Radiation Reporting: Blind, Idiotic, Corrupt - or All Three

Radiation Reporting: Blind, Idiotic, Corrupt - or All Three

The ongoing radiation catastrophe stemming from three out-of-control nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan, has taken a back seat to far graver news events of late: Michael Jackson's doctor, fund-raising by presidential hopefuls, the World Series and Netflix stock.

Meanwhile, reporting about the on-going disaster relentlessly repeats the minimization and trivialization of radiation risk that began March 11, with the largest earthquake in Japanese history and the unprecedented tsunami that left over 26,000 people dead or missing and 80,000 still living in shelters.

Radioactive contamination of soil, tap water, rain water, groundwater, beef, fish, vegetables, animal feed and incinerator ash are almost always said to be of little or "no immediate" danger, which helps explain why Fukushima has faded from public consciousness.

"An exposure of 100 millisieverts per year is considered the lowest level at which any increase in cancer risk is evident," the French Press Agency reported October 6. But the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission's official published position on radiation risk is that, "any amount of radiation may pose some risk for causing cancer and hereditary effect, [and] ... any increase in dose, no matter how small, results in an incremental increase in risk."

Contaminated spinach and milk "do not pose an immediate health threat," reported Giles Snyder of NPR's Weekend Edition, April 19. Yet, the National Council on Radiation Protection declares that "every increment of radiation exposure produces an incremental increase in the risk of cancer.”

“The nuclear crisis caused the worst radiation leak since Chernobyl,” The Associated Press said October 7, as if the accident were over. The same news agency said September 22 that “radiation leaks continue.”

An April 11 Forbes news report grossly misstated the US Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) official public warning about radiation. Noting that a Phoenix, Arizona, drinking water sample contained 3.2 pico-curies per liter of radioactive iodine-131 from Fukushima, and that the EPA's maximum contaminant level is 3.0, the writer concluded: "EPA does not consider these levels to pose a health threat." In fact, the EPA officially warns that "there is no level below which we can say an exposure poses no risk."

In spite of evidence of far flung and ominous levels of contamination, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had the nerve to tell Japan to be less conservative in its cleanup program planning. The removal of layers of topsoil is being considered by the government, but an IAEA team this month said that would be impractical. About 29 million cubic meters of surface soil, an area the size of Luxemburg, may need to be removed but, "We want the Japanese government to avoid becoming too conservative" in its cleanup plans," IAEA inspectors said. The IAEA is chartered to work worldwide "to promote nuclear technologies," while finding a disposal location for its mountains of radioactive waste is Japan's problem. The government recently approved "temporary" storage of millions of tons of contaminated soil and rice straw in state-owned forests.

Japan's health minister declared September 20 that the beef supply was safe and claimed that the government had improved its testing of food for radioactive contamination. In August the Minister, Yoko Komiyama, lifted a ban on shipments of beef contaminated with radioactive cesium.

"The government was saying everything sold in the market was safe before the beef incident, then it turned out to be untrue," Mariko Sano, secretary of the Tokyo-based consumer group Shufuren told the Wall Street Journal. "It's hard to believe that now."
 Fukushima's Owner Adds Insult to Injury - Claims Radioactive Fallout Isn't Theirs

Monday, 16 January 2012 By John LaForge, Truthout | News Analysis

In the amoral milieu of the corporate bottom line, you can't blame Tokyo Electric Power Co. for trying.

Tepco owns the six-reactor Fukushima complex that was wrecked by Japan's March 11 earthquake and smashed by the resulting tsunami. It faces more than $350 billion in compensation and clean-up costs, as well as likely prosecution for withholding crucial information that may have prevented some radiation exposures and for operating the giant station after being warned about the inadequacy of its protections against disasters.

So, when the company was hauled into Tokyo District Court October 31 by the Sunfield Golf Club, which was demanding decontamination of the golf course, Tepco lawyers tried something novel. They claimed the company isn't liable because it no longer "owned" the radioactive poisons that were spewed from its destroyed reactors.

"Radioactive materials that scattered and fell from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant belong to individual landowners there, not Tepco," the company said. This stunned the court, the plaintiffs and the press. An attorney for the golf club said, "We are flabbergasted...."

Ex-U.S. nuke regulator chief urges world to end atomic power dependency

Tokyo, Sept. 25 (ANI) — Former United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission chief has said the world needs to rethink on nuclear safety and end its dependence on atomic power following the Fukushima crisis.

Jaczko hoped that Japan uses its resources and energy to come up with ways to function without atomic power.

Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) is now examining requests from utilities to restart reactors.

< http://in.news.yahoo.com/ex-u-nuke-regulator-chief-urges-world-end-110753036.html>

Former NRC Chairman Says U.S. Nuclear Industry is "Going Away"

By Eliza Strickland / Posted 10 Oct 2013
PHOTO: Gregory Jaczko, who was chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the time of the Fukushima Daiichi accident, didn't mince words in an interview with IEEE Spectrum. The United States is turning away from nuclear power, he said, and he expects the rest of the world to eventually do the same. 

"I’ve never seen a movie that’s set 200 years in the future and the planet is being powered by fission reactors—that’s nobody’s vision of the future," he said. "This is not a future technology. It’s an old technology, and it serves a useful purpose. But that purpose is running its course."

Jaczko bases his assessment of the U.S. nuclear industry on a simple reading of the calendar. The 104 commercial nuclear reactors in the United States are aging, and he thinks that even those nuclear power stations that have received 20 year license extensions, allowing them to operate until they're 60 years old, may not see out that term. Jaczko said the economics of nuclear reactors are increasingly difficult, as the expense of repairs and upgrades makes nuclear power less competitive than cheap natural gas. He added that Entergy's recent decision to close the Vermont Yankee plant was a case in point.

"The industry is going away," he said bluntly. "Four reactors are being built, but there’s absolutely no money and no desire to finance more plants than that. So in 20 or 30 years we’re going to have very few nuclear power plants in this country—that’s just a fact." 

Jaczko spoke to IEEE Spectrum following his participation in an anti-nuclear event in New York City at which speakers discussed the lessons that could be learned from the Fukushima Daiichi accident. Speakers also included former Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan, who headed the government during the Fukushima accident, and Ralph Nader. Several speakers talked about New York's Indian Point nuclear power station, and Jaczko expressed his personal opinion that the plant should be shut down. 

Jaczko argued that more Fukushima-type accidents are inevitable if the world continues to rely on the current types of nuclear fission reactors, and he believes that society will not accept nuclear power on that condition. "For nuclear power plants to be considered safe, they should not produce accidents like this," he said. "By 'should not' I don’t mean that they have a low probability, but simply that they should not be able to produce accidents like this [at all]. That is what the public has said quite clearly. That is what we need as a new safety standard for nuclear power going forward." He acknowledged that new reactor designs such as small modular nuclear reactors and some Generation IV reactor designs could conceivably meet such a safety standard, but he didn't sound enthusiastic. 

 

Members of Mass. Delegation: Do Not Relicense Seabrook Nuclear Plant For Another 20 Years While Concrete Degradation Testing Is Incomplete

 

Lawmakers call for additional review, need to incorporate safety and aging vulnerabilities into NextEra’s current operating license

Washington (December 18, 2013) – Senator Edward J. Markey, joined by Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Representatives John F. Tierney, James P. McGovern, Stephen F. Lynch, William R. Keating, Niki Tsongas, and Joseph P. Kennedy today sent a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recommending the agency make no decision on the June 2010 request by Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant licensee NextEra Energy Seabrook to relicense the power plant for another 20 years that would begin in 2030. A Boston Globe investigation found that portions of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant had lost 22 percent of its strength due to water seepage and saturation over the past decade, a phenomenon of concrete degradation determined to be alkali silica reaction (ASR). While testing and monitoring of the degradation has been undertaken since then, it is unlikely that the tests or models currently being utilized can be applied to Seabrook in a manner that would enable the licensee to predict any future impacts of the problem.  

“If the aging-related safety concerns associated with nuclear power plants were fully understood and addressed, that could be one of several factors accounted for when considering whether to allow the Seabrook nuclear power plant to operate until the year 2050,” write the lawmakers in the letter to NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane. “But that is clearly not the case when it comes to ASR, and as such it is simply not possible to conclude that the reactor can be safely operated between the years 2030-50.”

In November 2011, then-Rep. Markey and Rep. Tierney called on the NRC to take immediate steps to address problems related to the dissolution of concrete in safety-related systems at Seabrook. In June 2011, the lawmakers called on the NRC to deny a 20-year relicense application for the Seabrook nuclear power plant that would begin in 2030 and end in 2050. The two lawmakers also called on the NRC to disallow all requests for 20-year license extensions that are filed as early as 20 years prior to expiration of the current license for any operating U.S. nuclear reactors.

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COUNTERPUNCH / DECEMBER 19, 20131

The Great Removal

The Nuclear Waste Dilemma

The Real Deal on Obama’s Deportation Record

Get Rid of It! But Where? How? When? And Who's Gonna Pay for It?

by ACE HOFFMAN

Hearings on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s proposed Generic Environment Impact Statement (GEIS) for nuclear waste were held nationally over the past few months and attended by more than 1400 people.  The comment period (for written comments) for “NRC NUREG-2157″ ends December 20th.

In California, about 150 people attended a hearing in Carlsbad, and over 200 attended the San Luis Obispo meeting.

Tonight in San Clemente, citizens will ask their city council to request an extension of the comment period.  Concerned citizens hope to be able to get additional requests from other local communities, to force the federal government to remove nuclear waste from the now-closed San Onofre Nuclear (Waste) Generating Station, or at least, to give us hardened on-site storage, which neither the current dry casks nor the spent fuel pools provide.

“Hardened” might mean underground, behind earthen berms, separated from each other,  moved away from rail, ship, aerial and truck bomb access points, fewer assemblies in each cask, etc. etc..  These are standard anti-terrorism procedures which are NOT being done at our ISFSIs (Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations, the current acronym for “semi-permanent nuclear waste dump and blight on the land.”)

Yesterday Donna Gilmore and I were suddenly interviewed by Fox 5 San Diego about Southern California Edison’s shipment of Unit II’s original reactor pressure vessel head to Clive, Utah.  It’s a dome-shaped object approximately 14 feet across.  Edison says it weighs 77 tons, and says that standing six feet away from it for an hour will give you about as much radiation as watching television for about a year.  Do they mean modern OLED screens or old tube TVs?  Do they mean the most modern types of dental x-ray equipment when they say it’s equal to a dental x-ray, or do they mean older machines that give out nearly an order of magnitude more radiation?  Or even older ones that were even worse?

Here’s a link to the report based on the on-site interview with Donna Gilmore.

This report by 760KFMB gives additional information.

Here’s a link to my own animation of San Onofre’s reactors, which shows the exact part they are moving (screen two (the two triangles at the top advance the screens)).  Notice that the RPVH is a pretty small piece of the entire system.

The RPVH is highly radioactive, although presumably it will be shipped facing down, so that most of the gamma emissions will be shielded by 8 inches of steel (with a lot of holes, which aim straight up, but presumably have been plugged with something).  Underneath perhaps they will have a heavy metal plate several inches thick bolted to the bottom, and any gamma emissions that get through it will, presumably, mainly go into the ground beneath the vehicle as it travels down the road.  Few will get through the eight inches of steel, few will get through the bottom plate and then bounce off the ground into where other vehicles with people might be, and so it is called “low level waste.”  The inner liner of the RPVH is made of the finest stainless steel available — and millions of kid’s braces could have been made with that steel, if it were not irradiated.  Some of it might find its way into kid’s braces some day by accident anyway.

Edison sent out a press release about moving the RPHV and assured the public it was safe.  Certainly, it won’t catch fire and spread radiation, thus contaminating the local population and the air, water and land.  The spent fuel at San Onofre, that is NOT being removed, can certainly do that.

Each time Edison does a transfer to dry casks, that operation is about a million times more dangerous than this RPHV transfer, but there are no announcements warning about those operations.  It just goes on daily, about one new cask per month, until the job is done and Edison can walk away, leaving southern Californians with a pile of waste which can destroy our paradise at any moment, for who-knows-how-many-generations.

Edison has NO plans for removing the nuclear waste, and neither does the NRC.  Outrageous!

I have attended nearly every Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearing on San Onofre for nearly 20 years.  For more than a decade we were told by Southern California Edison (with no objection from the NRC) that the waste problem was essentially solved because the waste would go to Yucca Mountain.  But Yucca Mountain is an imperfect solution:  Before the federal government stopped the project (or at least slowed it to a crawl), one of the last problems they could not be sure they had any good science about was “drip shields” which were to protect the fuel rods — that were to be permanently entombed at the site — from water dripping from above.  The shape, material, thickness, and expected durability of the shields were all undecided, but my recollection is that the last design was an upside-down flattened out V shape made out of 4-inch thick titanium.  And no one knew how long it would last, but 300 years was an outside estimate, or at least the hope.  After that, good luck.

What the transport vehicles would look like, and whether they would use rail or roads or both, was all undecided when the project was stopped, despite 10s of billions of dollars having been spent.

Geologic storage, if we choose that route, will not be easy and will not be risk free.  And we’re nowhere near it at this point.

Instead, we’ve apparently chosen to practically randomly assign approximately 75 sites around the country to be nearly-permanent or virtually-permanent (100s of years, which only George Orwell and the NRC can call temporary) nuclear waste dumps.  SanO is one of them.

I say “randomly” because the sites were never picked because they would be waste dumps at all, let alone appropriate ones:  When the reactors were built, the public was told the waste would be removed within a few MONTHS after it is discharged from the reactor!  Instead, virtually all of SanO’s used reactor cores remain on site.  (It should be noted that the used fuel is actually much easier to transport if its temperature is above about 800 degrees Fahrenheit, because the zirconium cladding is much more ductile above that temperature.  However, when the fuel is naturally that hot thermally, the damage if an accident were to occur would be much greater, because the fuel is also radioactively much “hotter” a few months after discharge than it is, say, 20 years or 50 years afterwards.)

Is San Onofre a good location for a nuclear waste dump, permanent or not?  Hardly!  Earthquakes, tsunamis, sabotage, large surrounding population, poor egress, no radiation emergency supplies to speak of anywhere in the nearby counties to handle a spent fuel fire resulting from an airplane impact… and it’s upwind from the entire United States, so everyone in the country will be contaminated if there is an accident at SanO.

Frankly, I can’t think of many WORSE places to store nuclear waste than most of the places we are currently storing it nationally:  Invariably near population centers, because that’s where the energy was/is produced.

Diablo Canyon, 250 miles to the north of SanO, is even more dangerous than SanO:  Its freshest spent fuel is dozens of times more radioactive than anything at San Onofre — now that SanO has been shut for nearly 2 years.  And the fuel that’s still inside DC’s reactors is thousands of times more radioactive than that!

At the very least, all the used reactor cores (aka “spent” or “used” fuel) in California should be consolidated into ONE protected location, the best one possible, wherever we decide that is — with DC shut down, of course, so no more waste is being produced here.  There is reason for California to wait for a national repository — it could be centuries away.  The fuel should be retrievable in case a permanent national repository does become available.  Spent fuel should NOT be reprocessed.  Reprocessing takes an enormous amount of energy and creates additional radioactive and chemical waste streams (no matter how many nuclear proponents claim otherwise).

Ace Hoffman, an independent investigator, has been studying the problems of nuclear power for many decades.  His 2008 handbook of nuclear facts, called The Code Killers, is available for free download here: www.acehoffman.org

___________

COUNTERPUNCH // DECEMBER 12, 2013

The Escalating Catastrophe

Japan’s New ‘Fukushima Fascism’

by HARVEY WASSERMAN

The site has been infiltrated by organized crime. There are horrifying signs of ecological disaster in the Pacific and human health impacts in the U.S.

But within Japan, a new State Secrets Act makes such talk punishable by up to ten years in prison.

Taro Yamamoto, a Japanese legislator, says the law “represents a coup d’etat” leading to “the recreation of a fascist state.” The powerful Asahi Shimbun newspaper compares it to “conspiracy” laws passed by totalitarian Japan in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor, and warns it could end independent reporting on Fukushima.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been leading Japan in an increasingly militaristic direction. Tensions have increased with China. Massive demonstrations have been renounced with talk of “treason.”

But it’s Fukushima that hangs most heavily over the nation and the world.

Tokyo Electric Power has begun the bring-down of hot fuel rods suspended high in the air over the heavily damaged Unit Four. The first assemblies it removed may have contained unused rods. The second may have been extremely radioactive.

But Tepco has clamped down on media coverage and complains about news helicopters filming the fuel rod removal.

Under the new State Secrets Act, the government could ban—and arrest—all independent media under any conditions at Fukushima, throwing a shroud of darkness over a disaster that threatens us all.

By all accounts, whatever clean-up is possible will span decades. The town of Fairfax, CA, has now called for a global takeover at Fukushima. More than 150,000 signees have asked the UN for such intervention.

As a private corporation, Tepco is geared to cut corners, slash wages and turn the clean-up into a private profit center.

It will have ample opportunity. The fuel pool at Unit Four poses huge dangers that could take years to sort out. But so do the ones at Units One, Two and Three. The site overall is littered with thousands of intensely radioactive rods and other materials whose potential fallout is thousands of times greater than what hit Hiroshima in 1945.

Soon after the accident, Tepco slashed the Fukushima workforce. It has since restored some of it, but has cut wages. Shady contractors shuttle in hundreds of untrained laborers to work in horrific conditions. Reuters says the site is heaving infiltrated by organized crime, raising the specter of stolen radioactive materials for dirty bombs and more.

Thousands of tons of radioactive water now sit in leaky tanks built by temporary workers who warn of their shoddy construction. They are sure to collapse with a strong earthquake.

Tepco says it may just dump the excess water into the Pacific anyway. Nuclear expert Arjun Makhijani has advocated the water be stored in supertankers until it can be treated, but the suggestion has been ignored.

Hundreds of tons of water also flow daily from the mountains through the contaminated site and into the Pacific. Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen long ago asked Tepco to dig a trench filled with absorbents to divert that flow. But he was told that would cost too much money.

Now Tepco wants to install a wall of ice. But that can’t be built for at least two years. It’s unclear where the energy to keep the wall frozen will come from, or if it would work at all.

Meanwhile, radiation is now reaching record levels in both the air and water.

The fallout has been already been detected off the coast of Alaska. It will cycle down along the west coast of Canada and the U.S. to northern Mexico by the end of 2014. Massive disappearances of sea lion pups, sardines, salmon, killer whales and other marine life are being reported, along with a terrifying mass disintegration of star fish. One sailor has documented a massive “dead zone” out 2,000 miles from Fukushima. Impacts on humans have already been documented in California and elsewhere.

Without global intervention, long-lived isotopes from Fukushima will continue to pour into the biosphere for decades to come.

The only power now being produced at Fukushima comes from a massive new windmill just recently installed offshore.

Amidst a disaster it can’t handle, the Japanese government is still pushing to re-open the 50 reactors forced shut since the melt-downs. It wants to avoid public fallout amidst a terrified population, and on the 2020 Olympics, scheduled for a Tokyo region now laced with radioactive hot spots. At least one on-site camera has stopped functioning. The government has also apparently stopped helicopter-based radiation monitoring.

A year ago a Japanese professor was detained 20 days without trial for speaking out against the open-air incineration of radioactive waste.

Now Prime Minister Abe can do far worse. The Times of India reports that the State Secrets Act is unpopular, and that Abe’s approval ratings have dropped with its passage.

But the new law may make Japan’s democracy a relic of its pre-Fukushima past.

It’s the cancerous mark of a nuclear regime bound to control all knowledge of a lethal global catastrophe now ceaselessly escalating.

_____________

September 10th, 2013

This is a News Update by Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. 

• 
  Petition to FDA Requests Sampling of Food for Radiation Resulting from Fukushima Catastrophe
  

In March, public health and environmental non-governmental organizations filed a citizens’ petition with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) demanding that the federal agency drastically reduce the amount of radioactive cesium allowed in food, nutritional supplements and pharmaceuticals and develop regulations to protect consumers from such pollutants.  Coalition members of the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network, including Beyond Nuclear and Citizens for Health, petitioned the FDA to lower the radiation standards from 1,200 Bequerels per kilogram to 5 Bequerels per kilogram.  http://ffan.us/  A Becquerel is a measurement of radiation.  They are asking that all food be tested and labeled with the amount of cesium contained in it.  The Network requests your support of their petition.

Cesium is a gamma emitter and a good tracer for releases from the spent fuel pools.  Cesium-134 remains radioactive for 10 to 20 years, while Cesium-137 remains radioactive for 300 to 600 years.  Cesium mimics potassium in the body.  Over time, cesium bio-accumulates and bio-magnifies in the environment.

Contamination of the U.S. food supply has been found in grapefruits in Florida and oranges, prunes and almonds in California.  In 2012, Bluefin tuna found off the coast of California had levels of radioactive cesium 10 times higher than the amount measured in previous years.  They spawn off the Japan coast and swim 6,000 miles across the Pacific to school in the waters off the California coast.

The American Medical Association has called for testing of seafood.  http://ffan.us/?p=253  The Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced late [in August 2013] that it will begin testing fish off the coast of British Columbia.  (http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/08/19/bc-salmon-radiation-testing.html)

In May 2013 Citizens for Health, along with the other coalition members of Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network (FFAN), filed a petition with the FDA to drastically reduce the amount of radioactive cesium permitted in food, from a ridiculous 1200 Bq/kg to 5 Bq/kg (see why here, read why here). The Bq (Becquerel) is a measure of radioactivity. The FDA is now accepting comments on our petition and every person’s voice counts, so leave a comment in support here!

We thought you would appreciate the chance to review comments in support of this petition recently submitted by the Organic Consumers Association:

“The Organic Consumers Association supports the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network’s petition requesting the Commissioner of Food and Drugs to promulgate regulations to protect U.S. consumers from Cesium 134 and Cesium 137 contamination.

No food should have more than 5 Bq/kg of Cesium 134/137. All food should be tested for and labeled with its Cesium 134/137 contamination.

The damaged Fukushima units continue to leak 10 million becquerels of Cesium 134 and 137 per hour into the environment with no sign of stopping. Unfortunately, Cesium bioaccumulates and biomagnifies over time. Since Cesium 134 has a hazardous life of about 10-20 years and Cesium 137 has a hazardous life of about 300-600 years, the threat of contamination in our food supply is a long-term issue that deserves immediate attention.

We are alarmed at the lack of testing currently in place to meet the present-and-growing threat of Cesium 134 and 137 contamination in our food supply. The time is past-due for a comprehensive response to radiation present in our food supply from the Fukushima disaster.

Various products in the U.S. food supply have Cesium 134 and 137 contamination, including pistachios, oranges from California, grapefruits from Florida, prunes from California, and almonds from California.

The California coastline itself is now in danger of radiation contamination. Scientists at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station found levels of Cesium 134 and 137 from the Fukushima disaster in bluefin tuna caught off the California coast in Feb. 2013.

FDA should promulgate a binding U.S. threshold of 5 Bq/kg of Cesium 134-137 contamination, but there is no safe dose. Consumers should have the information they need to manage their own Cesium 134/137 intake. The FDA should require the testing and labeling of Cesium 134/137 in food.”