0 views

  • "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.
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  • "Reactor makers Toshiba and Hitachi (brought in to help resolve the crisis) each have their own technology, and they don't talk to each other. Toshiba doesn't tell Hitachi what it's doing, and Hitachi doesn't tell Toshiba what it's doing." Meanwhile, despite there being no concrete data on the state of the reactor cores, claims by the government and TEPCO that the disaster is under control and that the reactors are on-schedule for a cold shutdown by the year's end have promoted a breakneck work schedule, leading to shoddy repairs and habitual disregard for worker safety, he said.
  • "Working at Fukushima is equivalent to being given an order to die," Suzuki quoted one nuclear-related company source as saying. He says plant workers regularly manipulate their radiation readings by reversing their dosimeters or putting them in their socks, giving them an extra 10 to 30 minutes on-site before they reach their daily dosage limit. In extreme cases, Suzuki said, workers even leave the radiation meters in their dormitories.
  • According to Suzuki, TEPCO and the subcontractors at the plant never explicitly tell the workers to take these measures. Instead the workers are simply assigned projects that would be impossible to complete on time without manipulating the dosage numbers, and whether through a sense of duty or fear of being fired, the workers never complain. Furthermore, the daily radiation screenings are "essentially an act," with the detector passed too quickly over each worker, while "the line to the buzzer that is supposed to sound when there's a problem has been cut," Suzuki said.
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Revealed: secret evacuation plan for Tokyo after Fukushima - 0 views

  • The Japanese government feared that millions of Tokyoites might have to be evacuated during the worst of last year's nuclear crisis, but kept the scenario secret to avoid panic in some of the world's most crowded urban areas, according to an internal report. The 15-page report, by the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission, was delivered to the then-Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, two weeks after the 11 March earthquake and tsunami triggered the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
  • It warned that if the situation spiralled out of control, compulsory or voluntary evacuation orders would have to be issued to residents living within 250 kilometres (155 miles) of the damaged facility, a radius that would have included the Tokyo metropolitan area that is home to around 30 million people. The directive would also have covered several large cities to the north and west of the plant, including Sendai. Some of the areas would be contaminated for "several decades", the report warned. Last May, Fukushima's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), admitted that uranium fuel inside three of the plant's reactors had melted down in the early days after disaster struck. A series of hydrogen explosions had showered thousands of square miles of land and sea with radioactive substances but officials from the government and Tepco repeatedly denied the meltdown scenario.
  • Mr Kan and his government insisted throughout March and April that the nuclear crisis was being contained and ignored calls to widen the evacuation area. But after he left office, the Prime Minister admitted in a newspaper interview that he feared the Fukushima disaster would leave the capital uninhabitable, and that evacuating it would have been "impossible". He said the "spine-chilling thought" of a deserted capital convinced him to scrap nuclear power.
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  • The latest revelations will revive criticism that the authorities have been less than forthcoming since the crisis erupted, and add to suspicions that they are still downplaying the impact of radiation. Government officials recently admitted that data on where the radiation went was withheld from the Japanese public for 10 days, even though it was shared with the US military in Japan.
  • The report will also add to concerns that Japan is unprepared for a similar disaster. Last week, researchers at the University of Tokyo warned that there is a 75 per cent probability that the capital will be hit by a major earthquake in the next four years.
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U.S. nuke regulators weaken safety rules [20Jun11] - 0 views

  • 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."
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  • Regulations are loosened, and reactors are back in compliance."That's what they say for everything ...," said Demetrios Basdekas, a retired NRC engineer. "Every time you turn around, they say, 'We have all this built-in conservatism.' "The crisis at the decades-old Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility in Japan has focused attention on nuclear safety and prompted the NRC to look at U.S. reactors. A report is due in July.But the factor of aging goes far beyond issues posed by Fukushima.
  • Commercial nuclear reactors in the United States were designed and licensed for 40 years. When the first were built in the 1960s and 1970s, it was expected that they would be replaced with improved models long before their licenses expired.That never happened. The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, massive cost overruns, crushing debt and high interest rates halted new construction in the 1980s.Instead, 66 of the 104 operating units have been relicensed for 20 more years. Renewal applications are under review for 16 other reactors.As of today, 82 reactors are more than 25 years old.The AP found proof that aging reactors have been allowed to run less safely to prolong operations.
  • Last year, the NRC weakened the safety margin for acceptable radiation damage to reactor vessels -- for a second time. The standard is based on a reactor vessel's "reference temperature," which predicts when it will become dangerously brittle and vulnerable to failure. Through the years, many plants have violated or come close to violating the standard.As a result, the minimum standard was relaxed first by raising the reference temperature 50 percent, and then 78 percent above the original -- even though a broken vessel could spill radioactive contents."We've seen the pattern," said nuclear safety scientist Dana Powers, who works for Sandia National Laboratories and also sits on an NRC advisory committee. "They're ... trying to get more and more out of these plants."
  • Sharpening the pencilThe AP study collected and analyzed government and industry documents -- some never-before released -- of both reactor types: pressurized water units that keep radioactivity confined to the reactor building and the less common boiling water types like those at Fukushima, which send radioactive water away from the reactor to drive electricity-generating turbines.The Energy Northwest Columbia Generating Station north of Richland is a boiling water design that's a newer generation than the Fukushima plants.Tens of thousands of pages of studies, test results, inspection reports and policy statements filed during four decades were reviewed. Interviews were conducted with scores of managers, regulators, engineers, scientists, whistleblowers, activists and residents living near the reactors at 65 sites, mostly in the East and Midwest.
  • AP reporters toured some of the oldest reactors -- Oyster Creek, N.J., near the Atlantic coast 50 miles east of Philadelphia and two at Indian Point, 25 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River.Called "Oyster Creak" by some critics, this boiling water reactor began running in 1969 and is the country's oldest operating commercial nuclear power plant. Its license was extended in 2009 until 2029, though utility officials announced in December they will shut the reactor 10 years earlier rather than build state-ordered cooling towers. Applications to extend the lives of pressurized water units 2 and 3 at Indian Point, each more than 36 years old, are under NRC review.Unprompted, several nuclear engineers and former regulators used nearly identical terminology to describe how industry and government research has frequently justified loosening safety standards. They call it "sharpening the pencil" or "pencil engineering" -- fudging calculations and assumptions to keep aging plants in compliance.
  • Cracked tubing: The industry has long known of cracking in steel alloy tubing used in the steam generators of pressurized water reactors. Ruptures have been common in these tubes containing radioactive coolant; in 1993 alone, there were seven. As many as 18 reactors still run on old generators.Problems can arise even in a newer metal alloy, according to a report of a 2008 industry-government workshop.
  • Neil Wilmshurst, director of plant technology for the industry's Electric Power Research Institute, acknowledged the industry and NRC often collaborate on research that supports rule changes. But he maintained there's "no kind of misplaced alliance ... to get the right answer."Yet agency staff, plant operators and consultants paint a different picture:* The AP reviewed 226 preliminary notifications -- alerts on emerging safety problems -- NRC has issued since 2005. Wear and tear in the form of clogged lines, cracked parts, leaky seals, rust and other deterioration contributed to at least 26 of the alerts. Other notifications lack detail, but aging was a probable factor in 113 more, or 62 percent in all. For example, the 39-year-old Palisades reactor in Michigan shut Jan. 22 when an electrical cable failed, a fuse blew and a valve stuck shut, expelling steam with low levels of radioactive tritium into the outside air. And a 1-inch crack in a valve weld aborted a restart in February at the LaSalle site west of Chicago.
  • * A 2008 NRC report blamed 70 percent of potentially serious safety problems on "degraded conditions" such as cracked nozzles, loose paint, electrical problems or offline cooling components.* Confronted with worn parts, the industry has repeatedly requested -- and regulators often have allowed -- inspections and repairs to be delayed for months until scheduled refueling outages. Again and again, problems worsened before being fixed. Postponed inspections inside a steam generator at Indian Point allowed tubing to burst, leading to a radioactive release in 2000. Two years later, cracking grew so bad in nozzles on the reactor vessel at the Davis-Besse plant near Toledo, Ohio, that it came within two months of a possible breach, an NRC report said, which could release radiation. Yet inspections failed to catch the same problem on the replacement vessel head until more nozzles were found to be cracked last year.
  • Time crumbles thingsNuclear plants are fundamentally no more immune to aging than our cars or homes: Metals grow weak and rusty, concrete crumbles, paint peels, crud accumulates. Big components like 17-story-tall concrete containment buildings or 800-ton reactor vessels are all but impossible to replace. Smaller parts and systems can be swapped but still pose risks as a result of weak maintenance and lax regulation or hard-to-predict failures.Even mundane deterioration can carry harsh consequences.For example, peeling paint and debris can be swept toward pumps that circulate cooling water in a reactor accident. A properly functioning containment building is needed to create air pressure that helps clear those pumps. But a containment building could fail in a severe accident. Yet the NRC has allowed safety calculations that assume the buildings will hold.
  • In a 2009 letter, Mario V. Bonaca, then-chairman of the NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, warned that this approach represents "a decrease in the safety margin" and makes a fuel-melting accident more likely.Many photos in NRC archives -- some released in response to AP requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act -- show rust accumulated in a thick crust or paint peeling in long sheets on untended equipment.Four areas stand out:
  • Brittle vessels: For years, operators have rearranged fuel rods to limit gradual radiation damage to the steel vessels protecting the core and keep them strong enough to meet safety standards.But even with last year's weakening of the safety margins, engineers and metal scientists say some plants may be forced to close over these concerns before their licenses run out -- unless, of course, new regulatory compromises are made.
  • Leaky valves: Operators have repeatedly violated leakage standards for valves designed to bottle up radioactive steam in an earthquake or other accident at boiling water reactors.Many plants have found they could not adhere to the general standard allowing main steam isolation valves to leak at a rate of no more than 11.5 cubic feet per hour. In 1999, the NRC decided to allow individual plants to seek amendments of up to 200 cubic feet per hour for all four steam valves combined.But plants have violated even those higher limits. For example, in 2007, Hatch Unit 2, in Baxley, Ga., reported combined leakage of 574 cubic feet per hour.
  • "Many utilities are doing that sort of thing," said engineer Richard T. Lahey Jr., who used to design nuclear safety systems for General Electric Co., which makes boiling water reactors. "I think we need nuclear power, but we can't compromise on safety. I think the vulnerability is on these older plants."Added Paul Blanch, an engineer who left the industry over safety issues, but later returned to work on solving them: "It's a philosophical position that (federal regulators) take that's driven by the industry and by the economics: What do we need to do to let those plants continue to operate?"Publicly, industry and government say that aging is well under control. "I see an effort on the part of this agency to always make sure that we're doing the right things for safety. I'm not sure that I see a pattern of staff simply doing things because there's an interest to reduce requirements -- that's certainly not the case," NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko said in an interview.
  • Corroded piping: Nuclear operators have failed to stop an epidemic of leaks in pipes and other underground equipment in damp settings. Nuclear sites have suffered more than 400 accidental radioactive leaks, the activist Union of Concerned Scientists reported in September.Plant operators have been drilling monitoring wells and patching buried piping and other equipment for several years to control an escalating outbreak.But there have been failures. Between 2000 and 2009, the annual number of leaks from underground piping shot up fivefold, according to an internal industry document.
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(Part 2) Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama of Tokyo University Tells the Politicians: "What Ar... - 0 views

  • Professor Kodama is the head of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo.Professor Kodama's anger is now directed toward the government's non-action to protect people, especially children and young mothers, from internal radiation exposure. His specialty is internal medicine using radioisotope, so he says he has done the intense research on internal radiation:
  • I have been in charge of antibody drugs at the Cabinet Office since Mr. Obuchi was the prime minister [1998-]. We put radioisotopes to antibody drugs to treat cancer. In other words, my job is to inject radioisotopes into human bodies, so my utmost concern is the internal radiation exposure and that is what I have been studying intensely.
  • The biggest problem of internal radiation is cancer. How does cancer happen? Because radiation cuts DNA strands. As you know, DNA is in a double helix. When it is in a double helix it is extremely stable. However, when a cell divides, the double helix becomes single strands, doubles and becomes 4 strands. This stage is the most vulnerable.
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  • Therefore, the fetuses and small children, with cells that rapidly divide, are most susceptible to radiation danger. Even for adults, there are cells that rapidly divide such as hair, blood cells and intestinal epitheria, and they can be damaged by radiation.Let me give you an example of what we know about internal radiation.
  • One genetic mutation does not cause cancer. After the initial hit by radiation, it needs a different trigger for a cell to mutate into a cancer cell, which is called "driver mutation" or "passenger mutation". (For details please refer to the attached document about the cases in Chernobyl and cesium.)Alpha radiation is most famous. I was startled when I learned of a professor at Tokyo University who said it was safe to drink plutonium.
  • Alpha radiation is the most dangerous radiation. It causes thorotrast liver damage, as we, liver specialists, know very well.Internal radiation is referred to as such-and-such millisieverts, but it is utterly meaningless. Iodine-131 goes to thyroid gland, and thorotrast goes to liver, and cesium goes to urothelium and urinary bladder. Whole body scan is utterly meaningless unless you look at these parts in the body where radiation accumulates.
  • Thorotrast was a contrast medium used in Germany since 1890. It was used in Japan since 1930, but it was found that 25 to 30% of people developed liver cancer 20 to 30 years later.Why does it take so long before cancer develops? Thorotrast is an alpha-radiation nuclide. Alpha radiation injures nearby cells, and the DNA that is harmed most is P53. We now know, thanks to genome science, the entire sequence of human DNA. However, there are 3 million locations on the DNA that are different from person to person. So today, it doesn't make sense at all to proceed as if all humans are the same. The basic principle should be the "personal life medicine" when we look at internal radiation - which DNA is damaged, and what kind of change is taking place.
  • In case of thorotrast, it is proven that P53 is damaged in the first stage, and it takes 20 to 30 years for the 2nd, 3rd mutations to occur, causing liver cancer and leukemia.About iodine-131. As you know, iodine accumulates in thyroid gland, and that is most noticeable during the formative phase of thyroid gland, i.e. in small children.
  • However, when the first researcher in Ukraine was saying in 1991 "There are an increasing number of thyroid cancer", researchers in Japan and the US were publishing articles in Nature magazine saying "There is no causal relationship between the radiation and thyroid cancer." Why did they say that? Because there was no data prior to 1986, there was no statistical significance.
  • The statistical significance was finally noted 20 years later. Why? Because the peak that started in 1986 disappeared. So even without the data prior to 1986, the occurrence of thyroid cancer and radiation exposure from Chernobyl had the causal relationship. Epidemiological proof is very difficult. It is impossible to prove until all the cases are done.Therefore, from the viewpoint of "protecting our children" a completely different approach is required.
  • Dr. Shoji Fukushima from a national institution called Japan Bioassay Research Center, which researches health effects of chemical compounds, has been studying diseases involving urinary tract since the Chernobyl accident.
  • Dr. Fukushima and doctors in Ukraine studied parts of bladders removed during more than 500 cases of prostatic hypertrophy surgery. They found out that in the highly contaminated area where 6Bq/liter was detected in urine, there was a high frequency of mutation of p53 though 6Bq may sound minuscule.
  • They also noticed many cases of proliferative precancerous conditions, which we assume was due to the activation of p38 MAP kinase and the signal called "NF-kappa B," leading inevitably to proliferative cystitis, with carcinoma in situ occurring with considerable frequency.Knowing this, I was astounded to hear the report that 2 to 13Bq/liter [of radioactive cesium] was detected from the breast milk of seven mothers in Fukushima.(to be continued in Part 3.)
  • When radioactive materials were detected from the breast milk, what did the government and government researchers say? "No need to worry. No immediate effect on health of the babies."Professor Kodama is saying that by the time we have proof that there is a causal relationship between internal radiation exposure (however small) and cancer, it may be too late.Thorotrast is a suspension containing the radioactive particles of thorium dioxide.
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    Japanese Professor's testimony on July 27, here is an excerpt from pt 1: Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama is the head of the Radioisotope Center at the University of Tokyo. On July 27, he appeared as a witness to give testimony to the Committee on Welfare and Labor in Japan's Lower House in the Diet. Remember Professor Kosako, also from the University of Tokyo, who resigned in protest as special advisor to the prime minister over the 20 millisievert/year radiation limit for school children? There are more gutsy researchers at Todai (Tokyo University) - the supreme school for the "establishment" - than I thought. Professor Kodama literally shouted at the politicians in the committee, "What the hell are you doing?" He was of course referring to the pathetic response by the national government in dealing with the nuclear crisis, particularly when it comes to protecting children. Part two:
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#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Workers Knew About the Extremely High Radiation Around Exhaust... - 0 views

  • There may not be any work planned in the area there, BECAUSE RADIATION IS TOO HIGH. There may be no work planned there, but the workers have to go near it to enter the Reactor 1 building. The radiation is so high that the workers, with all their full protection gear and equipment and construction materials they carry, have been running past the area in order to minimize radiation exposure.So it's been known.More information from his tweets:
  • (Someone asked if it's true that TEPCO does not have the survey meter that can measure more than 10 sievert/hr radiation.) I think that's correct. We do have the instrument to measure the radiation of the nuclear fuel rods, but I wonder what happened to that. Broke?(Referring to the area where over 10 sievert/hr radiation has been detected,) the radiation level around the exhaust stacks has been too high to even go near, ever since the accident started. Not just the area around the stack for Reactors 1 and 2, but also the stack for Reactors 3 and 4.
  • Debris are removed by shielded heavy equipment or remote-controlled equipment. That (10+ sievert/hr) spot was found during such operation.
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  • We have to run when we go by the stack to enter Reactor 1. That's hard work. My legs hurt already from climbing up and down the stairs in the reactor building. Now I appreciate elevators!
  • All the elevators inside the reactor buildings at Fukushima I Nuke Plant are broken.
  • As to the worker who measured the radiation with the survey meter attached to a stick, Hiroaki Koide of Kyoto University says he must have spent only 1 or 2 seconds near the stack to get 4 millisieverts radiation.Let's see. 2.78 millisieverts for one second, if the radiation was 10 sieverts/hr.
  • Koide thinks the radiation level is impossibly high to be coming from inside the duct or stack. He suspects there is a piece or two of the spent fuel blown out of the Spent Fuel Pool when Reactor 1 and Reactor 3 had hydrogen explosions.He also says the protection suits that workers wear do nothing to protect them from gamma rays, unless they wear lead vests, but even then only marginally.
  • (For more of his comment, there's a transcript of the radio program that he appeared in, in Japanese.)
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