Open Intelligence / Energy

Almost everyone in the alternative energy community is aware of Andrea Rossi's cold fusion based E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) technology. It is a game changer that allows vast amounts of energy to be produced by inducing a nuclear fusion process between small quantities of nickel powder and hydrogen gas. Instead of the reaction taking place in a gigantic multi-billion dollar experimental reactor, it takes place in a device that can fit on a table top. This technology seems to be everything to be hoped for in a revolutionary new source of energy to replace fossil fuels -- safe, cheap, environmentally friendly, and inexhaustible. 

It seems that as the launch of the technology approaches, the flow of information is accelerating. The information is coming from Defkalion Green Technologies Incorporated, Andrea Rossi himself, and from other sources. The following is a review of some of the breaking news.

A Self Sustaining One Megawatt Reactor

"The radiation from this unreported but very dangerous event was released without protecting the residents of Fukushima Prefecture -- especially the children. But the radiation was detected at elevated levels from 2:30 AM until 7:30 AM on a monitor in Ibaraki Prefecture. How many Curies were released? When will this nuclear war against the Japanese people and the Northern Hemisphere ever end? Instead of evacuation, the government gives the children (sick with radiation symptoms) film badges to measure the external exposure dose ... another study group like US govt. studies on Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims (they are still being studied), Iraq victims, Gaza victims. And the US government did the same thing to Americans during 1,300 nuclear bomb tests in the US."

And if that's not enough bad news, we have another big problem. Here at home we have two Nebraska nuclear power stations located near the Missouri River, and one is already submerged in flood waters. A hole torn in a 2,000-foot, inflatable barrier placed around the facility allowed over several feet of water to pour into containment buildings and electrical transformers at the plant. This disaster was reported -- and then quickly silenced -- by mainstream media. Cooper Nuclear Station, one of the nuclear power plants in the area, declared a "Notification of Unusual Event" after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released massive amounts water from two dams. This event is ongoing. ...

I wish I knew how all of this will play out. All I know is sometimes we all feel like we're just communities of puny little ants who can never change a thing. But don't despair, for we are many ... and when we combine our numbers, we are a very powerful force! I truly believe that we are the ones we have always waited for. As a lover of American Indian culture, I recall an old Indian wise man once said...

Even though she got zero attention here in the U.S., Lauren Moret's important message was heard loud and clear around the world on the Internet:

"Fukushima's radiation affects thousands of miles across the ocean! The west coast of North America is thousands of miles across the vast Pacific Ocean, a long way from Fukushima Daiichi and the radioactive solids, liquids, and gases being released daily and recklessly to poison both near and far. Already we are seeing the effects in North America. Air filters from cars in Seattle have been analyzed for hot particles and indicate that Seattle residents are inhaling 5 hot particles a day, in Tokyo it is 10 hot particles a day, in Fukushima Prefecture it is 30-40 times higher -- 300-400 hot particles a day. Hot particles and alpha emitters such as Uranium and Plutonium have not even been mentioned by the government or TEPCO, nor has their contribution to total radiation released been considered. Alpha particles are biologically 20 times more damaging than beta particles. "Iodine 131 in drinking water in San Francisco was reported by UC Berkeley to be 18,100% times higher than the EPA drinking water standard, yet the US government quit measuring it. Infant mortality in Berkeley and other west coast cities was reported by Dr. Janette Sherman to have increased 35% since March 11, after the Fukushima disaster. The babies are the first to die. Infant mortality in Philadelphia, PA. Where the highest Iodine 131 levels in drinking water measured in the US have been reported, has increased 45 percent since March 11. People on the west coast of the United States and even in Arizona are reporting a metallic taste in their mouths -- an indication of radioactive particles in the air as in Japan."

"On the night of June 14, a nuclear incident occurred in the Reactor 3 building in the spent fuel pool when huge bursts of gamma ray fluorescence lit up the night sky and turned the reactor building as bright as the sun, indicating the spent fuel rods and melted uranium and plutonium were boiling off, vaporized along with the rest of the fission products.

The government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. are boasting success in achieving the first stage in the road map to stabilize the reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, but experts said big challenges remain as the utility moves to the second phase, the goal of which is to achieve a cold shutdown in three to six months.

In the newly updated plan, released Tuesday, the two sides defined cold shutdown as bringing the temperature at the bottom of the pressure vessels in the stricken reactors to below 100 degrees. They also plan to reduce the amount of radioactive materials being released from the containment vessels and keep the radiation level around the plant to less than 1 millisievert per year by mid-January, which may enable some evacuees to return home.

When the second phase is over, "it will depend on radiation levels in the various areas, but I think we can achieve some specific results even for the evacuation area (within 20 km of the plant)," said Goshi Hosono, state minister in charge of the crisis,

A new intelligence report from the Department of Homeland Security issued Tuesday, titled Insider Threat to Utilities, warns "violent extremists have, in fact, obtained insider positions," and that "outsiders have attempted to solicit utility-sector employees" for damaging physical and cyber attacks.

"Based on the reliable reporting of previous incidents, we have high confidence in our judgment that insiders and their actions pose a significant threat to the infrastructure and information systems of U.S. facilities," the bulletin reads in part. "Past events and reporting also provide high confidence in our judgment that insider information on sites, infrastructure, networks, and personnel is valuable to our adversaries and may increase the impact of any attack on the utilities infrastructure."

Tokyo Electric Power Company says part of the external power supply has been cut at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant due to a problem in the transmission lines. TEPCO said on Friday that a current breaker was tripped by a sudden surge in the external power lines, cutting off electricity to the No. 3 and 4 reactors. The operator was forced to suspend a system treating radioactive water. Another system cooling the No.3 reactor's spent fuel storage pool was also shut down. TEPCO says the pool's temperature remains stable at around 30 degrees Celsius.

After the power outage, a building serving as the headquarters for the plant's stabilization switched to an emergency generator. TEPCO said work to inject water and nitrogen into the reactors has not been affected, as electricity is being supplied from other power sources. It said radiation levels around the plant show no major change, and claimed there was little risk of a leak occurring. TEPCO is working to restore external power, as it tries to find out what caused the problem

Russia's General Prosecutor's Office determined that unlicensed work occurred aboard the flagship of the Northern Fleet, the heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser Petr Velikii. After a long trek to Vladivostok and back, the ship underwent scheduled preventive maintenance in Murmansk by the ZAO Spetsialnaya Proizvodstvenno-Tekhnicheskaya Baza Zvezdochka joint-stock company. According to the General Prosecutor's Office investigation, ZAO Spetsialnaya Proizvodstvenno-Tekhnicheskaya Baza Zvezdochka General Director Barashko signed a report stating that the repairs and upgrades had been completed and the funding had been received and spent as designated. General Prosecutor's Office investigators determined however that ZAO Spetsialnaya Proizvodstvenno-Tekhnicheskaya Baza Zvezdochka had in fact only spent just $3.6 million of the designated funds to repair the Petr Velikii, while the remaining $9.56 million designated for the repairs had in fact apparently been stolen.

The Japanese government is about to set 100 millisieverts as lifetime, cumulative acceptable radiation exposure standard, counting both internal and external radiation exposure, and this is on top of the average 1.5 millisievert/year natural radiation exposure.Up till now, the acceptable radiation exposure has been 1 millisievert per year, in addition to the natural radiation exposure in Japan which is about 1.5 millisievert per year. There has been no standard for lifetime cumulative radiation exposure.

how many people, other than the nuke plant workers, have been tested with the whole body counters? Answer: not many. Reasons often cited are: background radiation too high in Fukushima for proper testing; there are not many whole body counters in Japan, 100 at most. Then, I read that a man from Iitate-mura in Fukushima demanded he be tested for radiation using the whole body counter. He finally got his wish several months after the start of the accident, and they refused to tell him the number. He still doesn't know how much radiation he's received.

Eating 1 kg of the meat is roughly equal to a radiation dose of 82.65 microsieverts for a period during which radioactive cesium remains in one's body. If a person eats food with radioactive cesium, half the amount remains in the body for nine days for a baby younger than 1. But the duration gets longer as people age, and it takes 90 days for those aged 50. The 82.65 microsieverts compares with the 100 microsieverts of radiation a person would be exposed to during a one-way air trip from Tokyo to New York.

Where has tainted beef been sold? At various shops and restaurants in all prefectures except for Okinawa. Every cow has a 10-digit identification number and the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry can trace the buyers of beef from contaminated cows.

At what level of radiation does the government ban distribution of contaminated meat? For radioactive cesium in meat, eggs and fish, the maximum limit is 500 becquerels per kg, the same level as in the European Union and Thailand. That compares with 1,000 becquerels in Singapore and Hong Kong, 1,200 in the United States and 370 in South Korea and Taiwan, according to the "Food and Radiation" booklet produced by the Consumer Affairs Agency. There is no provisional maximum level of radioactive iodine for meat and eggs because its half-life is as short as eight days, compared with 30 years for cesium, and it takes longer than eight days from the time they are produced to the time they are eaten, according to the agency's booklet. The level of radioactive iodine found in beef is at most 50 becquerels per kg, according to the agriculture ministry.

given the fact that a new study reports that the Columbia River will be contaminated with nuclear waste from a nuclear weapons plant for thousands—yes, thousands—of years. Even though the government has already spent billions of dollars on cleanup.

The Oregonian reports that the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, formerly a nuclear weapons production site, sits on 586 square miles of land next to the Columbia. And it has already leaked and spilled some waste into the river, contaminating the water and surrounding environment with such fun things as strontium, cesium, tritium, and plutonium. The federal government did an analysis of the damage to determine if capping and sealing off the waste would stop more of it from getting out, and also, if more waste could be imported to the site to be buried along with the original waste.

The analysis also shows that the U.S. energy department's plan to import low-level and midlevel radioactive waste from other sites to Hanford after 2022 poses "completely unacceptable" risks, [assistant director of the Oregon Department of Energy Ken] Niles said. Washington is also raising concerns about importing more waste. […] Health risks from Hanford's contamination are long-term, not immediate. They're expressed in terms of cancer cases after a lifetime of drinking well water from the site, with a one in 10,000 risk considered high. But many of the contaminant levels at the site exceed health benchmarks by wide margins.

Heavy rain brought by a tropical storm has increased the level of radioactive contaminated water at the basements of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Typhoon Ma-on moved east off the southern coast of Japan's main island of Honshu. 115 millimeters of precipitation was recorded in Namie Town, north of the plant, between Tuesday and Thursday. Rain has been gathering in the buildings housing the reactors because the roofs were severely damaged by hydrogen explosions that occurred after the initial March 11th disaster. Tokyo Electric Power Company or TEPCO, the plant's operator, says that at 7 AM local time on Thursday, the level of contaminated water pooled at the basement of the building of the No. 1 reactor was 44 centimeters up from the previous day. Officials at the utility say that there is no immediate danger of the contaminated water spilling out. But it is likely that the level of water will continue to rise for the time being. TEPCO says they are monitoring the situation.

Heavy rain brought by a tropical storm has increased the level of radioactive contaminated water at the basements of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Typhoon Ma-on moved east off the southern coast of Japan's main island of Honshu. 115 millimeters of precipitation was recorded in Namie Town, north of the plant, between Tuesday and Thursday. Rain has been gathering in the buildings housing the reactors because the roofs were severely damaged by hydrogen explosions that occurred after the initial March 11th disaster. Tokyo Electric Power Company or TEPCO, the plant's operator, says that at 7 AM local time on Thursday, the level of contaminated water pooled at the basement of the building of the No. 1 reactor was 44 centimeters up from the previous day. Officials at the utility say that there is no immediate danger of the contaminated water spilling out. But it is likely that the level of water will continue to rise for the time being. TEPCO says they are monitoring the situation.

Heavy rain brought by a tropical storm has increased the level of radioactive contaminated water at the basements of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Typhoon Ma-on moved east off the southern coast of Japan's main island of Honshu. 115 millimeters of precipitation was recorded in Namie Town, north of the plant, between Tuesday and Thursday.

China says it has made a breakthrough in its nuclear technology, testing for the first time an experimental fast neutron reactor. The China Institute of Atomic Energy says it tested the small reactor outside Beijing Thursday, connecting it to the power grid to produce electricity.

The test highlights Beijing's determination to be a leading innovator in nuclear power despite a slowdown in approving new plants to allow for safety checks following the nuclear disaster in Japan in March.  Beijing spent a year testing the fast neutron reactor before linking it to the power grid.

The new technology raises the uranium energy efficiency of the reactor, allowing less uranium to be used to produce power.  It also means that nuclear waste from older reactors, which are less efficient, can potentially be reused.  Experts say the technology also reduces radioactive waste

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s rules are a patchwork that needs to be reorganized and integrated into a new structure to improve safety, the agency’s staff told the five members of the commission on Tuesday at a meeting.The session was called to consider reforms after a tsunami caused the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. But how speedily the commission will take up the recommendations is not clear.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2011, the nuclear industry agreed to bring in assorted extra equipment, including batteries and generators, to cope with circumstances beyond what the plants were designed for. Such preparations are among the reasons that the commission has suggested that American reactors are better protected than Fukushima was. But back then, because their focus was on a potential terrorist attack, much of that equipment was located in spots that were not protected against floods, staff officials said.

“The insight that we drew from that is that if you make these decisions in a more holistic way, and you are more cognizant of what kinds of protections you are trying to foster, perhaps you can do them in a more useful way,’’ Gary Holahan, a member of the staff task force that reported to the commission, said on Tuesday. Another likely area of restructuring is to review the distinction that the commission makes between “design basis” and “beyond design basis” accidents. In the 1960s and 1970s, when the commission and a predecessor agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, issued construction permits for the 104 commercial reactors now running, they established requirements for hardware and training based on the safety factors arising from the characteristics of each site, including its vulnerability to flood or earthquake. Those are known as design-basis accidents.A variety of additional requirements involving potential problems that would be more severe but less likely (beyond design-basis accidents) have been added over the years.

The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday that it should decide within 90 days on how to address recommendations to be issued this week by a task force that examined the lessons of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in Japan. Almost simultaneously, House Republicans and the industry’s trade association warned him not to rush.

The chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, speaking at the National Press Club, cast the March 11 earthquake and tsunami at Fukushima Daiichi, which produced three meltdowns, as a serious challenge for the American nuclear industry. “The history of nuclear power has also been punctuated by several significant events that challenged old truths and upended our understanding of nuclear safety,’’ he said.

The task force’s recommendations are to be issued on Tuesday. Mr. Jaczko did not say that the five-member commission should complete its work in 90 days, only that it should give strong direction on each recommendation by then. The work should be finished within five years, he said.

One specialist, Nishio Masamichi, director of the Hakkaido Cancer Center, who initially called for "calm" in the early days following the disaster, wrote recently in a top Japanese business journal that the crisis has caused Japan's "myth of nuclear safety" to fall apart.

Nishio, according to this independent report, says it's time to confront the very real prospect of long-term radiation exposure, and has accused TEPCO executives of hiding the truth about the real damage caused by the disaster at the expense of saving the company. He also laid some blame for the way the aftermath of the disaster was handled on the country's leadership, saying Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his Cabinet lacked urgency and direction.

Regarding TEPCO, Nishio said the company gave broken dosimeters to temporary workers and only giving monitors when they are working, despite high levels of radiation throughout the entire site. He also accused the company of putting its workers in a gymnasium-type structure to sleep in order to keep them from running away.

Experts predict that the closure of nuclear plants in Germany will bring about a steady increase of gas, petroleum and coal in its thermoelectric uses, which will be reflected in the increase of 26 million tons per year of greenhouse gases, contributing to global warming.

Thermoelectric power use emits CO2, a principal greenhouse gas that, along with others, produces acid rain. All of these send thousands of tons of ash, residues from coal and heavy metals, and even concentrates amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere. For their part, modern nuclear reactors emit almost no contaminants into the air, although they periodically emit small quantities of radioactive gases. Their residues are smaller in volume (to the order of a million times) and are better controlled than those of thermoelectric power.

Pros and Cons

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b6d3ce/nuclear_regulatory) has announced the addition of the "Nuclear Regulatory Frameworks - Fuel Processing and Waste Disposal Policies Critical for Industry Growth" report to their offering. Nuclear Regulatory Frameworks - Fuel Processing and Waste Disposal Policies Critical for Industry Growth, that provides an insight into the nuclear regulatory frameworks of the major nuclear power countries of the world. The study, which is an offering from the company's Energy Research Group, provides information about the major nuclear agencies and associations across the world, major nuclear treaties and protocols and comparison between different countries on the basis of selected parameters which define the presence of nuclear power in a country. The research also provides the nuclear policy, regulatory frameworks, key nuclear policies and regulations and also the major nuclear affiliations for major nuclear power generating countries in each of the five geographic regions. The report is built using the data and information sourced from proprietary databases, primary and secondary research and in-house analysis by a team of industry experts.

Carbon Emission Reduction Protocol to Play an Important Role in Nuclear Policies Formulation

Improved Nuclear Waste Disposal Policy Instrumental in Revitalizing the Nuclear Industry

The Italian nuclear engineer and safety expert Cesare Silvi explains why he left his former pro-nuclear stance for solar and other renewable energy sources: “I soon came to the conclusion that neither international cooperation nor technological advancements would guarantee human societies to build and safely run nuclear reactors in all possible conditions on Earth (earthquakes, floods, droughts, tornadoes, wars, terrorism, climate change, tsunamis, pandemics, etc.). I am sadly reminded of this turning point in my life as I listen to the news about the earthquake, tsunami and extremely worrying nuclear crisis in Japan.”

Silvi warns that “there will definitely be worse accidents” if we continue with nuclear power: “Why not consider Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima as warnings of greater catastrophes to come and avoid the inevitable by shutting them down, much like changing your diet and/or lifestyle after finding out that your cholesterol or blood pressure is elevated, rather than continuing down the same path until a heart attack or stroke strikes?” According to Silvi the world could easily replace nuclear power simply by reducing our energy usage and introducing energy efficiency programs: “Nuclear today only generates about 12 percent of the developed world’s electricity. By instituting an energy efficiency program,” Silvi suggests, “we could fill the gap caused by shutting them all down and put this malevolent genie back into the bottle.”