Venezuela’s Chavez Halts Nuclear Energy Program following Japan Crisis
Mérida – Yesterday President Hugo Chávez put a freeze on Venezuela’s nascent nuclear energy program as a result of the crisis underway at Japan’s earthquake-stricken nuclear reactors.
In the aftermath of last Friday’s tragic earthquake, Chávez sent his condolences to the Japanese people and announced his decision to halt a bi-lateral nuclear development agreement signed between Venezuela and Russia in October of last year.
The announcement came just hours after new flames engulfed one of Japan’s damaged nuclear plants and forced authorities to evacuate the last remaining technicians.
“What has been taking place in the last few hours represents an enormous risk and threat to the entire world,” said Chávez late Tuesday evening.
“Even with all of the great technology and advances that the Japanese have…just look at what is happening with some of those nuclear reactors,” he said.
Chávez’s comments came after elevated radiation levels at Japan’s earthquake-stricken Fukushima Daiishi nuclear plant led authorities to suspend all efforts to prevent the plant’s reactors from melting down. Authorities ordered clean-up crews to leave the facilities and cancelled plans for the use of military helicopters to dump water on the plants in efforts to prevent temperatures from rising any further.
Chávez said Japan’s ongoing nuclear crisis would affect the development of nuclear energy programs worldwide. “There is no doubt whatsoever that this has altered, and will alter in a very strong way, all planning for nuclear energy across the globe,” he said.
“For the time being,” Chávez said, “I have ordered the Vice President [and Minister of Energy Rafael] Ramírez to put a freeze on the plans we have been advancing, the very preliminary studies related to Venezuela’s peaceful nuclear energy program.” … Full article
Radioactive Cloud/Fallout Over Europe From the Chernobyl Disaster
By Allen Roland:
Citations sourced from the Christian Science Monitor | March 16, 2011
Yesterday President Obama told KDKA-TV of Pittsburgh “that experts have assured him that a nuclear release from Japan will dissipate by the time it gets to Hawaii, much less the U.S. mainland” but I stopped believing Obama a long time ago and, besides, he lives on the East Coast ~ well out of harm’s way. By the way, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt recently joined Obama’s team as a top economic advisor and GE designed the faulty nuclear containment systems that are now breaking down in Japan. So Obama is not about to say anything that could harm his more than cozy relationship with Wall Street and the financial elite ~ the public be damned.
The New York Times reports that GE marketed the Mark 1 boiling water reactors, used in TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, “as cheaper to build than other reactors because they used a comparatively smaller and less expensive containment structure.” The same containment structures that are now breaking down ~ like BP, it’s all about greed, profit and lax oversight ~ and dam the safety concerns!
Contrary to Obama’s vacuous comments ~ “The worst case scenario is ~ the fuel rods fuse together, the temperatures get so hot that they melt together in a radioactive molten mass that bursts through the containment mechanisms,” said nuclear expert Joe Cirincione. “Some of the radioactivity could carry in the atmosphere to the West Coast of the US,” added Cirincione, head of anti-nuclear group Ploughshares Fund. He cited the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster to underline how far radioactivity can travel. “The radioactivity spread around the entire northern hemisphere,” from the devastated Ukrainian plant, he said.
~
On April 26 1986 a terrible disaster happened in Chernobyl in Ukraine. This is a radioactive radar that can see how high the radioactivity was. The more red the more dangerous.
~
Stephen Lendman
Chernobyl in 1986 killed nearly one million people and counting. Wide areas are affected by permanent contamination. Clean-up workers still risk radiation poisoning. Earlier ones suffered dreadful illnesses or died, mostly from painful cancers. In contaminated areas, the continuing effects include:
— a 100-fold increase in aggressive thyroid tumors;
— a 50-fold increase in leukemia, bone, brain, and other tumors;
— a 30% increase in “malformations” caused genetic mutations and other pathologies affecting cardio-vascular function, skeleton, muscular systems and connective tissues, as well as nervous system diseases and psychic disorders; and
— a 20% increase in premature births, besides an unknown number of spontaneous abortions, miscarriages, and still-born births.
Moreover, radiation contamination remains hazardous for thousands of years.
Worse Than Chernobyl?
No Reactor is Safe
By RUSSELL D. HOFFMAN | CounterPunch | March 17, 2011
The latest news is that the Japanese military are dropping sea water on the reactors by helicopter.
That sounds very inefficient, very ineffective, and very dangerous.
I described this event to a loved one today as one of the worst catastrophes in the history of humanity. What will she tell her 13-year-old while he watches the news tonight? That Ace is STILL saying the worst may be yet to come? That we might have one spent fuel pool fire after another… and dry cask fires, too… and more reactor meltdowns, and more explosions?
That over the next 20 years there will probably be more than a million dead in Japan from this accident, and thousands dead here in America?
Do we tell them that? These are pretty hard things to have to try to explain to a child.
Do we tell them the poisons are particularly bad for youngsters, infants, and fetuses?
“If you don’t understand what’s happening, you’re probably so young that you REALLY need to know!! It will affect YOUR life most of all!”
There’s no way to explain that.
Of course, you can always listen to the pro-nukers tell you not to worry because it can’t happen “here”, wherever “here” is for you. They will tell you the radiation levels from the Fukushima-Daiichi catastrophe will be little more than background levels by the time they get to you, wherever you are. They’ll say background radiation is harmless and might even be good for you. They’ll say it’s just a dusting. That’s it’s all going to land in China. That the deaths from Chernobyl didn’t happen.
They’ll say it all.
Radiation sickness isn’t pretty. People in Japan will be coming down with it in droves. Workers undoubtedly already are being visited behind plastic screens for the last time by their loved ones who, if they live close to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, were also irradiated, but not as badly.
I spoke at a hearing last night, near my local nuclear power plant. It was a common council hearing in San Clemente, the city nearest the reactor. I’ve posted a You-Tube video from the event.
The public speaking portion of the evening started with this author. The reactor company was allowed to speak last, for as long as they wanted. The representative explained that the reactor was built to withstand all foreseeable earthquakes in the area, and all tsunamis that they could foresee as well. And that was that. No talk of new studies, no talk of building the wall higher, nothing like that. Everything’s fine at San Onofre, according to them.
Lately at all the hearings for San Onofre, the activists have been overwhelmed by plant employees, some of whom always speak, such as the union duckie, and some of whom just clap for their team and leave when its the activists’ turn to talk.
There were NO employees making themselves obvious at this hearing, besides the one management representative. I did not see a single logoed shirt, patch, or San-Onofre beeper this time. … Full article
Red Alert in Japan: An Unfolding Nuclear Catastrophe
By Stephen Lendman | March 16, 2011
Since March 12, a potentially unprecedented catastrophe has been unfolding in Japan, despite official denials and corroborating media reports – managed, not real news. Believe none of them. Nonetheless, on March 15, Reuters suggested what’s ongoing, headlining: “Japan braces for potential radiation catastrophe,” saying:
“Japan faced potential catastrophe on Tuesday” after a fourth Fukushima reactor explosion, fire, and high-level radiation release, posing grave human health risks to an expanding area, including Toyko’s 20 million population 170 miles south.
France’s Nuclear Safety Authority rated the disaster a six on the international seven-point nuclear accident scale. Clearly, it’s the worst ever. Europe’s energy commissioner, Guenther Oettinger called it an “apocalypse,” telling the European Parliament that Toyko lost control of events.
Independent experts agree. It’s an unprecedented disaster spreading globally. All six Fukushima reactors are crippled, four of them spewing unknown amounts of radiation.
On March 15, city officials said levels were 20 times above normal, later stating they’d dropped, downplaying the risk. Government authorities also claimed Fukushima levels were falling. For residents throughout the country, believing them is hazardous to their health, given the gravity of the situation, likely deteriorating, not improving.
In Maebashi, 60 miles north of Tokyo and Chiba prefecture further south, Kyodo News reported radiation levels 10 times normal, perhaps downplaying much higher ones. Even Prime Minister Naoto Kan was alarmed, saying “(t)he possibility of further radioactive leakage is heightening,” meaning very likely it reached extremely hazardous levels. Earlier official reports downplayed the danger.
According to Hokkaido University Professor Koji Yamazaki, “Radioactive material will reach Tokyo but it is not harmful to human bodies because it will be dissipated by the time it gets” there.
False! Any amount of radiation is harmful. Moreover, it’s cumulative, causing cancer if one human gene is affected. Depending on the type and amount, it damages chromosomes and DNA. In her landmark book, “Nuclear Madness,” Helen Caldicott said:
“Lower doses of radiation can cause abnormalities of the immune system and can also cause leukemia five to ten years after exposure; (other) cancer(s), twelve to sixty years later; and genetic diseases and congenital anomalies in future generations.”
Moreover, “nuclear radiation is forever,” says Caldicott. It doesn’t dissipate or disappear. Downplaying its danger is hypocritical and outrageous. For a scientist like Yamazaki, it’s scandalous.
In 1953, Nobel laureate George Wald told students (including this writer) that “no amount of radiation is safe,” explaining that “Every dose is an overdose.”
Radiation is unforgiving. Exposure to elevated levels for short periods is harmful. If longer, cancer and other potentially fatal illnesses may develop. It’s why using nuclear reactors to generate power is irresponsible, in fact, crazy.
On March 15, New York Times writers Hiroko Tabuchi, David Sanger and Keith Bradsher headlined, “Fire and Damage at Japanese Plant Raise Risk of Nuclear Disaster,” saying:
Fukushima’s operator Toyko Electric Power (TEPCO), a notorious industry scofflaw, “expressed extreme concern that (they) were close to losing control over the fuel melting that has been ongoing in three (Daiichi) reactors….” After Unit 2 exploded, “pressure had dropped in the ‘suppression pool” – a section at the bottom of the reactor that converts steam to water and is part of the critical function of keeping the nuclear fuel protected.”
Afterward, radiation levels soared. According to Hiroaki Koide, senior reactor engineering specialist at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute:
“We are on the brink. We are now facing the worst-case scenario. We can assume that the containment vessel at Reactor No. 2 is already breached. If there is heavy melting inside the reactor, large amounts of radiation will most definitely be released.”
Moreover, a plant official said breaching would make it hard to impossible to maintain emergency seawater cooling for an extended period, and if workers are evacuated, “nuclear fuel in all three reactors (will likely) melt down,” causing “wholesale releases of radioactive material….”
Further, already over 200 magnitude five or greater aftershocks have occurred, and authorities warned of a 70% chance of a magnitude seven or greater one in days, perhaps making a bad situation much worse. In addition, chief cabinet secretary Yukido Edano said previous radioactivity levels were misreported in microsieverts instead of millisieverts – 1,000 times stronger. Earlier he said the situation isn’t similar to Chernobyl. In fact, potentially it’s far graver, unprecedented.
Nuclear experts also explained that even without a full meltdown (perhaps ongoing), today’s emergency will last a year or longer because of problems cooling the affected cores. As a result, long-term evacuations will be necessary. Already, nearly 500,000 people are affected, a total likely to grow, besides vast destruction, spreading contamination, growing threat to human health, and tens of thousands still missing, by now presumed dead, though not reported.
“Red Alert: Radiation Rising and Heading South in Japan”
On March 15, Stratfor Global Intelligence headlined that danger, saying:
After more explosions and risk of one or more full meltdowns (perhaps ongoing though unreported), “(t)he nuclear reactor situation in Japan had deteriorated significantly.” Even Japan’s Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) said Fukushima’s No. 2 reactor radiation level rose 163-fold in three hours. At No. 3, it was 400-fold.
Muted Japanese media report rising radiation levels south and southwest, already reaching Tokyo and numerous prefectures. “The government says radiation levels have reached levels hazardous to human health,” omitting that any level causes harm.
Reports “suggest a dramatic worsening as well as a wider spread than at any time since the emergency began.” All Japan and the Pacific rim are threatened. “The situation at the (affected) facility is uncertain, but clearly deteriorating.” How gravely, the fullness of time will determine.
A Final Comment
On March 12, nuclear expert Mark Grossman headlined, “Hydrogen, Zirconium, Flashbulbs – and Nuclear Craziness,” saying:
Coolant loss causes hydrogen gas eruptions “because of a highly volatile substance called zirconium,” chosen “in the 1940’s and 50’s” to build nuclear plants, “as the material (for) rods into which radioactive fuel would be loaded.”
Each plant has “30,000 to 40,000 rods – composed of twenty tones of zirconium.” It alone works well, allowing “neutrons from the fuel pellets in the rods to pass freely between the rods and thus a nuclear chain reaction to be sustained.”
But not without “a huge problem….” Zirconium “is highly volatile and when hot will explode spontaneously upon contact with air, water or steam.” With tons used in nuclear plants, in “a compound called ‘zircaloy,’ it “clads tens of thousands of fuel rods.”
Any interruption of coolant builds quickly. However, because of zirconium’s explosive power, the equivalent of nitroglycerine, it catches fire and explodes “at a temperature of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, well below the 5,000 degree temperature of a meltdown.”
Before it happens, it can cause hydrogen explosions “by drawing oxygen from water and steam letting it off,” what happened at Fukushima. They, in turn, create more heat, “bringing the zirconium itself closer and closer to its explosive level,” what may, in fact, have happened, perhaps bad enough to cause a full meltdown.
Using tons of explosive material like zirconium is “absolutely crazy.” Doing it makes every nuclear plant a ticking time bomb, vulnerable to explode, spewing lethal poisons into the atmosphere.
~
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
Japan’s Nuclear Armageddon and the Experts
By Mina Hamilton / Dissident Voice / March 16th, 2011
Tuesday, March 15. At 4:45 PM more grim news from Japan. Yet another fire breaks out at a Fukushima reactor. Searing flames shoot to the sky. Radiation levels are too high for workers to get close enough to put out the inferno. Even so, maybe, this fire will be doused. What’s next?
Coming hard on the heels of a monster earthquake and devastating tsunami, the nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan is more than heart-breaking. The magnitude of the tragedy is truly unfathomable.
Who has not groaned seeing pictures of the tsunami-claimed bodies? Who has not wept seeing thousands and thousands of Japanese mourning the loss of family, loved ones and homes? Who does not wince at the desperate refugees without water or food packed into freezing shelters?
Now add to the untold miseries multiple reactor core meltdowns? And a fuel pool meltdown? Plus, a radioactive plume heading out over the Pacific to deposit its toxic load in the ocean and its rich fisheries? Not to mention the threat of the wind shifting and carrying the radioactivity towards Tokyo? Korea?
It is understandable for those of us watching from a distance to feel hopeless. What can I do? Who doesn’t want to turn off the TV, climb under the covers – and leave the unfolding disaster in the hands of the experts?
If there’s one lesson this catastrophe should convey: don’t leave it to the experts.
These experts got us here in the first place. One example: what the industry and most media commentators refer to as “spent fuel.”
“Spent” fuel? What’s that?
“Spent” is an industry-euphemism. It implies something harmless, wasted or used up. Quite the opposite.
Spent fuel is irradiated fuel: fuel that has been irradiated inside a nuclear reactor’s core. After removal from the reactor, this fuel is massively contaminated with radioactive elements and must be stored in giant pools.
On March 15 the New York Times said these fuel pools “could pose an even greater danger” than the reactors melting down.
An even greater danger? Isn’t a core meltdown as bad as it gets?
Alas, a fuel pool meltdown could be worse than a reactor core meltdown. Much worse. This is because fuel pools contain far more radioactivity than that which is inside a reactor core. Unfortunately, at Fukushima we may get both types of meltdowns.
Robert Alvarez, formerly of the US Department of Energy and now at the Institute of Policy Studies, provided insight into this potential nuclear Armageddon. In a recent blog Alvarez states the fuel in each of the pools at the Fukushima complex has 5 to 10 times the radioactivity of the fuel inside one reactor core. And much of this radioactive material is the highly toxic and long-lived radionuclide, cesium-137. See.)
Another problem: Unlike the reactor cores, which have a hefty, six-inch thick steel containment vessel, the fuel pools at Fukushima are in unhardened and therefore highly vulnerable concrete structures. The roof of one of these structures has been completely demolished in at least one of the stricken reactors, Unit 4.
Why is irradiated fuel sitting in pools? (They’re sort of like swimming pools, though considerably deeper. About 40 feet long, 40 feet wide and 45 feet deep.)
After removal from the reactor core, the irradiated fuel is fiendishly hot. The fuel is so hot it will cause the water it is immersed in to boil – if the water is not cooled. What if fuel pool’s cooling systems fail? Disaster. If the water is not cooled for a certain number of days or weeks, the water will boil off. Next, the fuel can catch fire, releasing its toxic load to the environment.
Given the repeated explosions at the Fukushima reactors and the latest fire at Unit 4, this count-down to an irradiated fuel pool meltdown appears to be underway.
Pools of water hanging up in the air? With no back-up water circulation, no back-up generators? Pools not in hardened or sealed containments? Pools stuffed to the gills with extraordinarily toxic materials that are now threatening the health and safety of thousands of already suffering Japanese citizens?
Citizens have, over the last 30 years, repeatedly challenged the safety of irradiated fuel pools and repeatedly the nuclear industry and its experts have said, no problem.
Yes, right now, we all need to do whatever we can to assist the Japanese people.
For the longer term, however, let’s remember the nuclear industry and its “experts” got us to this extremely dangerous moment. An informed, organized and determined citizenry is the only way to free us of our dependency upon this exceedingly dangerous and unforgiving energy source.
~
Mina Hamilton is a writer based in New York City. Formerly she was the Co-founder and Director of the Radioactive Waste Campaign. She frequently writes about nuclear issues.
Hate to Say It, but We Told You So!
Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening | 03 – 16 – 2011
It seems rather silly now, doesn’t it, all the US concern about terrorism?
The nuclear crisis in Japan, which continues to worsen, threatens to become a total multiple meltdown, combined with the perhaps even more disastrous explosion and fire in one or several spent fuel rod ponds. If any of these things happen, not to mention many of them, several hundred square miles of Japan would be rendered indefinitely uninhabitable, costing hundreds of billions of dollars. And it could be worse. If the winds are blowing south during such a disaster, all of Tokyo, which has a metropolitan population of over 30 million, could have to be evacuated.
A study by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission back in 1997, found that one spent fuel disaster could devastate almost 200 square miles of the US, and cause half a trillion dollars in damage!
And we’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year chasing after a few thousand ragtag Taliban fighters and supposedly pursuing a few hundred Arab terrorists, most of whom are fighting back with their shoes and their underwear?
So where is the real risk to America’s security?
Well, for starters, we could consider the 23 nuclear plants currently operating in the US that were built by General Electric using the same basic flawed design as those that are blowing up in Fukushima, Japan right now. Those plants, which are located in my state of Pennsylvania, as well as everywhere from Alabama to Nebraska and Vermont, are as much as 40 years old. They are only still in operation today because the NRC is such an industry-captive regulator that it has granted them long license extensions running way past their sell-by date. It has even given many of them the okay to run at capacities exceeding 100% of design standards!
There are other plants, also creaky with age, such as the ones in San Onofre and Diablo Canyon, California, which were knowingly built within a few miles of major earthquake faults–faults which could produce earthquakes on a scale of the one that just hit Japan. Both those facilities were designed to allegedly be able to survive (when new) a 7.5 quake. That was an untestable assertion of faith, but in any case, with an 8, an 8.5 or a 9, all bets would be off.
San Onofre, by the way, is closer to Los Angeles than Fukushima is to Tokyo, so if there is a threat now that Tokyo might have to be evacuated, a similar blowup of the San Onofre nuke reactor would have the millions of people in Los Angeles evacuating their city–maybe back to Oklahoma where their forebears fled from the Dust Bowl (maybe we could call them LAkies, though hopefully they’d get a friendlier reception than L.A. gave to the okies of yore).
So much for America’s only remaining export: the film industry.
It would make far more sense for the US to forget about those alleged terrorists who are supposedly out to get us (and to stop mucking around in the Middle East countries and provoking all that anger!) and instead to spend some of that Pentagon and Homeland Security swill to shut down these old nuke plants, and even many newer ones that are built in vulnerable locations, so we don’t have to suffer a disaster of our own making like the people of Japan are facing today.
Don’t expect much from our two nuke-besotted political parties, though.
Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, a man of stunningly limited intellectual ability who gives the impression when he talks of having just sucked on a lemon, weighed in with a defense of current government plans to subsidize and build more nuclear power plants in the US, saying that “right after a major environmental catastrophe” would “not be a very good time to be making American domestic policy.”
President Obama, is also backing a so-called “nuclear renaissance” in the US. A senior White House source has reportedly said that the president remains in favor of nuclear power and that U.S. nuclear plants were made to survive strong storms and earthquakes. And on Tuesday, as Japan pulled workers out of the Fukushima plant, essentially giving up the fight to prevent disaster because of the level of radioactivity there, the president told local Pittsburgh TV station KDKA that he had been assured that US reactors were safe (sic), closely monitored (sic), and designed to withstand earthquakes and other natural disasters (sic).
Of course, as Mother Jones magazine has noted, this same president, back in 2009, was touting the safety of Japanese nuclear plants as a model for the US. Back then, at a “town meeting” event, he said, “There’s no reason why, technologically, we can’t employ nuclear energy in a safe and effective way. Japan does it and France does it, and it doesn’t have greenhouse gas emissions, so it would be stupid for us not to do that in a much more effective way.”
Now, I admit it’s like shooting fish in a barrel to respond to these two shills for the nuclear industry, but what the hell, I’m going to fire anyhow.
Mr. McConnell, if now, when the folly of nuclear power is on full display in Japan, is not the time to discuss a plan to expand the use of nuclear power in the US, when exactly would be the right time?
And Mr. Obama, would you care to rephrase that 2009 line of yours in light of recent events? Perhaps it might be better to say, “Japan has shown what can happen with nuclear power when something goes wrong, so it would be stupid for us to continue to do here what they have done” and build nuclear plants all over the country on fault lines, near oceans and rivers, and near populations centers.
Watching all this go down is terribly frustrating. As my wife Joyce said yesterday morning, when we awoke to read of the looming threat of a full meltdown of perhaps as many as three or four reactors and the burning of one or more spent fuel piles in Japan, “We were right all along when we opposed nuclear power back in the 1970s.”
Yes we were. Shouldn’t all us anti-nukers now get some street cred, some media respect, and some respect from the political class for our prescience?
Nah. Don’t expect it. Money talks, and the nuclear establishment [and military industrial complex] has the power–even if it is blowing up on them.
The Idiocy and Hubris of Engineers: Will GE Get Whacked for the Catastrophic Failure of its Nuke Plants in Fukushira?
By Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening | 03 – 14 – 201
GE, the company that boasts that it “brings good things to life,” was the designer of the nuclear plants that are blowing up like hot popcorn kernels at the Fukushima Dai-ichi generating plant north of Tokyo that was hit by the double-whammy of an 8.9 earthquake and a huge tsunami.
The company may escape tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in liability from this continuing disaster, which could still result in a catastrophic total meltdown of one or more of the reactors (as of this writing three of the reactors are reported to have suffered partial meltdowns, and all could potentially become more serious total meltdowns with a rupture of the reactor container), thanks to Japanese law, which makes the operator–in this case Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) liable. But if it were found that it was design flaws by GE that caused the problem, presumably TEPCO or the Japanese government could pursue GE for damages.
In fact, the design of these facilities–a design which, it should be noted, was also used in 23 nuclear plants operating in the US in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont–appear to have included serious flaws, from a safety perspective.
The drawings of the plants in question, called Mark I Reactors, provide no way for venting hydrogen gas from the containment buildings, despite the fact that one of the first things that happens in the event of a cooling failure is the massive production of hydrogen gas by the exposed fuel rods in the core. This is why two of the nuclear generator buildings at Fukushima Dai-ichi have exploded with tremendous force blasting off the roof and walls of the structures, and damaging control equipment needed to control the reactors.
One would have thought that design engineers at GE would have thought about that fact, and provided venting systems for any hydrogen gas being vented in an emergency into the building. But no. They didn’t.
There goes the neighborhood: A second GE nuclear reactor building at Fukushima Dai-ishi suffers a hydrogen gas explosion.
There is a worse problem though. Probably in an effort to keep the problem of nuclear waste hidden from the public, these plants feature huge pools of water up in the higher level of the containment building above the reactors, which hold the spent fuel rods from the reactor. These rods are still “hot” but besides the uranium fuel pellets, they also contain the highly radioactive and potentially biologically active decay products of the fission process–particularly radioactive Cesium 137, Iodine 131 and Strontium 90. (Some of GE’s plants in the US feature this same design. The two GE Peach Bottom reactors near me, for example, each have two spent fuel tanks sitting above their reactors.)
As Robert Alvarez, a former nuclear energy adviser to President Bill Clinton, has written, if these waste containers, euphemistically called “ponds,” were to be damaged in an explosion and lose their cooling and radiation-shielding water, they could burst into flame from the resulting burning of the highly flammable zirconium cladding of the fuel rods, blasting perhaps three to nine times as much of these materials into the air as was released by the Chernobyl reactor disaster. (And that’s if just one reactor blows!) Each pool, Alvarez says, generally contains five to ten times as much nuclear material as the reactors themselves. Alvarez cites a 1997 Nuclear Regulatory Commission study that predicted that a waste pool fire could render a 188-square-mile area “uninhabitable” and do $59 billion worth of damage (but that was 13 years ago).
Another nuclear scientist agrees with Alvarez, quoted in an article in the Christian Science Monitor:
“There should be much more attention paid to the spent-fuel pools,” says Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear engineer and president of the anti-nuclear power Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. “If there’s a complete loss of containment [and thus the water inside], it can catch fire. There’s a huge amount of radioactivity inside – far more than is inside the reactors. The damaged reactors are less likely to spread the same vast amounts of radiation that Chernobyl did, but a spent-fuel pool fire could very well produce damage similar to or even greater than Chernobyl.”
Adding to that worry, Alvarez says photos of Reactor 3 seem to show white steam rising from the damaged facility, from a location where the spent fuel pond would likely be. (See photo below)
Steam appears to be billowing up from the damaged Reactor 3 at the Fukushima Dai-ishi plant, suggesting the pool containing spent fuel has been compromised
But it gets worse. According to news reports, the Reactor 3 unit was being fueled with a controversial mixed oxides fuel rod, which includes, in addition to uranium, a significant amount of plutonium–a far more dangerous element both chemically as a toxin, and in terms of its radioactivity.
You have to ask, what kind of numbskull would put a waste “pond” for spent fuel right above the reactor of a nuclear plant, thus insuring that in the event of a meltdown, not only would the core of the reactor blow up into the environment, but also all of the spent fuel from prior years? All that “Six Sigma” quality culture stuff at GE and they came up with this?
I don’t know. I heard about those waste “pools” in the past, and always assumed they were somewhere on the plant grounds away from the reactor itself, but now it turns out they put the damned things right in the line of fire of any meltdown. Boy, that’s just brilliant!
It’s as if you put the oil tank or propane tank for your furnace right above the burner in your basement, so that if there was some problem with the furnace it would ignite the tank, or as if you put the gas tank of your car right above the engine, so that if you had an engine fire, it would explode the gas tank!
This may explain why people in India are reportedly rethinking GE’s bid for a big piece of the country’s proposed market for $150 billion in new nuclear power plants in that country, and why it may not be so easy for GE and other nuclear plant builders to escape liability for their products in the future.
Back in November, President Obama was in India pushing that country’s government to pass legislation exempting GE from liability for nuclear “accidents.” That idea is probably not going to go very far now.
Jeffrey Immelt, the chairman and CEO of GE and a big friend of Obama’s (he was named to an unpaid post as “jobs czar” by the president earlier this year, despite the company’s long record of exporting US jobs to places like China and India), says it’s “too soon” to assess the impact on the company’s nuclear business prospects of the nuclear “accidents” in northern Japan.
He’s certainly right about that (though investors aren’t waiting: the stock was down 3.5% today alone by noon, following the second hydrogen gas explosion). At this point only two of the buildings housing the six troubled reactors has blown up, and TEPCO has only lost control of the cooling systems in three of the six, and also, so far, only three have suffered partial meltdowns. Things could get a lot worse if one or more goes into full meltdown, or if one or more of those waste “ponds” blows up.
GE may end up having to change its motto to: “GE brings death to things.”
Meltdown at Fukushima
Japan’s government and nuclear industry, with assistance from the U.S. military, is in a desperate race to stave off multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns — as well as potential fires in pools of spent fuel.
As of Sunday afternoon, more than 170,000 people have been evacuated near the reactor sites as radioactive releases have increased. The number of military emergency responders has jumped from 51,000 to 100,000. Officials now report a partial meltdown at Fukushima’s Unit 1. Japanese media outlets are reporting that there may be a second one underway at Unit 3. People living nearby have been exposed to unknown levels of radiation, with some requiring medical attention.
Meanwhile, Unit 2 of the Tokai nuclear complex, which is near Kyodo and just 75 miles north of Tokyo, is reported to have a coolant pump failure. And Japan’s nuclear safety agency has declared a state of emergency at the Onagawa nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan because of high radiation levels. Authorities are saying its three reactors are “under control.”
The damage from the massive earthquake and the tsunamis that followed have profoundly damaged the reactor sites’ infrastructure, leaving them without power and their electrical and piping systems destroyed. A hydrogen explosion yesterday at Unit 1 severely damaged the reactor building, blowing apart its roof.
The results of desperate efforts to divert seawater into the Unit 1 reactor are uncertain. A Japanese official reported that gauges don’t appear to show the water level rising in the reactor vessel.
There remain a number of major uncertainties about the situation’s stability and many questions about what might happen next. Along with the struggle to cool the reactors is the potential danger from an inability to cool Fukushima’s spent nuclear fuel pools. They contain very large concentrations of radioactivity, can catch fire, and are in much more vulnerable buildings. The ponds, typically rectangular basins about 40 feet deep, are made of reinforced concrete walls four to five feet thick lined with stainless steel.
The boiling-water reactors at Fukushima — 40 years old and designed by General Electric — have spent fuel pools several stories above ground adjacent to the top of the reactor. The hydrogen explosion may have blown off the roof covering the pool, as it’s not under containment. The pool requires water circulation to remove decay heat. If this doesn’t happen, the water will evaporate and possibly boil off. If a pool wall or support is compromised, then drainage is a concern. Once the water drops to around 5-6 feet above the assemblies, dose rates could be life-threatening near the reactor building. If significant drainage occurs, after several hours the zirconium cladding around the irradiated uranium could ignite.
Then all bets are off.
On average, spent fuel ponds hold five-to-ten times more long-lived radioactivity than a reactor core. Particularly worrisome is the large amount of cesium-137 in fuel ponds, which contain anywhere from 20 to 50 million curies of this dangerous radioactive isotope. With a half-life of 30 years, cesium-137 gives off highly penetrating radiation and is absorbed in the food chain as if it were potassium.
In comparison, the 1986 Chernobyl accident released about 40 percent of the reactor core’s 6 million curies. A 1997 report for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by Brookhaven National Laboratory also found that a severe pool fire could render about 188 square miles uninhabitable, cause as many as 28,000 cancer fatalities, and cost $59 billion in damage. A single spent fuel pond holds more cesium-137 than was deposited by all atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in the Northern Hemisphere combined. Earthquakes and acts of malice are considered to be the primary events that can cause a major loss of pool water.
In 2003, my colleagues and I published a study that indicated if a spent fuel pool were drained in the United States, a major release of cesium-137 from a pool fire could render an area uninhabitable greater than created by the Chernobyl accident. We recommended that spent fuel older than five years, about 75 percent of what’s in U.S. spent fuel pools, be placed in dry hardened casks — something Germany did 25 years ago. The NRC challenged our recommendation, which prompted Congress to request a review of this controversy by the National Academy of Sciences. In 2004, the Academy reported that a “partially or completely drained spent fuel pool could lead to a propagating zirconium cladding fire and release large quantities of radioactive materials to the environment.”
Given what’s happening at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, it’s time for a serious review of what our nuclear safety authorities consider to be improbable, especially when it comes to reactors operating in earthquake zones.
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Robert Alvarez, an Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar, served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary from 1993 to 1999. www.ips-dc.org
On the Brink of a Meltdown
By ROBERT ALVAREZ | CounterPunch | March 11, 2011
We shouldn’t need yet another major nuclear power accident to wake up the public and decision-makers to the fact that there are better, much safer ways to make electricity.
In the aftermath of the largest earthquake to occur in Japan in recorded history, 5,800 residents living within five miles of six reactors at the Fukushima nuclear station have been advised to evacuate and people living within 15 miles of the plant are advised to remain indoors.
Plant operators have not been able to cool down the core of one reactor containing enormous amounts of radioactivity because of failed back-up diesel generators required for the emergency cooling. In a race against time, the power company and the Japanese military are flying in nine emergency generators. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton announced today that the U.S. Air Force has provided cooling water for the troubled reactor. Complicating matters, Japan’s Meteorological Agency has declared the area to be at high risk of being hit by a tsunami.
The plant was operating at full power when the quake hit and even though control rods were automatically inserted to halt the nuclear reaction, the reactor core remains very hot. Even with a fully functioning emergency core cooling system, it would take several hours for the reactor core to cool and stabilize. If emergency cooling isn’t restored, the risks of a core melt, and release of radioactivity into the environment is significantly increased. Also, it’s not clear if piping and electric distribution systems inside the plant have been damaged. If so, that would interfere with reactor cooling. A senior U.S. nuclear power technician tells me the window of time before serious problems arise is between 12 and 24 hours.
Early on Japanese nuclear officials provided reassurances that no radiation has been released. However, because of the reactor remains at a very high temperature, radiation levels are rising in the turbine building – forcing to plant operators to vent radioactive steam into the environment.
But the devastating Japanese quake and its outcome could generate a political tsunami here in the United States. For instance, in California it may become impossible for the owners of the San Onofre and Diablo Canyon reactors to extend their operating licenses with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The quake is also likely to further deflate the “nuclear renaissance” balloon.
These two reactors are sitting in high seismic risk zones near earthquake faults. Each is designed to withstand a quake as great as 7.5 on the Richter scale. According to many seismologists, the probability of a major earthquake in the California coastal zone in the foreseeable future is a near certainty. The U.S. Geological Survey reports the largest registering 8.3 on the Richter scale devastated San Francisco in 1906.
“There have been tremblers felt at U.S. plants over the past several
years, but nothing approaching the need for emergency action,” Scott Burnell, a spokesman at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Reuters today.
As the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe approaches next month, the earthquakes in Japan serve as a reminder that the risks of nuclear power, when things go seriously wrong. The Chernobyl accident required nearly a million emergency responders and cleanup workers. More than 100,000 residents from 187 settlements were permanently evacuated because of radioactive contamination. An area equal to half of the State of New Jersey was rendered uninhabitable.
Fortunately, U.S. and Japanese reactors have extra measures of protection that were lacking at Chernobl, such as a secondary concrete containment structure over the reactor vessel to prevent escape of radioactivity. In 1979, the containment structure at the Three Mile Island reactor did prevent the escape of a catastrophic amount of radioactivity after the core melted. But, people living nearby were exposed to higher levels of radiation from the accident and deliberate venting to stabilize the reactor. Also, within one hour the multi-billion dollar investment in that plant went down the drain. In the meanwhile, let’s hope that the core of the Japanese reactor can be cooled in time. We shouldn’t need yet another major nuclear power accident to wake up the public and decision-makers to the fact that there are better, much safer ways to make electricity.
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Robert Alvarez, an Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar, served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary from 1993 to 1999.
8.9 Quake Could Irradiate the Entire United States
By HARVEY WASSERMAN | CounterPunch | March 11, 2011
Had the violent 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit off the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the entire United States.
The two huge reactors each at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are not designed to withstand such powerful shocks. All four are extremely close to major faults.
All four reactors are located relatively low to the coast. They are vulnerable to tsunamis like those now expected to hit as many as fifty countries.
San Onofre sits between San Diego and Los Angeles. A radioactive cloud spewing from one or both reactors there would do incalculable damage to either or both urban areas before carrying over the rest of southern and central California.
Diablo Canyon is at Avila Beach, on the coast just west of San Luis Obispo, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A radioactive eruption there would pour into central California and, depending on the winds, up to the Bay Area or southeast into Santa Barbara and then to Los Angeles. The cloud would at very least permanently destroy much of the region on which most Americans rely for their winter supply of fresh vegetables.
By the federal Price-Anderson Act of 1957, the owners of the destroyed reactors—including Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison—would be covered by private insurance only up to $11 billion, a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars worth of damage that would be done. The rest would become the responsibility of the federal taxpayer and the fallout victims. Virtually all homeowner insurance policies in the United States exempt the insurers from liability from a reactor disaster.
The most definitive recent study of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster puts the death toll at 985,000. The accident irradiated a remote rural area. The nearest city, Kiev, is 80 kilometers away.
But San Luis Obispo is some ten miles directly downwind from Diablo Canyon. The region around San Onofre has become heavily suburbanized.
Heavy radioactive fallout spread from Chernobyl blanketed all of Europe within a matter of days. It covered an area far larger than the United States.
Fallout did hit the jet stream and then the coast of California, thousands of miles away, within ten days. It then carried all the way across the northern tier of the United States.
Chernobyl Unit Four was of comparable size to the two reactors at Diablo Canyon, and somewhat larger than the two at San Onofre.
But it was very new when it exploded. California’s four coastal reactors have been operating since the 1970s and 1980s. Their accumulated internal radioactive burdens could exceed what was spewed at Chernobyl.
Japanese officials say all affected reactors automatically shut, with no radiation releases. But they are not reliable. In 2007 a smaller earthquake rocked the seven-reactor Kashiwazaki site and forced its lengthy shut-down.
Preliminary reports indicate at least one fire at a Japanese reactor hit by this quake and tsunami.
In 1986 the Perry nuclear plant, east of Cleveland, was rocked by a 5.5 Richter-scale shock, many orders of magnitude weaker than this one. That quake broke pipes and other key equipment within the plant. It took out nearby roads and bridges.
Thankfully, Perry had not yet opened. An official Ohio commission later warned that evacuation during such a quake would be impossible.
Numerous other American reactors sit on or near earthquake faults.
The Obama Administration is now asking Congress for $36 billion in new loan guarantees to build more commercial reactors.
It has yet to reveal its exact plans for dealing with a major reactor disaster. Nor has it identified the cash or human reserves needed to cover the death and destruction imposed by the reactors’ owners.
