Nuke Power’s Collapse Gets Ever More Dangerous-The Rust-Bucket Fleet Must Cease to Exist

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Weekend Edition Nov 30-Dec 02, 2012

The Rust-Bucket Fleet Must Cease to Exist

Nuke Power’s Collapse Gets Ever More Dangerous

by HARVEY WASSERMAN

In the wake of this fall’s election, the disintegration of America’s decrepit atomic reactor fleet is fast approaching critical mass. Unless our No Nukes movement can get the worst of them shut soon, Barack Obama may be very lucky to get through his second term without a major reactor disaster.

All 104 licensed US reactors were designed before 1975—a third of a century ago. All but one went on line in the 1980s or earlier.

Plunging natural gas prices (due largely to ecologically disastrous fracking) are dumping even fully-amortized US reactors into deep red ink. Wisconsin’s Kewaunee will close next year because nobody wants to buy it. A reactor at Clinton, Illinois, may join it. Should gas prices stay low, the trickle of shut-downs will turn into a flood.

But more disturbing are the structural problems, made ever-more dangerous by slashed maintenance budgets.

*San Onofre Units One and Two, near major earthquake faults on the coast between Los Angeles and San Diego, have been shut for more than nine months by core breakdowns in their newly refurbished steam generators. A fix could exceed a half-billion dollars. A bitter public battle now rages over shutting them both.

*The containment dome at North Florida’s Crystal River was seriously damaged during “repair” efforts that could take $2 billion to correct. It will probably never reopen.

*NRC inspections of Nebraska’s Fort Calhoun, damaged during recent flooding, have unearthed a wide range of structural problems that could shut it forever, and that may have been illegally covered-up.

*Ohio’s Davis-Besse has structural containment cracks that should have forced it down years ago and others have been found at South Carolina’s V.C. Summer reactor pressure vessel.

*Intense public pressure at Vermont Yankee, at two reactors at New York’s Indian Point, and at New Jersey’s Oyster Creek (damaged in Hurricane Sandy) could bring them all down.

Projected completion of a second unit at Watts Bar, Tennessee, where construction began in the 1960s, has been pushed back to April, 2015. If finished at all, building this reactor may span a half-century.

Two new reactors under preliminary construction in South Carolina have been plagued by delays and cost overruns. Faulty components and concrete have marred two more under construction at Vogtle, Georgia, where builders may soon ask for a new delay on consideration of proposed federal loan guarantees.

This fall’s defeat of the very pro-nuclear Mitt Romney is an industry set-back. The return of Harry Reid (D-NV) as Senate Majority Leader means the failed Yucca Mountain waste dump will stay dead. A number of new Congressionals are notably pro-green, in line with Obama’s strong rhetorical support.

The move toward renewables has been boosted by Germany’s shut-down of eight reactors and huge investments in wind, solar and other renewables, which are exceeding financial and ecological expectations. Despite pro-nuke nay-sayers, Germany’s energy supply of energy has risen while prices have fallen.

The Department of Energy has confirmed that US solar power continues to drop in price. US employment in the solar industry has surged past 118,000, a rise of more than 13% over last year.

Despite a wide range of financial problems, including uncertainty over renewal of the Production Tax Credit, the green energy industry continues to expand. Along with marijuana, Colorado has now legalized industrial hemp, opening the door for a major bio-fuel that will have strong agricultural support.

At some near-term tipping point, the financial and political clout of the green energy industry will fly past that of atomic power.

But at Fukushima, a spent fuel pool crammed with some 1500 hugely radioactive rods still sits atop a deteriorating shell that could collapse with the inevitable upcoming earthquake. As the Earth hangs in the balance, the pool may or may not be emptied this coming year, depending on the dubious technical and financial capabilities of its owners, who are in a deep fiscal crater. Meanwhile, fish irradiated by the huge quantities of Fukushima emissions are being consumed here in the US.

Overall, the “nuclear renaissance” is in shambles. So is an industry increasingly comprised of rust-bucket fleet of decayed reactors in serious decline.

Solartopians everywhere can celebrate an election that seemed to show some progress toward saving our beleaguered planet.

But our survival still depends on shutting ALL these old reactors before the next Fukushima contaminates us with far more than just radioactive fish.

Harvey Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA!  OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is atwww.harveywasserman.ning.com, along with WILL THE GOP STEAL AMERICA’S 2012 ELECTION?, co-authored with Bob Fitrakis.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/30/nuke-powers-collapse-gets-ever-more-dangerous/

Unpacking the Fukushima Disaster

by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall / November 28th, 2012

On Fukushima Beach is an hour long brilliantly constructed documentary that uses a montage of mainstream and Internet media clips to unpack the Fukushima disaster. In addition to providing a painless scientific overview of radiation health issues, it outlines the ongoing radiation risks faced by all residents of the northern hemisphere.

There are simple measures people everywhere (except the Japanese – they need to be evacuated asap) could be taking to protect themselves. Yet in their eagerness to promote and support the nuclear power industry, the Obama administration, the Japanese government and the international agencies charged with monitoring and addressing similar health issues (such as the UN, the International Atomic Energy Agency and World Health Organization), have remained stubbornly silent on what promises to be the most serious health crisis of the 21st century.

Relying heavily on the technical expertise of highly prominent and credible medical professionals and scientists (including Australian pediatrician Dr Helen Caldicott and Japanese-American theoretical physicist Dr Michio Kaku), the film stresses the following essential points:

• Despite being “shut down,” all four Fukushima reactors continue to release dangerous radioactive nucleotides, both to the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean. There is a self-perpetuating chain reaction occurring in Reactors 1-3, in which core meltdowns have occurred. Continuing radiation release can only be stopped by encasing them in a concrete shell, as the Soviets did at Chernobyl. Extremely high radiation levels make it too hazardous for workers to begin construction of this shell (even though an organization of several hundred elderly retired engineers have volunteered to sacrifice themselves to undertake the clean up -Retired Fukushima engineers. Tokyo Electric Power Co., aka TEPCO, has rebuffed their offer, fearing negative publicity.)
• Since meltdowns have already occurred (there was an explosion but no meltdown at Chernobyl), high levels of radiation have entered the subsoil below the containment chamber, as well as the groundwater. Halting radiation leakage into the groundwater would require installation of an impermeable barrier between the reactor and the water table. TEPCO has refused to even consider such a barrier, claiming it would be too expensive and “affect stock prices.”
• The Japanese government was criminally negligent in refusing to evacuate Tokyo (238 km or 148 miles from Fukushima), owing to their reluctance to create public “panic.” Abundant evidence suggests they were well aware Tokyo’s 30 million residents were at risk. Recent random sampling reveals that Tokyo children are being exposed to five times the acceptable does of radiation. Many are already showing evidence of radiation poisoning (hair loss, lethargy, rashes, joint pains, tiredness and rings under their eyes). While government clinics are diagnosing them with psychiatric conditions, pregnant women are undergoing abortions to prevent their infants from being born with birth defects.
• Despite claims from the nuclear power industry that no human beings have ever died from industry-related radiation poisoning, careful documentation by Russian scientists indicate that there were approximately one million deaths (mainly from cancer and leukemia) directly related to Chernobyl. The time lag between exposure and death (three to four years for leukemia and lung cancer and fifteen years for solid cancers) make it easier for the nuclear industry to deny the connection. However there are clear statistical links that can’t be explained any other way.
• Prevailing wind patterns mean that Americans, even those on the East Coast, and Europeans have been exposed to hazardous levels of airborne radiation. Studies of ocean currents reveal that high radiation levels have spread throughout the entire North Pacific. Tuna and other species caught on the West Coast reveal dangerous levels of radioactive cesium. No one, no matter where they live, should be eating Pacific seafood sourced north of the Equator.
• There are 1,535 spent MOX (combined uranium/plutonium) fuel rods stored in open cooling pools on the roof of Reactor 4. According to TEPCO, they can’t be moved before 2015-2016. Another earthquake could potentially expose them to the air, forcing evacuation of the entire northern hemisphere.

The filmmakers also attempt to explain the conspiracy of silence around the ongoing Fukushima disaster and the extreme threat it poses to literally billions of people in the northern hemisphere. They blame the insane power of the nuclear power industry, which ironically is one of the most spectacularly unprofitable industries in modern times. The companies that build and operate nuclear power plants rely on massive government subsidies in the construction phase, as the revenue they earn from selling electricity can’t possibly cover their costs. Apparently nuclear power – known as “atoms for peace” in the 1950s – was dreamed up as a public relations ploy to de-stigmatize nuclear weapons in the public mind.

The film stresses that nuclear power and weapons production have always been joined at the hip. It also reveals that General Electric (GE), the powerful defense contractor (and owner of NBC network) which manufactures nuclear weapons – is the same company that designed and built the Fukushima reactors. Interesting how the Obama administration, which has approved massive subsidies for new nuclear power plants, has exerted major pressure on Japan to conceal GE’s involvement in Fukushima.

Dr. Stuart Bramhall is a 63-year-old American child and adolescent psychiatrist and political refugee in New Zealand. Her works include a young adult novel The Battle for Tomorrow about a 16 year old girl who participates in the blockade and occupation of the US Capitol and a memoir, The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee. Email her at: stuartbramhall@yahoo.co.nz. Read other articles by Stuart Jeanne.

This article was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2012 at 8:00am and is filed under Disasters, Film Review, Japan.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/11/on-fukushima-beach/