Aletho News

Nuke protester murdered in India as police open fire on peaceful crowd

By Rady Ananda | COTO Report | April 22, 2011

Authorities responded to peaceful protest of a proposed nuclear power plant site in India by shooting at the crowd, killing one and injuring eight. Over sixty others were arrested. Killed by police on Monday, the body of 30-year-old Tabrez Sayekar was carried through the streets at a funeral march attended by more than 2,000 people on Wednesday. No one has been charged in his murder.

The Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), along with the French nuclear energy giant, Areva, plan to build the world’s largest nuclear power plant complex generating nearly 10,000 megawatts of electricity in an agricultural area at Jaitapur in the Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra.

In December, the world renowned Tata Institute of Social Sciences published a social and environmental assessment of the proposed project conducted by Jamsetji Tata Centre for Disaster Management last April, calling it a potential disaster. According to DNA India, the report charges that the government has hidden and suppressed important and relevant information, and “has subverted facts” by labeling the proposed 968-hectare site as barren land though the locals use it for agriculture, horticulture and grazing.

“‘Farmers and horticulturists have spent lakhs of rupees to make the land cultivable over years and even the government has supported them. This includes Alfonso mangoes and cashews. Now, when the time has come for them to reap their investments, they are afraid of losing their land as the government now claims it is barren land,’ says the report. It adds that even the fisherfolk of the region are against the project.”

Even the level of seismicity was changed, from a high severity earthquake zone to moderate seismic severity zone.

“‘The government is not only hiding facts, but also manipulating them,’ the report alleges.”

NPCIL, an agency of the Indian government, defends the moderate label. “Seismicity is one of the key criteria in site selection for nuclear power plants and the Jaitapur site meets the requirements for siting as stipulated in the atomic energy regulatory board’s code on safety,” it said in response to TISS.

However, last month, Times of India reported:

“[T]he Geological Survey of India shows that between 1985 and 2005, there were 92 earthquakes [in the area].

“The ground is unstable, say activists and geologists, and there is no guarantee that the government’s safeguards will protect the people and ecologically sensitive Konkan coast from a nuclear disaster should there be another earthquake.

“Environmental activist Pradeep Indulkar said: ‘The third explosion at the Fukushima plant in Japan on Tuesday confirms that in the event of an earthquake, precautionary measures and safeguards will not avert a disaster. It is better not to have a nuclear power plant in this seismic zone region.’

“At Shivane village, 20 km from Jaitapur, Chandrakant Padkar remembers the day the earth shook and the road outside his house vanished. The unreported earthquake took place two years ago, and the village still bears the scars.”

Greenpeace India plans to deliver a petition to the Maharashtra Chief Minister on April 26, the 25th anniversary of the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine. You can sign the petition here.

“Instead of ignoring and ruthlessly suppressing the protest against the Jaitapur nuclear reactor park, Prithviraj Chavan, Maharashtra Chief Minister, needs to scrap the project. The CM needs to know that he cannot build Jaitapur against the people’s will when alternatives exist.”

Sane Response to Deadly Energy Source

Nuclear power is the deadliest, costliest form of energy on record, according to Dr. Benjamin Sovacool of Project Syndicate. “Not counting the Fukushima catastrophe, there has been more than one nuclear incident and $330 million in damage every year, on average, for the past three decades.”

In a policy brief published in January, Sovacool notes, “The nuclear fuel cycle involves some of the most dangerous elements known to humankind. These elements include more than 100 dangerous radionuclides and carcinogens such as strontium-90, iodine-131 and cesium-137, which are the same toxins found in the fallout of nuclear weapons.”

The damage done to Earth by nuclear accidents and waste is permanent, for a mere 20-30 years of electricity, a dirty secret that the nuclear industry has not resolved. In the U.S., for example, the waste is stored in holding pools at four to five times the pool’s capacity.

Despite the world’s clean water shortage, Sovacool reports:

“Nuclear plants use 25-50% more water per unit of electricity generated than fossil fuel plants with equivalent cooling systems…. The average US plant operating on an open–loop cooling system withdraws 216 Million litres of water every day and consumes 125 Million litres of water every day.

“Nuclear plants and uranium mining also contaminate water and the methods used to draw the water and exclude debris through screens kill marine and riparian life, setting in place a destructive chain of events for ocean/river systems.”

Der Spiegel writes, “The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, for all the attention it gets, is far from the only nuclear no-go area on the planet.”  In its recent catalogue of several now-uninhabitable spots on the planet as a result of nuclear use, leaks, waste and accidents, Spiegel documents thousands of square miles in the U.S., Germany, Kazakhstan, Japan, India, Britain and Northern Africa contaminated by radiation, areas which produce high rates of birth defects and cancers. Their report doesn’t even touch the depleted uranium used in the Middle East by the U.S. and its allies.

While we watch Fukushima’s radiation fall on the northern hemisphere, contaminating our milk and water in the U.S., Canada and Europe, it’s notable that, like previous nuclear accidents, governments lie about the severity. Fifty years after the UK’s worst nuclear disaster, experts advise that the radiation released was twice what was originally reported.

Chernobyl was no different, as a recent book published by the New York Academy of Sciences reveals.  Government authorities reported 3,000 casualties from that disaster, but in Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, the authors conclude that, based on now available medical data, 985,000 people died as a result of the Chernobyl disaster, as of 2004. The researchers based their conclusions on 5,000 radiological surveys, scientific reports and health data.

Because of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, EnviroVideo released a video based on that book: “Chernobyl: A Million Casualties.” Watch it at http://blip.tv/file/4922080.

Neither is Japan any different. Engineer Keith Harmon Snow writes:

“In a recent WikiLeaks diplomatic cable, politician Taro Kono, a high-profile member of Japan’s lower house, told U.S. diplomats that the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (MITI) — the Japanese government department responsible for nuclear energy — has been ‘covering up nuclear accidents and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry.’ In 2002 ‘the chairman and four executives of TEPCO, the company that owns the stricken Fukushima plant, resigned after reports that safety records were falsified.’”

Corporate-run governments will not stop destroying the planet for profit. It is up to humanity to do all in its power to end the ongoing ecocide. Sometimes this means putting your life on the line, as Tabrez Sayekar did on Monday, just short of the 25^th Anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

April 24, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Nuclear Power | Leave a comment

Fukushima’s Boiling-Water Reactors Continue to Boil and a Sarcophagus Looms

By Mina Hamilton / Dissident Voice / April 20th, 2011

Japan’s Disneyland reopens.

Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan makes a plea to his countrymen to “live life as normal”.

It would be churlish to deny scared kids or worried parents a hug from Mickey Mouse, if that’s what might console. But the proliferation of fantasies regarding the stricken Fukushima Daiichi plants continues at a ferocious pace – and behind-the-scenes, plans for a sarcophagus solidify.

The New York Times talks of the possibility of returning the land to a “greenfield” state. Denis Flory, a Deputy Director General of the International Atomic Energy Association insists Fukushima is not Chernobyl. At a recent meeting, Flory explains, “At Chernobyl a nuclear reactor exploded. In Japan… there may be…” The Deputy Director pauses and looks abashed, “some leaks, but containment is here.”

This absurd claim is made, despite the fact that the International Atomic Energy Association’s own data asserts that 70% of the radioactive fuel in reactor no. 1 is damaged. In reactor no. 2, 30% of the fuel is damaged and it’s 35% in reactor no. 3. (Damaged means crumbled, cracked and/or melted fuel. It is now accumulating at the bottom of the reactor vessels and impeding cooling of, as yet, undamaged fuel.)

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency opines that high radiation readings above the irradiated fuel pool at reactor no. 4 may be from “rainwater.”

And, Big News, on Monday, April 18, TEPCO admits its month-long, much-ballyhooed effort to cool the reactors isn’t working, hasn’t worked and won’t work. A new cooling system will have to be designed and installed to bring the temperature of the fractious reactors under control.

A staggering admission.

The term boiling-water-reactor has a new punch. At the Fukushima plants water inside reactors vessels 1, 2, and 3 is hot. In the hottest reactor the water temperature is 338 degrees Fahrenheit, well above the boiling point. (The other two reactors aren’t much cooler.) Weeks and weeks of spraying by helicopters and pumping have been to little avail.

Take the Japanese government’s, TEPCO’s, and the world media’s hard labors to create the belief that the situation is “improving.” Combine this comforting notion with good-old, ordinary denial, with a highly understandable human desire to deny the magnitude of the tragedy, and it’s hard to keep one’s eyes fully open, right on-the-ball.

But here it is before our eyes: Three reactors still reeling out-of-control. Three reactors whose coolant is at a roiling boil — much like the bubble-filled and steam-generating water all of us know from cooking up a bit of pasta for dinner. One of these reactors, no. 2, has a steel containment vessel that may be cracked. Plus, at reactor no. 4, one steaming, over-heated, spent fuel pool the concrete support of which is a tad sketchy.

Unlike our pasta water, in the case of the Fukushima reactors, the boiling water is contaminated with fission products such as cesium, strontium and plutonium. And said water with its toxic load has to go somewhere, i.e. outside the reactor. So at Fukushima there is an ongoing program of what in nuclear parlance is called “feed and bleed.” Or, in simple language, feed water into the reactor vessel and release radioactive steam to the environment. And then there’s the advertent leaks to adjacent turbine buildings, outside ditches, and, alas, the ocean.

The current TEPCO estimate is that this will go on a long time. Month in and month out. Probably, until December. Regular burps of radiation into the atmosphere and regular releases of radioactivity into the ocean for 6 to 9 months?

That’s the short term outlook.

The longer term is 10 to 30 years to remove all the fuel, cut up the reactor vessels, cart the contaminated pieces of steel away, cut up the contaminated concrete and lug that away, take the intact fuel somewhere (the Rokkasho reprocessing facility?) and do what with the damaged fuel? Leave it in place, as was done at Chernobyl? Where, 25 years after the Chernobyl explosion, radioactivity is currently seeping out, requiring the emplacement of a second, larger sarcophagus?

Fukushima, Chernobyl. It’s not a pretty picture.

In the meantime, why not cover-up those ugly skeletal remains at Japan’s crippled plants? With some improvised coverings and, down the road, a sarcophagus or two or three?

Recently, the sarcophagus-approach came a couple of steps closer with the arrival in Japan of two immense concrete pump trucks.

Each of these behemoths, known as 70z’s, weighs 190,000 pounds. They are manufactured by a German company, Putzmeister. In 1986 this company was responsible for the construction of the concrete sarcophagus around the graphite reactor at Chernobyl.

The 70z’s weigh so much they had to be transported by Russian Antonov’s, the world’s second-heaviest cargo planes. Previously used to transport the Russian space shuttle, the planes were specially sent from Russia to the US to pick up the hefty pumps. And where did these pumps come from in the US? From Los Angeles, CA and Atlanta, GA.

One of the pumps was pulled off of the construction site for the MOX-fuel fabrication facility being constructed by the French-government-owned company, Areva, at the US Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. To interrupt a $4.86 billion dollar project (already 5-years behind schedule and $3 billion over-budget) is unprecedented.

Obviously, arrangements were made at high levels of the US, French, Russian and Japanese governments for the deal to go through. What was particularly telling about the deal?

It was already in the works by the end of March. At a time, when the Japanese government and TEPCO were endlessly intoning about getting the stricken Fukushima reactors “under control,” already the giant concrete pumps were being readied for transport to Japan.

On March 31, a spokesman for the company providing concrete for the MOX Fuel facility, was quoted in the Augusta Chronicle, “Our understanding is, they are preparing to go to the next phase and it will require a lot of concrete.”

March 31? “A lot of concrete?”

Of course, it never did make sense that such huge pumps would be necessary for cooling purposes. (Albeit the amazing stretch of the 70-meter crane would reduce radiation exposure of workers, as would impressive remote-control features.)

But why the need for the giant behemoth pumps flown in by Russian super-cargo plane? After all this was the company that poured concrete for the 10-mile-long Gotthard Tunnel burrowing under the Alps, between Switzerland and Italy. The company that, after the 1989 California earthquake, rebuilt the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The company that built the world’s highest tower, the Burj Dubai.

And the only company in the world to have experience building a giant, nuclear- sarcophagus.

After the pumps arrived in Japan, a company spokesman was still saying the giant pumps were for cooling the Fukushima reactors. (For weeks a somewhat smaller pump, also a Putzmeister, was pouring water into the wrecked irradiated fuel pool of reactor no 4.)

When pressed by a CNN reporter, the spokesman admitted pouring concrete was a “plausible scenario.”

Throughout the disaster of the past five, going on six weeks, TEPCO, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency and the Japanese government have seemed bumbling and inept to the point of absurdity. Behind the bland announcements, the silly re-assurances was a different reality: three-plus weeks ago, detailed, complicated plans were being made to stop some key work at the MOX fuel plant in South Carolina and arrange for the special transport of the immense concrete pumps to Japan.

What other secret plans are currently underway – that we will hear about a month from now, if we’re lucky?

What exactly is the proposed design for the sarcophagus or sarcophagi? Drawings up on the TEPCO site suggest a three-sided structure, one with a top and sides – but no bottom. That means the distinct possibility of melted fuel, if it is left on-site (as happened at Chernobyl), migrating downwards toward vital water tables and/or washing out to contaminate the sea. Toxins washing-down and out, continuously, for decades and decades and…

Japanese refugees in the required and voluntary evacuation zones, critics in the Japanese government, Japanese environmentalists, Tokyo residents, fishermen, abalone-divers, dairy farmers, agricultural workers and citizens of the world must demand more transparency regarding these critically important plans.

If the Fukushima clean-up project is left to the nuclear boys-in-the-back-room, the plan is bound to be contaminated. Contaminated by thinking distorted by the bottom-line – and warped by the desire to protect the nuclear industry.

Let’s not let that happen.

~

Mina Hamilton is a writer based in New York City. She is a contributor to several books including Critical Mass:Voices for a Nuclear-Free Future and Deadly Defense, an analysis of contamination issues at nuclear weapons facilities in the US. She can be reached at: minaham@aol.

April 20, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Nuclear Power | Leave a comment

Powerful Aftershock Rocks Japan

By Stephen Lendman | April 9, 2011

Measuring 7.1 (one or more other reports said 7.4), rocked northeast Japan, causing more damage and disruption to a devastated area. It cut electricity to four million homes, disrupted power at two nuclear facilities, and according to Kyodo News:

“Radioactive water spilled from pools holding spent nuclear fuel rods at the Onagawa power plant in Miyagi Prefecture,” according to Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA).

For up to 80 minutes, power was lost at Onagawa and the Higashidori nuclear facility. “A small amount of contaminated water spilled on the floor (inside) all three (Onagawa) reactors….In all, water spilled or leaked at eight sections of the plant,” also run by Tokyo Electric (TEPCO). In addition, blowout panels designed to control pressure were damaged in reactor number three’s turbine building, TEPCO saying a complete damage assessment was ongoing.

Moreover, a Rokkasho village (Aomori Prefecture) spent nuclear fuel disposal facility also lost power temporarily. The extent of nuclear facility damage is unknown, except for sketchy and unreliable official reports.

As always, they say damage, new or earlier, poses no dangers. Already, in fact, Fukushima caused potentially apocalyptic ones, covered up to conceal their gravity, extending far beyond Japan and the Pacific rim.

Other reports also downplay them, including from The New York Times and Al Jazeera, often indistinguishable from and as unreliable as BBC, headlining (on April 8) “Japan quake causes radioactive spill,” saying:

“A powerful earthquake in northeast Japan rocked a nuclear plant, causing a small amount of radioactive water to spill, but the operator said there was no immediate danger,” case closed.

On April 8, New York Times writers Hiroko Tabuchi and Andrew Pollack were just as deceptive, headlining, “Millions Without Power After Japan Aftershock,” saying:

TEPCO said “it had found no new damage (and no) increase in radiation levels” at any plant affected. Instead of explaining the situation’s gravity, the report merely said concerns “remain high.”

On the Progressive Radio News Hour’s April 7 broadcast, nuclear expert Karl Grossman discussed worrisome issues raised by his mentor, nuclear physicist Dr. Richard E. Webb, the world expert on nuclear plant explosions. In his work, writings and 1976 book titled, “The Accident Hazards of Nuclear Power Plants,” he explained the dangers, saying in his introduction:

“Nuclear power plants present a hazard to the health and safety of the public because they are subject to accident, such as an explosion, in which harmful substances called radioactivity could be released to the atmosphere as dust and expose a large population to lethal or injurious radiation.”

His main conclusion was that “the full accident hazard of each type nuclear power reactor has not been scientifically established, even for the most likely of serious accidents.”

Specifically, “the theory underlying the industry’s safety calculations has not been experimentally verified, nor are the necessary experiments planned….This shortcoming is one of the two chief concerns of this book.”

“The other, and more important, concern is that there are accident possibilities not considered for licensing which are more severe than the design basis accidents and that these have not even been theoretically investigated for the course they each could take….”

In other words, reactor containment systems aren’t designed for the worst potential accidents. As a result, each operating reactor anywhere “appears to have an enormous potential for public disaster.”

Thirty-five years later, little has changed. Many American reactors are as vulnerable as Fukushima’s, and no plans are in place to handle worst case scenarios, too potentially catastrophic to imagine but are very real, likely, and sooner or later, inevitable as long as nuclear plants keep operating.

Webb estimated the “theoretical magnitude of the worst consequences of the worst conceivable reactor accident,” a disturbing consideration but important. Moreover, he said it’s not as unlikely as might appear, given America’s passion with nuclear roulette – a ticking time bomb technology, accidents waiting to happen.

Widespread fallout depends on rainfall, he explained. Without it, contamination is better contained. Nonetheless, his worst possible accident scenario is as follows:

(1) a lethal radiation cloud a mile wide, extending 75 miles;

(2) evacuation or severely restrictive living conditions for an area the size of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio combined (120,000 square miles), lasting a year or longer; and

(3) severe long-term agricultural restrictions because of strontium 90 fallout over a land mass the size of half the land east of the Mississippi River (500,000 square miles), lasting one or more years, with dairy farming prohibited “for a very long time” over a 150,000 square mile area.

Other considerations involve genetic damage and LMFBR (Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor) accident consequences, especially for plutonium, the most toxic substance known by far. A millionth of a gram ingested can kill.

In addition, “the maximum distance downwind from a reactor accident” related to the above estimates is about 1,500 – 2,000 miles. “Hence, a nuclear reactor accident can affect distant communities as well as those nearby.”

Moreover, the above estimates aren’t maximum ones, as weather conditions can raise them. As a result, disaster levels depend on the amount of released radioactivity into the atmosphere “in the form of a very fine, light dust (particles one micron diameter in size) so that it can disperse over a wide area before fallout.”

Also, the higher the fuel temperature, the stronger the explosion and greater fractional radioactivity release in the form of a finer dust. Contingency plans don’t take these factors into consideration or the effects on food, water and human health.

On April 4, the web site eyreinternational.com quoted Webb’s analysis of a spent fuel rod accident, what occurred disastrously at Fukushima, saying:

“160,000 square miles (is) rendered uninhabitable (the size of California) by Cesium-137 alone; 338,000 acres of land ruined agriculturally because of Strontium-90 fallout; 200,000 square miles ruined by plutonium contamination alone – a lung cancer dust hazard.”

The site says after making these calculations, Webb concluded that radiation is much more harmful than he assumed, believing that within 48 hours of a major reactor accident, 30 – 100 million people potentially could be harmed by radioactive atmospheric, water and soil contamination. In other words, the most dire scenario is too frightening to imagine. Possibly it’s now unfolding in Japan, what the fullness of time will reveal.

~

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

April 9, 2011 Posted by aletho | Deception, Nuclear Power | Leave a comment