Monday, March 14, 2011

Nuclear Power






Illustration:  The al-Quaeda flag (means "the foundation").  In one of those announcements you only hear once on the radio before the bosses shut it down, they were quoted as encouraging the rebels in Libya to fight and continue the struggle against the infidel, Gaddafi.  And you thought he was making it all up, didn't you?


ANYWAY, ONWARD:

I find it difficult to get very surprised at the news from Japan.  I have always considered it a truism that these plants were dangerous (well, since I was 15, anyway).    When they start with "Our friend, the atom," crap, they even said that they did not know what to do with the waste, but nothing had to be done for at least 20 years and by then technology would have solved that problem.  That was in 1958. 

We are still using fission, not fusion (which is what gave us the enormous calculations of the energy that could be produced, and without much waste).  Well, forget fusion -- it is not going to happen until after you are dead.

I think the whole issue takes a back seat, is ignored, because most people haven't the slightest idea as to what something as simple as an isotope is.  What about half-life?  Did you know that there is no such thing as "depleted uranium'?  It is just enhanced uranium, a different isotope that has gone back to a previous isotope level.  Yeah, glad I was able to clear that one up.

So, now it is agreed that three reactors are in a state of melt-down and some radioactive stuff has a half-life of 17,000 years.  They are giving out tablets for that, take one daily.




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Japan Facing Biggest Catastrophe Since Dawn of Nuclear Age

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Japan remains in a state of emergency three days after a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit the country. An estimated 10,000 people have died, and Japan is facing the worst nuclear crisis since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On Monday, a second explosion hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and a third reactor lost its cooling system, raising fears of a meltdown. Radiation levels have been detected as far as 100 miles away. Dozens of people have tested positive for radiation exposure, and hundreds of thousands of have been evacuated, with the number expected to rise. [includes rush transcript–partial]
Filed under Nuclear Power
Guests:
Yurika Ayukawa, professor of the environment at Chiba University in Japan. She is formerly with the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center.
Harvey Wasserman, longtime anti-nuclear activist and the editor of nukefree.org. He is also a senior adviser to GreenPeace USA and the author of the book SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth.
Kevin Kamps, specialist in nuclear waste at the nuclear watchdog, Beyond Nuclear. Last year he was in Japan assessing the state of its nuclear facilities.
Arnie Gundersen, nuclear industry executive for many years before blowing the whistle on the company he worked for in 1990, when he found inappropriately stored radioactive material. He is now chief engineer at Fairewinds Associates.
Japan Al Jazeera English report on Minami Sanriku,
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Rush Transcript

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AMY GOODMAN: Japan is facing its biggest catastrophe since the dawn of the nuclear age, when the U.S. dropped two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the wake of the massive earthquake and tsunami Friday, a second explosion has hit a Japanese nuclear plant. Monday’s explosion, caused by a hydrogen buildup, blew the roof off a containment building at Fukushima Daiichi’s reactor 3, two days after a blast hit reactor 1. Eleven people were injured in the blast.
Officials say the reactor core inside was undamaged, but now a third reactor at the plant has lost its cooling system, and news agencies are reporting a meltdown of the fuel rods cannot be ruled out.
While Japanese officials are playing down any health risk, Pentagon officials reported Sunday helicopters flying 60 miles from the plant picked up small amounts of radioactive particulates, suggesting widening environmental contamination. And the U.S. Navy moved one of its aircraft carriers from the area after detecting low-level radiation 100 miles offshore. The New York Times reports radioactive releases of steam from the crippled plants could go on for weeks or even months. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from the area around the plant. At least 22 people have tested positive for radiation exposure, with the number expected to rise.
Technicians have been battling to cool reactors at the plant since Friday. They’re using an untested method of pouring in a mixture of seawater and boric acid. Re-establishing normal cooling of the reactors would require restoring electric power, which was cut in the earthquake and tsunami and now may require plant technicians working in areas that have become highly contaminated with radioactivity.
The New York Times reports, quote, "In a country where memories of a nuclear horror of a different sort in the last days of World War II weigh heavily on the national psyche and national politics, the impact of continued venting of long-lasting radioactivity from the plants is hard to overstate."
Harvey Wasserman is a longtime anti-nuclear activist and editor of nukefree.org. He’s also senior adviser to Greenpeace U.S.A. and the author of SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth. He joins us from Columbus, Ohio.
We’re also joined by Kevin Kamps, specialist in nuclear waste at the nuclear watchdog Beyond Nuclear. Last year he was in Japan assessing the state of nuclear facilities. He’s joining us from Washington, D.C.
And we’re joined via Democracy Now! video stream from Burlington, Vermont, by Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear industry executive for many years before blowing the whistle on the company he worked for in 1990, when he found inappropriately stored radioactive material, now chief engineer at Fairewinds Associates.
And we are going first, though, to Japan. We are going to be speaking with Yurika Ayukawa. She is joining us from Tokyo, formerly with the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, now a professor of the environment at Chiba University in Japan.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Can you talk about the latest with the nuclear reactors?
YURIKA AYUKAWA: Hello. This is Yurika Ayukawa.
The latest one is the threatening of meltdown by nuclear reactor 2 at Fukushima 1 site. So, this is the third reactor that’s going to be in a very critical situation. All of the fuel rods seems to be out of water, and they are pouring in seawater, but they couldn’t detect how much water they’ve put in, in the beginning, and now they said it’s going in, but still there is a lot of—the whole rod is exposed. And the latest news is that they found some radioactive materials, like—they didn’t say the name, but I feel it’s like cesium—around the site. So, there must be melting going on inside the reactor.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to Harvey Wasserman. He’s speaking to us from Columbus, Ohio, long experience in dealing with nuclear plants in this country. Harvey, this latest news of the Japanese nuclear reactor, water levels inside almost empty, according to the power plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power. Then, the news agency Jiji saying a meltdown of fuel rods inside the Fukushima Daiichi complex’s No. 2 reactor could not be ruled out. Can you explain the significance of this, the exposure of the fuel rods?
HARVEY WASSERMAN: Well, it’s hugely significant, and it’s a very, very dangerous situation. I should note that the first reactor at Fukushima is identical to the Vermont Yankee plant, and which is now up for relicensing and which the people of Vermont are trying to shut. And we should also note that this kind of accident, this kind of disaster, could have occurred at four reactors in California, had the 9.0-Richter-scale earthquake hit close to Diablo Canyon at San Luis Obispo or San Onofre between L.A. and San Diego. We could very well now be watching Los Angeles or San Diego being evacuated, had this kind of thing happened in California. And, of course, the issue is the same in Vermont. There are 23 reactors in the United States that are identical or close to identical to the first Fukushima reactor.
Now, this exposure of fuel is about as bad as it gets. It means that these fuel rods, superheated fuel rods, could melt if they are exposed to water, which they’re trying to pour water in there. It could create radioactive steam, conceivably bow off the containment and result in another Chernobyl and a horrific, horrendous release of radiation that could, and in fact would, come to the United States within a week or so, as the Chernobyl radiation came to California within 10 days. This is about as bad as it gets. And we are not 100 percent sure we’re getting fully accurate information. We only know that the worst case scenario is very much a possibility. There are 10 reactors at the Fukushima site—two separate sites, one with six reactors and one with four. And the fact that a U.S. aircraft carrier has detected significant radiation 60 miles away is very much a dangerous sign. It means that radiation releases are ongoing and probably will only get worse.
AMY GOODMAN: Here in the United States, some have raised concerns about the safety of nuclear power plants located in earthquake-prone areas like California, like you, Harvey Wasserman. But speaking to Meet the Press yesterday, Marvin Fertel, the president of the NEI, the Nuclear Energy Institute, expressed confidence about the safety of nuclear plants in California.
CHUCK TODD: We have a couple of nuclear power plants in earthquake zones, or at least in California. Is there a concern? Should Americans be concerned about the fact that these power plants are sitting in earthquake zones? Are they safe?
MARVIN FERTEL: Yeah, all of our power plants, whether they’re in California, which is a high earthquake area, or in the Midwest or other places, are required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to design to be able to withstand the maximum credible earthquake. And the NRC continues to update and upgrade what the requirements are.
CHUCK TODD: And you said post-9-11 that there were some extra upgrades put in to make sure that—that these nuclear plants could handle a total power shutdown, correct?
MARVIN FERTEL: Yeah. We’ve done things post-9-11 to make sure that if something happened in our plant, like happened in Japan, where you lost all power, that you could get water to the core and continue to cool it.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Marvin Fertel, president of the Nuclear Energy Institute, which represents the energy industry, speaking with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press. Harvey Wasserman, your response?
HARVEY WASSERMAN: Well, that’s what he’s paid to say. You know, I was in Japan in the mid-1970s. That’s exactly what they said about Fukushima. I spoke at the Kashiwazaki plant, which, less than five years ago, was also hit by a huge earthquake, and seven reactors shut there. The people of Japan were repeatedly assured that this could not happen. Those reactors in Japan, and the ones in United States, are designed to withstand a 7.5-Richter earthquake, and this is a 9.0, which is more than 10—a significantly higher impact than what they’re designed to withstand. We’re also seeing pressures inside these reactor pressure vessels and containment domes that are in excess of design capacity. The nuclear industry is defending a product that cannot withstand Mother Nature, both in the United States and Japan.
You have to remember that the Japanese industry is highly advanced. Both Westinghouse and General Electric, the two major purveyors of nuclear plants in the United States, are now owned by Japanese companies. This is not the Soviet Union. This is a highly advanced country that cannot cope with nuclear power plants that have been—sustained damage that was predicted. We predicted that these nuclear plants would be hit by earthquakes and by tsunamis, and the Japanese government and the nuclear industry laughed it off, just as Mr. [Fertel] has done yesterday. Every nuclear plant in the United States is susceptible to this kind of damage and this kind of disaster, and it’s time that they be shut, in any kind of prudent mindset that will protect the people of this country and our economy, by the way, as we’re going to see what’s happening to the Japanese economy.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re speaking with anti-nuclear activist Harvey Wasserman, speaking to us from Columbus, Ohio. When we come back, we’ll speak with a specialist in nuclear waste who has recently returned from looking at the nuclear power plants in Japan. And we’ll speak with a nuclear whistleblower from Vermont who says one of the plants in Japan is similar to, almost the same as, the one in Vermont, that even the Vermont governor is attempting to shut down. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.
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