Aletho News

Since Fukushima the real dangers of nuclear power are now better known

By Andrew McKillop | VHeadline | May 9, 2011

In an article published August 1, 2010 I stated what is now clearer than ever, after the Fukushima disaster, and more and more threatening, after perhaps the last time the USA triumphally announces that Bin laden is dead (announcements of his death stretch back as far as December 2001).

In the August 2010 article I said:

Conventional wars, like the conventional nation states that make or “wage” war, are less and less credible due to the new nuclear threat, due to certain or assured massive or total destruction and economic damage, when or if large reactors and nuclear installations are hit.

A quick roundup of admitted and officially announced damage to the 6-reactor Fukushima site in Japan, and economic losses due to this disaster as of early May is as follows:

– At least 4 of the reactors are destroyed and unable to be repaired, and the 2 that could or might be repaired face rising Japanese public opinion in rejection of nuclear power. Radiation levels on-site remain very high, also making it difficult to envisage repair of the 2 potentially recoverable reactors. Dismantling the reactors and safe store entombment and neutralization of radiation danger at the site will cost at least US$12 billion and take several years – perhaps more than 10 years.

-Around 90,000 Japanese have been forced out of their homes, jobs and livelihoods in the 20-kilometre Total Exclusion Zone around the disaster site, that many scientists say should be extended to at least 30-kilometres. There is no known date for when these persons can or might return inside the exclusion zone, resulting in total economic loss. Some 25+ years after the Chernobyl disaster, its 7,800 square kilometre total exclusion zone remains uninhabitable.

– Economic costs and losses from the Fukushima nuclear disaster are presently estimated at a total of around US$130-175 billion, but may further increase.

– The total radiological inventory or radiation potential of each reactor at the Fukushima site is about 200 times the radiation released by the Hiroshima atom bomb, which killed about 60,000 persons by radiation (blast and fire, also killing at least as many persons, in August 1945).

-Including fuel rods in fuel pond storage, ancillary equipment, on-site nuclear wastes and nuclear materials, the total radiological inventory of the Fukushima site is probably more than 10,000 times the radiation released by the Hiroshima atom bomb.

Worldwide, there are about 440 civil reactors of similar size to the Fukushima reactors, in service at this time, as well as about 290 research, scientific and military reactors, and about 370 submarine and surface ship reactors. The radiological inventory of these mostly non-military reactors is vastly higher than the radiation release potential of all nuclear weapons held by the so-called “declared nuclear powers” (USA, Russia, China, France, UK), and the “non-declared powers” (India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea)

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Since late 2010, world media has repeatedly carried reports claiming Al Qaeda intends to become nuclear capable. One example is a February 2, 2011 article in UK Daily Telegraph headlined Wikileaks: Al Qaeda is planning a dirty bomb, and continuing: “Al-Qaeda is actively trying to secure nuclear material and recruiting rogue scientists to build a radioactive”dirty” bomb, according to leaked diplomatic documents”.

The antiquated, technological naivety of this Wikileaks claim reminds us that Wikileaks has possibly multiple agendas and multiple masters in its so-called quest for truth. The article citing Wikileaks goes on to repeat claims of Al Qaeda being “interested” in dirty bombs, basically nuclear wastes or radioactive material packed in any kind of container and exploded, for example in a city center dustbin.

Al Qaeda operatives would however have no interest in the vast dirty bombs also known as civil nuclear reactors. They would also eschew fuel rod fabrication centers, waste reprocessing and storage centers, road, ship and train convoys transporting ultra-deadly materials, notably plutonium, the world’s uranium mines, and remaining large quantities of smaller sized nuclear ordnance, including atomic mines, torpedoes and artillery shells, leftover from the Cold War period!

Nuclear reactors are in no way designed to resist military attack – even so-called military reactors which are mostly high neutron reactors able to quickly “breed” or produce plutonium and highly enriched uranium, to make atomic weapons, are themselves rarely hard-shell protected or located underground. Most nuclear reactors have so-called containment features rarely exceeding 20 to30 centimetres of concrete and in some cases a few centimetres of mild steel protection of the reactor cores. Fuel rod dumps or cooling ponds – as shown in the case of Fukushima – are sometimes located in open air surroundings with zero protection.

The range and types of conventional military ordnance able to penetrate and destroy reactor cores, or their cooling systems, or both are very wide-ranging. They range from conventional bombs, artillery shells, mines, mortars, anti-tank and anti-building shoulder-fired missiles, to conventional short-range or long-range missiles. These missiles are owned by more than 20 nations, including Iran’s Shahab-4. Other than conventional military ordnance, unconventional and so-called terror war ordnance able to destroy any civil nuclear reactors include a large range of potential weapons. These range from kamikaze explosives like the suicide belt, to long range anti-tank missiles, improvised devices using conventional military or civil explosives, drone-launched explosive charges, and electronic and Internet based hacking attack on the control systems of nuclear plants.

Only after covering some of the more rational and likely weapons choices, do we come on to hijacked airplanes deliberately crashed on nuclear sites – whether reactor sites, reprocessing sites, fuel fabrication centres, waste storage centres, and other parts of the so-called nuclear value chain.

NO NEED FOR TERROR WAR

The Fukushima disaster has prized open previously semi-secret information on the fantastic death toll in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus from the Chernobyl catastrophe of 1986. Some 60,0000 Liquidators were forced to work at the site, under panic conditions, with little or no protection and today perhaps one-third to one-half of these Liquidators are already dead. Economic loss from the Chernobyl disaster, in today’s money, was at least US$250 billion. This was not a military attack or terror attack, but a nuclear catastrophe due to human error. The Fukushima disaster was due to earthquake and tsunami, of course aggravated by the proven irresponsibility, lying and cost-cutting of the site operator, Tepco.

Nuclear power is therefore already a dagger pointed at the jugular vein of the global economy and consumer economy. Today, with what is likely the last gasp of the Al Qaeda farce, and its violence and loss of life, created by American geopolitical strategy for unknown or absurd reasons, we have a new and additional asymmetric nuclear war threat.

Western media and the Wikileaks communication side-channel provides false information on the supposed Dirty Bomb threat of Al Qaeda, but totally ignores the reality of existing and vast dirty bomb civil reactors and other nuclear infrastructures in the worldwide nuclear value chain. Since Fukushima the real dangers of nuclear power are now better known. Whatever may remain of Al Qaeda’s operatives will also know.

Andrew McKillop
xtran9@gmail.com
Senior Partner
EP Capital Pty Ltd
Mount Hawthorn
Western Australia
Australia 6016
Phone: +61 411 771 895

May 9, 2011 - Posted by aletho | Deception, Nuclear Power