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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Dan R.D.

Dan R.D.

PhysOrg Mobile: Ukraine begins construction of new nuclear waste storage [05Oct11] - 0 views

  • Ukraine launched construction of a new facility Wednesday to stockpile industrial nuclear waste in the contaminated zone around its Chernobyl plant, site of the worst nuclear accident of the last 25 years. The facility will be launched in early 2013 and will only house Ukrainian nuclear waste, a large part of which is currently stored in "poorly equipped" locations, Chernobyl plant's spokeswoman Maya Rudenko said. "It will not be for material from nuclear plants" but waste from medical facilities and industries, she told AFP. The facility will have capacity for 400,000 capsules with such waste and have a lifespan of 50 years.
  • Construction of the storage facility is estimated to cost over 11 million euros ($14.6 million) to come from Britain, which will provide eight million British pounds ($12 million) and the European Commission (two million euros, or $2.6 million). The Chernobyl nuclear plant is located about 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Kiev and close to the borders with Russia and Belarus. Its fourth reactor exploded in April 1986 with fallout hitting the three Soviet republics along with a large part of Europe.
Dan R.D.

Gemma Reguera on cleaning up nuclear waste with bacteria [03Oct11] - 0 views

  • Gemma Reguera at Michigan State University leads a team that found the normal digestive processes of a common type of bacteria – known as Geobacter – can reduce levels of uranium waste. She spoke with EarthSky:
  • geobacter
  • She said these bacteria don’t make radioactive material less radioactive. But they do immobilize it by converting it into a solid that’s more easily contained – so we can remove it and store it safely. Her group found that, when Geobacter come into contact with free-floating uranium – uranium dissolved in water, let’s say – the bacteria zap the uranium with small blasts of electricity. They do this naturally, as part of their digestive processes. This electricity causes the uranium to mineralize – in other words, they turn the uranium into something like a rock. Radioactive material is much less potent in this solid form, Reguera said, and easier to remove from the environment. She said:
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  • We know how to stimulate these organisms to be able to clean up contaminants at will.
  • She said her team is working on using these bacteria – and machines modeled after them – to have the capability of cleaning up radioactive sites across the world.
Dan R.D.

Stick to rules on importing blended waste [08Oct11] - 0 views

  • nergySolutions is once again asking for the State of Utah’s permission to accept another vagrant bunch of radioactive waste. It plans to blend, or dilute, Class B and Class C waste with less radioactive waste until it just meets the Class A waste levels its license allows at its Clive disposal site. Think of it as kind of a radioactive smoothie.
  • This blended waste is a unique waste stream: something unforeseen and unknown to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) when it developed its low-level waste regulations in 1981. While the commission is currently trying to develop coherent new guidance on this, its rules state that it is only OK to intentionally mix wastes “as long as the classification is not altered.” Utah does not have such a regulation.
  • At present there are no disposal sites that accept Classes B and C low level waste, but that will change in about a month when a Texas disposal site opens and starts accepting these materials, without any of the hazards incurred in actually putting these things in the blender. The public understands how corporations often use regulatory loopholes to their own benefit.
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  • EnergySolutions is also partnering with a company (Studsvik) that in presentations to our board last year vigorously lobbied against blending, saying that there were “not sufficient safeguards,” in place, and that this “does not solve the problem.” And, what will be the actual increase of the total radioactive dose at the site, since the blended material will be manipulated to be at the very highest level of Class A waste?
Dan R.D.

Consultants chosen for deep nuclear waste store [07Oct11] - 0 views

  • Consultants Parsons Brinckerhoff and Gardiner & Theobald have won a four-year contract with the nuclear Decommissioning Agency to help develop plans for a long-term “geological” storage facility for nuclear waste.
  • The contract to provide technical support for the planned multi-billion pound facility has been awarded to the Orchid Group,
  • The Geological Disposal Facility will be designed to keep radioactive materials isolated from the environment for thousands of years at a UK location that has yet to be chosen. Engineers on the project will have to create, for the first time, a facility to last for millennia.
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  • David Rutherford, senior director, energy at Parsons Brinckerhoff, said:  “The development of an underground disposal facility for radioactive materials is a vital legacy for future generations.”
Dan R.D.

Hold the cesium: Ways to reduce radiation in your diet [20Sep11] - 0 views

  • While readings of radiation in the air have returned to pre-3/11 levels in most areas of Japan — not including areas close to the plant and the so-called hot spots — the contamination of soil, which affects the food chain, could pose a long-term health risk, experts say. Iodine-131, cesium-134 and cesium-137 were released in large quantities by the nuclear plant, and if they are accumulated in the body, they could cause cancer.
  • Kunikazu Noguchi, lecturer at Nihon University and an often-quoted expert on radiological protection, assures that consumers need not worry too much about any produce on the market, because at present, radiation levels in most vegetables, meat, dairy and other foods, even those from Fukushima Prefecture, are far below the government's safety limits and often undetectable. But for consumers concerned about the few incidents of tainted food slipping through the government checks (such as the beef from cattle that had been fed with tainted straw in Fukushima, which was shipped nationwide in July), or families with small children, Noguchi suggests a simple way to minimize their radiation exposure through food: rinse it.
  • rinsing the food well before cooking, preferably with hot water, and/or boiling or stewing it, a large portion of radioactive elements can be removed. In his book, published in Japanese in mid-July, "Hoshano Osen kara Kazoku wo Mamoru Tabekata no Anzen Manyuaru" ("The Safety Manual for Protecting Your Family From Radiation Contamination"), Noguchi offers tips on how to prepare food, item by item, so consumers can reduce their radiation intake at home.
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  • More radiation in spinach and other leafy vegetables can be removed if they are boiled. As for lettuces, throw away the outer leaf and rinse the rest well. Data from Chernobyl shows that rinsing lettuce can remove up to half of the cesium-134 and two thirds of the cesium-137. Cucumbers can be pickled with vinegar, which cuts radiation by up to 94 percent. Peeling carrots and boiling them with salted hot water would also help reduce cesium levels.
  • For fish and other seafood, however, watch out for strontium-90, which has a half-life of 29 years. According to Noguchi, far greater quantities of strontium-90 were released into the ocean than into the air and ground. Contrary to popular thinking, large fish are not necessarily riskier to consume. Though large fish do eat smaller fish, which leads some to believe they accumulate more radioactive materials, Noguchi says it is the small fish and flat fish that have stayed close to the Fukushima plant that pose more risk. Unlike large fish that swim longer distances, small fish cannot move far from contaminated areas. With tuna fish, rinse with water before eating or cooking. Boiling or marinating salmon helps remove cesium-137, and avoid eating fish bones, as they could contain strontium-90.
  • Fresh milk from Fukushima Prefecture was suspended from the market from mid-March until the end of April after it was found to contain radioactive iodine.
  • Cheese and butter are fine, too, because, during their production, the milk whey — the liquid that gets separated from curd — is removed. While rich in nutrition, cesium and strontium tend to remain in whey. Yogurt, which usually has whey floating on top, also undergoes radiation checks before going on the market, but if you are still worried, pour off the whey before you eat the yogurt.
  • Wakame (soft seaweed) and kombu (kelp) are integral parts of the Japanese diet. They flew off store shelves in the wake of the nuclear disaster, when consumers heard that the natural iodine in them might help them fight radiation contamination. Seaweed from the sea close to the nuclear plant, however, will likely absorb high levels of radiation in the coming years. You can rinse it before cooking, or choose seaweed harvested elsewhere.
Dan R.D.

GSDF holds emergency evacuation drill near stricken Fukushima nuclear plant [13Sep11] - 0 views

  • FUKUSHIMA -- The Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) and residents of the zone between 20 and 30 kilometers from the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant held an emergency evacuation drill on Sept. 12.
  • The GSDF held a similar drill without civilian participation in July. The scenario for the drill presupposed further meltdown of the Fukushima plant's No. 3 reactor core, and a local accumulation of radioactive materials emitting 20 millisieverts of radiation within the next four days. A total of some 400 GSDF personnel were deployed for the drill held in the municipalities of Minamisoma, Tamura, Kawauchi, Hirono, Tomioka and Naraha. Thirty-two municipal workers and firefighters along with 18 local residents also joined the drill.
  • GSDF personnel went to assigned homes to drive elderly residents to evacuation points, as well as hospitals to drive and fly patients to medical facilities in the city of Fukushima.
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  • Click here for the original Japanese story (Mainichi Japan) September 13, 2011
Dan R.D.

Iran Officially Opens First Nuclear Plant - ABC News [12Sep11] - 0 views

shared by Dan R.D. on 12 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Iran celebrated the official opening of the nation's first nuclear power plant today, a worrisome milestone for Western critics of the Iranian nuclear program.
  • Iranian state news said. The plant has been under construction by a Russian company for nearly two decades.
  • Today State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said the official opening of the Bushehr plant was still "troubling" since Iran is now the only country in the world with an operating nuclear reactor that has not ratified the international Convention on Nuclear Safety.
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  • The head of the International Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, said at the start of a five-day U.N. meeting today that the organization is "increasingly concerned" about Iran's nuclear program and that Iran was still not providing the agency "necessary cooperation" with its nuclear program.
  • Most recently, Iranian officials accused the U.S. and its allies of conspiring to damage its nuclear activities when the Stuxnet computer worm was found on the computers of several employees at the Bushehr nuclear plant last summer.
  • Although the U.S. never accepted -- or denied -- responsibility for the virus, a January 2010 cable released by WikiLeaks earlier this year revealed that the U.S. was at that time considering advice by a German thinktank that "covert sabotage" would be the most effective way to disable Iran's nuclear program.
Dan R.D.

BBC News - France nuclear: Marcoule site explosion kills one [12Sep11] - 0 views

  • One person has been killed and four injured, one seriously, in a blast at the Marcoule nuclear site in France.
  • But interior ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet later said there had been no leak of radiation, neither inside nor outside the plant.
  • None of the injured workers was contaminated by radiation, said officials. The worker who died was killed by the blast and not by exposure to nuclear material.
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  • The Centraco treatment centre belongs to a subsidiary of EDF. It produces MOX fuel, which recycles plutonium from nuclear weapons. There are no nuclear reactors on site.
  • The EDF spokesman said blast happened in a furnace used to burn waste, including fuels, tools and clothing which had been used in nuclear energy production but had only very low levels of radiation.
  • "The fire caused by the explosion was under control," he said. Another official later said the incident was over.
Dan R.D.

Huge power outage affects San Diego O.C., Arizona and Mexico [08Sep11] - 0 views

  • SAN DIEGO -- A major power outage knocked out electricity to more than 2 million people in California, Arizona and Mexico on Thursday, taking two nuclear reactors offline, leaving people sweltering in the late-summer heat and disrupting flights at the San Diego airport.
  • San Diego bore the brunt of the blackout and most of the nation's eighth-largest city was darkened. All outgoing flights from San Diego's Lindbergh Field were grounded and police stations were using generators to accept emergency calls across the area.
  • "It feels like you're in an oven and you can't escape," said Rosa Maria Gonzales, a spokeswoman with the Imperial Irrigation District in California's sizzling eastern desert. She said it was about 115 degrees when the power went out for about 150,000 of its customers.
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  • FBI officials ruled out terrorism while power plant authorities struggled to find the cause of the outage that started shortly before 4 p.m. PDT.
  • "Essentially we have two connections from the rest of the world: One of from the north and one is to the east. Both connections are severed," Niggli said.
  • Power officials don't know what severed the line.
  • Niggli said he suspects the system was "overwhelmed by too many outages in too many places."
  • Niggli said relief was on its way, slowly. He said his 1.4 million customers may be without power until Friday.
Dan R.D.

Fukushima shows how it tests rice for radiation [06Sep11] - 0 views

  • FUKUSHIMA — The Fukushima Prefectural Government laid open Monday how it tests local rice for radioactive substances, showing to the media the harvest of sample plants for preliminary tests on brown rice at a paddy in the town of Tanagura.
  • The initial tests cover unprocessed rice from about five plants each from five spots per paddy. Municipalities with rice contaminated with more than 200 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram will have more samples tested than others after harvesting, it said.
Dan R.D.

Almost 500 millisieverts of radiation for some in corridor NW [06Sep11] - 0 views

  • There’s a denial of the severity of the accident by the business community and government in Tokyo… they are ignoring and denying severity of problem… Some towns in the NW corridor received 50 rem of radiation, people in those towns received 50 rems.. that means there is almost a 50/50 chance of cancer… that information just came out now 6 months after accident…
Dan R.D.

Japan could rebuild faster with renewables, says report [12Apr11] - 0 views

  • The Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability has an answer, and it's anything but business as usual. By deploying a mix of renewables and energy efficiency technology, they argue, Japan's need for electricity could be met three years sooner than through nuclear and conventional fossil fuel power.
  • All told, Japan's earthquake and tsunami have knocked out at least 15,000 megawatts of electricity generating capacity -- that's greater than the total summer peak demand for all of New York City
  • Rebuilding with renewables would restore the country’s capacity more cleanly. The initial cost would be higher but spread across the lifetime of the initiatives, it would only amount to an additional 10 percent more per year. The study authors argue this would be more than justified by the positive economic impact of meeting Japan's power needs years before conventional plants could be brought on-line.
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  • Japan has to rebuild its infrastructure anyway -- some estimates put the total cost at $310 billion -- so the Nautilus Institute argues that this is an opportunity to deploy a more modern version of what came before. Will Japan seize the opportunity to deploy a smart grid that can be used to balance power production and consumption, and so enable robust energy infrastructure like rooftop solar?
Dan R.D.

Alec Baldwin Knocks Nuclear Power, Calls Reactors 'Filthy' [02Sep11] - 0 views

  • And there is some evidence that the dangers of nuclear power have been underestimated in the past. An Associated Press analysis of a preliminary government report on nuclear reactor safety found that the risk of an earthquake causing a severe accident at a U.S. nuclear plant is as much as 24 times greater than previously thought, suggesting an urgent need for upgrades.
  • But for some opponents of nuclear power, no amount of planning or patching is enough. The risks to the environment and human health, they say, far outweigh whatever benefits nuclear power might have to offer -- even if those benefits include reducing the nation's reliance on fossil fuels.
  • Among those critics is the actor Alec Baldwin, whose thoughts on the subject carry added weight with his admitted interest in entering politics. Earlier this month, he told The New York Times that while a run is not imminent, he has his eye on the mayor's office.
Dan R.D.

JAPAN: Fukushima Blows Lid Off Exploited Labour [03Sept11] - 0 views

shared by Dan R.D. on 03 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • "Fukushima has created public awareness on a section of nuclear workers castigated as ‘radiation- exposed people’ but forming the dark underbelly of an industry that depends on them," says Minoru Nasu, spokesperson for the Japan Day Labourers Union.
  • Nasu, a long-time labour activist, says that while nuclear industry relies heavily on unskilled workers it has left it to thuggish subcontractors to marshal them as daily wagers.
  • described as "human auctioning," Nasu told IPS. Labourers gather at the crack of dawn at designated places such as public parks to be picked up by toughs who take them to the nuclear plants.
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  • According to figures available with the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Japan’s regulator, of the 80,0000-odd workers at Japan’s 18 commercial nuclear power plants, 80 percent are contract workers. At the Fukushima plant, 89 percent of the 10,000 workers in 2010 were on contract.
  • "When their work is completed, they are expected to simply disappear. Nobody cares about them," said Nasu.
  • "Work conditions at the plant were frightening, demanding and dangerous. But, the worst aspect was the lack of protection for workers. We were sitting rabbits for unscrupulous authorities," he told a meeting of supporters last week.
  • News reports say that day labourers at Fukushima are being offered as much as 300 dollars per day. That may explain why most of the workers who went to help stabilise the plant have not returned.
Dan R.D.

Nuclear Plants Face System-Wide Earthquake Safety Review [02Sep11] - 0 views

  • The Nuclear Regulatory Commission may force the nation’s nuclear power plants to reevaluate their earthquake detection and safety systems and the manner in which they calculate their resistance to earthquakes as a result of unexpected damage to American and foreign reactor complexes caused by recent earthquakes.
  • The decision to send a formal Augmented Inspection Team followed the notification by Dominion Power, which owns and operates the North Anna plants that the ground motion of the Virginia earthquake, measured at 5.8 in magnitude, “may have exceeded the ground motion for which it was designed.”
  • All of the nation’s nuclear power plants, which were designed in the 1950s and 1960s, were supposed to be able to handle the acceleration of the ground motion and shaking associated with the largest historically recorded earthquake within a 50 mile radius of the site. For North Anna, a ground motion of .12 of normal gravity is the “design basis” incorporated into the plant’s license. That was based on an earthquake of a magnitude 4.8, and the plant was designed to withstand the gravitational tug resulting from an earthquake of 5.1 in magnitude.
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  • “Not only are the operating reactors getting special attention,” said NRC spokesman Roger Hannah, “but we are also looking at the spent fuel pools and the dry cask storage area, where 25 of the 27 casks moved slightly during the earthquake. They weigh 100 tons or so when fully loaded, and it would take significant movement of the earth for them to fall over. But they moved from a half inch to 4.5 inches on their pad.”
  • “It’s like building on jello. If you put the apartment building on jello and you shake the bowl, the jello quivers and the apartment building shakes a lot.  To be safe in the earth equivalent of jello you would have to build your nuclear power plant in what amounts to a concrete boat, so it could essentially float when the jello shook and be strong enough to remain standing.”
Dan R.D.

More Green Madness On the Plains [25Aug11] - 0 views

  • The proposed Keystone XL pipeline will carry oil from tar sands in Canada across the entire midwestern United States to Port Arthur, Texas. It could eventually transport 900,000 barrels of oil a day and without government funding of any kind has the potential to create 20,000 jobs starting early in 2012. The greens want President Obama to kill it of course; the political blindness and the wishful thinking that so frequently vitiates green policy proposals is fully on display.
  • I will only point to a study by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers: “Oil sands crude is six per cent more GHG intensive than the U.S. crude supply average on a wells-to-wheels basis.” Only 6 percent. Yes, that study comes from the oil industry; the green studies and the oil company studies are both suspect and need outside review.
  • the Washington Post want to throw the greens under the bus on this one. “Tar sands crude is not appealing; it is low-grade, it is hard to extract, it is difficult to refine and it produces a lot of carbon emissions. But if it is to be burned anyway, there’s little reason for America to reject it, as long as Keystone XL can transport it across the plains safely.”
Dan R.D.

PERLEY: Nuclear future beyond Japan [17Mar11] - 0 views

  • In January, two Italian scientists announced they had invented a reactor that fuses nickel and hydrogen nuclei at room temperature, producing copper and throwing off massive amounts of energy in the process. Sergio Focardi and Andrea Rossi demonstrated their tabletop device before a standing-room-only crowd in Bologna, purportedly using 400 watts of power to generate 12,400 watts with no hazardous waste. They told observers that their reactors, small enough to fit in a household closet are able to produce electricity for less than 1 cent per kilowatt hour.
  • The Italians’ reported 31-fold increase in energy from cheap and commonplace ingredients - if genuine - would rank as one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time, deposing oil as king of energy resources. Petroleum-producing regimes in the Middle East now using petro-dollars from the United States and other power-needy nations to fund Islamic extremism across the globe would be put out of business.
Dan R.D.

13-Year-Old Uses Fibonacci Sequence For Solar Power Breakthrough [19Aug11] - 0 views

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    An anonymous reader tips news of 7th grader Aidan Dwyer, who used phyllotaxis - the way leaves are arranged on plant stems in nature - as inspiration to arrange an array of solar panels in a way that generates 20-50% more energy than a uniform, flat panel array. Aidan wrote, "I designed and built my own test model, copying the Fibonacci pattern of an oak tree. I studied my results with the compass tool and figured out the branch angles. The pattern was about 137 degrees and the Fibonacci sequence was 2/5. Then I built a model using this pattern from PVC tubing. In place of leaves, I used PV solar panels hooked up in series that produced up to 1/2 volt, so the peak output of the model was 5 volts. The entire design copied the pattern of an oak tree as closely as possible. ... The Fibonacci tree design performed better than the flat-panel model. The tree design made 20% more electricity and collected 2 1/2 more hours of sunlight during the day. But the most interesting results were in December, when the Sun was at its lowest point in the sky. The tree design made 50% more electricity, and the collection time of sunlight was up to 50% longer!" His work earned him a Young Naturalist Award from the American Museum of Natural History and a provisional patent on the design.
Dan R.D.

Radioactive Chemicals in California Tracked to Fukushima Meltdown [15Aug11] - 0 views

  • Scientists in California are reporting raised levels of radioactive chemicals in the atmosphere in the weeks following the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The measurements are the latest evidence that the reactors melted down catastrophically.
  • Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), say that radioactive sulfur from the stricken power plant reached California in late March, two weeks after the crisis at Fukushima began. The sulfur is a by-product of emergency procedures taken immediately after the accident. The work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
  • The latest measurements seem to confirm that. For several years, Mark Thiemens, a chemist at UCSD, and his group have been measuring atmospheric levels of a radioactive isotope of sulfur, 35S, which is usually generated by cosmic rays striking argon atoms in the atmosphere. On 28 March, the team detected levels of radioactive sulfur dioxide gas (35SO2) and sulphate aerosols (35SO4-2) that were well above the natural background.
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  • The chemicals posed "no risk" to residents in San Diego, says Thiemens. In fact, it took a year to even develop equipment sensitive enough to measure levels as low as these, he says.
Dan R.D.

Steve Kirsch: Ten Lessons From Fukushima [25Jul11] - 0 views

  • The world is in serious trouble with carbon emissions.
  • We now can update our statistics on public deaths due to nuclear power over the last 50 years by adding 0 deaths affecting the general public at large. As we expected, nuclear is still by far the safest way to generate power (fewest deaths per MwH generated).
  • We learned it is a bad idea to put generators in the basement of a plant near a large body of water subject to tsunamis.
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  • We learned that 40 years ago, people didn't design reactors as safely as we do today.
  • We've always known that having a reactor shutdown process that is dependent upon electricity is a bad idea.
  • It shows that 40-year-old designs are not perfect, yet nuclear is still the safest form of power.
  • We've learned, once again, that people are irrational. When 8 members of the public died in a natural gas explosion in a town near where I live (San Bruno), there was not a single editorial or protest calling for the end of natural gas.
  • No member of the public died from nuclear radiation in the Japan quake. Unsafe buildings caused untold thousands of deaths in the same disaster.
  • As far as I know, the death toll at Fukushima was 4 people.
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