Group items tagged

Since March 11, 2011 it has been reported that YouTube videos containing footage or comments unfavorable to Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) or the Japanese government have been removed within several hours of their posting. Examples of offending YouTube videos include excerpts of TV shows with controversial comments like footage showing smoke emitted from the nuclear reactors, and an ex-TEPCO employee speaking on his Fukushima experiences. Likewise, Twitter accounts with too much content regarding nuclear power and radiation issues have been disrupted.

On June 17, 2011 the Japanese Parliament passed “The Computer Network Monitoring Law” . Prof. Ibusuki of Seijo Univ. Law Dept. comments that “The Computer Network Monitoring Law will enable the police to monitor anyone’s internet activity without restriction.” Although this appears, on the surface, to be beneficial when targeting cyber-attacks, some Japanese commentators are suggesting that the law is un-Constitutional.

“Nuclear Power Safety Regulation Publicity Project” stipulates that, “The Contractor is required to monitor blogs on nuclear power and radiation issues as well as Twitter accounts (monitoring tweets is essential) around the clock, and conduct research and analysis on incorrect and inappropriate information that would lead to false rumors, and to report such internet accounts to the Agency. The “Contractor” is required to keep the Agency well informed on the internet accounts and keywords used in the blogs and Twitter accounts that are posting incorrect and inappropriate information. The Contractor is required to maintain sufficient number of personnel for around-the-clock monitoring. The Contractor is required to submit reports on internet accounts via CDR.” The document, however, does not state that blogs or Twitter accounts, which run afoul of METI’s guidelines, are to be banned or frozen.” The question is, will METI draw the line at “clarifying” erroneous information, or will it act to clamp down and suppress sources of information that it finds inconvenient?

The nuclear phase-out until 2022, which the government proposed in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident, and the accelerated transition into an age of renewable energy supply can almost go ahead as planned. The Bundesrat (Federal Council)  followed the Bundestag’s (Federal Parliament’s) vote of 1 July 2011 and approved the energy legislative package in its last session before the summer break. However, the Energy-Efficient Renovations of Residential Buildings Act was rejected. Hence, the laws below can enter into force after having been signed by the Federal President Christian Wulff and following promulgation in the Federal Law Gazette: 13th amendment of the Atomic Energy Act (AtG) – the actual nuclear energy exit law; Act Amending the Legal Framework for the Promotion of the Electricity Generation from Renewable Energy Sources (Gesetz zur Neuregelung des Rechtsrahmens für die Förderung der Stromerzeugung aus erneuerbaren Energien), which most importantly contains amendments of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) in Article 1; Act Amending Energy Law related Provisions (Gesetz zur Neuregelung energiewirtschaftsrechtlicher Vorschriften), most importantly of the German Energy Act (EnWG); Act on Measures Accelerating the Expansion of the Electricity Grids (Gesetz über Maßnahmen zur Beschleunigung des Netzausbaus Elektrizitätsnetze), which most importantly includes a new Grid Expansion Acceleration Act (NABEG) in Article 1, but also amends other laws; Act Amending the Energy and Climate Fund Act (Gesetz zur Änderung des Gesetzes zur Errichtung eines Sondervermögens “Energie- und Klimafonds – EKFG -ÄndG); Act Strenghtening Climate-Friendly Measures in Towns and Municipalities (Gesetz zur Stärkung der klimagerechten Entwicklung in den Städten und Gemeinden); First Act Amending Shipping Laws (Erstes Gesetz zur Änderung schifffahrtsrechtlicher Vorschriften). Approval by the Bundesrat, the legislative body that represents the federal states, had been uncertain for many of the bills contained in the package. The CDU/CSU/FDP coalition government does not hold a majority in the Bundesrat. While support for the amendment of the Atomic Energy Act (AtG) in the Bundesrat could be expected after the clear majority that the bill received in the Bundestag’s vote, this was not the case for many the other bills. To be able to decide before the summer break, the Bundesrat had shortened the consultation period for the bills. Still the expert committees of the Bundesrat prepared numerous recommendations to amend the bills.

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.

Vermont Law School (a private institution) is known as a leader in environmental law.  Students at the school have an Environmental Law Society and an International Law Society, and on September 30 these societies hosted a public meeting that featured Vaishali Patil, a woman from India who is an “environmental activist” and nuclear power opponent.

During the September 30 meeting that featured Patil, everyone in attendance introduced themselves, and Crafton said that she had come to the law school to work against the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

Speaking from notes on a piece of paper the size of an index card, she gave “red meat” to the audience of about 30 students and three or four older people. Her talk was similar to her speech on this YouTube presentation from earlier this year.

US nuclear power plants mostly exist in a legal “get out of jail free” land of LLC (Legal Liability Corporation) ownership. While big energy conglomerates like Entergy own the bulk of the commercial nuclear power plants in the US, these plants are owned by individual LLC companies that have one asset, the power plant. Through a network of LLC companies and holding companies these energy giants are able to suck all the profits out of these nuclear power plants but shoulder none of the risk if something goes bad.

The US has a nuclear accident liability law, Price-Anderson. This law sets up a limited fund that all licensed nuclear plant owners would pay into in the event of an accident. They only pay premiums into this fund after an accident happens. Under this law each plant is required to have $300 million in liability insurance that would pay before Price-Anderson would kick in. Proving any other sort of cash reserves, ability to pay for an extended outage or an accident (including Price-Anderson premiums) has been largely voluntary by the power companies. Even when proof of financial assets is asked for by the NRC it is calculated based on projected income estimates done by the power company. The NRC admits they are out of their expertise when it comes to finance and also does no investigation to assure these estimates have any basis in fact. The NRC has also complained repeatedly that deregulation of the energy industry is causing a lack of safety and maintenance to become a large problem as companies try to extract as much profit as possible up and out of these LLC companies to the parent company, leaving insufficient money to safely operate these nuclear plants. Many of these plants in LLC situations are among the aging reactor fleet from the 1960′s & 1970′s. As these plants ask for operating license extensions from the NRC, financial soundness is not part of the review.

If a nuclear power plant has a major accident, is found to have an expensive damage situation or is facing decommissioning the LLC that owns it can file for bankruptcy and walk away. The parent company has no financial risk or liability. The NRC has expressed doubt about being able to “pierce the corporate veil” in court and has diverted into settlements every time it has run into this issue with an aging plant facing a financial crisis. The NRC also has no special standing in a bankruptcy case where they can compel Price-Anderson premium payments or for the nuclear power company to pay funds towards decommissioning. It is not totally clear where the decommissioning trust fund lies as these funds are “sold” along with the plant when a new company takes over a nuclear power plant.

Without much going on recently that hasn’t been covered by other blog posts, I’d like to explore a topic not specifically tied to nuclear power or to activities currently going on in Washington, D.C. It involves an idea I have about a possible alternative means of having the electricity market account for the public health and environmental costs of various energy sources, and encouraging the development and use of cleaner sources (including nuclear) without requiring legislation. Given the failure of Congress to take action on global warming, as well as environmental issues in general, non-legislative approaches to accomplishing environmental goals may be necessary. The Problem

One may say that the best response would be to significantly tighten pollution regulations, perhaps to the point where no sources have significant external costs. There are problems with this approach, however, above and beyond the fact that the energy industry has (and will?) successfully blocked the legislation that would be required. Significant tightening of regulations raises issues such as how expensive compliance will be, and whether or not viable alternative (cleaner) sources would be available. The beauty of simply placing a cost (or tax) on pollution that reflects its costs to public health and the environment is that those issues need not be addressed. The market just decides between sources based on the true, overall cost of each, resulting in the minimum overall (economic + environmental) cost-generation portfolio

The above reasoning is what led to policies like cap-and-trade or a CO2 emissions tax being proposed as a solution for the global warming problem. This has not flown politically, however. Policies that attempt to have external costs included in the market cost of energy have been labeled a “tax increase.” This is particularly true given that the associated pollution taxes (or emissions credit costs) would have largely gone to the government.

NEW DELHI: Two NGOs and prominent ex-bureaucrats on Friday moved a PIL in the Supreme Court challenging the constitutional validity of nuclear civil liability law and sought a comprehensive safety review of all nuclear installations in the country by an independent expert group. NGOs ‘Common Cause’ and Centre for Public Interest Litigation along with other petitioners, including former cabinet secretary T S R Subramaniam, former power secretary E A S Sarma and former CEC T Gopalaswami requested the court to cancel clearances given to proposed nuclear power plants till the safety assessment was carried out.

FP&L to recover $196 million in 2012 * Progress Energy Florida request cut to $85.9 millionHOUSTON Oct 24 (Reuters) - Florida electric regulators on Monday approved requests from the state's two largest utilities to charge customers more than $280 million next year for work to develop four proposed nuclear reactors and to expand output at two existing plants.Florida is one of a handful of U.S. states in which laws were passed in the mid 2000s to revive the stagnant nuclear industry by offering utilities incentives to reduce the risk of building costly new reactors which take years to site, license and construct.The laws typically allow utilities to charge customers for certain project-related costs during the development and construction years in order to reduce long-term project financing costs.

The Florida Public Service Commission approved NextEra Energy's Florida Power & Light's full request to recover slightly more than $196 million from customers next year.Commissioners also agreed to allow Progress Energy's Florida utility to recover nearly $86 million next year for costs associated with a plan to build two new 2,200-MW reactors in Levy County, Florida.FP&L's amount includes costs related to the proposed 2,200-megawatt Turkey Point Units 6 and 7 and costs to add 450 MW of capacity at existing reactors at FP&L's Turkey Point and St. Lucie nuclear stations.That's up from only about $31 million approved for recovery in 2011 after a protracted dispute between the commission and the state's largest utility which has more than 4 million customers.

An FP&L spokesman said 90 percent of the funds requested for 2012 will pay for work to increase output at FP&L's existing reactors. About 29 MW is already in service with work to add the remaining 400 MW set for completion in 2013.Commercial operation of the new Turkey Point reactors, expected to cost between $12 billion and $18 billion, has been delayed about four years until 2022 and 2023 after FP&L said growth in power consumption slowed in the state during the economic recession.Progress Energy Florida initially sought $140.9 million, but the commission reduced that amount by more than $50 million under a 2009 plan deferring some early Levy costs due to the state's worsening economy.The proposed Levy County reactors, expected to cost about $20 billion, were originally set to begin operating in the 2016-17 time frame, but Progress delayed the timeline until at least 2020."We're pleased the commission confirmed our plan to make state-of-the-art nuclear power available to our customers in the state of Florida," Progress spokeswoman Suzanne Grant said.

Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed," he said, "You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively.

TEPCO has been spraying water on several of the reactors and fuel cores, but this has led to even greater problems, such as radiation being emitted into the air in steam and evaporated sea water - as well as generating hundreds of thousands of tons of highly radioactive sea water that has to be disposed of.

"They are pouring in water and the question is what are they going to do with the waste that comes out of that system, because it is going to contain plutonium and uranium. Where do you put the water?"

A spokesman for NRC defended the rule in the Wall Street Journal, pointing out that plants across the country have stored spent fuel rods safely for years.

Attorneys general from New York, Connecticut and Vermont announced Tuesday that they plan to sue the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over a recent ruling on waste storage at nuclear plants

Specifically, they object to an NRC rule issued in late December that allows plants to keep spent fuel on site for 60 years after they close, as opposed to 30 years under previous law.

Testimony by Professor Tatsuhiko Kodama of Tokyo University continues. He goes back to Minami Soma City where his Radioisotope Center has been helping to decontaminate.We at the Radioisotope Center of Tokyo University have been helping to decontaminate Minami-Soma City, sending about 4 people at a time and doing decontamination work for the length of 700km per week.Again, what's happening to Minami-Soma clearly shows that 20 or 30 kilometer radius [from the nuke plant] doesn't make any sense at all. You have to measure in more detail like measuring each nursery school.

Right now, from the 20 to 30 kilometer radius area, 1,700 school children are put on the buses to go to school. Actually in Minami-Soma, the center of the city is located near the ocean, and 70% of the schools have relatively low level of radiation. Yet, children are forced to get on the school buses to go all the way to schools near Iitate-mura [where radiation is higher], spending 1 million yen everyday for the busing.

I strongly demand that this situation be terminated as soon as possible.What's most problematic is the government's policy that they will compensate the residents for the moving cost only if their areas are designated as official evacuation zones. In a recent committee held at the House of Councilors [Upper House], President Shimizu of TEPCO and Mr. Kaieda, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry answered that way. I ask you to separate the two immediately - compensation criteria issue and children's safety issue.

On July 25, Entergy announced that it is ordering fuel for the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and will conduct the refueling in October. The state of Vermont has passed laws that supposedly give it the right to refuse to let Vermont Yankee operate past March 2012. Entergy’s decision to buy $60-million worth of fuel to be loaded in October was, therefore, no slam-dunk decision.

This saga has a long history. Entergy has sued Vermont, and part of its lawsuit was a request for an injunction against the state being allowed to shut down the plant while the suit was ongoing. The story then got complicated. Judge J. Garvan Murtha of the federal court in Brattleboro, Vt., denied the injunction. In his ruling, Murtha said that “Entergy has failed to show that any irreparable harm it may incur between now and a decision on the merits would be, or is likely to be, ameliorated by a preliminary injunction in the short time before this court decides Entergy’s claims.” He also moved up the date of the full hearing to September 12.

Murtha said many things that sounded like he had acknowledged Entergy’s having a good case. On the other hand, he also turned down the injunction. This gave commentators lots of room to comment! (There’s never a “slow news day” around this trial.) I commented and some professors at Vermont Law School commented.

A tea producer blended the tea with radioactive cesium with the tea without radioactive cesium so that he could sell off his radioactive tea. An operator of a sewer sludge plant knowingly sold radioactive sludge to a manufacturer of garden soil because there was no national government standard when he sold it. Their reason: "It's safer that way, as radioactive cesium will be diluted".Many Japanese consumers seem dismayed to find out that there are people among them who would do such a thing, but there are people like that, unfortunately. And as the article cites one government agency, it is clearly none of the government's business to do anything about it anytime soon.From Tokyo Shinbun paper version (not online; 10/3/2011), extremely quick translation subject to revision later if necessary:

Dilute cesium and sell - blend tea, garden soil - so that the cesium level is below the limitAfter the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident spread radioactive materials, the provisional safety limit was set for variety of foods and goods. If an item tests less than the provisional limit it is considered "guaranteed safe". As the result, there are businesses that mix [radioactive goods] with those made in places far away from Fukushima Prefecture to dilute radioactive materials and sell them. Currently it is not against the law to do so, but the consumers who doubt the safety of the products and the producers who fear further "baseless rumor" damages are voicing concern.Mixing

According to our research, we have been able to confirm instances of goods being sold after diluting the radioactive cesium content - garden soil and green teas.In case of garden soil, sludge from water purification plants and sewage treatment plants had been used as an ingredient of the garden soil before the provisional safety limit for sludge was set. Sludge contains vital ingredients like phosphorus and potassium, and it is mixed with the soil at 10 to 20% ratio to make the garden soil.The safety standard for radioactive materials in sludge was established on June 16, but some water purification plants in Kanagawa Prefecture had sold the total of 4,538 tonnes of sludge to the garden soil manufacturers from April up till June 16.

Sixteen tons and what you get is a nuclear catastrophe. The explosions that rocked the Fukushima No.1 nuclear plant were more powerful than the combustion of hydrogen gas, as claimed by the Tokyo Electric Power Company. The actual cause of the blasts, according to intelligence sources in Washington, was nuclear fission of. warhead cores illegally taken from America's sole nuclear-weapons assembly facility. Evaporation in the cooling pools used for spent fuel rods led to the detonation of stored weapons-grade plutonium and uranium.   The facts about clandestine American and Israeli support for Japan's nuclear armament are being suppressed in the biggest official cover-up in recent history. The timeline of events indicates the theft from America's strategic arsenal was authorized at the highest level under a three-way deal between the Bush-Cheney team, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Elhud Olmert's government in Tel Aviv.

Tokyo's Strangelove   In early 2007, Vice President Dick Cheney flew to Tokyo with his closest aides. Newspaper editorials noted the secrecy surrounding his visit - no press conferences, no handshakes with ordinary folks and, as diplomatic cables suggest, no briefing for U.S. Embassy staffers in Tokyo.   Cheney snubbed Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma, who was shut out of confidential talks. The pretext was his criticism of President George Bush for claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The more immediate concern was that the defense minister might disclose bilateral secrets to the Pentagon. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were sure to oppose White House approval of Japan's nuclear program.

Camp David Go-Ahead   The deal was sealed on Abe's subsequent visit to Washington. Wary of the eavesdropping that led to Richard Nixon's fall from grace, Bush preferred the privacy afforded at Camp David. There, in a rustic lodge on April 27, Bush and Abe huddled for 45 minutes. What transpired has never been revealed, not even in vague outline.   As his Russian card suggested, Abe was shopping for enriched uranium. At 99.9 percent purity, American-made uranium and plutonium is the world's finest nuclear material. The lack of mineral contaminants means that it cannot be traced back to its origin. In contrast, material from Chinese and Russian labs can be identified by impurities introduced during the enrichment process.

Not all co-ops (grocery stores operated as cooperatives) are equal, but some are decidedly more customer-friendly (as opposed to producer-friendly) and take care in sourcing the food that are not contaminated with radioactive materials AND disclosing the detailed information of their testing.

One of the readers of this blog, William Marcus, has sent me his observations on sourcing the safe food in Japan. William currently lives in Osaka with his family with the toddler son. He says co-ops in Japan are not centralized (which I didn't know), and that more east and north you go co-ops tend not to disclose the details of the testing they do (if they do the testing) on the foodstuff they sell.

The particular COOP that he recommends is "Shizenha" co-op headquartered in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture and has operations in Tokushima Prefecture in Shikoku region. The co-op, he says, has just started to accept membership from Kanto and Tohoku regions.

CWIP, or Construction Work in Progress, is a law, fortunately existent only in a handful of U.S. states, that allows a utility to charge ratepayers higher rates to cover future costs of a yet-to-be-constructed reactor, even if that reactor is never built.

The residents of a picturesque village in the south of England will on Wednesday go to the high court in a last ditch attempt to prevent thousands of tonnes of radioactive waste being dumped into a nearby landfill site.

He argued the "risk of actual harm from the development would be very low" but the villagers have brought in Richard Buxton, a Cambridge law firm that specialises in environmental and public law.

The minister ruled in May in favour of a plan drawn up by waste management company, Augean, to allow 250,000 tonnes of nuclear materials to be placed in the East Northamptonshire Resource Management Facility.

In this rare case, I am actually with the farmer who is standing up to the authorities.The evacuation-ready zone was abolished on September 30 and the residents who evacuated are supposed to go back. However, the authorities (the national government and the Fukushima prefectural government) prohibited farmers in the evacuation zones (evacuation-ready, planned evacuation, and no-entry) from growing rice this year. It was a blanket ban on growing rice in these zones regardless of the density of radioactive materials in the soil, while areas outside the evacuation zones but with potentially high levels of radioactive materials in the soil were allowed to be cultivated for rice with only a cursory soil monitoring test.This farmer defied the arbitrary government order, grew rice and harvested. He has declared he wants sell it.From Yomiuri Shinbun (10/30/2011):

On October 28, the Fukushima prefectural government advised a farmer (age 58) in Miyakoji-machi in Tamura City to discard the rice he harvested, based on the Food Control Law, because the farmer had grown and harvested the rice in the area designated as "emergency evacuation-ready zone" after the nuclear plant accident.

The farmer has said no.