Pro-Nuke Climate Scientists Should Go to Fukushima Four

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Sunday November 03, 2013 · 9:01 PM PST

2013/11/03 · 21:01

Four climate scientists have made a public statement claiming nuclear power is an answer to global warming.

Before they proceed, they should visit Fukushima, where the Tokyo Electric Power Company has moved definitively toward bringing down the some 1300 hot fuel rods from a pool at Unit Four.

Which makes this a time of global terror.

In response more than 150,000 petition signatures from www.nukefree.org and others will be delivered at the United Nations this Thursday, November 7, asking for a global response to this disaster.

Since March 11, 2011, fuel assemblies weighing some 400 tons, containing more than 1500 extremely radioactive fuel rods, have been suspended 100 feet in the air above Fukushima Daiichi’s Unit Four. “If you calculate the amount of cesium 137 in the pool, the amount is equivalent to 14,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs," says Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute. Former US Department of Energy official Robert Alvarez, an expert on fuel pool fires, calculates potential fallout from Unit Four at ten times greater than what came from Chernobyl.

Tokyo Electric Power says it may start moving these fuel rods as early as November 8. Using computerized controls, such an operation might take take about 100 days. But because of the damage done to the assemblies, the fuel pool and the supporting building, the job must be coordinated manually. Tepco says it could take a year, but that requires an optimism the company’s track record doesn’t warrant.

The assemblies were pulled from Unit Four’s core for routine maintenance just prior to the disaster. When the quake and tsunami hit, the pool lost coolant.

Reactor fuel pellets are encased in long tubes made of zirconium alloy, which is extremely flammable when exposed to air.

The United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that at least some of the rods caught fire. There’s no hardened containment over the Fukushima fuel pools, so substantial quantities of radiation were spewed directly into the atmosphere.

Fully aware of its corrosive effects, Tepco had little choice but to pour in seawater. The fuel rods are almost certainly embrittled and crumbling. Random debris has been seen in the pool.

Unit Four’s structure is buckling from the quake and from an explosion possibly linked to hydrogen. The building is tipping and sinking into the sea of mud created by massive quantities of water which has been flowing down from the mountains and carrying contamination into the ocean. A typhoon has just dumped ten more inches of rain onto the site. Yet another is apparently on its way.

The site has been thankfully spared another massive quake since the big one thirty-two months ago. But should the Unit Four pool crash to the ground, or an assembly be dropped, or a fuel rod crumble or break in transit, the ensuing releases could cripple critical electronic equipment and require evacuation of all workers. Humankind could be left standing helpless, as almost happened when Tepco contemplated abandoning the site altogether as the disaster began.

There are some 11,000 fuel rods now scattered around the Fukushima site. More than 6,000 sit in a pool just 50 meters from the base of Unit Four.

The exact location and status of the melted cores from Units One, Two and Three remain uncertain. Millions of tons of water have been poured into their proximate location to keep them cool. Much of that contaminated water is being stored in more than a thousand leaky tanks that could not withstand a strong earthquake.

Japan’s Prime Minister Abe has finally asked for global help in dealing with Fukushima’s water problems. US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has offered America’s help.

But nothing short of a full-on global presence will do. The bring-down of the fuel rods from Unit Four is a terrifying unknown. There’s no precedent for an operation of this scope, precision or potential fallout.

At very least it demands fullest possible attention from all the world’s best scientists and engineers. The global media must power through the Abe Administration’s crack-down on the flow of information. And we must all direct our full awareness to what is about to happen at Fukushima.

Unfortunately, it’s no exaggeration to say that our survival may depend on it.

It's also clear that before anyone advocates MORE nuclear power, they should take a good long look at what's going at Fukushima. And if they are claiming atomic expertise, maybe they should jump in to help.

Boston's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers Help Heal the Hub

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Saturday November 02, 2013 · 6:50 PM PDT

2013/11/02 · 18:50

Harvey Wasserman

Boston’s fabulous furry freak brothers help heal the hub
November 2, 2013

A bunch of crazy-looking bearded freaks have just won the World Series. YEAH!!!!

They’re our beloved 2013 Boston Red Sox, led by the massively good-humored Dominican slugger David “Big Papi” Ortiz and a Japanese relief pitcher half his size.

All season they’ve played like a cross between Biblical zealots on fire for their craft and crazed hippies out dancing around the campfire---just like it should be when grown men devote themselves to a kid's game.

They pull each others’ beards, laugh, high five, yell and hit. And they have just now blown organized baseball, with all its slick hype and moneyball millions, back to where it belongs.

So too the Hub, city of my birth.

This spring it was shattered by a senseless bombing at our gorgeous Marathon. For more than a century the town faithful have packed streets once run by the Sons of Liberty, now by Marathon runners from everywhere, conquering Heartbreak Hill to bask in the glories of a hard-win finish and a tank of Sam Adams.

It was hellish to have all that so insanely assaulted. It’s a hurt that will never entirely go away.

But in 2001, after the Word Trade Centers went down, the New York Yankees won the World Series. For the first (and only) time many of us actually rooted for the Bronx Bombers.

After Katrina and official negligence horribly hammered New Orleans, the Saints won their first and only Superbowl.

Now the Red Sox have come to salve us. This was the last major league team to bring a black man onto its roster. It hasn’t won a World Series at home since 1918, when the Babe was still a babe.

But it’s also been a club with sense enough to not tear down Fenway Park, the Sistine Chapel of baseball.

Last year they hired an uptight, unworthy coach and finished last. This year they dumped him and some overpaid superstars and put together an actual TEAM. A bunch of very talented guys who love baseball and each other. They proved beyond a 5 o’clock shadow that intangibles DO matter, that no matter how much blood money is sloshing around the world of sport, it’s still a game.

And that those who are loose enough to PLAY it and hug each other while doing so can win it all.

For decades Boston hosted the opposite. They were led by my childhood hero, Ted Williams, maybe the greatest of all natural hitters.

Now he seems a sour, tortured soul. The Sox always had great talent around him, but never won it all. In Fenway with my grampa, we saw him hit a beautiful low, looping line drive home run to right, then spit at a fan in left who was heckling him. What was it like in that clubhouse?

John Updike’s “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu” immortalized Ted’s last game. In a prose poem that revolutionized sports writing, we are in a Fenway frenzy on September 28, 1960, as Williams comes to the plate for his final at bat. Right out of the story books, he clobbers a homer to the deepest part of center field. The whole city goes crazy, weeping, cheering, stomping, bowing to one of baseball’s greatest statistical careers.

But Ted Williams could not bring himself to come out of the dugout to tip his hat or hold his heart. For ten, fifteen, twenty minutes they cheered. And he sat there, until silence once again reigned.

All that’s behind us now. “This is our fucking city,” Big Papi yelled at the Fenway memorial for the Marathon’s dead.

The season that’s unfolded has been a joy to behold. There were no bad guys. The Dodgers, Pirates, Tigers, Cards....they were all fine teams of decent spirit.

But they didn’t shave their heads, then pull at each other’s facial hairs when they hit home runs. They didn’t have Koji Uehara who can’t speak English, or Big Papi who seems to invent his own. They didn’t prove once again that the “intangibles” like fun, camaraderie, goofiness and loving the game can win championships.

That baseball is, after all, a beautiful ballet, meant to be embraced for its own sake.

For a city still healing, and for so many of us daily buried in places like Fukushima and global warming, long hours and the legal tender, it has been a wonderful confirmation.

Thanks, guys. Thank you thank you thank you.

------------------------

Harvey Wasserman edits Nuke Free and wrote SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH. In his youth, he played left field (of course).

Robert Stone Must Film Fukushima Now

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Monday October 28, 2013 · 9:21 PM PDT

2013/10/28 · 21:21

We are in desperate need of documentary filmmakers at Fukushima.

The Japanese government is about to pass a national censorship law clearly meant to make it impossible to know what’s going on there.

Massive quantities of radioactive water have been flowing through the site since the 3/11/11 earthquake/tsunami.

At thousand flimsy tanks hold still more thousands of tons of radioactive water which would pour into the Pacific should they collapse.

An earthquake and two typhoons have have just hit there, flushing still more radioactive water into the sea.

The corrupt and incompetent Tokyo Electric Power Company will soon try moving 400 tons of supremely radioactive rods from a damaged Unit Four fuel pool, an operation that could easily end in global catastrophe. The rods contain 14,000 times as much radioactive cesium as was released at the bombing of Hiroshima.

Nobody knows the exact location of the melted cores from Units One, Two and Three or whether they are still fissioning.

Reuters and others report criminal involvement, slashed wages, inhuman working conditions, serious shortages and lack of training in what has become an extremely dangerous labor crisis.

Intensely radioactive hotspots have turned up throughout Japan, including some that threaten human life in Tokyo and make cast a pall on the upcoming Olympics.

At least one report indicates a massive dead zone in the Pacific apparently caused by radiation pouring in from the site. Tuna contaminated with radiation from Fukushima have been caught off the California coast, and there are widespread reports other marine life disappearing throughout the Pacific.

With the information flow from Fukushima apparently about to go dark, the presence of independent media and researchers has become more critical than ever.

Petitions with more than 140,000 signatures asking for a global takeover of the Fukushima site will be delivered to the United Nations November 7. The ask is for a transnational team of world’s best scientists and engineers to guarantee that all necessary resources are available to deal with this crisis.

Robert Stone has made a high budget dis-infomercial sponsored by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen, whose cohort Bill Gates has bet heavily on new nukes. Called “Pandora’s Promise,” Stone’s promoters have refused to send us a review copy. We’re told it mocks industry opponents without actually interviewing them, while downplaying the killing power of atomic radiation. It’s scheduled to air on CNN without a balancing point of view.

A trip to Fukushima might change Stone’s mind. He’s worked in the past with Michael Moore, one of our greatest investigative documentarians. Using Michael’s aggressive techniques, we want him to bring back critical information that could make a difference.

At very least we desperately need to know more about the11,000 intensely radioactive fuel rods on site, the three missing reactor cores, the proposed bring-down of the Unit Four fuel rods, the potential for still more explosions, the labor crisis, the unending flow of potentially lethal radiation into the biosphere, and much more.

The fate of the Earth may now hang at the mercy of a widely distrusted corporation and far-right government intent on blacking out that site.

Dr. James Hanson, an important climate scientist, has expressed his support for atomic energy, and would make a fitting co-worker on this trip.

Along the way, Mr. Stone, you might check out Japan’s massive new offshore wind turbines whose promise is to replace all the reactors this disaster has forced shut.

But as a hired industry gun, you need above all to tell us what’s happening at Fukushima...before the lights go out.

Our future could well depend on how honestly you undertake this critical task. Please report back as soon as possible.

Is Japan's Abe Being Honest About Fukushima?

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Friday October 11, 2013 · 2:01 AM PDT

2013/10/11 · 02:01

Japan’s pro-nuclear Prime Minister has finally asked for global help at Fukushima.

It probably hasn’t hurt that more than 100,000 people have signed petitions (www.nukefree.org ) calling for a global takeover; more than 8,000 have viewed a new YouTube on it ( http://www.nukefree.org/... ).

Massive quantities of heavily contaminated water are pouring into the Pacific Ocean, dousing workers along the way. Hundreds of huge, flimsy tanks are leaking untold tons of highly radioactive fluids.

At Unit #4, more than 1300 fuel rods, with more than 400 tons of extremely radioactive material, containing potential cesium fallout comparable to 14,000 Hiroshima bombs, are stranded 100 feet in the air
( http://www.nukefree.org/... )

All this more than 30 months after the 3/11/2011 earthquake/tsunami led to three melt-downs and at least four explosions.

“Our country needs your knowledge and expertise” he has said to the world community. “We are wide open to receive the most advanced knowledge from overseas to contain the problem.”
( http://www.nukefree.org/... ).

But is he serious?

“I am aware of three US companies with state of the art technology that have been to Japan repeatedly and have been rebuffed by the Japanese government,” says Arnie Gundersen, a Vermont-based nuclear engineer focussed on Fukushima.

“I have spoken with six Japanese medical doctors who have said that they were told not to discuss radiation induced medical issues with their patients. None will speak out to the press.

“Three American University professors...were afraid to sign the UN petition to Ban Ki-Moon because it would endanger their Japanese colloquies who they are doing research with.”

Abe, he says (to paraphrase it politely), might not be entirely forthcoming.

Fukushima Daiichi is less than 200 miles from Tokyo. Prevailing winds generally blow out to sea---directly towards the United States, where Fukushima’s fallout was measured less than a week after the initial disaster.

But radioactive hot spots have already been found in Tokyo. A worst-case cloud would eventually make Japan an uninhabitable waste-land. What it could do to the Pacific Ocean and the rest of us downwind approaches the unthinkable.

“If you calculate the amount of cesium 137 in the pool” at Unit #4, “the amount is equivalent to 14,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs,” says Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute ( http://www.nukefree.org/... ).

The Unit #4 fuel assemblies were pulled for routine maintenance just prior to the earthquake/tsunami. An International Atomic Energy Agency document says they were exposed to the open air, did catch fire and did release radiation.
( http://www.nukefree.org/... ).

Since none of the six GE-designed Daiichi reactors has a containment over the fuel pools, that radiation poured directly into the atmosphere. Dozens more designed like these reactors operate in the US and around the world.

Then corrosive sea water was dumped into the pool.

Unit #4 was damaged in the quake, and by an explosion possibly caused by hydrogen leaking in from Unit #3. It shows signs of buckling and of sinking into soil turning to mud by water flowing down from the mountains, and from attempts to cool the cores missing from Units #1, #2 and #3.

Tokyo Electric Power and the Japanese government may try to bring down the Unit #4 rods next month. With cranes operated by computers, that might normally take about 100 days. But this requires manual control. Tepco says they’ll try to do it in a year (half their original estimate) presumably to beat the next earthquake.

But the pool may be damaged and corroded. Loose debris is visible. The rods and assemblies may be warped. Gundersen says they’re embrittled and may be crumbling.

Some 6,000 additional rods now sit in a common storage pool just 50 meters away. Overall some 11,000 rods are scattered around the site.
( http://www.nukefree.org/... )
Vital as it is, bringing Unit #4’s rods safely down is a just a small step toward coping with the overall mess.

Should just one rod fall or ignite, or buildings collapse, or cooling systems fail, radiation levels at the site could well force all humans to leave. Critical electronic equipment could be rendered unworkable. The world might then just stand helpless as the radioactive fires rage.
( http://www.nukefree.org/... )

Gundersen long ago recommended Tepco dig a trench filled with zeolite to protect the site from the water flowing down from the mountains. He was told there was not enough money available to do the job.

Now Prime Minister Abe wants an “ice wall” to run a mile around the site. No such wall that size has ever been built, and this one could not be in place for at least two years.

Gundersen and 16 other experts have filed a list of suggestions with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Thus far there’s been no official response.
( http://www.nukefree.org/... )

Abe’s request for global help with Fukushima’s water problems may be a welcome start.

But the fuel rods at Unit #4 embody our Earth’s most serious immediate crisis.

The team in charge of bringing them down must embody all the best minds our species can muster, along with every ounce of resource we can bring to bear.

The whole world must be watching as this operation begins.

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