(Forbes image)
Fukushima Disaster Reaches Epic Proportions
........Now, there is news of Fukushima’s damaged Unit 4 pool, that a Yale professor warns “is in perilous danger and could threaten all of humanity for thousands of years.” This is one of the biggest crises we’ve faced as a human race, as some have put it, since the disarming of the Soviet Union or the Cuban Missile Crisis. We need every activist to call for immediate action and all resources to be provided to the Fukushima plant without further finger pointing at the plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco) in order for this calamity to be averted.
“[...] Much more serious is the danger that the spent fuel rod pool at the top of the nuclear plant number four will collapse in a storm or an earthquake, or in a failed attempt to carefully remove each of the 1,535 rods and safely transport them to the common storage pool 50 meters away. Conditions in the unit 4 pool, 100 feet from the ground, are perilous, and if any two of the rods touch it could cause a nuclear reaction that would be uncontrollable. The radiation emitted from all these rods, if they are not continually cool and kept separate, would require the evacuation of surrounding areas including Tokyo. Because of the radiation at the site the 6,375 rods in the common storage pool could not be continuously cooled; they would fission and all of humanity will be threatened, for thousands of years.”
Tepco has alluded to the fact that they don’t have the resources or expertise to try to remove these fuel rods safely, even though early on they tried to downplay the seriousness of the Fukushima event. The company already faces bankruptcy, but there is a much larger matter at hand. If the rods are not removed properly, more than 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times the radiation that was released at Hiroshima. We can’t leave this to Tepco and the Japanese government to handle. It is no longer a ‘foreign’ issue, but a worldwide concern to be taken extremely seriously.
Future of Japan depends on stopping Fukushima leaks, PM tells workers
Shinzo Abe visits stricken site amid rising doubts about plant operator's ability to conduct cleanup operation alone
(TruthOut) ~ Nuclear Crisis at Fukushima Could Spew Out More Than 15,000 Times as Much Radiation as Hiroshima Bombing
There is no excuse for not acting. All the resources our species can muster must be focused on the fuel pool at Fukushima Unit 4.
Fukushima's owner, Tokyo Electric (Tepco), says that within as few as 60 days it may begin trying to remove more than 1300 spent fuel rods from a badly damaged pool perched 100 feet in the air. The pool rests on a badly damaged building that is tilting, sinking and could easily come down in the next earthquake, if not on its own.
Some 400 tons of fuel in that pool could spew out more than 15,000 times as much radiation as was released at Hiroshima.
The one thing certain about this crisis is that Tepco does not have the scientific, engineering or financial resources to handle it. Nor does the Japanese government. The situation demands a coordinated worldwide effort of the best scientists and engineers our species can muster.
........The engineering and scientific barriers to emptying the Unit Four fuel pool are unique and daunting, says Gundersen. But it must be done to 100% perfection.
Should the attempt fail, the rods could be exposed to air and catch fire, releasing horrific quantities of radiation into the atmosphere. The pool could come crashing to the ground, dumping the rods together into a pile that could fission and possibly explode. The resulting radioactive cloud would threaten the health and safety of all us.
Chernobyl's first 1986 fallout reached California within ten days. Fukushima's in 2011 arrived in less than a week. A new fuel fire at Unit 4 would pour out a continuous stream of lethal radioactive poisons for centuries.
Former Ambassador Mitsuhei Murata says full-scale releases from Fukushima "would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival."
Neither Tokyo Electric nor the government of Japan can go this alone. There is no excuse for deploying anything less than a coordinated team of the planet's best scientists and engineers.
We have two months or less to act.
- Japan to lodge complaint with French embassy over newspaper cartoon linking nuclear disaster and 2020 Olympics bid
And a petition from the Sierra Club - Nuclear waste in our communities?
I first learned about "atomic waste" in my high chair; I grew up in the fifties in Washington State and my grandfather frequently had business at the Hanford Reservation (now the most contaminated nuclear waste site in North America). I remember my mother arguing with him about the dangers of nuclear waste: she was concerned about the health of the Columbia River; he trusted that the plant would be safe.But my mother was right: the tanks containing highly radioactive waste are leaking, and the Columbia River is at risk.1The reactors at Hanford are now closed. But when I discovered that another nuclear reactor (the same kind used at Fukushima) now operates within miles of the Columbia River, I was motivated to take action to protect the river, and began organizing in my community. I was dismayed when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently relicensed the Columbia Generating Station for another 20 years -- even though they don’t have a solid plan for storing the waste safely.Fortunately the courts are now requiring the NRC to have a moratorium on licensing until they do an environmental impact statement on the radioactive waste. Now we have a chance to protect the river by demanding that the waste be stored safely.The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now developing new rules for the long-term storage of highly radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear reactors. These rules will determine whether or not your state becomes a transportation route for thousands of shipments of highly radioactive waste on super-trucks, or a storage site for some or all of the 70,000+ tons of radioactive waste.We have a very unique opportunity to have a say in how our country handles radioactive waste from nuclear reactors in the future. If we don't step up and comment, we will have lost our ability to protect our grandchildren, and many generations to come, from the deadly dangers of radiation.Thank you for everything you do for the environment,
Leslie MarchAnd more news from the Nuclear Information and Resource Service ~
Sierra Club Nuclear Program Volunteer Lead
New Action to Stop $8.3 Billion Nuclear Taxpayer Loan
Vogtle loan CAN be stopped; let's pump up the volume!
The proposed $8.3 Billion taxpayer loan for construction of Georgia's Vogtle nuclear reactors is teetering on the edge; so NIRS is teaming up with CredoAction in a new action to tip it over entirely.
You may remember that the loan was announced, with great fanfare, by President Obama in February 2010, as part of his stated "all of the above" energy strategy. It came from the Department of Energy's $18.5 Billion loan guarantee fund and was supposed to herald the "nuclear renaissance." Today, fully 3 1/2 years later, the loan has still not been granted, nor has any other loan for new reactor construction.
Why? Because Southern Company, the lead utility in the Vogtle project, wants a sweetheart deal that would not only give it well below-market interest rates, but also put all of the risk on taxpayers rather than themselves. Indeed, Southern Company officials have said at least five times that they don't even need the loan--they're already using ratepayers as their private bank under Georgia's "early cost recovery" law. If that were true, then why should taxpayers be involved at all? But Southern's other partners, which own about 40% of the project, do need the federal loan.
This is the time to tell President Obama and Energy Secretary Moniz to finally give up on this fiasco--before taxpayer money is put at risk. No extension, no loan. Even if you've sent a letter on this issue before, this is a new action. Please act now.
The White House's own Office of Management and Budget, which along with the Department of Energy must approve the loan, has balked at the riskiness of the proposed loan and the final deadline for loan approval has been extended several times over the years. The next deadline is coming up on September 30, 2013.
Vogtle received its construction license in February 2012. It is already nearly two years behind schedule and somewhere between $700 million and $1.6 billion over budget, depending on who's counting. Given the history of large nuclear construction projects in the U.S. and abroad, more delay and cost overruns can be expected. The first two Vogtle reactors actually finished at more than 1200% over budget.
Since President Obama's February 2010 loan announcement, the nuclear "renaissance" has collapsed. During 2013 alone, six proposed new reactors were dropped for various reasons, five operating reactors announced permanent shutdowns, and utilities gave up on power uprates for five more reactors. The nuclear "renaissance" now consists of two reactors at Summer in South Carolina, a Tennessee Valley Authority reactor that began construction more than 30 years ago, and Vogtle. The marketplace has spoken and nuclear power has lost. Not only is natural gas a current (and dirty) competitor, but costs of clean renewables like solar and wind have plummeted and are viable alternatives, while energy efficiency programs are keeping new demand far lower than projected when the Vogtle project was first announced.
This is the time to tell President Obama and Energy Secretary Moniz to finally give up on this fiasco--before taxpayer money is put at risk. No extension, no loan. Act now. Your voice matters.
NRC to hold "Waste Confidence" meetings across U.S.Join us and pack the meetings! Tell NRC: we have no confidence in your radioactive waste policy.
Make the reactor licensing moratorium permanent!
Plus: New international petition on FukushimaAs you probably know, since the summer of 2012, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been unable to issue licenses for new reactors, nor renewals for existing licenses. A federal court threw out the underpinning of the agency's radioactive waste policy--its "waste confidence" rule. That rule had stated that the NRC was confident that high-level radioactive waste always would be stored or disposed safely, and thus could continue to be generated.
But the court found that with the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site effectively cancelled and no alternative in place, the NRC could not be "confident" of permanent disposal. Moreover, the court ruled that the NRC had no technical basis for asserting that current on-site storage practices in fuel pools and dry casks would be safe for the indefinite future. This ruling forced the current moratorium on licensing.
The NRC has now prepared a Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement (DGEIS) as part of the process of replacing its "waste confidence" rule and it hopes to finalize this document and resume licensing during 2014. During October and November, the agency will hold 12 public meetings around the country to explain and receive public comment on this document. The NRC is also accepting written comments through November 27 (we will set up an action page to help you comment before the deadline, we'll let you know when it's ready).
These meetings are our opportunity to point out the many technical and logical shortcomings in this new document, and to call for making the licensing moratorium permanent. The only radioactive waste option we have confidence in is to stop making it! There will be protests outside and public involvement inside each one of these meetings. We hope you will join us and help pack every meeting!
On our new waste confidence home page, you will find draft press releases, alerts and other information for each meeting; a link to a full schedule and locations of each meeting; a link to download the entire DGEIS if you'd like; and more. We will be adding talking points and other information to this page in coming days.
Some groups already have started organizing for these meetings; whether you're part of an organization or just a concerned person, it's time to join together and make the strongest public statement possible at every one of these meetings.
New Fukushima petition
Our colleagues in Japan, including Green Action, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and more, are sponsoring a new international petition calling on the Japanese government to take immediate action, including bringing in international experts, to stop the radioactive water leaks to the ocean. In addition, the petition calls for an end to efforts to restart Japanese reactors and to export Japanese reactors.
Please join NIRS in supporting and signing this petition. You can do so here.
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