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In her Op/Ed column, "Power economy with nuclear energy," former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman is correct that nuclear energy is "a vital part of our clean energy portfolio" and that it demands "a constant focus on safety." However, she misrepresents the true state of facts in asserting that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission "has undertaken an exhaustive review of the country's commercial reactors and concluded that they are safe."The NRC's re-evaluation of the safety risk to nuclear plants from seismic events remains ongoing. Even before the March earthquake in Japan, the NRC recognized that updated probabilistic seismic hazard estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey, particularly for the central and eastern U.S., require a re-evaluation of the seismic safety parameters required of licensees.The August earthquake near the North Anna nuclear plant demonstrated that the NRC must accelerate this review and quickly identify those existing plants that should be upgraded to provide a higher margin of safety commensurate with the greater risks now understood to be posed by seismic events.

In fact, the NRC has already concluded that the proposed third reactor at North Anna will be required to withstand ground acceleration parameters that are significantly higher than those required in the licenses for existing units 1 and 2, which were tripped by the Aug. 23 earthquake and remain shut down. Clearly, North Anna units 1 and 2 must be "backfitted" to withstand higher ground acceleration parameters before they are restarted.While nuclear power provides our best current energy alternative to fossil fuels, it must be employed in a manner that ensures the safety of all concerned.

dered the evacuation of all people in a 20-30 kilometre radius around the nuclear plant. This area is now inhabitable but many animals remain including dogs, cats, cows, pigs and horses. The Japanese government didn’t make a plan to save those animals that had to be abandoned by their owners. Many of the pets' owners thought that they would have the opportunity to return to their house in couple of days. But as it turned out they could not return for several days and even weeks. When they finally had the opportunity to return and gather up their belongings many owners discovered that their beloved pets had died of starvation or ran away. The owners of farms could not move many big animals such as cows and horses due to lack of resources and man power. 

There were an estimated 15,000 pets (dogs and cats), 3,500 cows, 30,000 pigs, 440,000 chickens and an unknown numbers of horses that were left behind. It is now six months since the disaster, unfortunately many of the animals have die from dehydration and starvation. However, there are still a few thousand animals that survive. These animals have miraculously survived this tough situation with the help and care from some animal loving volunteers and groups. These groups have been forced to break the law by entering the government’s 20-kilometre radius no-entry zone just to help these animals. Saving animals from the no-entry zone is still prohibited. Unfortunately the Japanese government and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) still do nothing to help. There ignorance is behind the loss of all these precious animals. All these animals' voices have to be head before the situation becomes worse. Mainstream media in Japan has hardly mentioned the situation these animals face. Therefore, many Japanese do not even know about this tragic situation.

Please help us to save the lives of these animals!  Please click on the letter to Japanese Government and TEPCO. These letters will be sent to them. Hopefully the result of many letters from individuals and groups from around the world will make them realize that we all know what is going on. Just maybe this will force them to do something about this horrible situation. Please don't let the dogs and cats that are loving family members die in this cruel way! Please don't let these cows that fed families meat and milk die in this cruel way!

Currently,at least 3 reactors are having melt out. Even Mr.Koide from Kyoyo University,who has been the most insightful advisory of us says, there is no major risk of explosion as long as the fuel rods are underground. Tepco announced they started building the impermeable wall on the sea side of reactor 1~4 on 10/28/2011. They say it takes 2 years to build. However,in Chernobyl,the biggest concern was the explosion underground after melt out. They put tons of human robots to settle it down.

They assumed if melted fuel touches the underground water vein,it would cause hydrovolcanic explosion so the entire area of Europe would be uninhabited. Soviet union was also afraid of the contamination of river. They ended up putting 800,000 people to settle it down and they suffer from severe health damage. In Japan,everything is concealed and nobody seems concerned about hydrovolcanic explosion and water contamination though it is likely to be going on already. Though Fukushima had container vessel,now that all of them were destroyed,the situation is similar to Chernobyl.

Roughly estimating,Chernobyl needed 800,000 people. In Fukushima,reactor 1~6 are in crisis,which means 800,000×6=4,800,000 people are needed to dedicate their lives. The video below is very insightful. It explains what Soviet did to avoid hydrovolcanic explosion. 600 pilots died. 10,000 coal miners were put (all in 20s or 30s) into digging the hole under the reactor,and at least 2500 of them died before 40s.

On Friday Canadian regulators published their post-Fukushima Daiichi report on nuclear safety, concluding the country’s reactors could stand up safely to the conditions that triggered the crisis in Japan. As in the United States, the Canadian government ordered inspections of its operating nuclear plants and a review of their accident preparedness in response to the March station blackout that severely damaged three reactors. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s Fukushima Task Force Report “concludes that Canadian nuclear power plants are safe and pose a very small risk to the health and safety of Canadians or to the environment.” The report identified no gaps in emergency planning or regulatory oversight related to severe accidents. Further, the CNSC said in a release the country’s reactors can “withstand conditions similar to those that triggered the Fukushima event.”

Global energy advisory body, the International Energy Agency (IEA), says that India should not get influenced by countries that have announced changes in their nuclear energy plans in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. “India should go ahead and implement its civil

nuclear power plans,” Richard Jones, American diplomat and the deputy executive director of IEA told the Hindustan Times in an exclusive interview. “Of the countries like Germany, Italy and few others that have announced changes in their nuclear policy, we were not expecting them to do much in nuclear anyway.”

Jones said while India must “take a lesson from the Fukushima nuclear disaster and adequately address its security and safety concerns,” but should not slow down its nuclear capacity addition plans as switching to alternate fuels like gas for power generation.

The destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan was responsible for the biggest discharge of radioactive material into the ocean in history, a study from a French institute said. The radioactive cesium that flowed into the ocean from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant was 20 times the amount estimated by its owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., according to the study by the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety, which is funded by the French government. It’s the second report released in a week calling into question estimates from Japan’s government and the operator of the plant that was damaged in the March earthquake and tsunami. Tokyo Electric’s Fukushima station may have emitted more than double the company’s estimate of atmospheric release at the height of the worst civil atomic crisis since Chernobyl in 1986. End Extract http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-31/fukushima-plant-released-record-amount-of-radiation-into-ocean?category=%2Fnews%2Fmostread%2F

The origin of xenon in the containment of Fukushima Daiichi 2 is currently considered to be spontaneous fission, a process of radioactive decay not involving any chain reaction.    Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) was able to clarify the matter somewhat today, having been unsure of a previous trace detection of xenon. Subsequent work by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency confirmed the presence of the element, which is among a range of elements found after heavy atoms undergo fission.

The usual chain reaction of fission in a nuclear power reactor is initiated by a source of neutrons and sustained by a specific arrangement of fissile elements and moderating water. Spontaneous fission, however, occurs naturally from time to time in heavy elements of above 230 in atomic mass without any external stimulus and not usually causing any subsequent fissions.

Tepco said it considered the source of the xenon to be spontaneous fission on those grounds that it had injected boric acid to the reactor vessel to reduce the likelihood of chain fission reactions but was still able to detect xenon. Temperature and pressure data from the unit also showed no change around the time of the xenon's discovery in another indication that chain reactions were not taking place.   While spontaneous fission is infrequent, it nevertheless occurs continuously at a low level in all nuclear reactors. It is one of several possible forms of radioactive decay, albeit far less common than alpha and beta decay. The additional heat input from spontaneous fission is insignificant compared to the overall decay heat that must be removed continuously as a basic matter of nuclear safety.

In the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, many wondered what the event’s impact would be on the nuclear renaissance in the United States. Those who follow the nuclear industry didn’t need eight months of hindsight to give an answer: what nuclear renaissance? The outlook for U.S. nuclear power has worsened considerably in the past five years. Where once there were plans for new reactors at more than 30 different sites, today there are only five, and even those planned reactors might disappear. Only one is actually under construction, and to credit the industry with breaking ground on a new reactor is overstating its prospects. However, none of this gloom is the result of Japan’s tsunami. On the eve of the Tohoku earthquake, U.S. nuclear power looked just as moribund as it is today. The cause of this decline is not renewed concerns about safety, or even that old red herring, waste disposal — instead, it is simple economics. Other technologies, particularly natural gas, offer much cheaper power than nuclear both today and in the foreseeable future.

In 2009, the MIT Future of Nuclear Power study released an update to its 2003 estimate of the costs of nuclear power. Estimating a capital cost of $4,000/kW and a fuel cost of $0.67/MMBtu, the study’s authors projected a cost of new nuclear power of 6.6 cents/kWh. Using the same modeling approach, the cost of electricity from a natural gas plant with capital costs of $850/kW and fuel costs of $5.16/MMBtu would be 4.4 cents/kWh. What’s worse, the estimate of 6.6 cents/kWh assumes that nuclear power is able to secure financing at the same interest rate as natural gas plants. In reality, credit markets assign a significant risk premium to nuclear power, bringing its total levelized cost of electricity to 8.4 cents/kWh, nearly twice the cost of natural gas power. Unless the capital costs of new nuclear power plants turn out to be significantly less than what experts expect, or natural gas prices rise considerably in the near future, there is little reason to believe that any new nuclear plants will be built without significant subsidies. This is not to say that nuclear power could not make a comeback within the next 10 to 20 years. But before nuclear can once again be considered a credible competitor to fossil fuels, four changes must happen.

The second problem facing nuclear power is its high borrowing costs. To some extent, this problem is a natural consequence of nuclear power plants taking a longer time to build than natural gas plants and having a much higher construction risk (the capital cost of natural gas plants is well-established relative to that of nuclear power). And likewise, to some extent, this problem might resolve itself over time, both as the completion of nuclear plants helps nail down the true capital cost of nuclear power, and as vendors add smaller, modular reactor designs to their list of offerings. But much of the reason behind the high interest rates on loans to nuclear construction is that the industry is scoring an own-goal. In the current relationship between utilities and reactor vendors, utilities are asked to absorb all of the costs of a vendor’s overruns — if a reactor ends up costing a couple billion dollars more than the vendor quotes, it’s the utility that is expected to make up the difference.