Tag Archives: nuclear

Fukushima

One Year Later: TEPCo accepts blame for poor handling of Fukushima Daiichi, but also points finger at incompetent government.

20 June 2012, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCo) published a thick report concerning the handling of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

It admits three of four damaged reactors (there are six reactors at the facility) actually went into melt down, because of total loss in cooling.

“The report admits that the company’s management of the emergency cooling system, which had been criticized by a government panel, was inadequate.”  However, “The report also blames the government for directly and indirectly interfering with TEPCO’s emergency response efforts. It says government officials disregarded what was actually happening on the ground, causing unnecessary confusion.”-NHK (nippon housou kyoukai/Japan Broadcasting Corporation)

The reactors were supplied by the U.S. company General Electric. The disaster is ongoing!

Fukushima

Government Incompetence: Forced re-start of Ohi Nuclear plant backfires; emergency at Reactor 3, missing cooling water! People not told until the day after!

About a week ago the Japanese federal government forced the re-start of the Ohi nuclear power plant.  Prime Minister Noda gave the order, saying “…Japanese society can not survive!” without it.

Now, 20 June 2012, the operators of the Ohi disaster reactors, Kansai Electric Power Company (KEPCo) revealed a potentially major problem with Reactor 3, and they didn’t discover it until an alarm sounded when they tried to re-start it!

Reactor 3 has lost cooling water, and KEPCo officials don’t know why.  Just like TEPCo officials at Fukushima Daiichi, they believe the water got out through leaks but so far they can’t find any!

The alarm sounded when the water dropped by 5 centimeters (almost 2 inches).  Doesn’t sound like much but realize the cooling tanks are huge and it could amount to tons of water lost!

People living near the nuclear plant (in their wisdom the Japanese officials allowed nuclear plants to be built near homes, and vice verse) are outraged because they were not told about the problem until 13 hours later.  They were already angry because most of them opposed the re-start.

KEPCo said it did not warn the residents because there is no law in Japan requiring them to do so, in regards to the amount of water lost.

Ohi’s Reactor 4 is also scheduled for re-start.  The reactors at Ohi were supplied by the U.S. company Westinghouse.

 

Fukushima, Idaho

East Idaho Gamma Ray detector update: Conflicting readings on 16 June 2012, as high as 26 μR/h! More proof of Fukushima?

On 25 May 2012, I posted how the public display on the Big Lost River IEMP station, in eastern Idaho, was not working.  Now it is, and it’s showing 10 more micro Roentgens per hour than what is being posted on the www.idahoop.org website.

Big Lost River IEMP Gamma display, 16 June 2012

On 16 June 2012, the display was showing between 24 and 27 μR/h!  I watched for ten minutes and it never went lower than 24 μR/h.  I checked the website and discovered that it was reporting gamma levels of 15.2 μR/h.

Why the big difference?

For perspective, 9.8 μR/h is considered “less than typical”.  The ghost city of Pripyat, which was contaminated by Chernobyl in the 1980s, is still showing gamma levels as high as 66 μR/h!

The Big Lost River IEMP is located in an area of eastern Idaho that has been used for nuclear experiments ever since World War 2.  Are these high(?) gamma levels the result of decades of experiments (still ongoing right now), or is it because of the ongoing disaster at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan?

Fukushima

One Year Later: Unexplained extreme radiation levels above Fukushima Daiichi Reactor 2!

14 June 2012, NHK (nippon housou kyoukai/Japan Broadcasting Corporation) reporting that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCo) has discovered that on the 5th floor of the building housing Reactor 2 there is extreme levels of radiation.

The discovery was made by a robot used in the ongoing search to find where leaks are coming from.  More than one year after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster began, TEPCo officials still can not find the origin of the many radiation leaks they believe must exist in the GE designed reactors.

The 5th floor of the building housing Reactor 2 shows no sign of major physical damage, yet is flooded with 880 millisieverts (880,000 microsieverts) per hour of radiation!  It is 4.5 meters (14.7 feet) above the reactor.

To put it in perspective; many countries consider a yearly exposure of 2.7 millisieverts to be normal.   That’s spread out over the entire year, not all at once!  It also depends on the type of radiation, gamma radiation from a reactor that went critical is definitely bad.

TEPCo admits that Reactor 2 has spewed the greatest amount of radiation of all the damaged reactors, so far.

Finding leaks is of primary concern, because they must stop any radiation leaks in order to bring down lethal radiation levels, so that humans can remove the melted fuel rods and begin decommissioning the reactors.

Until TEPCo can find the leaks, and since no one in charge in Japan wants to dump sand, lead and concrete on the reactors, there is no chance of stopping the nuclear disaster reactors.

Business/Economics, International, U.S.

Government Hypocrisy: United States exempts 7 more countries from Iran sanctions list. What about up-coming EU sanctions? UN says Iran has no Nukes!

“….we did not say Iran had nuclear weapons. We never said such. We also did not say that Iran made a decision to obtain nuclear weapons. That we also did not say.”-Yukiya Amano, International Atomic Energy Agency

12 June 2012, apparently all the excitement over Iran’s nuclear program was hyperbole.  The Obama administration just exempted seven more countries from the oil sanctions.

In March 2012 France, Germany and Japan were exempted. Now India, South Korea, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Taiwan and South Africa.  Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said it was because those countries have dramatically reduced their purchase of Iranian oil.

I’ve been following this and I can say that several of those countries have not reduced their purchases of Iran oil, even increasing their future orders!

U.S. officials (both in the Obama administration and in Congress) have been bold face lying to the U.S. news media, claiming that the sanctions have hurt the Iranian economy.  If that’s so then why is Iran swimming in more money than ever before?

Today it was revealed that Iran’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has doubled in the past fives years, despite decades of old sanctions, and despite the new sanctions: “Due to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s economic capacities we have been able to move through the sanctions and will do the same in future as well.”-Seyed Shamseddin Hosseini, Iranian Ministry of Economic Affairs & Finance

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Iran now has the 17th strongest economy in the World, thanks to their GDP rising to $482 billion USD last year.  The IMF expects Iran’s GDP, for 2012, to be more than 3%, and remember, that’s under sanctions!

Iran’s own stock exchange (Tehran Stock Exchange or TSE) has seen a 280% growth rate in the past five years!  The TSE is doing almost too well, so much so that Iranian officials issued a statement to try and calm investors: “Concerns about bubble growth are unfounded. The reason for the rise in the index is the flow of cash into the stock market.”-Ali Sahraie, TSE operations manager

Stock market analysts believe Iran’s TSE has a lot more room for growth: “Even though (the market) is rallying I still think of it as under performing.”-Ahmad Alanani, works for London based Exotix

The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) boss just came out (in an interview with the Wall Street Journal) and said Iran has no nukes, and that the IAEA could find no evidence suggesting that Iran is trying to build nukes.

However, the IAEA did allude to possible nuke weapons programs that were active prior to 2003: “We don’t have the impression that they are re-concentrating their activities. Before 2003 the work was quite systematic. And after that it is more dispersed. And this situation continues.”-Yukiya Amano

Sanctions against Iran, by the European Union, are set to go into effect on 1 July.

Fukushima

One Year Later: More proof of government evil; Japanese leaders knew how bad Fukushima Daiichi was from day one!

11 June 2012, NHK (nippon housou kyoukai/Japan Broadcasting Corporation) reporting that a new government report reveals that the federal leaders knew how bad the radiation levels were at the very beginning of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.

The government refused to release the report, but NHK claims they got hold of a copy from the Science Ministry!

The Science Ministry sent staff to Namie Town, in Fukushima Prefecture, on 15 March 2011.  They discovered that radiation levels were already at 330 microsieverts per hour (7,920 microsieverts per day, or 7.92 millisieverts per day)!  Namie Town is only 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from the nuke plant.

Japanese news media had demanded the government give radiation data immediately following the 11 March disasters.  The government took until 25 April to do so, however, they used data from a useless SPEEDI system.

The SPEEDI system was only designed to give predictions, not actual real time data!

 

Business/Economics, International, Technology, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Japan to force re-start of nuclear power plants, for the sake of the economic “survival of society.” New studies suggest that power use in Japan can not be reduced much further, even if utility rates are raised!

“To protect the [economic] livelihoods of the Japanese people, it is my judgment that Reactors 3 and 4 at Ohi nuclear power station should be restarted.”-Yoshihiko Noda, Prime Minister of Japan

Despite that fact that local governments in Japan have the final say on the start up of a nuclear power plant, and they’ve said no, the federal government has decided to do it anyway!

Noda gave this dire warning: “Cheap and stable electricity is vital. If all the reactors that previously provided 30% of Japan’s electricity supply are halted, or kept idle, Japanese society can not survive!”

This comes as some studies on utility usage, and increased prices for power, show that most Japanese families/individuals can not reduce power usage any further, no matter how expensive the electric rates get.   Electricity rates in Japan are already among the most expensive rates in the world!

Fukushima

One Year Later: Japanese government incompetence; still no official nuclear disaster emergency regulations!

8 June 2012, NHK (nippon housou kyoukai/Japan Broadcasting Corporation) reporting that more than one year after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi began, the federal government of Japan still has no new official policy regarding nuclear disasters!

Last year most local governments, and individuals, learned of government evacuation instructions through media, not federal government channels.  Also, it’s now known that some people actually evacuated the wrong way, into radiation plumes, and many of the emergency centers did not perform as expected.

The federal government scrapped their old policies, as they proved totally useless, and were supposed to come up with new ones by now!

About the only thing the federal government of Japan has agreed on is to expand danger zones around nuclear plants from 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) to 30 km (18.6 miles).

More than 130 municipal governments are supposed to create their own nuke disaster regulations, but, they’re supposed to be based on the, so far, non-existent federal regulations.

A new federal nuclear regulatory body was supposed to be up and running in April 2012, but it never happened.

Fukushima

One Year Later: GE designed Fukushima Daiichi Reactors still leaking cooling water! No decommissioning until it stops!

8 June 2012, Tokyo Electric (TEPCo) said that employees inspected the basements of Reactors 2 & 3, for the first time since the March 2011 nuclear disaster began!

Now, more than a year later, TEPCo officials say it is clear that the reactor vessels are damaged and still leaking! Really, after all this time?

The basement of Reactor 2 has 5.33 meters (17.3 feet) of contaminated water, and Reactor 3 has 5.43 meters (17.7 feet)!

Rather than dump sand, lead, boric acid and concrete on the thing (as the Soviets did with Chernobyl), the Japanese government, and TEPCo, have decided to shut down the GE designed disaster reactors, as if they were functioning normally!

The problem is that it requires the cooling down of the reactors, and the removal of melted fuel rods.  And that can only be accomplished by stopping any leaks and removing all contaminated water.  Here’s the thing, more than one year later, TEPCo still does not know where the water is leaking from!!!

Fukushima

One Year Later: Incompetence continues at Fukushima Daiichi, cooling pumps fail, again!

6 June 2012, Tokyo Electric revealed that a cooling pump for the spent fuel pool, above Reactor 4, failed on Monday, 4 June.  Japanese media says the pump was burnt.

A back up pump was used the next day, but it failed as well.  TEPCo finally got it working today, however, temps in the spent fuel pool have hit 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit)!

TEPCo says it will take 12 to 24 hours to cool down the spent fuel pool.