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TEPCO has announced that as of today, the final additions to the enclosure structure at No. 1 reactor building have been made (air circulation and filtration equipment) and that the inspection of the structure and systems by NISA is completed satisfactorily. The structure itself has been completed for a while, but this might be considered as the official commissioning of the entire structure and ventilation system.-TEPCO has also announced that it will drastically increase the amount of water being injected to No. 1 reactor in order to cut down on evaporation inside the structure. It appears that the high humidity environment is hampering the ability to work inside, so TEPCO will increase the feed rate through the feed line (normal feedwater injection line) upward from 4 cubic meters per hour to 7.5 cubic meters per hour over four days. When the conditions of the plant are ascertained at that point TEPCO will further increase water flow. This will also reduce drastically any gaseous emissions to the enclosure from the damaged reactor.

TEPCO has discovered a nearly or else completely sheared axle shaft casing on the overhead crane at the common spent fuel building at Fukushima Daiichi. The cause is yet unknown, and no hazard is posed at this time. -TEPCO is almost ready to place the gas handling system (improvised arrangement) at No. 2 reactor plant (to handle gases in the primary containment) into operation. This system will filter out radioactive airborne contaminants. Similar systems will be employed eventually at all three reactors.

Finally, airborne releases from Fukushima Daiichi continue to decline .. contrary to many reports on anti-nuclear sites .. as shown by these two panels from a report issued by the Japanese Prime Minister's office.

Dominion Says Crack Found at North Anna Containment Building, Bloomberg, September 2, 2011:

Dominion Resources Inc. found a small crack on a wall with “no safety significance” in a room of a containment building at the North Anna nuclear plant [...] Dominion discovered a “cosmetic” crack in a horizontal construction joint on a wall that is in the containment building, [Dan Stoddard, the Dominion's senior vice president for nuclear operations] said. [...] Dominion invited reporters to tour the plant’s control room, transformer and generator areas. Company officials didn’t take the group into the reactor containment structure or the building that houses a cooling pool for spent fuel because that would have been “more complex and more time-consuming,” Stoddard said. [...]

Miami, Oct. 16 –Headline: ‘Fukushima disaster can happen here’ Today’s Miami Herald has an article warning South Florida residents they “should take little comfort in assurances that a Fukushima-type catastrophe could not happen here.” It notes that the Miami-area nuclear power plant, Turkey Point, “is just as reliant as Fukushima on offsite electricity, emergency electrical generators and batteries.” Yet, Florida Power & Light (FPL) is trying to build two new reactors at the site, making a total of four.

These two proposed reactors, the AP1000 design, are essentially “experimental” and “have never been tested or operated commercially at full scale”. The reactor design has “drawn substantial criticism on safety issues”. The article reviews three of these: 1) “One major issue is that the steel inner-containment structure is barely strong enough to keep radioactivity from escaping during a ‘design basis accident.’ This leaves little margin for error when the steel containment structure eventually corrodes and loses strength. Such corrosion is a common problem in older reactors.” 2) “The British Nuclear Installations Inspectorate has criticized Toshiba/Westinghouse for not sufficiently demonstrating that the outer concrete shield can withstand an external shock, such as an earthquake, hurricane, tornado or impact from a commercial aircraft crash.” 3) “Perhaps, the most damaging criticism comes from Dr. John Ma, the lead structural reviewer evaluating the outer concrete shield for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Dr. Ma submitted a ‘nonconcurrence statement of dissent’ stating that the outer shield could shatter like a ‘glass cup’ in an earthquake or commercial aircraft crash.”

The Need for Independent Assessment of the Fourth Reactor, Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., October 25, 2011: “In his recent blog, entitled “The Fourth Reactor and the Destiny of Japan”, Akio Matsumura correctly identifies the spent fuel pool in Unit 4 as the most serious potential threat for further massive radioactive releases from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.” The Fourth Reactor and the Destiny of Japan, Akio Matsumura, September 29, 2011:

“I, along with many eminent scientists, are emphasizing the precarious situation of the fourth reactor that contains 1,535 nuclear fuel rods in the pool and is balanced on the second floor, outside of the reactor containment vessel. If the fuel rods spill onto the ground, disaster will ensue and force Tokyo and Yokohama to close, creating a gigantic evacuation zone. All scientists I have talked with say that if the structure collapses we will be in a situation well beyond where science has ever gone. The destiny of Japan will be changed and the disaster will certainly compromise the security of neighboring countries and the rest of the world in terms of health, migration and geopolitics. The Japanese government should immediately create an independent assessment team to determine the structural integrity of the spent fuel pool and its supporting structure. This is of the highest importance: the structure’s security is critical to the country’s future.” h/t Anonymous tip About Akio Matsumura Throughout his long career at the United Nations and other organizations he has brought together the unlikeliest of people: Arafat and Rabin, Chinese government officials and the Dalai Lama, and many more.

The Japanese government’s worst-case scenario at the height of the nuclear crisis last year warned that tens of millions of people, including Tokyo residents, might need to leave their homes, according to a report obtained by The Associated Press. But fearing widespread panic, officials kept the report secret.   The recent emergence of the 15-page internal document may add to complaints in Japan that the government withheld too much information about the nuclear accident.

It also casts doubt about whether the government was sufficiently prepared to cope with what could have been an evacuation of unprecedented scale.   The report was submitted to then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his top advisers on March 25, two weeks after the earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, causing three reactors to melt down and generating hydrogen explosions that blew away protective structures.   Workers ultimately were able to bring the reactors under control, but at the time, it was unclear whether emergency measures would succeed. Kan commissioned the report, compiled by the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, to examine what options the government had if those efforts failed.

The report looked at several ways the crisis could escalate—explosions inside the reactors, complete meltdowns, and the structural failure of cooling pools used for spent nuclear fuel

In addition to regulating commercial nuclear power reactors that generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, the NRC also regulates much smaller reactors used for research, training and development. These “research and test reactors,” often called RTRs or non-power reactors, contribute to almost every field of science including physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, geology, archeology, and environmental sciences. Most are located at universities or colleges. (The NRC does not regulate research reactors run by the Department of Energy.) The most common use for these small reactors is for experiments. One widely used type of experiment is neutron scattering. Radiation from the reactor is directed at the material to be studied. The manner in which the radiation interacts and bounces off, or scatters, from the material provides information on structure and properties. Neutron scattering is an important tool in experiments dealing with superconductors, polymers, metals, and proteins.

Neutron radiography is another experimental technique. It is similar to medical or dental X-rays. These experiments are used to determine structural integrity and provide quality control for aerospace, automotive and medical components. NRC experts inspect each RTR periodically to ensure they are being operated according to the agency’s safety and security requirements, and the facility’s own license conditions. The NRC uses a graded approach in its inspection program so there are less frequent and detailed inspections at facilities that pose a lower risk.

There are two types of inspection programs for operating research and test reactors: • For reactors licensed to operate at power levels of 2 megawatts or greater, the inspection program is completed annually. • For reactors licensed to operate at power levels below 2 megawatts, the inspection program is completed every two years.

Presence of subcontractors affiliated with crime syndicates and their employees     Two local newspapers in Fukushima Prefecture have recently reported that businesses affiliated with crime syndicates are involved in the clean-up operation at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. One of them is the Fukushima Min-yu Shimbun, which reported in its May 23 issue that on May 22 the Koriyama City police and the Futaba Gun (County) police arrested leading members of a gangster group affiliated with the Sumiyoshi-kai crime syndicate based in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture. According to the newspaper, they were charged with violation of the Temporary Staffing Services Law by dispatching five to six members of the group to the nuclear power station for the clean-up operation.

No matter how many plastic cards currently crowd your wallet, one day you may wish to make room for one more. The Department of Homeland Security(DHS)’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has developed a miniaturized version of a dosimeter, a portable device used for measuring exposure to ionizing radiation, which can provide life-saving early detection in the unlikely event of a nuclear accident or dirty bomb.

Dubbed the Citizen’s Dosimeter, this high-tech plastic card would be as convenient and affordable as a subway card, with the capability to measure the amount of radiation on a person or in a given area. The National Urban Security Technologies Laboratory (or NUSTL, pronounced new STEEL) located in New York City and managed by DHS S&T, has been awarded a patent that covers the development of radiation dosimetry technologies – DHS’s first patent.

Currently, personal radiation dosimeter badges are worn in nuclear plants, but a plant dosimeter cannot be read on the spot; it must be sent to a processing lab to determine an individual’s radiation dose. While a final prototype has not yet been built, a workable blueprint for a wallet-sized card that can detect radiation in real time is now in place.

The March nuclear disaster in Fukushima in Japan led countries with nuclear power plants to revisit safety measures. The International Atomic Energy Agency constituted a global expert fact-finding mission to the island nation. The purpose of the mission was to ascertain facts and identify initial lessons to be learned for sharing with the nuclear community.

The mission submitted its report in June and the report stated in clear terms that “there were insufficient defence for tsunami hazards. Tsunami hazards that were considered in 2002 were underestimated. Additional protective measures were not reviewed and approved by the regulatory authority. Severe accident management provisions were not adequate to cope with multiple plant failures”.

Further, on the regulatory environment the report states: “Japan has a well organized emergency preparedness and response system as demonstrated by the handling of the Fukushima accident. Nevertheless, complicated structures and organizations can result in delays in urgent decision making.” The inability to foresee such extreme scenarios is a forewarning to countries that are expanding nuclear capacity at a frenzied pace.

Extract As time runs out on the old rusting steel and cement crypt built 25 years ago over toxic remains of Chernobyl nuclear reactor, Western donors meet in Kyiv Tuesday to raise needed $1 billion to build new containment structure. Designed to last a century, the new stadium like structure is to be the world’s largest movable object, capable of covering Statue of Liberty. End Extract http://www.voanews.com/english/news/photo-galleries/120201984.html

Dominion Virginia Power thinks it will be ready to restart its North Anna 1 nuclear reactor in two weeks and the North Anna 2 by mid-October, if federal regulators approve. But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff members indicated Thursday that making sure the reactors, which were shut down by the Aug. 23 earthquake nearby, are safe to begin operating again might take longer. The staff said at the meeting with utility officials that it had plenty of questions as the agency looks into the Louisa County power station's design to resist seismic damage.

Preliminary information from the U.S. Geological Survey indicates that the earthquake produced a shaking force in the region twice as strong as the North Anna plant was designed to handle, the NRC said. Dominion Virginia Power acknowledges that the force from the earthquake exceeded the plant's theoretical design strength. The 5.8-magnitude earthquake caused only minor damage that did not affect nuclear safety, the company said. The quake also caused 25 of the 115-ton steel casks storing highly radioactive used fuel rods to shift as much as 4½ inches out of position on their concrete storage pad.

No U.S. nuclear power plant has been tripped off-line by an earthquake before, the NRC said.

As Canadians learned about dangerous radiation falling on them in rain on Tuesday as far east as Toronto registered at 20,000 CPM, equivalent to the highly targeted dose of radiation for cancer radiotherapy,  the Fukushima catastrophe escalated even higher Wednesday with evidence that the ground is cracking under the crippled nuclear power plant, causing radioactive steam to escape, "very serious and alarming" according to Anissa Naouai's guest on Russia Today, Dr. Robert Jacobs, Professor of nuclear history at Hiroshima Peace Institute. 

Fukushima nuclear plant workers have reported that the ground under the facility is cracking and radioactive steam is already escaping through the cracks that Dr. Jacobs says is very serious and alarming development because it has happened after two large earthquakes over the past few weeks according to Russia Today. (See embedded Russia Today interviewing Dr. Jacobs on Youtube video on this page left.) "There was a 6.4 earthquake on the 31st of July and a 6.0 earthquake on August 12th," Dr. Jacobs told Russia Today's Naoiai.

"What this indicates is there may have been some breaking of the pipes and some of the structures underground that happened during these earthquakes," he said. "There could be radioactive water that is venting into the soil and what's more, as cracks are opening, the steam and radioactivity is working its way up," he said.

The turbine hall at the shut down Bradwell nuclear power plant in Essex, UK, is being demolished as part of the plant's decommissioning. The hall is the largest single building on the site. Meanwhile, an innovative process is being used to clean the site's used fuel pool.   The Bradwell site hosts two 125 MWe Magnox gas-cooled reactors, which operated between 1962 and 2002.

The turbine hall - about the size of a football pitch and some 15 metres tall - was originally constructed in the 1950s and used to house the plant's nine turbine generators.

Work has already been carried out to strip off the metal sheeting covering the building to reveal its main structure. Ancillary buildings on the Bradwell site - including the auxiliary turbine hall, the main control room, the water treatment plant and the battery room - have already been demolished.   Over 100 tonnes of dangerous asbestos has been removed from the hall, while more than 6000 tonnes of metal has been removed and sent for recycling.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) “Near-Term Task Force Review of Insights from the Fukushima Dai-ichi Accident” publicly released its 92-page well intentioned near-term review on the implications of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster for US reactors on July 13, 2011.  The federal agency proposes to improve its “patchwork of regulatory requirements” developed “piece by piece over the decades.” Beyond Nuclear remains concerned that many critical reactor safety areas are still dominated by industry “voluntary initiatives” where non-compliance continues to elude federal enforcement and  Capitol Hill pro-nuclear champions announced their resistance to any costly safety improvements

Of most concern, the NRC is still ignoring warnings as did its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission,  in 1972 from their senior safety officer, Dr. Steven Hanuaer to “discourage all further use” in the US of the Fukushima-style General Electric Mark I boiling water reactor. The federal regulators instead issued three more construction permits and eventually 16 more operating licenses in the 1970s for this same dangerous design. There are now 23 Fukushima-style reactors operating in the United States as part of a total of 32 Mark I’s worldwide---counting the smoldering radioactive rubble at Fukushima.   The NRC task force report does not fundamentally address the most critical issue coming out of the Fukushima catastrophe, namely, the design vulnerability of all Mark I containment structures to catastrophic failure during a severe accident

The NRC report further ignores that these same Mark I reactors, like Vermont Yankee and Oyster Creek, are not currently in compliance with their operating licenses that were originally required to have a reliable "leak tight" containment structure. If the NRC were looking for the most significant and meaningful safety upgrade to the US reactors directly impacted by the Fukushima disaster they would require that all Mark I reactor operators restore containment integrity to the original licensed leak tight condition. Or order that they be shut them down, permanently.  All of the Mark I reactors voluntarily installed retrofits to vent all a substandard and undersized containment to save it from rupturing during a severe accident. The same experimental vent was installed at Fukushima in 1991. The same experimental fix failed on three containments buildings to prevent the uncontrolled releases of radioactivity to the air and water that are still occurring now four months after the accident.

His latest book, "Fukushima Meltdown: The World's First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster," has just become available online as a Kindle book in an excellent and fluid translation by a team under the guidance of American author and scholar, Douglas Lummis. Originally published as "Fukushima Genpatsu Merutodaun" by Asahi Shinsho on May 30, 2011, this is the book that Hirose had hoped he would never have to write. For three decades he has been warning Japanese people about the catastrophes that could been visited on their country — and now his worst nightmare has become a reality. "This is called the '3/11 Disaster' by many," he writes, "but it did not happen on 3/11, it began on 3/11 and it is continuing today. ... Nuclear power plants are a wildly dangerous way to get electricity and are unnecessary. The world needs to learn quickly from Japan's tragedy." Hirose points out that from day one of the disaster the situation in Fukushima had reached the highest level of nuclear accidents, namely level 7 — and from the outset, the government was keenly aware of this fact. But it chose to conceal the truth from the people.

"In past nuclear-plant disasters — those at Chernobyl (in present-day Ukraine, in 1986) and at Three Mile Island (in Pennsylvania in the United States, in 1979) — only one reactor was involved in each. However, at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, four reactors went critical at the same time." On March 13, two days after the tsunami that followed the magnitude-9 Great East Japan Earthquake, Masataka Shimizu, the president of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), the operator of the stricken nuclear plant, said at a press conference: "The tsunami was beyond all previous imagination. In the sense that we took all measures that could be thought of for dealing with a tsunami, there was nothing wrong with our preparations." As Hirose and many other commentators have pointed out, Tepco executives and government planners knew perfectly well that tsunamis far exceeding 20 meters in height struck that very region in 1896 and again, 37 years later, in 1933. The 14-meter-high tsunami that inundated many of the Fukushima No. 1 plant's facilities was, in fact, well within the parameters of what could objectively be termed "expected" — and was simply not "beyond all previous imagination," as Shimizu claimed.

In fact, the willful absence of care by both industry and government comprises nothing less than a blatant act of savagery against the people of Japan. This book is full of enlightening technical explanations on every aspect of nuclear safety, from structural safeguards (and their clear inadequacy) to the nature of hydrogen explosions and meltdowns. Hirose warns us, with detailed descriptions of the lay of the land and the features of each reactor, about the nuclear power plants at Tomari in Hokkaido, Higashidori in Aomori Prefecture and Onagawa in Miyagi Prefecture; about other plants in Ibaraki, Ishikawa, Shimane, Ehime, Saga and Kagoshima prefectures; and perhaps most dangerous of all, about the 14 reactors along the Wakasa Coast in Fukui Prefecture, constituting what I would call Hōshanō Yokochō (Radioactivity Alley). Many of the reactors at these plants are aging and plagued with serious structural problems.

As part of the biggest, costliest environmental cleanup project in the nation's history - disposing of 53 million gallons of radioactive waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state - one thing was supposed to be sure: Waste stored in the sturdy, double-wall steel tanks that hold part of the toxic ooze wasn't going anywhere. But that reassurance has been thrown into question with the discovery of a 3-foot-long piece of radioactive material between the inner and outer steel walls of one of the storage tanks, prompting new worries at the troubled cleanup site. "We're taking it seriously, and we're doing an investigation so we can better understand what it is," Department of Energy spokeswoman Lori Gamache said

The discovery marks the first time material has been found outside the inner wall of one of the site's 28 double-shell tanks, thought to be relatively secure interim storage for the radioactive material generated when Hanford was one of the nation's major atomic production facilities. It opened in 1943 and began a gradual shutdown in 1964. Cleanup started in 1989. The $12.2-billion cleanup project eventually aims to turn most of the waste stored at Hanford into glass rods at a high-tech vitrification plant scheduled to be operational in 2019, assuming the formidable design and engineering hurdles can be overcome. In the meantime, plant engineers have been gathering waste stored in the facility's 149 aging, leaky single-wall storage tanks and redepositing them in the double0-shell tanks for safekeeping. Over the years, more than 1 million gallons of waste has leaked out of 67 single-wall tanks into the surrounding soil.

"There's been this presumption that the double-shell tanks at least are sound and won't fail, and they'll be there for us," said Tom Carpenter of the advocacy group Hanford Challenge. Several days ago the group obtained a memo from the cleanup site detailing discovery of the mysterious substance. "This changes everything. It is alarming that there is now solid evidence that Hanford double-shell has leaked," Carpenter said in a separate statement on the discovery. The 42-year-old tank, known as AY-102, holds about 857,000 gallons of radioactive and other toxic chemical waste, much of it removed several years ago from a single-shell storage tank where it was considered unsaf

In the western desert state of Arizona, a company called EnviroMission is planning to build a new solar tower, the first of its kind, an ambitious new way to produce energy with heat from the sun.When completed in 2015, the tower, located in La Paz County, will be the tallest structure in the United States, and the second tallest in the world. It is the first of two such towers planned by EnviroMission for Arizona. While it is a solar power source, it does not rely on the same technology as solar panels. The solar tower has a wide greenhouse at the bottom 4.8 kilometres in diametre, which is heated by the sun. On the principle that hot air rises, the heat then gets sucked into the gigantic 800-metre-high tower, displacing cool air and pushing it up through the tower, causing turbines located just above the base to turn. Causing turbines to turn is actually the premise of most of today's most prevalent sources of energy.