After Gutenberg

jcwinnie

Brave New Climate assures us, “There was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity.”

By “significant” I mean a level of radiation of more than what you would receive on – say – a long distance flight, or drinking a glass of beer that comes from certain areas with high levels of natural background radiation.

Hey, O.K., Fukushima is not Chernobyl. Let’s go out for a few REMs.

Now, where does that leave us?

• The plant is safe now and will stay safe.
• Japan is looking at an INES Level 4 Accident: Nuclear accident with local consequences. That is bad for the company that owns the plant, but not for anyone else.
• Some radiation was released when the pressure vessel was vented. All radioactive isotopes from the activated steam have gone (decayed). A very small amount of Cesium was released, as well as Iodine. If you were sitting on top of the plants’ chimney when they were venting, you should probably give up smoking to return to your former life expectancy. The Cesium and Iodine isotopes were carried out to the sea and will never be seen again.
• There was some limited damage to the first containment. That means that some amounts of radioactive Cesium and Iodine will also be released into the cooling water, but no Uranium or other nasty stuff (the Uranium oxide does not “dissolve” in the water). There are facilities for treating the cooling water inside the third containment. The radioactive Cesium and Iodine will be removed there and eventually stored as radioactive waste in terminal storage.
• The seawater used as cooling water will be activated to some degree. Because the control rods are fully inserted, the Uranium chain reaction is not happening. That means the “main” nuclear reaction is not happening, thus not contributing to the activation. The intermediate radioactive materials (Cesium and Iodine) are also almost gone at this stage, because the Uranium decay was stopped a long time ago. This further reduces the activation. The bottom line is that there will be some low level of activation of the seawater, which will also be removed by the treatment facilities.
• The seawater will then be replaced over time with the “normal” cooling water
• The reactor core will then be dismantled and transported to a processing facility, just like during a regular fuel change.
• Fuel rods and the entire plant will be checked for potential damage. This will take about 4-5 years.
• The safety systems on all Japanese plants will be upgraded to withstand a 9.0 earthquake and tsunami (or worse)
• I believe the most significant problem will be a prolonged power shortage. About half of Japan’s nuclear reactors will probably have to be inspected, reducing the nation’s power generating capacity by 15%. This will probably be covered by running gas power plants that are usually only used for peak loads to cover some of the base load as well. That will increase your electricity bill, as well as lead to potential power shortages during peak demand, in Japan.

Mm, is the seawater used to flood containment now more radioactive?

jcwinnie

And, speaking of Howdy-Doody and Bendable, Pose-able Ken, HuffPoz Rob Kal notes: “The tragedy in Japan will quickly produce an army of PR flacks, fighting to protect the interests of those who have a stake in the building and maintaining of nuclear reactors and related nuclear energy facilities.”

Remember when Shatner would say authoritatively, “Damage Control Team report.”

We know, from Wendell Potter’s book, Deadly Spin, that there is a pattern of reaction that major industries engage in when they consider themselves under attack. The industry’s primary corporations will work together to establish teams assigned to minimize damage and control message.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Our Senators are not PR flacks. PR flacks are not elected positions.

jcwinnie

Gosh! The PR flacks dinna say anything about the spent fuel pools. Via Climate Progress, we learn from The NY Times that, as of Tuesday 9:36 “… late Tuesday Japan’s nuclear watchdog said a pool storing spent fuel rods at that fourth reactor had overheated and reached boiling point and had become unapproachable by workers.”

“It still seems unlikely there will be massive amounts of radioactivity released from a meltdown,” note Professor Joe. “That said, I listened to a press call today, which included one of my former DOE colleagues, Bob Alvarez, which spelled out a problem potentially equally as large but not receiving much attention.”

Climate Progress relays a story written by Sharon Begley, science columnist and science editor of Newsweek, “The Japan Nuke Problem No One’s Talking About,”.

To the growing list of worries at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant … add this: could the spent nuclear fuel sitting in a nearby storage pool pose an even bigger threat to people and the environment? The spent fuel produced by reactors has been a challenge since the dawn of the nuclear industry, with most reactor operators opting to store it in pools of cooling water on site. At the 40-year-old Fukushima plant, which was built by General Electric, the fuel rods are stored at a pool about three stories up, next to the reactor (a schematic is here). Satellite photos raise concerns that the roof of the building housing the pool has been blown off, says Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a senior policy adviser to the secretary of energy and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999. He and other experts are now warning that any release of radioactivity from the spent-fuel pool could make the releases from the reactors themselves pale in comparison.

The spent-fuel pools are rectangular basins about 40 feet deep, made of four- to five-foot-thick reinforced concrete lined with stainless steel. That was thought to be sufficient to prevent a breach. But the disastrous combination of an earthquake (which knocked out power form the electricity grid) and a tsunami (which swamped the diesel generators serving as backup power) forced the power-plant operators to turn to batteries for core cooling.When battery-powered cooling failed, hydrogen in two of the units exploded, damaging the reactor buildings—and, apparently, the spent-fuel area as well. Satellite photos appear to show that two cranes used to move spent fuel into the pool “are both gone,” Alvarez told a press conference organized by Friends of the Earth, a nonprofit environmental group that opposes nuclear power. “There has definitely been damage to the pool area.”

The pools “contain very large concentrations of radioactivity, can catch fire, and are in much more vulnerable buildings,” he warns. If the pools lose their inflow of circulating cooling water, the water in the pools will evaporate. If the level of water drops to five or six feet above the spent fuel, Alvarez calculates, the release of radioactivity “could be life-threatening near the reactor building.” Since the total amount of long-lived radioactivity in the pool is at least five times that in the reactor core, a catastrophic release would mean “all bets are off,” he says.

Of particular concern: cesium-137 in the pool, at levels Alvarez estimates at 20 million to 50 million curies. The 1986 Chernobyl accident released about 40 percent of the reactor core’s 6 million curies. In a 1997 report for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory estimated that a severe pool fire—made possible by the loss of cooling water—could leave about 188 square miles uninhabitable and cause up to 28,000 cancer deaths.

Once again, warnings from scientists were ignored that could have dramatically reduced the risk here:

The new concern at Fukushima Daiichi highlights an ongoing controversy about the way spent fuel gets stored: what if Tokyo Electric Power had heeded the growing scientific consensus and moved the spent fuel out of the storage pool and into dry, hardened casks for storage? Germany did this 25 years ago. The NRC has rejected this recommendation, but a 2006 analysis by the National Academy of Sciences warned that “breaches in spent fuel pools could be much harder to plug [than those in dry casks], especially if high radiation fields or the collapse of the overlying building prevented workers from reaching the pool. Complete cleanup from a zirconium cladding fire would be extraordinarily expensive, and even after cleanup was completed large areas downwind of the site might remain contaminated to levels that prevented reoccupation.”The NAS report … concluded that “recovery from an attack on a dry cask would be much easier than the recovery from an attack on a spent fuel pool. Breaches in dry casks could be temporarily plugged with radiation-absorbing materials until permanent fixes or replacements could be made … It is the potential for zirconium cladding fires in spent fuel pools that gives dry cask storage most of its comparative safety and security advantages.”

The NRC counts almost 100 spent-fuel pools in the United States.

jcwinnie

Obviously, the first wave of talking heads and PR flacks have failed to contain dangerous investment shaking, profit destroying talk. This blog recommends among the other strategies undertaken that Big Eddie buy a pol who is willing to talk tough when talking Purpose Driven Capitalism talk, e.g., someone like Paul LePage saying, “O.K. we have a small release of radioactive substances. So, you have to trundle around a few kids, look like cue balls. Big Deal!”

So what if there are almost 100 spent-fuel pools in the United States. So what if, “in a 1997 report for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory estimated that a severe pool fire—made possible by the loss of cooling water—could leave about 188 square miles uninhabitable and cause up to 28,000 cancer deaths.” These are scientists. Not economists. Not industry leaders.

We’ve got to get out there and fight this kind of reporting coming from the New York Times, “In Stricken Fuel-Cooling Pools, a Danger for the Longer Term.”

And, tell those sushi-lovers to stop acting like a bunch of girlie men. We don’t need more NYT stories like the one, eerily similar to reports from inside BP after the oil spill:

“They’re basically in a full-scale panic” among Japanese power industry managers, said a senior nuclear industry executive. The executive is not involved in managing the response to the reactors’ difficulties but has many contacts in Japan. “They’re in total disarray, they don’t know what to do.”

Gosh, do you think we could get Tony Hayward out of Siberian retirement. Now there was leadership.

And, reports about a valve sticking. We’ve got to put a stop to that sort of reporting toot sweet. There already are Three Mile Island references seeping into the media stream.

jcwinnie

The Oil Drum Fukushima Thread for 15 Mar is more dire than for 14 Mar. (On Mother Jones Kate Shepherd has a good, timeline of recent events.) The head of the French Nuclear Energy Safety Authority is saying International Atomic Energy Agency should raise the INES (International Nuclear Event Scale) level from 5 to 6 for the Japanese nuclear power stations damaged by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Reference Three Mile Island was a Level 5 event; Chernobyl a Level 7 event.

jcwinnie

On The Oil Drum Euan Mearns posts a compilation of recent events at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station.

He notes that Unit 4, shut down at time of incident, is causing the greatest concern at present because of large quantities of radioactive material outside of containment. The spent fuel rods kept underwater in the refueling floor have become uncovered. How much is not publicly known since radiation levels make it dangerous to get close to the spent fuel pool. It is unknown whether TEPCO and/or the Japanese federal government knows anymore from surveillance sensors / robotic survey.

France and the USA are sending charter planes to evacuate their nationals from Tokyo.

Guess the spin doctors were a bit too proactive on Grist and elsewhere.

BTW: In Twitterdom they are known as “sock puppets.” Indeed, the U.S. Army is paying a media company to devise a means to deploy sock puppet accounts on Twitter and Facebook.

jcwinnie

Gristz John Farrell argues that cost, not the Japan crisis, should scrub nuclear power.

jcwinnie

Speaking of falling forward steamed shrimp, toss in – The Onion, and Yes, Men, you having the makings of a decent Jambalayla. audio

** Spoiler **
Humor from America’s Finest News Service:

WASHINGTON—Responding to the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sought Thursday to reassure nervous Americans that U.S. reactors were 100 percent safe and posed absolutely no threat to the public health as long as no unforeseeable system failure or sudden accident were to occur.

“With the advanced safeguards we have in place, the nuclear facilities in this country could never, ever become a danger like those in Japan, unless our generators malfunctioned in an unexpected yet catastrophic manner, causing the fuel rods to melt down,” said NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko, insisting that nuclear power remained a clean, harmless energy source that could only lead to disaster if events were to unfold in the exact same way they did in Japan, or in a number of other terrifying and totally plausible scenarios that have taken place since the 1950s.

“When you consider all of our backup cooling processes, containment vessels, and contingency plans, you realize that, barring the fact that all of those safety measures could be wiped away in an instant by a natural disaster or electrical error, our reactors are indestructible.” Jaczko added that U.S. nuclear power plants were also completely guarded against any and all terrorist attacks, except those no one could have predicted.

jcwinnie

Speaking of catastrophes and wishful thinking, there was an error. Lindsey Graham won’t be vying for a Presidential position in 2014, The next election is in 2012. This blog didn’t want to think of it happening so soon.

jcwinnie

The NY Times reports, “The Tokyo Electric Power Company and the Japan Self-Defense Forces focused their efforts on Reactor No. 3 at the Fukushima plant, some 170 miles north of Tokyo, which contains a highly toxic fuel that includes reclaimed plutonium.”

jcwinnie

Careful, more than a passing resemblance to Revkin 2.0

jcwinnie

In response to ScienceBlogs satire, Renee G Berentsen Davis commented, “The harm from nuclear power is rarely publicized.”

“In Belarus, only 15-20% of babies are born healthy. Roche comforts children who are born with multiple holes in their heart, a condition known in Belarus as “Chernobyl heart.”

Another event that got much less coverage than Chernobyl was in the United States.

The Dresden 2 nuclear power plant in Grundy County, Illinois run by Exelon, is the nation’s largest nuclear energy producer. The Dresden plant and another Exelon-owned plant nearby had leaked millions of gallons of water contaminated with tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, into the surrounding environment. Some of it seeped into water supplies used by the Sauers and other local residents for drinking, bathing and cooking. Since the leaks, childhood leukemia has increased 49% and childhood brain cancer has increased 104%. Exelon hadn’t informed the community of the leak. After it became public, Exelon repaired the leak with duct tape.

http://www.poisonedforprofit.net/victims.php

She concludes with the warning: “We forget to add in the true costs of unclean technologies. Many are not known because of the nature of settlements from the lawsuits that prevent victims from going public.”

jcwinnie

Or volcanoes, Andy, I don’t think we have enough nuclear facilities built where there are seismic issues.

“When they set up Los Alamos initially, they didn’t care about these things. They were looking for an isolated site,” said [Greg] Mello [of the Los Alamos Study Group], who has studied seismic issues at the lab since 1996. . . . “Since then, many people have questioned the wisdom of putting a plutonium processing facility and now a nuclear pit manufacturing facility on the side of a volcano.”

jcwinnie

The National notes, “Fukushima Daiichi was stacked high with more uranium than it was originally designed to hold and had repeatedly missed mandatory safety checks over the past decade.” Of course, TEPCO is the only utility company operating nuclear power plants where such hubris existed / exists, right?

jcwinnie

SciAm Online reports that in the United States, “leaks, burst cooling pipes, faulty controls, misplaced fuel rods and engineers’ warnings about design flaws have done little to slow down approvals for continued operation of the nation’s aging nuclear plants.” Yes, including the ones built on fault lines.

jcwinnie

OTOH, the true believers and PR flaks do NOT believe that geothermal is safe. When the Fukushima Dai-ichi event was in its first few days, pro-nuclear protesters swarmed on a Grist re-post of Joe Romm post, “Will Japan be hit with multiple nuclear meltdowns in the wake of the tsunami?”

Note: This was early in the crisis when there was lots of “Don’t Panic, Remain Calm” talk from the Japanese government attempting to recover from the natural disaster and before TEPCO admitted that there had been damage to the core fuel integrity in reactors #1, #2 and #3 and a partial meltdowns suspected to have occurred in #2 reactor.

One pro-nuclear advocate bewailed the loss of electric power stating that nothing but nuclear could provide this first world country with base load. I suggested geothermal; and, a pro-nuclear advocate retorted that there were earthquakes associated with this choice; was that what I wished for the Japanese?

At the time, it reminded of previous discourse with the Big Gav about this risk. After all steam generators, no matter the source of the heat, are susceptible to earthquakes.

In any case, I withheld a defensive response, e.g., I consider Japan to be like Iceland where geothermal is successful or Hawaii where it is being considered. (Unsure where the newly financed project in Ireland also is comparable access.) I see the potential for those locations as different than deep drilling projects in Australia or the continental United States.

The Big Gav relayed a post from the Climate Spectator, “Geothermal to the Rescue in Japan?”, which prompted me to wish that I could see more trustworthy comparison between geothermal and nuclear.

jcwinnie

Is Bob Burnett advising the nuclear power industry to work on personality for upcoming elections in 2012?

In addition to housing six reactors, the Fukushima Daiichi site is a repository for forty years of spent fuel rods, an estimated 1914 tons including active fuel.

…despite having had 65 years to consider the problem, Nuclear Engineers have yet to come up with a common-sense solution for spent fuel.* (The spent nuclear fuel, no longer capable of sustaining a nuclear reaction, remains dangerously lethal for thousands of years and no reasonable person wants it stored in their neighborhood.) This had led to the great Yucca Mountain storage debate in the US and similar sagas throughout the world. At Fukushima Daiichi they “solved” the problem by keeping the spent fuel on site.

The U.S. has accepted these problems because we’ve been indoctrinated by a cult that’s facilitated our atomic energy addiction. America’s nuclear cult is ruled by what Admiral Hyman Rickover once called “the nuclear priesthood.”

A cult is a group that engages in “coercive persuasion” and for 65 years that’s been true of the U.S. atomic energy establishment. Our nuclear cult has six defining characteristics: First, people are placed in a “physically or emotionally distressing situation;” citizens are warned that if we don’t build nuclear power plants we will run out of electricity. Second, legitimate concerns are dissuaded by “one simple explanation;” we’re assured that our nuclear priests are smarter than the rest of us and their “science” will solve all problems. Third, converts typically fall under the spell of a “charismatic leader;” for four decades, Edward Teller mesmerized Washington with his exaggerated atomic energy claims, “nuclear power will be too cheap to meter.” (Teller was the model for Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.) Fourth, adherents savor a new powerful identity; the U.S. prides itself as being part of an exclusive nuclear “club.” Finally, cult members are isolated and “their access to information is severely controlled.” This, of course, is what has happened in Japan, where dissenting opinions were stifled and in many cases vital information was withheld; for example, what has happened to the fuel at Fukushima Daiichi reactor four.

As is the case with most cults, America’s nuclear priesthood has insisted upon special privileges. Thus, builders of American nuclear plants are granted legal immunity from lawsuits in the event of catastrophic events. And even when new information arises that would question facility safety, nuclear plant operators are give a free pass, told they do not have to submit to new tests or rules. (For example, they’ve ignored the new fault by California’s Diablo Canyon Nuclear Reactor.)

For 65 years the U.S. has been the victim of coercive persuasion administered by our nuclear priesthood. In light of the horrific Fukushima Daiichi events, it’s time for Americans to be deprogrammed. It’s time for us to kick our atomic-energy addiction and close all of our nuclear plants.

*Editor’s note: Not entirely true… There are 5th generation reactor designs that can use spent fuel as fuel. What do to with the waste from these reactors still is a problem.

jcwinnie

Morris Dancing on the Edge of Politics in the Zeros relays a tongue in cheek report, i.e., “A Tokyo Electric official told CNN that authorities are not sure why the levels spiked.”

“Radiation levels at Fukushima Dai-ichi?”

No, radiation in samples from the ocean off the nuclear plant are 1,250 times above normal.

Either the official (and Tokyo Electric) genuinely doesn’t know and thus should be fired and replaced by someone with actual competence or – more likely – he is is being mischevious with the facts, in which case he should be immediately arrested and frog-marched to jail.

Unbelievably, another official tried to imply that while such water would be dangerous to drink, it might not be hazardous for sea life. Okay Mr. Official, I want you to eat sushi from that area for a week. If you don’t end up hospitalized or glowing, then maybe the rest of us might try a nibble. But I’m guessing you won’t eat even a bite. Toyko Electric and the government act like this is all just some darned misperception that can be rectified by the correct application of PR spin. Good luck with that.

jcwinnie

As concern increases about the release of radioactive material from Unit #3 at Fukushima Dai-ichi, Raymond Learsy’s comforting thought for the day, AG readers, is that “pools holding spent fuels at nuclear plants in the United States are even more heavily loaded than those at the Japanese reactors.”

jcwinnie

Erich Pica suggests, “Don’t Jump to Conclusions About Nuclear Reactors. Look at the Facts and Say No”

“In 2010 alone, mechanical, electrical and human errors caused “near-misses” at reactors in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.” The Union of Concerned Scientists list “only includes events that caused plants to shut down, not ‘routine’ safety concerns like the aging drain pipes at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant that were leaking radioactive tritium into the groundwater.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is responsible for some pencil whipping after the Fukushima Dai-ichi event, has “allowed Vermont Yankee to continue operating.”

jcwinnie

And, in a Washington Theater performance, Senator Dianne Feinstein expounded, “I have a hard time understanding why the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not mandated a more rapid transfer of spent fuel to dry casks,”

Nice sound bite, Senator Feinstein, similar to the noise made about the coal ash ponds. Might we have an update on the progress being made to protect the public from further of these environmental catastrophes?

Back to the rhetorical question, imagine the fate of your career in the private energy industry, if you advocated all that extra cost of solid storage and they started to use the spent fuel (like scientists have shown how to make gasoline from recycled oil).

Better to invest on spin control and re-election campaigns, eh?

Not to mention impact. Even as a U.S. Senator, how much impact will you have upon world events over centuries, or even millennia? Those people near the uranium mines, coal strip mining, oil sand, the talk about 7 generations, pshaw, when you are in the nuclear energy business and release some plutonium with a 80,000 year half-life, now that surely is having an impact on the world.

Negative, sure, and who says negative advertising is unprofitable, eh?

jcwinnie

Somehow Tepco just got around to discovering an 8 inch crack in a concrete pit at a Fukushima reactor 2 that is leaking radioactive water into the ocean. This came days after radiation levels in the ocean were found to be high and after Tepco initially said it was impossible for water to be leaking into the ocean.

In other news, groundwater near the plant shows radioactive contamination.
And, in other news, concern grows about problems at another TEPCO site.
That’s about it for now. Having a glowing green day, AG comment readers.

jcwinnie

And, here is your Fukushima Dai-ichi INES 7 Thought for the Day, sheeple: One In Three US Citizens Live 50 Miles Or Less From A Nuclear Reactor