Group items tagged

Epidemiologist Joseph Mangano, MPH MBA, said: "This study of Fukushima health hazards is the first to be published in a scientific journal. It raises concerns, and strongly suggests that health studies continue, to understand the true impact of Fukushima in Japan and around the world

Internist and toxicologist Janette Sherman, MD, said: "Based on our continuing research, the actual death count here may be as high as 18,000, with influenza and pneumonia, which were up five-fold in the period in question as a cause of death. Deaths are seen across all ages, but we continue to find that infants are hardest hit because their tissues are rapidly multiplying, they have undeveloped immune systems, and the doses of radioisotopes are proportionally greater than for adults."Dr. Sherman is an adjunct professor, Western Michigan University, and contributing editor of "Chernobyl - Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" published by the NY Academy of Sciences in 2009, and author of "Chemical Exposure and Disease and Life's Delicate Balance - Causes and Prevention of Breast Cancer."The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issues weekly reports on numbers of deaths for 122 U.S. cities with a population over 100,000, or about 25-30 percent of the U.S. In the 14 weeks after Fukushima fallout arrived in the U.S. (March 20 to June 25), deaths reported to the CDC rose 4.46 percent from the same period in 2010, compared to just 2.34 percent in the 14 weeks prior. Estimated excess deaths during this period for the entire U.S. are about 14,000.

Here is a comment on this topic from Rossi's blog, "The Journal of Nuclear Physics." http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/?p=501&cpage=2#comment-54414 

Dear Alessandro Casali: This photo [shown in the opening of this PESN story] has been taken during the stress test of a series of E-Cats a couple of weeks ago, together with the Greek Scientist Christos Stremmenos. They are some of the E-Cats that will compound the 1 MW plant. In that phase the E-Cats were working making steam WITHOUT energy input. This is why you see us so focused (me and Stremmenos). The 1 MW plant, probably will work mostly without energy input, I suppose, because we are resolving the safety issues connected. The 4 red spots are pumps, the E-Cat clusters are hidden. The three characters in the photo are Prof. Sergio Focardi, Prof. Christos Stremmenos and me. Warm Regards, A.R.

(I think the reason he uses the word "mostly" in the above post, is that the one megawatt plant will require input power to start. Also, if a reactor core starts to drift lower in output, power will be used for a few minutes to bring it back to a normal operating temperature. For the vast majority of the time, there will be no input power.) The fact that the one megawatt plant will use no input power (the vast majority of the time) is very important. This will be absolute -- beyond any doubt -- proof that the technology works as claimed. Simply put, the pathological skeptics and naysayers will not be able to refute that cold fusion is taking place. 

Confirmation the Catalyst and Fuel is Super Cheap

Cumulative radiation dose is neither an accurate nor an appropriate measure of cancer induction risk for protracted or fractionated ionizing radiation exposure except for describing the virtual threshold for various exposures; and Cancer promotion risk for ongoing lifetime biological processes is a relative process as seen in the RERF (Radiation Effects Research Foundation) studies of the Japanese atomic bomb survivors for brief high dose-rate exposures to ionizing radiation. It cannot be used to estimate cancer induction risk from protracted or fractionated ionizing exposures over long times and at low dose rates.

RecommendationsThe current ICRP radiation protection recommendations certainly provide a high level of safety and protection for radiation workers and the public. Radiation safety has been the most important goal of the ICRP, and their recommendations have met that goal with distinction. However, the ICRP risk estimates and response models for protracted or fractionated ionizing radiation exposures and long-lived internal emitters seriously overestimate the risks of low doses. Reasonably accurate cancer induction risk estimates are needed to avoid expensive over-regulation and to bolster the scientific foundation of radiation safety regulations and analysis. Many of the current environmental radiation safety standards are inappropriately low and prohibitively expensive to enforce.

The current ICRP models of radiation carcinogenesis can be misleading. Revision of the radiation safety standards is needed that clearly distinguishes between radiation cancer promotion as observed in the atomic bomb survivor studies and radiation cancer induction as observed for long-lived internal emitters. In particular, the ICRP needs to revisit and revise the standards currently recommended for ionizing radiation-induced cancer. Recommended standards should be considered that are based on lifetime average dose rate to sensitive tissues in the case of internally-deposited, relatively long-lived radionuclides and other protracted or fractionated exposures rather than on cumulative or committed dose.

And while there have been scattered reports already of food contamination—of tea leaves and spinach, for example—Mr. Kosako said there will be broader, more disturbing discoveries later this year, especially as rice, Japan’s staple, is harvested. “Come the harvest season in the fall, there will be a chaos,” Mr. Kosako said. “Among the rice harvested, there will certainly be some radiation contamination—though I don’t know at what levels—setting off a scandal. If people stop buying rice from Tohoku, . . . we’ll have a tricky problem.”

The Atlantic points out:

The reason for official reluctance to admit that the earthquake did direct structural damage to reactor one is obvious. Katsunobu Onda, author of TEPCO: The Dark Empire … who sounded the alarm about the firm in his 2007 book explains it this way: “If TEPCO and the government of Japan admit an earthquake can do direct damage to the reactor, this raises suspicions about the safety of every reactor they run. They are using a number of antiquated reactors that have the same systematic problems, the same wear and tear on the piping.”

Oddly enough, while TEPCO later insisted that the cause of the meltdown was the tsunami knocking out emergency power systems, at the 7:47 p.m. TEPCO press conference the same day, the spokesman in response to questions from the press about the cooling systems stated that the emergency water circulation equipment and reactor core isolation time cooling systems would work even without electricity

On May 15, TEPCO went some way toward admitting at least some of these claims in a report called “Reactor Core Status of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit One.” The report said there might have been pre-tsunami damage to key facilities including pipes. “This means that assurances from the industry in Japan and overseas that the reactors were robust is now blown apart,” said Shaun Burnie, an independent nuclear waste consultant. “It raises fundamental questions on all reactors in high seismic risk areas.”

Eyewitness testimony and TEPCO’S own data indicates that the damage [done to the plant by the quake] was significant. All of this despite the fact that shaking experienced at the plant during the quake was within it’s approved design specifications

The Wall Street Journal writes:

A former nuclear adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan blasted the government’s continuing handling of the crisis, and predicted further revelations of radiation threats to the public in the coming months. In his first media interview since resigning his post in protest in April, Toshiso Kosako, one of the country’s leading experts on radiation safety, said Mr. Kan’s government has been slow to test for possible dangers in the sea and to fish and has understated certain radiation dangers to minimize what it will have to spend to clean up contamination.

Former Minister for Internal Affairs Haraguchi Kazuhiro has alleged that radiation monitoring station data was actually three decimal places greater than the numbers released to the public. If this is true, it constitutes a “national crime”, in Nishio’s words

And – as the Guardian notes in a third article – the collusion between the British government and nuclear companies is leading to political fallout:

It’s not just the Japanese. As the Guardian notes:

The Guardian reports in a second article

British government officials approached nuclear companies to draw up a co-ordinated public relations strategy to play down the Fukushima nuclear accident just two days after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and before the extent of the radiation leak was known. Internal emails seen by the Guardian show how the business and energy departments worked closely behind the scenes with the multinational companies EDF Energy, Areva and Westinghouse… Officials stressed the importance of preventing the incident from undermining public support for nuclear power.

The Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith, who sits on the Commons environmental audit committee, condemned the extent of co-ordination between the government and nuclear companies that the emails appear to reveal.

The official suggested that if companies sent in their comments, they could be incorporated into briefs to ministers and government statements. “We need to all be working from the same material to get the message through to the media and the public

The office for nuclear development invited companies to attend a meeting at the NIA’s headquarters in London. The aim was “to discuss a joint communications and engagement strategy aimed at ensuring we maintain confidence among the British public on the safety of nuclear power stations and nuclear new-build policy in light of recent events at the Fukushima nuclear power plant”. Other documents released by the government’s safety watchdog, the office for nuclear regulation, reveal that the text of an announcement on 5 April about the impact of Fukushima on the new nuclear programme was privately cleared with nuclear industry representatives at a meeting the previous week. According to one former regulator, who preferred not to be named, the degree of collusion was “truly shocking”.

The release of 80 emails showing that in the days after the Fukushima accident not one but two government departments were working with nuclear companies to spin one of the biggest industrial catastrophes of the last 50 years, even as people were dying and a vast area was being made uninhabitable, is shocking

What the emails shows is a weak government, captured by a powerful industry colluding to at least misinform and very probably lie to the public and the media.

To argue that the radiation was being released deliberately and was “all part of the safety systems to control and manage a situation” is Orwellian.

British Shenanigans

“This deliberate and (sadly) very effective attempt to ‘calm’ the reporting of the true story of Fukushima is a terrible betrayal of liberal values. In my view it is not acceptable that a Liberal Democrat cabinet minister presides over a department deeply involved in a blatant conspiracy designed to manipulate the truth in order to protect corporate interests”. -Andy Myles, Liberal Democrat party’s former chief executive in Scotland “These emails corroborate my own impression that there has been a strange silence in the UK following the Fukushima disaster … in the UK, new nuclear sites have been announced before the results of the Europe-wide review of nuclear safety has been completed. Today’s news strengthens the case for the government to halt new nuclear plans until an independent and transparent review has been conducted.” -Fiona Hall, leader of the Liberal Democrats in the European parliament

NOTHING happend to the fuel in the pools at Fukushima. I would like to see some evidence other than the word of an activist who frightens kids for a living to support Gunter’s rant about peices of fuel being ejected miles away. From the looks of that video, the fuel didn’t move an inch. There is also a poll associated with the article. The poll discloses that it is completely unscientific, since it allows anyone to vote and is not based on randomly selected participants. However, I think that the results as of 0315 this morning are pretty amusing since the antinuclear opinion piece has been posted for nearly a week.

95% disagree with “Beyond Nuclear”. Let’s make it 99% by Rod Adams on October 14, 2011 in Antinuclear activist, Politics of Nuclear Energy, Unreliables, Wind energy Share0 One of the more powerful concepts that I studied in college was called “groupthink.” The curriculum developers in the history department at the US Naval Academy thought it was important for people in training to become leaders in the US Navy learn to seek counsel and advice from as broad a range of sources as possible. We were taught how to avoid the kind of bad decision making that can result by surrounding oneself with yes-men or fellow travelers. The case study I remember most was the ill fated Bay of Pigs invasion where virtually the entire Kennedy Administration cabinet thought that it would be a cakewalk. If Patricia Miller had bothered to do the fact-checking required by journalistic integrity she would have come across this video showing 30 feet of water above the fuel at Fukushima with all of the fuel bundles exactly where they’re supposed to be.Aside: Don’t we live in an amazing world? I just typed “Bay of Pigs groupthink” into my browser search box and instantly hit on exactly the link I needed to support the statement above. It even cites the book we used when I was a plebe in 1977, more than 33 years ago. End Aside. Not everyone, however, has the benefit of early leadership lessons about the danger of believing that a small group of likeminded people can provide actionable advice. Some of the people who are most likely to be victims of groupthink are those who adamantly oppose the continued safe operation of emission-free nuclear power plants. The writers who exclusively quote members of that tiny community have also fallen into the groupthink trap.  On October 8, 2011, the Berkeley Patch, a New Jersey based journal that regularly posts negative stories about Oyster Creek, featured an article titled Petitioners to NRC: Shut Down All Fukushima-Like Nuclear Plants . Here is a snapshot of the masthead, the headline and the lede. The article is a diatribe that quotes people on the short list of frequently quoted antinuclear activists including Paul Gunter, Michael Mariotte, Kevin Kamps, Deb Katz and Dale Bridenbaugh. The author faithfully reproduces some of their best attempts to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt using untruths about the actual events at Fukushima. For example, the article uses the following example of how antinuclear activists are still trying to spread the myth that the used fuel pools at Fukushima caught fire. Oyster Creek – the oldest nuclear plant in the United States – has generated over 700 tons of high-level radioactive waste, Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear said. “Granted that some of that has been moved into dry cast storage, but the pool remains full to its capacity,” Kamps said. “And this was a re-rack capacity. Much later in terms of quantity of high level radioactive waste than it was originally designed for.” This represents 125 million curies of radioactive cesium-137 and the NRC has reported that up to 100 percent of the hazardous material could be released from a pool fire, Kamps said. “I would like to point out that Fukushima Daiichi units one, two, three and four combined in terms of the inventory of high level radioactive waste in their storage pools does not match some of these reactors I mentioned in terms of how much waste is in these pools,” Kamps said. “So the risks are greater here for boil downs and the consequences of a radioactive fire in these pools.” Fortunately, the people who are not a part of the antinuclear community are finally beginning to recognize their own strength and to realize that they do not have to remain silent while the lies are being spread. Here is how a knowledgable commenter responded to the above segment of the article: If Patricia Miller had bothered to do the fact-checking required by journalistic integrity she would have come across this video showing 30 feet of water above the fuel at Fukushima with all of the fuel bundles exactly where they’re supposed to be.

“It took a really extraordinary event for 95 percent of the people in the world to know about it,” he said. “If they know about Fukushima, they know about Mark 1 reactors exploding in the air and releasing toxic radiation across the world and they know that’s not a good thing. Something has to be done to make sure that never happens again.” I could not let that one pass without a comment; I am quite sure that Mariotte has once again fallen victim to the fact that he surrounds himself with people who echo his own prejudices. Here is my response.

Marriotte makes an interesting statement by he claiming that “95% of the people in the world” know about Fukushima. That statement might be true about the people in the United States, where advertiser-supported television news programs covered the events with breathless hype for several months. I am pretty sure that you would have a difficult time finding anyone in China, central Africa, the Asian subcontinent, South America or the Middle East who can even pronounce Fukushima, much less know anything about GE Mark 1 containments. Most of them would not even know that they should be worried about radiation because they have never been taught to be afraid of something that they cannot smell, feel, taste, or hear especially when it occurs at levels that have no chance of making them sick within their expected lifetime. Mariotte, Gunter, Kamps, Katz and Bridenbaugh are all members of a vocal, but tiny group of people who have been carrying the water of the fossil fuel industry for decades by opposing nuclear energy, the only real competitor it has. They are victims of groupthink who believe that their neighbors in Takoma Park are representative of the whole world.

Just before making this comment, I voted in the unscientific poll associated with the article. 95% say that Oyster Creek should keep on powering New Jersey homes and businesses. They are not impressed by the Beyond Nuclear FUD; they like clean electricity.

On June 7, there was a fire -- apparently unrelated to the flooding -- in an electrical switchgear room at Fort Calhoun. For about 90 minutes, the pool where spent fuel is stored had no power for cooling. OPPD reported that "offsite power remained available, as well as the emergency diesel generators if needed." But the incident was yet another reminder of the plant's potential vulnerability

And so, Fort Calhoun remains on emergency alert because of the flood -- which is expected to worsen by early next week. On June 9, the Army Corps of Engineers announced PDF that the Missouri River would crest at least two feet higher in Blair than previously anticipated

The Fort Calhoun plant has never experienced a flood like this before

this spring, heavy rains and high snowpack levels in Montana, northern Wyoming, and the western Dakotas have filled reservoirs to capacity, and unprecedented releases from the dams are now reaching Omaha and other cities in the Missouri River valley. Floodgates that haven't been opened in 50 years are spilling 150,000 cubic feet per second -- enough water to fill more than a hundred Olympic-size swimming pools in one minute. And Fort Calhoun isn't the only power plant affected by flooding on the Missouri: The much larger Cooper Nuclear Station in Brownville, Nebraska, sits below the Missouri's confluence with the Platte River -- which is also flooding. Workers at Cooper have constructed barriers and stockpiled fuel for the plant's three diesel generators while, like their colleagues at Fort Calhoun, they wait for the inevitable.

According to the WSJ, the Saudi government said the former ambassador does not speak for it in an official capacity. Al-Faisal, however, is widely believed to be on a short list to be the next foreign minister of KSA. How credible his claim is about the potential for a regional arms race remains to be seen. Swapping nukes for oil drums

The main driver for KSA’s plans to build reactors is that at the rate that it is burning its own oil, it may have substantially less to export in just a decade or so. At a minimum, it may lose the excess capacity the rest of the world relies on when there are disruptions in supplies from other countries. One scenario suggested by energy analysts that follow oil markets is that within two decades most of the KSA output would be used for domestic consumption. Total Saudi reserves are estimated at 267 billion barrels. Debates rage in the news media over so-called peak oil, but energy experts discount them as speculative at best, and fantastic or worse on the downside.

Current production estimates put total KSA production capacity at 12.5 million barrels a day with a maximum output of 15 million barrels a day. The Wall Street Journal reported in April 2011 that production was running at 8 million-9 million barrels a day compared to 11 million barrels a day in 2010 reported by the Energy Information Administration. The difference is the global economic downturn has reduced demand. What’s got the attention of energy planners is that domestic use in KSA could grow from 3.4 million barrels of oil a day in 2009 to 8.3 million barrels a day by 2028.

The official Saudi press agency said in April 2010 that it was “alarmed” by increasing oil and gas consumption for domestic use and the resulting impact on export revenues. Reduction of consumption, which pushes up use of fossil fuel to produce electricity, is not an option for both economic and political reasons. In 2011, the Saudi government has increased its subsidies of energy supplies by $100 million for domestic use, in part to dampen any possibilities of social unrest like that which toppled regimes in Tunisia and Egypt.

Like other Arab countries, KSA has a large population of unemployed young people who have better than average educations.  This is a volatile mix and the arch conservatives that run KSA have defused it with lavish subsidies.

Electricity demand is predicted to increase from 75 GWe by 2018 to more than 120 Gwe by 2030. This growth can’t be sustained by fossil fuel alone and also maintain the income stream the nation depends on from oil exports. Nuclear reactors are an obvious choice to intervene in an unsustainable growth scenario.

This outlook is sending the Saudi government down a path to develop nuclear energy. In April, it announced that it was setting up the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KA-CARE) to pursue this objective. Saudi Arabia is building up its transmission and distribution grids to interconnect with the UAE on the east and Oman to the south.  It is developing its so-called empty quarter which Middle East experts point out isn’t as empty as it sounds.

The new city’s charter states that nuclear and renewable energies, especially solar, would be developed to ensure continued supplies of drinking water and electricity to its growing population and save hydrocarbon resources such as petroleum and gas for use by future generations. The objective is to make them a source of income for a much longer period.

Czech utility CEZ plans Europe’s largest reactor complexes The Czech government is planning a significant expansion of nuclear energy now that Germany has moved to shutter its 17 reactors by 2020.  A national energy strategy would call for building two or more new reactors at Temelin and three more at Dukovany. The two sites house a total of six existing reactors and grid infrastructure. 

Czech Industry & Trade Minister Martin Kocourek (right) told the Bloomberg wire service  September 8 the country will not give in to anti-nuclear influences from Austria or Germany. “Czech doesn’t need ideology.  What it needs is a rational update of its energy strategy.  The current ideology-driven policies of some countries is one thing; our reality is another.” If state-owned Czech utility CEZ builds all five reactors, worth about $28 billion, it will export electricity to Germany and Poland.  CEZ is expected to release documents related to the bid process next month.  The bidders are Areva, Westinghouse, and Rosatom.  An award for the first two new reactors to be built at Temelin is expected in 2013.

On September 15 CEZ named Daniel Benes, 41, as its new CEO with a mandate to execute a national energy strategy that includes building new nuclear reactors.  On September 20 Benes told financial wire services it will be his top priority linked to the goal of energy security for the Czech Republic.

On September 23 Czech President Vaclav Klaus (left) spoke at the United Nations in support of nuclear energy.  According to English language Czech news media, Klaus said: . . . “We consider what happened in Fukushima did not by any means question the arguments for nuclear energy.  These arguments are strong, economically rational and convincing.” He called Germany’s decision to close its reactors an “irrational populist event.”  In a parallel statement trade minister Kocourek said that CEZ would not expand renewable energy sources beyond 13% because it is unrealistic to expect to run a modern country on them.  He added CEZ “has big doubts” about biomass.

South Korea to invest in Romanian nuclear plant A South Korean nuclear energy consortium may invest in a project to build a third and a fourth reactor at Cernovoda in southeast Romania. The consortium replaces an investor group which pulled out of the project earlier this year.  The project manager for the new reactors is EnergoNuclear.  Right now Romania’s state owned electric utility holds an 85% share in the project and Italy’s ENEL holds another 9%. If the deal goes through, the South Korean group could take up to a 45 % stake in the project which is estimated to cost $5.7 billion.  Romania has two CANDU reactors at the site near the country’s Black Sea coast.  South Korea has experience with the CANDU design so it is plausible it may reference it in a proposal to build the next two units. This would be a huge win for AECL which recently was split up with its reactor division sold off for peanuts to SNC Lavalin.  AECL has marketed itself in eastern Europe hoping for this kind of development.

I have been involved in the financial analysis of enough large projects to know that there are two sure ways to add cost to any project. The first method is to add delay

The second method is to add lawyers to the mix; they are professionally motivated to argue and delay. After all, they bill by the minute.

Here is the response that I posted in the comment section of Ms. Smith’s Wall Street Journal article.The sad part of the story was the apparent lack of understanding by the project detractors of the impact of their actions on the cost of the project. The length of time spent building the plant will have a very real impact on the cost of the project due to the fact that more time means more salaries, more interest on borrowed money, and a greater chance of increased prices for materials and equipment purchased and installed at a later time than planned.

Maintaining projected costs and schedules is highly dependent on the actions of regulators and intervenors who continue to slow down progress with legalistic arguments that have nothing to do with safety. The issues that the regulators raised are related to a difference of technical opinion on whether or not is reasonable to neglect the impact of solar heating and cooling while modeling the behavior of the containment building after an accident that releases 600 F water and steam into the building.

Westinghouse went back and recalculated the impact of the minor term in the equation – the final result was that under absolutely worst case conditions, the final pressure inside the containment went up by about 0.3 psi and was still well below the building’s allowed maximum pressure.

The current Chairman of the NRC is a professional political staffer whose complete professional experience following college was working for two avowed antinuclear politicians. He has cost taxpayers in 31 states billions already with his decision to refuse to finish the Yucca Mountain license review; now he is aiming to cost Georgia ratepayers and GA Power investors (remember, utility investors are often widows and orphans) hundreds of millions to billions more. He took the unprecedented step of issuing a press release calling Westinghouse’s application into question over such a technical dispute regarding the significance of terms in a mathematical model.

Americans need to know just how job unfriendly the NRC Chairman is.Full disclosure – I work for a company that is designing nuclear reactors that will soon need to be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I fear for my long term employment and that of hundreds of my colleagues and neighbors.