Nuclear Meltdown Watch

[StarmanSkye]

Letest (new) interview w/ Arnie Gunderson of Fairewinds Associates by Warren Pollack, discussing the long-range economic, social, environmental and health implications & costs of the Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown. A pretty candid, frank examination of critical issues that the nuclear Industry, government and esp. mass media won't touch. Esp. interesting, re: the actual failure-rate of nuclear energy over 40 years with 6 accidents among some 400 plants is about 1.5%: At that equivalent failure rate for air travel, NO ONE would willingly choose to fly. Gunderson estimates there will be a million cancer deaths in the next 20 or so years linked to Fukushima. The insurance industry calculated the financial loss of accidental death due to a major public disaster at 1.8 million dollars, which places the human death liability cost of this accident at almost 2 trillion dollars -- and that DOESN'T include property, equity or projected income losses, nor the medical-care costs -- which could easily add up another 5 trillion dollars. The HUMAN costs in suffering, stress and mental health are incalculable. Government and the Nuclear Energy Industry are unconscionably irresponsible in glossing-over these very real issues (my comment).
Vid very Recommended.
Dec. 21, 201

--quote--
Arnie Gundersen of Fairwinds Associates (a leading nuclear expert) and Warren Pollock redefine the Fukushima nuclear incidents (meltdowns and explosions) in terms of human and total cost. Its easy to look at the details of a highly complex speciality, but it has been hard to quantify the cost and risk of nuclear power up to now! We talk about the rate of failure of nuclear being so high that were that rate applied to aviation there would be no air travel. Nuclear is different in that you have no choice in trading risk for travel, or in this case risk for energy. During 9-11 human value in the western world was quantified in an actuarial model which put each person at a value of $1.8 million dollars. Gundersen explains that up to 1 Million people will be damaged by this incident which puts the total damage well into the trillions of dollars. The full cost of nuclear power has to consider human cost and costs of contamination to the environment. We clarify some important issues regarding radiation and particulate matter.

--unquote--

[slomo]

Esp. interesting, re: the actual failure-rate of nuclear energy over 40 years with 6 accidents among some 400 plants is about 1.5%: At that equivalent failure rate for air travel, NO ONE would willingly choose to fly.

This is a little misleading, because failure rates always have a time dimension. 1.5% over 40 years is actually a very low failure rate if the failure entails only the loss of one plane. It's hard to compare with air travel, because failures are given in terms of flight hours, which don't easily align with power plant operation hours, but let's go with a failure rate on the order of 0.0353 failures per year of continuous flying (0.0353 = 4.03 failures/million hours x 8760 hours/year), which is about a 75.6% failure rate per 40 years (assuming an exponential distribution). Perhaps a single plane does not fly continuously, so with 10% time in the air, you have 0.00353 failures / year and a 13% probability of failure over 40 years. That seems a bit high to me (as I said, comparisons are difficult), but I might believe 1% over 40 years, which is still comparable with a single nuclear power plant. The odds of being killed in a plane crash are 1 in 9.2 million. What are the odds of dying as a result of a nuclear power plant failure? That is the question.

The real problem is that when nuclear power plants fail, the losses are catastrophic. Assuming an exponential distribution (which is being charitable towards the nuclear power industry, relative to a more realistic Weibull distribution), 1.5% over 40 years corresponds to 0.000378 failures per year per plant, which corresponds to a 99.99% probability of at least one failure over 100 years. Again, being charitable to the nuclear power industry, let's take into account only the two worst, region-destroying accidents, Chernobyl and Fukishima. That is 2/400 over 40 years, which (again assuming an exponential distribution) translates to a failure rate of 0.000125 per year per plant, and corresponds to a 99.3% probability of at least one catastrophic failure (in 400 plants) over 100 years. Hardly black swan stuff. If all 400 plants run for the next 1000 years (as implied by the program of nuclear power evangelists of "environmentally friendly and sustainable nuclear power generation"), about 11.8% (47 plants) will fail catastrophically. Assuming that the 400 plants are equally distributed across habitable portions of the globe, can we afford to lose 11.8% of our habitable land over 1000 years?

This is not including the widespread effects of dispersal of radioactive material. Seeing that Chernobyl affected much of Europe and Fukushima stands to affect much of North America, let's suppose that humanity can withstand at most 10 catastrophic nuclear power plaint failures (again, being charitable to the nuclear power industry); in other words, 10 Chernobyl-style catastrophes corresponds to 1 ELE. In 100 years, the probability of such an ELE is 3.0%, and in 1000 years it is 100%.

[JackRiddler]

Thanks slomo.

40 years is a hell of a small sample size - and the plants gets riskier with age.

What are the odds of dying as a result of a nuclear power plant failure? That is the question.

What are the odds of dying if an airplane crashes more than 50 yards away from you?

[slomo]

40 years is a hell of a small sample size - and the plants gets riskier with age.

In case it was missed, that the point of this statement:

Assuming an exponential distribution (which is being charitable towards the nuclear power industry, relative to a more realistic Weibull distribution), ...

40 years is fine if failures are exponential (though, indeed, with 2-6 events, the standard error on the failure rate would be large). More likely, failures would increase over time, which would require a Weibull model for greater accuracy and, hence, more years of followup. Even with an assumption that favors the nuclear power industry, the probability of ELE in 100-1000 years due to meltdowns is very high.

[StarmanSkye]

Here, latest (produced late December, uploaded to youtube Jan. 5, 2012) update by Arnie Gunderson of Fairewinds Associates providing a 'Where we are and where we are going' assessment of the ongoing Fukushima disaster covering 3 main points: Onsite, Exposure to Public, Disposal-containment-handling of (what to 'do' with) contaminated radiation waste substances.

Among the more dire long-term implications is the TEPCO assessment that the elaborate system of cooling-pipes, pumps, valves, filters and heat-exchangers essential to maintaining the reactors in tenuous 'cold shutdown' are NOT seismically secure, but very vulnerable to a significant aftershock earthquake event -- their failure will require immediate repair within a critical 40 hour window to forestall further severe core overheating/meltdown damage -- THAT's how fragile TEPCO's claim of acheiving 'cold shutdown' really is.

As Arnie explains (and astute followers of this ongoing disaster know) the Fukushima site is ONLY 'stable' in the sense of a delicate day-by-day balancing act that requires a vast mechanical-hydraulic system attended by an army of technical workers to service & maintain, against the latent disaster potential of 4 mangled, damaged nuclear reactors with 3 dangerous uncontained core meltdowns and 4 storage pools that will require decades of critical attention to effectively make 'secure' -- and that can be jeopardized by the simplest equipment failure or breakdown. Hardly reassuring, that.

Japan's plan to 'dispose' of the vast radioactive waste consists of diluting it (one ton of stuff to one kg of radioactive waste, or 1000 to 1) and incinerating it, with a portion of radioactive sustances esp. noble gases like Cesium & Iodine going up the stack and into the atmosphere, and the rest in ashes dumped in Tokyo Bay. To anyone but an imbecile, this isn't an effective 'solution' at all. Rather, it seems part of an agenda to wish the problem away and immunize TEPCO against financial liability. As is raising the legal definition of 'safe' exposure levels for Japanese civilians returning to their homes to radiation FAR above exposure allowed for American nuclear workers (who, after all, trade-off safety for financial rewards of lucrative employment).
*******



--quote--
Is the Japanese government and the IAEA protecting the nuclear industry and not the people of Japan by claiming that Fukushima is stable when it is not? Fairewinds' chief engineer Arnie Gunderson reports.

Plutonium From Fukushima Made It Around The Planet

A recently published study in the Journal of Environmental Radioactivity confirms that the radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster reached Europe (Lithuania), and included plutonium, the most deadly manmade element (nanogram for nanogram) in existence.

According to the study's authors the radionuclide concentrations measured indicate there was "long-range air mass transport from Japan across the Pacific, the North America and the Atlantic Ocean to Central Europe as indicated by modelling." What this means is that every region under the jet stream -- which includes half of the planet north of its equator -- could have been exposed to some degree of plutonium fall-out; a fact that is all the more disturbing when we consider there is no such thing as a safe level, and that the harm (on the human scale of time) does not dissipate: the half life of plutonium-239 is 24,200 years, and that of uranium-238 is 4,460,000,000 years, which is older than our planet.

In a past exposé, where we identified the likelihood of the occurrence we are now reporting on, we published Jet Stream radiation dispersion projections from Germany's EURAD system which showed that Radioiodine-131 and Cesium-137 were within detectable concentrations thousands of miles away from Fukushima within days after the event. This was, after all, a nuclear explosion (as occurred also at Chernobyl) producing extremely small particles moving at extremely high velocity, and not a hydrogen-based conflagration, which was erroneously reported to be the case in the first days following the disaster.
--unquote--

[crikkett]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/01/radioactive-concrete-is-latest-scare-for-fukushima-survivors/

Jan 16, 2012 8:33am
Radioactive Concrete Is Latest Scare for Fukushima Survivors
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The Japanese government is investigating how radioactive concrete ended up in a new apartment complex in the Fukushima Prefecture, housing evacuees from a town near the crippled nuclear plant.

The contamination was first discovered when dosimeter readings of children in the city of Nihonmatsu, roughly 40 miles from the reactors at Fuksuhima Dai-ichi, revealed a high school student had been exposed to 1.62 millisieverts in a span of three months, well above the annual 1 millisievert limit the government has established for safety reasons. Further investigation traced the radiation back to the student’s three-story apartment building, where officials detected radioactive cesium inside the concrete.

Radiation levels at the 6-month-old apartment were higher inside the building than outside. A dozen families live in the new apartment complex.

The gravel used in the cement came from a quarry in the town of Namie, located just miles from the Fukushima plant. While Namie sits inside the government mandated 12-mile “no-go” zone because of radiation concerns, it wasn’t completely closed off until the end of April, meaning the gravel was exposed to radiation spewing from the Fukushima plant during that time.

The owner of the quarry said he shipped 5,200 tons of gravel to 19 different companies, two of which now say they sold the material to 200 construction firms. The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry has launched an investigation to determine where the gravel was used.

The contaminated concrete is the latest radiation scare that has plagued Japan more than 10 months after a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami triggered the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. 80,000 people have been displaced by the Fukushima disaster, many of whom may never return home.

“We thought we could finally settle here. I have no words,” said a resident, who told broadcaster NHK she moved to the apartment with her husband and young children, to escape radiation. “I just feel so awful for my kids. I feel like I’ve failed as a parent.”

NHK reports government officials brushed off initial inquiries about the contaminated concrete in December, saying they had conducted thorough checks.

[eyeno]

remember folks the dose is negligible, its only like a chest xray

a non-stop 24 hour a day lifetime chest xray...

*Google Translation*
Title: Fukushima cesium found in the Finnish woods
Source: YLE (Finland Public Television, BBC counterpart)
Date: Jan 17, 2012

Finnish forests are small amounts of radioactive cesium, which is derived from Fukushima nuclear power plant in the March accident. Radiation and Nuclear Safety of the cesium-134 and 137 have been found in lichens, fungi as well as elk and reindeer meat. Radioactivity not detected drinking water, milk and food for sale.

Radiation collected in late summer and autumn samples, which were found Fukushima cesium.

Radiation and Nuclear Safety, the accident caused by the increase in Fukushima Finnish radiation dose is negligible. Fukushima the accident increased the amount of artificial radioactivity in Finnish natural products of the highest per cent. [...]

http://enenews.com/finland-announces-de ... ants-fungi

[Nordic]

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120122a1.html

Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012

Cabinet kept alarming nuke report secret

Fearful of scaring public, existence of document was denied for months

The government buried a worst-case scenario for the Fukushima nuclear crisis that was drafted last March and kept it under wraps until the end of last year, sources in the administration said Saturday.

After the document was shown to a small, select group of senior government officials at the prime minister's office in late March, the administration of then Prime Minister Naoto Kan decided to quietly bury it, the sources said.

"When the document was presented (in March), a discussion ensued about keeping its existence secret," a government source said.

In order to deny its existence, the government treated it as a personal document of Japan Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Shunsuke Kondo, who authored it, until the end of December, the sources said.

It was only then that it was actually recognized as an official government document, they said.

"The content was so shocking that we decided to treat it as if it didn't exist," a senior government official said.

A private-sector panel investigating the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant intends to examine whether the government tried to manipulate information during its handling of the crisis.

The panel plans to interview Kan and Goshi Hosono, minister in charge of the nuclear crisis and Kan's former adviser, among others.

Kondo drew up the document at Kan's request and is dated March 25, 2011. The document forecast that in a worst-case scenario the plant's crippled reactors would intermittently release massive quantities of radioactive materials for about a year.

The projection was based on a scenario in which a hydrogen explosion would tear through the No. 1 reactor's containment vessel, forcing all workers at the plant to evacuate because of the ensuing lethal radiation levels.

The document said that in such an event, residents within a radius of 170 km of the power station, and possibly even further away, would be forced to evacuate. Those living within a radius of between 170 km and 250 km of the plant, including Tokyo, could chose to evacuate voluntarily. The wrecked power station is about 220 km northeast of the capital.

Kan admitted in September that a worst-case scenario for the disaster had been drawn up. After parts of it were leaked in December, his successor, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, decided to start treating it as a Cabinet Office document.

"Because we were told there would be enough time to evacuate residents (even in a worst-case scenario), we refrained from disclosing the document due to fear it would cause unnecessary anxiety (among the public)," Hosono, the nuclear crisis minister, said at a Jan. 6 news conference.

Ministry not keeping track

The health ministry has not been keeping track of radiation that workers at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are exposed to while off-site or off duty, ministry officials said Saturday, prompting concerns that current systems to check exposure may be inadequate.

The health ministry also doesn't check radiation doses that workers are exposed to during decontamination efforts around the wrecked No. 1 plant.

The ministry currently only keeps track of radiation exposure for the plant's employees when they are engaged in work around the facility.

Seems like that worst-case scenario did in fact happen.

[eyeno]

turmeric root. says neurosurgeon dr. russell blaylock. steady ingestion arms a body against.

from another source, a doctor, can't remember his name, rosemary herb.

i have stocks of both. take them regularly.

melatonin too

I am not a doctor. do your own research.

[seemslikeadream]

Deputy PM: Japan failed to keep records of key nuclear crisis meetings

By Associated Press, Published: January 26

TOKYO — Japan’s deputy prime minister acknowledged Friday that the government failed to take minutes of 10 meetings last year on the response to the country’s disasters and nuclear crisis and called for officials to compile reports on the meetings retroactively.

The missing minutes have become a hot political debate, with opposition lawmakers saying they are necessary to provide a transparent record of the government’s discussion after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami touched off the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.

Deputy Prime Minister Katsuya Okada confirmed Friday at a news conference that the minutes were not fully recorded at the time and called for them to be written up, retroactively, by the end of February. Three of the meetings during the chaotic period had no record at all, not even an agenda, including a government nuclear crisis meeting headed by the prime minister.

Okada has set up a panel to investigate the extent of the problem and its cause.

The missing minutes are the latest example of the government missteps in disclosing information.

Japanese authorities and regulators already have been repeatedly criticized for how they handled information amid the unfolding nuclear crisis. Officials initially denied that the reactors had melted down, and have been accused of playing down the health risks of exposure to radiation.

The government also kept secret a worst-case scenario that tens of millions of people, including Tokyo residents, might need to leave their homes, according to a report obtained recently by The Associated Press.

An outside panel investigating the government response to the nuclear crisis has been critical, calling for more transparency in relaying information to the public.

“Needless to say, keeping records at these meetings is extremely important,” Okada said. “Each minister should keep that in mind.”

Okada rejected speculation that the nuclear crisis meetings may have intentionally left unrecorded to avoid responsibility. He said the oversights were “unfortunate” developments during the chaotic time when the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant rapidly deteriorated and three of its reactors spiraled into meltdowns.

He said reconstruction of the minutes would be possible through notes and recordings kept by officials who attended the meetings.

Japan’s public records law requires minutes or summaries at key government meetings, but not all of them.

[smoking since 1879]

turmeric root. says neurosurgeon dr. russell blaylock. steady ingestion arms a body against.

from another source, a doctor, can't remember his name, rosemary herb.

i have stocks of both. take them regularly.

melatonin too

I am not a doctor. do your own research.

Grape Seed Extract Kills Head and Neck Cancer Cells, Leaves Healthy Cells Unharmed
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120127140939.htm

apparently.

[Project Willow]

[urlhttp://www.thestar.com/article/1124014--u-s-nuclear-reactor-shut-down-released-steam-in-unusual-event[/url]

Ill. nuclear reactor loses power, venting steam
By TAMMY WEBBER | Associated Press – 13 hrs ago

CHICAGO (AP) — A nuclear reactor at a northern Illinois plant shut down Monday after losing power, and steam was being vented to reduce pressure, according to officials from Exelon Nuclear and federal regulators.

Unit 2 at Byron Generating Station, about 95 miles northwest of Chicago, shut down at 10:18 a.m., after losing power, Exelon officials said. Diesel generators began supplying power to the plant, and operators began releasing steam to cool the reactor from the part of the plant where turbines are producing electricity, not from within the nuclear reactor itself, officials said.

The steam contains low levels of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, but federal and plant officials insisted the levels were safe for workers and the public.

.....

(Edited to change thread spreading non-dinky linky.

Hi I am... )

[Iamwhomiam]

Thanks, Project Willow. Was just checking to see if anyone had yet posted this.

Here's a photo from the Boston Globe's coverage: http://cache.boston.com/resize/bonzai-fba/AP_Photo/2012/01/31/1327997401_1671/300h.jpg

"In this March 16, 2011 photo, steam escapes from Exelon Corp.'s nuclear plant in Byron, Ill. A nuclear reactor the plant shut down Monday, Jan. 30, 2012 after losing power, and steam was being vented to reduce pressure, according to officials from Exelon Nuclear and federal regulators."

And a better one from The Hindu

<snip>
"Candace Humphrey, Ogle County’s emergency management coordinator, said county officials were notified of the incident as soon as it happened and that public safety was never in danger.

“It was standard procedure that they would notify county officials,” she said. “There is always concern. But, it never crossed my mind that there was any danger to the people of Ogle County.”

[seemslikeadream]

Major new leak at Japan's nuclear plant - Kyodo

Wed Feb 1, 2012 5:38pm EST

Feb 2 (Reuters) - More than 8 tonnes of water have leaked from Japan's stricken nuclear power plant after a frozen pipe burst inside a reactor buiding, but none of the water is thought to have escaped the complex, Kyodo news agency said on Thursday.

Kyodo, quoting the Fukushima plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), said the water had leaked from the No.4 reactor when a pipe "dropped off" but that the liquid had all been contained inside the reactor building.

The plant, on the coast north of Tokyo, was wrecked by a huge earthquake and tsunami in March last year, triggering the evacuation of around 80,000 people in the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. The major leak follows the discovery and plugging of smaller leaks at the same reactor last weekend.

Kyodo quoted Tepco officials as saying the latest leak had been found late on Tuesday night and was stopped by closing a valve. The report did not make completely clear if the leaked water was radioactive but implied it, noting that water inside the No.4 reactor was being used to cool spent fuel rods.

"The total amount of leakage from the reactor was initially estimated to be 6 litres, but the utility revised the figure later Wednesday, adding that the leakage appears to have started at around 5 p.m. (0800 GMT) Monday," Kyodo said.

"The utility plans to check whether there are similar cases in the other crippled reactors," it added. (Reporting by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Kavita Chandran)

[eyeno]

and another one...first article says "potential leak", and then an update that says "could have"
if we knew how much of this stuff we were actually bathing in on a regular basis it would probably be a real buzz kill

California nuclear station shuts down unit over possible leak
By
Adonai
– February 1, 2012Posted in: Energy, Radiation

[img]http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/California-nuclear-plant-shut-down-Jan-31-2012.jpg
[/img]

The San Onofre nuclear station in southern California shut down one of its units as sensors detected a possible leak Tuesday evening.

The Southern California Edison (SCE), operator of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) south of San Clemente, announced that it has begun a precautionary shutdown of the Unit 3 because sensors detected a possible leak in one of the unit’s steam generator tubes.

An SCE statement said, “The potential leak poses no imminent danger to the public or plant workers. There has been no release to the atmosphere.”

The SONGS said through Twitter that “The possible leak is inside the containment dome, no release into the atmosphere,” and “No imminent danger to public.” The Unit 3 was shut down at around 5:30 p.m. (01:30 GMT, Wednesday).

The SCE said the cause of the leak is under investigation and the repair work will follow before it resumes operation. The company has reported the incident to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The San Onofre is jointly owned by the SCE (78.21 percent), San Diego Gas & Electric (20 percent), and the city of Riverside (1.79 percent). The nuclear station is Southern California’s largest source of electricity. Its two units can generate 2,200 megawatts of power, enough to meet the needs of 1.4 million average homes at a point in time.

The SCE said Unit 2 in the station is currently offline for a planned maintenance, refueling and technology upgrade outage. But the company said it has ample reserve power to meet customer needs while Unit 3 is offline.

The SCE is one of the largest electric utilities in the United States, serving a population of nearly 14 million in central, coastal and southern California.

Source: XinhuaNet

Featured image credit: UbAlert
http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2012/0 ... ible-leak/

Officials: Radiation 'could have' escaped plant
Associated PressBy MICHAEL R. BLOOD | Associated Press – 13 hrs ago

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A tiny amount of radiation could have escaped into the atmosphere from a Southern California nuclear power plant after a water leak prompted operators to shut down the reactor as a precaution, officials said Wednesday.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Victor Dricks said a small amount of radioactive gas "could have" escaped the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station on the northern San Diego County coast.

Southern California Edison spokesman Gil Alexander told The Associated Press the amount would have been "extremely small" and possibly not detectable by monitors.

The company and federal regulators say the release would not have posed a safety risk for the public.

"It would have been very, very small, low level, which would not pose a danger to anyone," Dricks said.

http://news.yahoo.com/officials-radiati ... 23700.html