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D'coda Dcoda

Fukushima highly radiated United States water, food cover-up by feds continues [14Jul11] - 0 views

www.examiner.com/...ood-cover-up-by-feds-continues

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 15 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • In KING 5 TV's report Tuesday on high levels of radiation detected in Northwest rainwater, the United States government is accused of continuing to fail to tell the public about Fukushima dangerous radiation blanketing parts of the United States, a coverup that led grassroots projects and independent reporters to gather and present data for public well-being. University of California Nuclear Engineering Department Forum began asking on Tuesday for people in the Los Angles area to come forward with any dangerous radiation readings that may have been detected after local peaches were highly radioactive
  • UPDATE: July 13, 2011, 11:11pm: The peaches reported on July 12 were bought at "a local market," not Santa Monica Market, according to Environews on Wednesday. An investigation about the source of the peaches is underway.   Right to health denied when United States government hides high levels of Fukushima radiation  In KING 5 TV's report Tuesday on high levels of radiation detected in Northwest rainwater , the United States   government is accused of continuing to fail to tell the public about Fukushima dangerous radiation blanketing parts of the United States , a coverup that led grassroots projects and independent reporters to gather and present data for public well-being. University of California Nuclear Engineering Department Forum   began asking on Tuesday for people in the Los Angles area   to come forward with any dangerous radiation readings that may have been detected after local peaches were highly radioactive . "Our government said no health levels, no health levels were exceeded, when in fact, the rain water in the Northwest is reaching levels 130 times the drinking water standards," said Gerry Pollet from a non-government organization watchdog, Heart of America Northwest.
  • UPDATE: July 13, 2011, 11:11pm: The peaches reported on July 12 were bought at "a local market," not Santa Monica Market, according to Environews on Wednesday. An investigation about the source of the peaches is underway.   Right to health denied when United States government hides high levels of Fukushima radiation   In KING 5 TV's report Tuesday on high levels of radiation detected in Northwest rainwater , the United States   government is accused of continuing to fail to tell the public about Fukushima dangerous radiation blanketing parts of the United States , a coverup that led grassroots projects and independent reporters to gather and present data for public well-being. University of California Nuclear Engineering Department Forum   began asking on Tuesday for people in the Los Angles area   to come forward with any dangerous radiation readings that may have been detected after local peaches were highly radioactive . "Our government said no health levels, no health levels were exceeded, when in fact, the rain water in the Northwest is reaching levels 130 times the drinking water standards," said Gerry Pollet from a non-government organization watchdog, Heart of America Northwest. A call from the University of California Nuclear Engineering Department Forum for public radiation readings in Los Angeles came after a finding on Friday, July 8th, 2011 was reported that two peaches from the popular Santa Monica local market were confirmed to have sustained radiation levels of 81 CPMs, or greater
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  • "The market's background radiation was said to be about 39 CPMs. The two peaches, thus, had significantly high radiation contamination equaling over two times site background levels," stated reported EnviroReporter, the  independent news source created by Michael Collins and Denise Anne Duffield in May 2006 featuring work of Collins, a multi-award-winning investigative journalist who specializes in environmental issues and served sic years as a Director of the Los Angeles Press Club and five years as its Judging Chair
  • "What makes this discovery especially significant is that the 2X background radioactivity detected in these peaches was likely significantly attenuated by their water content; when eaten the exposure rate may be significantly higher. Even worse, it is likely that the detected radioactivity is from a longer half life radionuclide; which when eaten, would irradiate a person from the inside out for potential years to come." (@Potrblog, July 10th, 2011, at 8:05 pm, www.enviroreporter.com/2011/03/enviroreporter-coms-radiation-station/)
  • Pollet reviewed Iodine 131 numbers released by the Environmental Protection Agency last spring and reported to KING5 TV, "The level that was detected on March 24 was 41 times the drinking water standard." 
  • EPA says this was a brief period of elevated radiation in rainwater, and safe drinking water standards are based on chronic exposure to radiation over a lifetime, contrary to what independent radiation experts say, including persons such as Dr. Helen Caldicott, the international leading preventionist of nuclear injury, Joseph Mangano, Cindy Folkers, a radiation and health specialist at Beyond Nuclear, Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, and Dr. Alexey Yablokov
  • In light of the ongoing failure of government to provide critically important Fukushima radiation news, each above named experts have recommended that to survive Fukushima, the public needs to seek information being provided by activists and by websites such as Beyond Nuclear and EnvrioReporter.
D'coda Dcoda

Report: Peaches in Los Angeles-area found with radiation at more than double site backg... - 0 views

enenews.com/-double-site-background-levels

nuclear energy

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 13 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Radiation Station Stats, EnviroReporter, July 8, 2011: 10:05 pm 10-minute INTERIOR average: 39.9 CPM 9:50 pm 10-minute EXTERIOR average: 45.6 CPM NORMAL 4:00 pm INTERIOR spot reading in Santa Monica market with approximate background of 39 CPM – Two peaches sustained 81 CPM and above or over two times background (208% of site background). 3:40 pm 10-minute INTERIOR average: 39.6 CPM 3:25 pm 10-minute EXTERIOR average: 47.0 CPM 1:05 pm 10-minute INTERIOR average: 39.6 CPM 12:45 pm 10-minute EXTERIOR average: 45.8 CPM [...] h/t ChasAha via Two Peaches in Greater Los Angeles found high in radiation
D'coda Dcoda

Earthquake readiness of U.S. nuclear power plants is unclear [25Aug11] - 0 views

www.usatoday.com/...clear-safety-earthquakes_n.htm

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 29 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Earthquakes are routinely measured by magnitude, or energy released. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)requires the nation's 104 nuclear reactors to withstand a predicted level of ground motion, or acceleration — something called g-force. What does that mean, magnitude-wise?
  • "I don't have what that translates into … unfortunately," NRC spokesman David McIntyre says. The agency released a statement Thursday to clarify its "earthquake measurements and design criteria," but it does not say what ground motion each reactor can handle. This muddiness heightens the concerns of industry critics, who have urged stricter safety rules after reactors at Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant nearly melted down due to a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
  • A task force mandated by President Obama recommended in July that each U.S. plant be re-examined, given ongoing NRC research that shows the seismic risks for Eastern and Central U.S. nuclear power plants have increased. "The Virginia earthquake is now our local 911 call to stop delaying the implementation of stricter safety standards," Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., wrote in a letter this week to the NRC.
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  • He noted that while the North Anna nuclear facility, near the quake's epicenter in Mineral, Va., successfully shut down Tuesday, one of its backup generators failed to work. The plant declared an "alert" — the second lowest of NRC's four emergency classifications. It regained its electricity seven hours later but is not yet back in operation. Twelve other nuclear power plants along the East Coast and upper Midwest declared an "unusual event," the lowest classification. They resumed normal operations by the end of Tuesday. They are: Peach Bottom, Three Mile Island, Susquehanna and Limerick in Pennsylvania; Salem, Hope Creek and Oyster Creek in New Jersey; Calvert Cliffs in Maryland; Surry in Virginia; Shearon Harris in North Carolina and D.C. Cook and Palisades in Michigan.
  • "It's unclear how they (U.S. reactors) would stand up," says Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit group critical of nuclear energy. He says the lack of transparency about their preparedness "provides an additional smokescreen" that implies the public should just trust them. "It's not 'trust us.' It's a regulatory process," says Steve Kerekes, spokesman of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group. He says each plant looks at historic seismic activity in its area, designs against that and upgrades systems as needed. Last year alone, he says, the industry spent about $7 billion on capital improvements.
  • Yet not all that money was spent on safety, and the regulatory process is "based on industry self-assessment," says Robert Alvarez, scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and former senior adviser at the Department of Energy. "You can imagine the conflicts of interest that arise." So how prepared each nuclear plant is for an earthquake, he says, is "pretty much what the operators say it is."
  • Jim Norvelle, spokesman of Dominion Virginia Power, which operates the North Anna plant, says its two reactors were built to withstand ground motion of 0.12g to 0.18g, depending on soil composition. He says that translates into magnitudes of 5.9 to 6.2. He says that although one backup diesel generator leaked when Tuesday's quake cut off power, the plant had a spare generator and redundant safety systems to keep the reactors' radioactive cores cool.
D'coda Dcoda

Pennsylvania nuclear plants prepare for possible flooding [09Sep11] - 3 views

www.platts.com/...6454882

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 09 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania are preparing to cope with flooding, but none has declared a state of emergency, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said Thursday. All the Pennsylvania nuclear plants that could potentially be affected by flooding are in close communication with NRC, and with state and local officials, and the agency has resident inspectors at each plant who are monitoring the situation, Sheehan said. The plants were all operating at full power early Thursday, according to NRC data, except for Exelon Nuclear's Peach Bottom-3, which was at 88% power and has been gradually reducing its output for several days ahead of refueling outage.
  • Emergency diesel generators and their fuel tanks at those plants are "located at a higher elevation, in buildings designed to keep them dry," Sheehan said. Exelon Nuclear's Three Mile Island-1, located along the Susquehanna River, 10 miles southeast of Harrisburg, began its abnormal operating procedure for river flooding early Wednesday, Sheehan said. The river peaked at 291 feet above sea level Wednesday and was at 288 feet above sea level early Thursday. It is expected to crest Thursday at about 297 feet above sea level, he said.
  • If the river reaches 300 feet above sea level, then the plant would have to declare an unusual event, the least significant of NRC's four emergency levels, Sheehan said. If the river reaches 302 feet above sea level, the plant would need to shut and an alert, the next highest level of emergency, would need to be declared. "Important equipment" at Three Mile Island-1 is protected against flooding up to about 315 feet above sea level, Sheehan said.
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  • At Exelon Nuclear's Peach Bottom-2 and -3 reactors, about 18 miles south of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the Conowingo Pond is expected to crest at 109 feet above sea level, Sheehan said.
  • Plant procedures require the reactors to be shut down if the pond reaches 111 feet above sea level. Exelon is working to control pond levels by using the spillways at the Conowingo Dam, he said. Exelon Nuclear does not anticipate it will need to shut down Three Mile Island-1 due to flooding, company spokeswoman April Schilpp said Thursday. "We have several feet of margin before any action would be required," Schilpp said. She declined to disclose at what point the plant would be required to shut down, but said it is a function of the rate of river flow and river level.
  • At PPL's Susquehanna-1 and -2 units in Salem Township, about 70 miles northeast of Harrisburg, the Susquehanna River is cresting at 39 feet above river level, Sheehan said. The plant entered its abnormal operating procedure for flooding earlier Thursday. "Major safety-related structures and components" of the plants are located about 75 feet above river level, he said. "The biggest impact on the plant" might be on its water intakes, which are being closely monitored, he said. There might be problems getting plant personnel to and from the site, so some staff might remain at the plant overnight, he said
D'coda Dcoda

GE warns nuclear reactors could struggle in earthquake [03Oct11] - 2 views

www.nj.com/...rns_nuclear_reactors_coul.html

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 03 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • A manufacturer of dozens of boiling water nuclear reactors in the country, including many on the East Coast, warned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last year and reiterated last week that earthquakes could hinder its reactors from shutting down. GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, which manufactured the boiling water reactors at Oyster Creek, Hope Creek and two plants in Pennsylvania, said that an earthquake could prevent rods that cool the reactor from being inserted. The rods cool the reactor down because they contain boron, which attracts neutrons. Without the rods, boron would be injected, a messier emergency solution.
  • "Earlier this week, they submitted the results of this evaluation they did and they found that friction that could result from an earthquake could impact the ability of control rods to insert all the way," said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan Friday. "They serve a very important function and if there was a change of alignment in an earthquake and they could not insert all the way, it would be a problem." It’s not ideal to have a shutdown system fail at a moment of emergency, Sheehan said. "In a significant event like an earthquake, you would want to stop that from happening," Sheehan said, "because your safety systems could be challenged at the same time."
  • A spokesman for GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy said that when plants start up and shut down which amounts to about 1 percent of the time they run, added shaking from an earthquake could stop rods from easily sliding into the core. "There’s some friction," said spokesman Michael Tetuan. "They still insert, it’s just more friction than there would normally be." Last week’s NRC filing identified more than a dozen plants around the country that could be vulnerable, including Oyster Creek, Hope Creek and Limerick and Peach Bottom in Pennsylvania. Those plants were notified by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and recommended to participate in a surveillance program.
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  • "They identified this before Fukushima and before the earthquake in Virginia, but that takes on heightened significance now," Sheehan said.
D'coda Dcoda

Arnie Gundersen has inflated his resume, yet frequently claims that Entergy cannot be t... - 0 views

atomicinsights.com/...entergy-cannot-be-trusted.html

nuclear energy

shared by D'coda Dcoda on 08 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Arnie Gundersen, who lives here in Burlington, is Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Associates is a well-known authority on the subject, someone who has figured prominently in recent accounts of Vermont Yankee circumstances.
  • I think he exaggerated his responsibilities for projects at NU, 1972-6.
  • There are several exaggerations in that brief statement. Because he has been an expert witness, Mr. Gundersen has been required to provide an accurate resume to public bodies; you can find one such document at the end of the testimony that he provided in March 2006 to oppose the Public Service of Vermont’s decision to allow Entergy to increase the power output from Vermont Yankee.
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  • A careful reading of that resume reveals only one mention of any kind of license to operate a reactor. In the section of his resume headed Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) 1971 to 1972, there is the following statement: “Critical Facility Reactor Operator, Instructor. Licensed AEC reactor operator instructing students and utility reactor operators in start-up through full power operation of a reactor.” Here is a quote about that critical facility from a contact who attended RPI at the same time as Gundersen did.
  • It operated at no pressure, room temperature, licensed to 100W, highly enriched U, open tank of water.
  • A second exaggeration comes in the statement that Gundersen has “almost four decades experience in the nuclear power industry.” His resume shows that he graduated from school in 1972 and that he stopped working for Nuclear Energy Services in 1990. From that point on, his full time employment was as a math and science teacher at a series of private schools. His resume lists several items under the heading of Nuclear Consulting 1990 – Present, but it would be interesting to hear the opinion of nuclear professionals about how those activities count as experience in the nuclear industry.
  • An Atomic Insights reader who is personally familiar with the work that Gundersen did at Northeast Utilities during the period from 1972-1976 read the posted resume and shared the following comment with me using the polite and understated language that is common among engineering professionals.
  • Mr. Gundersen, who has almost four decades experience in the nuclear power industry, earned his Bachelors and Masters in Nuclear Engineering from RPI. He was a licensed reactor operator and put in twenty years in the industry. He’s led teams of engineers dealing with nuclear reactors at 70 nuclear plants around the nation. He was appointed by now Governor Peter Schumlin to the Vermont Yankee Oversight Panel in 2008 and it’s his expertise that qualifies him as an expert witness on various aspects of Vermont Yankee, including plant safety, its decommissioning fund, and the suitability of the plant being extended past 2012.
  • I spoke to that contact at length a few days ago, he told me that Gundersen was assigned to the licensing group and did not have any real design engineering responsibilities while at NU.
  • In 2008, he applied to become a member of the Diablo Canyon Safety Committee. On that application, he made the following statement about his experience:
  • Since 1970 Arnold Gundersen has been an expert witness in nuclear litigations at the Federal and State hearings such as Three Mile Island, US NRC ASLB, Vermont State Public Service Board, Western Atlas Nuclear Litigation, U.S. Senate Nuclear Safety Hearings, Peach Bottom Nuclear Power Plant Litigation, &c. He has also testified at the Czech Senate on nuclear matters.
  • I went back and checked the resume linked to above. According to that resume, Mr. Gundersen earned his BS in Nuclear Engineering from RPI in 1971, so he was still an undergraduate student in 1970. That leads me to the conclusion that either there was a judge somewhere who has rather low standards for expertise for his witnesses, or that Mr. Gundersen needs someone to give him a calendar for Christmas.When noticing that, I also reread the first job listed on his resume. Here is how that job was described:
  • “Public Service Electric and Gas (PSE&G) – 1970Assistant Engineer:Performed Shielding design of radwaste and auxiliary buildings for Newbold Island Units 1 & 2, including development of computer codes.”
  • The date listed for that job was before his graduation date. My guess is that it was a summer internship since Newbold Island, NJ is 218 miles from Troy, NY, the home of RPI. That would be a long commute if the job was done during the school year
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