A federal lawsuit filed by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) led to the release of documents confirming details of the planned “Protective Action Guides” (PAGs) to be implemented, which include the new radically higher maximum allowable radiation levels.
PEER has accused the EPA of jeopardizing public health in favor of public relations.
From a PEER press release dated December 22, 2016:
“Following Japan’s Fukushima meltdown in 2011, EPA’s claims that no radioactivity could reach the U.S. at levels of concern were contradicted by its own rainwater measurements showing contamination from Fukushima throughout the U.S. well above Safe Drinking Water Act limits. In reaction, EPA prepared new limits 1000s of times higher than even the Fukushima rainwater because ‘EPA experienced major difficulties conveying to the public that the detected levels…were not of immediate concern for public health.’”
EPA kept details of new guidelines a secret
Although the EPA released its proposed PAGs for public comment, it conveniently neglected to include “all but four of the 110 radionuclides covered, and refused to reveal how much they were above Safe Drinking Water Act limits.”
Only after the PEER lawsuit forced the EPA to release the pertinent documents did it become clear how much the levels were to be increased. Even so, more than 60,000 people had already left comments in opposition of the proposed guidelines on the agency’s website.
Current drinking water radiation limits are defined under the Safe Drinking Water Act, established in the 1970s.
The documents obtained by PEER revealed that the EPA plans to raise maximum allowable limits of iodine-131, cobalt-60 and calcium-45 to more than 10,000 times the levels allowed under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Others would be hundreds or thousands of times higher under the new guidelines.
The agency’s justification for withholding the new proposed limits from the public until after the proposal had been adopted was that it wanted to “avoid confusion.”
The EPA deliberately hid the details not only from the public, but also from some of its own staff, according to PEER:
“The documents also reveal that EPA’s radiation division even hid the new concentrations from other divisions of EPA that were critical of the proposal, requiring repeated efforts to get them to even be disclosed internally.”
Even the George W. Bush administration’s attempt to introduce higher limits – a plan that was ultimately withdrawn – was modest in comparison to the levels proposed under the Obama EPA.
On December 1, outgoing EPA administrator Gina McCarthy gave final approval to all of the proposed PAGs – except for the drinking water standards. It’s unclear at this point whether she will actually approve the water section before leaving office, or whether she will leave the issue to the next administration to deal with.
Voice your opposition (before it’s too late)
There appears to be a good chance McCarthy will approve the rest of the PAGs before the changing of the guard, and there is still time to make your opposition to the proposals known.
It’s important to understand that higher allowable radiation limits will take pressure off the nuclear and fracking industries as well, which may be the real motivation for the establishment of the new guidelines – with Fukushima merely serving as an excuse to do so.
“The Dr. Strangelove wing of EPA does not want this information shared with many of its own experts, let alone the public,” said PEER executive director Jeff Ruch. “This is a matter of public health that should be promulgated in broad daylight rather than slimed through in the witching hours of a departing administration.”
If you would like to voice your opposition to the EPA plan, click here.
Sources:
]]>Article by JapanTimes
There have been increasing calls for decommissioning the power plant located just a few kilometers south of the wrecked Fukushima No. 1 installation.
The government has been finding it difficult to reach a clear conclusion on Fukushima No. 2’s fate, as it and Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings have been busy dealing with its older counterpart that suffered three reactor meltdowns following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
On Dec. 21, the Fukushima Prefectural Assembly voted unanimously to adopt a resolution calling on the central government to decommission the No. 2 plant “at an early date,” arguing that the facility is an obstacle to the prefecture’s recovery from the 3/11 disasters.
A temporary halt to the cooling system for a spent fuel pool at the No. 2 plant caused by an earthquake in November rekindled fears of another meltdown crisis.
In 2011, the prefectural assembly adopted a petition calling for decommissioning all reactors in Fukushima.
The assembly has also adopted a series of written opinions demanding the decommissioning of the No. 2 plant, which is located in the towns of Naraha and Tomioka.
Demands from local communities “have been ignored by the central government,” one person said.
The central government’s official position is that whether to decommission the plant is up to Tepco.
As the government has already lifted the state of emergency for the No. 2 plant, it has no authority to decide the decommissioning under current regulations.
If an exception were made, the central government could receive a barrage of requests for decommissioning reactors all over the country, sources familiar with the situation said.
“Such a situation would destroy Japan’s whole nuclear policy,” a senior official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said.
Some people have called for creating a special law on decommissioning Fukushima No. 2, but others have raised concerns that such a step could infringe on Tepco’s property rights, the sources said.
Some officials in the central government have said that no one believes the No. 2 plant can continue to exist.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Cabinet have left room for making a political decision on dismantling the facility, saying that the plant can’t be treated in the same way as other nuclear plants due to fear among Fukushima residents of another nuclear accident.
Since the government effectively holds a stake of more than 50 percent in Tepco, it can influence the company’s policy as a major shareholder.
But Tepco now needs to focus on dealing with the No. 1 plant. A senior company official said that it “cannot afford to decide on decommissioning, which would require a huge workforce.”
The main opposition Democratic Party plans to pursue a suprapartisan law that would urge Tepco to decide to decommission the plant at an early date.
“While understanding calls for early decommissioning, we have no choice but to wait for the No. 2 plant’s four reactors to reach the end of their 40-year lifetimes,” a lawmaker of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said.
The four reactors launched operations between April 1982 and August 1987
Read more at: japantimes.co
]]>Perhaps the word “tear” is misleading; it is actually one of the biggest faults on Earth and it runs right through the Ring of Fire, which is notorious for its volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Measuring about 60,000 square kilometers in area and 7 kilometers deep, it is roughly the size of Tanzania.
One big issue at play is the fact that earthquakes that already take place around the tear might make it slip, which would lead to violent tremors on the islands that surround it as energy is released in waves.
The other problem is its situation in the planet’s most seismically-active area. The Ring of Fire is home to 90 percent of the planet’s earthquakes. It stretches from New Zealand to the top of Australia, past Indonesia and Japan, down the West Coast of the U.S. and down to the bottom of South America.
Seismic activity hotbed
This area has been a hotbed of activity recently, with more than 100 people killed and 84,000 people left homeless following a 6.5-magnitude earthquake in western Indonesia earlier this month. A 6.9-magnitude quake shook the coast of Japan in already-troubled Fukushima last month, spurring tsunami waves. In August, Queensland, Australia, saw its biggest earthquake in the last two decades when a 5.8-magntiude quake hit the coast near Bowen.
In 2004, an enormous earthquake under the sea led to the tsunami that affected many countries in the Indian Ocean and left 170,000 people dead. The Ring of Fire was also home to the strongest earthquake ever recorded, a 9.5-magnitiude quake that hit Chile in the 1960s.
While the hole, which is called the Banda Detachment, is not exactly a new discovery, no one could say for sure exactly how it became so deep until now. After finally being able to see and document the fault, scientists have determined that it was created through a process known as subduction wherein one tectonic plate moves beneath another and is then forced downward, plunging through the crust into the mantle. It is hoped that the discovery will help to assess the dangers of tsunamis and earthquakes in the future.
Nuclear plants near fault lines pose grave dangers
An earthquake like the one in Japan last month could cause major problems around the world. The still-unrepaired nuclear fuel rod pools affected by the 2011 tsunami at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant are a serious risk to individuals as an event could cause gigantic clouds full of radioactive material to form in the Northern Hemisphere.
California has two nuclear reactors close to fault lines: San Onofre and Diablo Canyon. The reactor at San Onofre, which sits between San Diego and Los Angeles, was only built to withstand a 7.0 quake, while the Diablo Canyon plant can only handle quakes up to 7.5 in magnitude. It’s important to keep in mind that the quake that struck Japan in 2011 was 9.0 in magnitude, while the Fukushima plant was only built to handle quakes of up to 7.9 magnitude.
Another vulnerable area is Washington’s Hanford Reactor on the Columbia River. This facility is already leaking some radioactive coolant into the nearby groundwater and could lead to a tremendous amount of problems if the area is hit by a major earthquake.
If you live anywhere near the Ring of Fire, it’s a good idea to have a supply of iodine on hand. You’ll want to do everything you can to try to prevent your body from absorbing too much radioactive material. Organic survival food is another thing that can come in handy any place that is subjected to not only seismic activity but also extreme weather like hurricanes and tornadoes.
Sources:
]]>Facebook recently announced it would rely on SNOPES to “fact-check” news articles to make sure Facebook operated with high integrity standards and full transparency. In reality, the announcement was a thinly-veiled attempt to censor independent journalism by labeling real news “fake news” with the help of all the left-wing (actual) whores and fraudsters at SNOPES.
SNOPES has frequently labeled truthful reporting on vaccines, GMOs and false flag shootings to be “false” information, siding with liberals, President Obama and the corporate establishment on nearly every topic. While claiming it is an arbiter of truth, SNOPES really functions as just another liberal propaganda mouthpiece, declaring left-wing propaganda to be “truthful” while slamming anything that contradicts liberal ideology or Big Government narratives. In this way, SNOPES mirrors Politifact, which is also run by left-wing propagandists and mind manipulators.
SNOPES, “claims to be one of the web’s ‘essential resources’ and ‘painstaking, scholarly and reliable'” says the Daily Mail, which goes on to explain:
It was founded by husband-and-wife Barbara and David Mikkelson, who used a letterhead claiming they were a non-existent society to start their research. Now they are divorced – with Barbara claiming in legal documents he embezzled $98,000 of company money and spent it on ‘himself and prostitutes’.
Snopes.com founder David Mikkelson’s new wife Elyssa Young is employed by the website as an administrator… she has worked as an escort and porn actress and despite claims [that SNOPES] is non-political ran as a Libertarian for Congress on a ‘Dump Bush’ platform. Its main ‘fact checker’ is Kimberly LaCapria, whose blog ‘ViceVixen’ says she is in touch with her ‘domme side’ and has posted on Snopes.com while smoking pot.
This montage shows the original SNOPES founders (bottom right) alongside the “Vice Vixen” escort-porn star now working there:
“The CEO of Snopes.com, the fact-checking website that was recently named as one of Facebook’s “fake news” arbiters, has been accused in divorce proceedings of appropriating company funds which he allegedly spent on expensive holidays and prostitutes,” reports Breitbart.com.
The founders’ names are David Mikkelson and Barbara Mikkelson. Via Breitbart:
Barbara has claimed that her former husband embezzled money from the company. Court documents obtained by the Daily Mail state that Barbara accused David of “raiding the corporate business Bardav bank account for his personal use and attorney fees.” Barbara also claims that David embezzled $98,000 over four years, which “he expended upon himself and the prostitutes he hired.” Barbara claims that David spent $10,000 from their business accounts between April and June of 2016 to fund an expensive 24-day holiday for him and his “girlfriend.”
Here’s a composite of online posts from Elyssa Young, the new bride of David Mikkelson, who also ran an online escort posting. She’s now an administrator at SNOPES, which gives a whole new meaning of “prostitutes” aiding “presstitutes.”
Court documents: SNOPES CEO embezzled $98,000 to hire prostitutes
This divorce document states that SNOPES CEO David Mikkelson embezzled money from the company to hire prostitutes. As shown in the document below, courtesy of UK Daily Mail:
…embezzlement of $98,000 from our company over the course of four years, which were monies he expended upon himself and the prostitutes he hired…
In addition to marrying an escort service tease, David Mikkelson thinks he should be paid $720,000 a year to run the SNOPES left-wing propaganda website. Via the UK Daily Mail:
David wanted his salary raised from $240,000 to $360,000 – arguing that this would still put him below the ‘industry standards’ and that he should be paid up to $720,000 a year.
‘As I said, based on industry standards and our revenues, my salary should be about 2x to 3x what it is now,’ he wrote in an email to Barbara in April 2016. ‘I’ll settle for $360K with the understanding that it’s to be retroactive to the start of the year.’
Banging whores with “sweet liberal shill money”
“According to divorce papers, Snopes co-founder David Mikkelson started taking all sorts of trips around the world to bang whores after that sweet liberal shill money started rolling in,” reports Zero Hedge.
“While engaging in this debauchery, Mikkelson wrote off just about everything as a business expense, embezzling a reported $98,000. The Snopes co-founder has since settled down and married a [NSFW] part time porn actress, Snopes.com administrator (spicy!), and sex worker. As in, she has a website devoted to being a whore.”
Lying for the left also turns out to be incredibly profitable. “David kept their joint baseball card collection, a savings account with $1.59 million balance, and other savings worth more than $300,000,” reports the paper.
Here’s a photo of the SNOPES founders posing as complete slobs with their obese cat perched on a couch that looks ripped out of the 1970s. David’s expression almost seems to say, “What I really wanted was some VIP pu##y and all I got was this obese creature annoying the hell out of me… plus a cat!”
SNOPES CEO marries a prostitute who has been banged by men from around the world… is that “diversity?”
SNOPES CEO Mikkelson’s new wife, Elyssa Young, has been banged by so many other paying customers that you can actually find online reviews for her “services.”
This particular review states that she “travels overseas extensively” and is a great choice “if you seek a lover.”
Hiring and marrying actual whores to “services” the presstitutes in the fakestream media is all part of SNOPES’ “diversity” program, according to the CEO. “Our editorial staff is drawn from diverse backgrounds,” Mikkelson told the UK Daily Mail.
If he means diversity in sexually transmitted diseases, he’s probably right. Can you imagine the vast array of viral populations festering in the crotches of these despicable “fact-checking” sleazebags?
Another SNOPES fact-checker turns out to be a pot-smoking fetish gear sex blogger who thinks Republicans fear females
The bizarre, twisted “diversity” of SNOPES’ staff doesn’t end there. Another SNOPES “fact-checker” named Kim LaCapria is a fetish gear sex blogger, according to Breitbart.com:
Writing under the pseudonym Vice Vixen, Snopes fact-checker Kim LaCapria regularly wrote about sex and fetish gear on her own blog, which was described as a lifestyle blog “with a specific focus on naughtiness, sin, carnal pursuits, and general hedonism and bonne vivante-ery.” LaCapria’s blog often featured reviews of sex toys. One particular review reads, “If you are doing something to your fella, and you apply this to the base of his cash-and-prizes while you carry on, he will scream and perhaps cry.” On another blog, LaCapria once described what she did on her day off, writing that she “played scrabble, smoked pot, and posted to Snopes.” She then added, “That’s what I did on my day ‘on,’ too.”
Snopes “fact-checker” Kim LaCapria claimed on her personal blog that she has “posted to Snopes” after smoking marijuana. As TheDC previously revealed, LaCapria describes herself as “openly left-leaning” and once claimed that Republicans fear “female agency.”
Official “fact-checkers” turn out to be steeped in debauchery, betrayal and deviant behavior
What’s astonishing in all this is how Facebook has already announced it will rely on SNOPES to “fact-check” news articles. Because SNOPES has long been run by left-leaning liberal propagandists, everyone knows Facebook’s “fact-checking” is really just a new form of censorship to silence independent journalism.
The fact that left-wing propagandists also happen to be actual whores, and men who marry whores, and people who reportedly embezzle money to hire whores is no surprise to anyone. The political left has descended into cabal of liars, thieves, asshats and intolerant, abusive hate-mongers who have been widely rejected by most of civil society. Revelations about SNOPES only further confirm what we’ve all known about the opinion leaders on the left for quite some time: They’re mostly sick, twisted, mentally ill sociopaths who have no ethics, no morals and no dedication to actual truth. They lie when it’s convenient; they stab each other in the back (feel the Bern!); they have weird sex fetishes (Bill Clinton’s numerous sex assaults on women); they routinely cheat on each other (Bill Clinton is not Chelsea Clinton’s father); and they LIE, LIE, LIE while proclaiming that have a divine monopoly on “truth.”
That Mark Zuckerberg would appoint these people to “fact-check” Facebook news just makes Zuckerberg a sicko and a psycho. In doing so, he’s in good company with other globalist psychopaths like Jeff Bezos, George Soros, Bill Gates and Ted Turner. Other small-time propagandists who operate with a similar degree of fraud and deception include:
– Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia who launched the propaganda venture using money earned from being a porn king.
– Jon Entine, a biotech industry propagandist who was exposed by Natural News for being a violent psychopath who physically attacked his wife in front of their own child.
– James “the Amazing” Randi, who was caught on tape soliciting sex acts from young men.
James Randi, in turn, leads to David Gorski, the discredited “skeptics” blogger and cancer surgeon who has been reported to the FBI for a series of allegations involving the same cancer center where now-imprisoned cancer surgeon Dr. Farid Fata committed widespread criminal fraud by falsely diagnosing patients with cancer so he could profit from “treating” them.
All these people are leftists. What they have in common is their complete abandonment of truth, ethics and morality in their psychopathic quest for power. They are all willing to lie, cheat, steal, defame, slander or, in some cases, even murder people in order to get their way.
Oh wait, let me guess: SNOPES is going to investigate these accusations against SNOPES and proclaim that everything in this story is false. Therefore, all criticism of SNOPES is “fake news” by definition, because the authenticity of the monopolistic arbiter of news can never be questioned, you see.
The Ministry of Truth is alive and well in America, and it’s run by deviants, traitors and whores. If you believe anything you read on SNOPES, you’re a complete fool.
Ditch Facebook, Google, CNN and the WashingtonPost
All this helps explain why people are ditching Facebook, Google News, CNN, MSNBC and all the corrupt, twisted “mainstream” news sources and turning to independent, alternative news gateways.
To assist people in finding independent, truthful journalism run by intelligent, ethical people who don’t embezzle money to hire whores, here are several solutions:
CENSORED.news provides a near-real-time update of news headlines from all the popular independent media websites like Breitbart, NaturalNews, Infowars, Zero Hedge, Activist Post and more. (More sites being added soon.)
GoodGopher.com is an independent search engine that searches indy news website. It’s refreshed daily, and you can use it to find breaking news on all the topics that are routinely censored by the mainstream media. Click here to see a real-time search result for “SNOPES Elyssa Young”
FETCH.news brings you real-time news headlines on specific topics from across the independent media. There, you can monitor news feeds covering the DEA, FDA, FBI, CIA and the CDC. Or monitor news on topics like encryption, psychiatry, smart meters, population control or influenza.
AlternativeNews.com brings you real-time news headlines from across the Natural News universe of websites, including NewsTarget.com, Trump.news, TalkNetwork.com and more.
Share.NaturalNews.com is part of the Diaspora open source social network system, which is an uncensored alternative to Facebook. Thousands of former Facebook users have already migrated to Share.NaturalNews.com where every post appears in your feed.
Gab.ai is Twitter alternative where content is entirely uncensored. It’s still a relatively small site, but it’s growing rapidly. Find our feeds at Gab.ai/HealthRanger and Gab.ai/NaturalNews
]]>
In November, researchers from the Fukushima InFORM project detected the radioactive isotope Cesium-134 (Cs-134) in Canadian salmon. Then on December 9, researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution detected Cs-134 in seawater samples taken at two beaches in Oregon.
Because Cs-134 has a half life of only two years, any occurrence of the isotope in the environment must have come from Fukushima.
In 2011, a major earthquake and tsunami triggered multiple meltdowns at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Massive quantities of radioactive material spilled into the ocean, while further material ejected into the air also eventually found its way to sea. Since then, researchers have been tracking the progress of this “radioactive plume” as it is carried toward North America by ocean currents.
Plume still spreading
Chemical oceanographer Ken Buesseler of Woods Hole has been one of the primary scientists tracking the plume, by means of the crowd-funded, citizen science seawater sampling project Our Radioactive Ocean.
The radioactive samples were collected from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach in Oregon in January and February 2016. Sampling had previously shown the North American arrival of the plume in the form of Cs-134 in seawater collected from Vancouver Island, B.C.
The Fukushima InFORM project, which detected the radioactive salmon, is a partnership of various academic, government and nonprofit organizations, including Woods Hole, to assess the radiological risks to Canada’s oceans from the Fukushima disaster. The radioactive sockeye salmon was collected from Okanagan Lake in the summer of 2015.
The seawater also contained higher-than-background levels of Cs-137, another isotope that only occurs as a result of the nuclear industry. Because of nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s, however, levels of Cs-137 – which has a half-life of 30 years – still persist in the oceans. Levels higher than the background level leftover from these tests are likely due to Fukushima.
Scientists expect to rely more on Cs-137 for tracking Fukushima’s fallout as the years go on. Five years after the disaster, Cs-134 is already becoming increasingly hard to detect.
According to a recent analysis of Buesseler’s data by Fukushima InFORM, concentrations of Cs-137 in the central northeast Pacific have steadily increased since 2011.
“It appears that the plume has spread throughout this vast area from Alaska to California,” the researchers wrote.
Worse to come
Scientists say that the radioactivity levels detected do not currently pose risks to health or the environment. The levels of Cs-134 in the seawater were only 0.3 becquerels per cubic meter, while those in the salmon were more than a thousand times lower than those set as a health concern by Health Canada.
These levels are expected to keep increasing, however, as the bulk of the Fukushima plume has yet to reach North America.
“As the contamination plume progresses towards our coast we expect levels closer to shore to increase over the coming year,” said Jay Cullen, who leads Fukushima InFORM.
Data show that the plume is moving toward North America at about twice the speed of a garden snail.
Buesseler does not believe that radioactivity will ever reach dangerous levels at any one spot along the North American coast – unless Fukushima suffers from another disaster. In that case, the information on ocean currents being collected by Our Radioactive Ocean might prove invaluable.
The Fukushima Daiichi plant still contains more than a thousand giant tanks filled with radioactive water, while the failed reactors still contain hundreds of tons of molten fuel. In the worst-case scenario, the fuel would melt through its containment vessels and into the ground, uncontrollably irradiating groundwater that flows into the ocean.
“That’s the type of thing where people are still concerned, as am I, about what could happen,” Buesseler said.
Decommissioning and cleaning up the Fukushima plant is expected to take decades. A government panel recently doubled the cost projections for the project to $190 billion.
Sources for this article include:
]]>The amazing and somewhat terrifying animation proceeds at a rate of 30 days per second, and reveals a great deal of constant activity around the globe – particularly along major fault lines located where tectonic plates collide, such as those of the Pacific “Ring of Fire.”
From the YouTube description of the video:
“The earthquake hypocenters first appear as flashes then remain as colored circles before shrinking with time so as not to obscure subsequent earthquakes. The size of the circle represents the earthquake magnitude while the color represents its depth within the earth.”
After showing the time-sequenced earthquake history, the video next shows all of the quakes from the 15-year period simultaneously. Then, earthquakes greater than 6.5 magnitude – ones big enough to trigger a tsunami – are shown.
Finally, the map shows only earthquakes with a magnitude of 8.0 or higher from the 15-year period.
It’s easy to see where the major activity occurs – along the Pacific Ring of Fire, which includes the west coast of the United States, Canada, Central and South America, as well as Japan, China’s coastal regions and many Pacific island nations.
Surprisingly, many of the world’s nuclear reactors are situated along the Pacific Ring of Fire and numerous other major fault lines.
The 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck off the coast of Japan in 2011 was the most serious example of what can happen when a nuclear plant is not only built near a major tectonic fault line, but next to the sea as well.
The resulting tsunami caused a major nuclear accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant – one that has still not been resolved or cleaned up. The Fukushima plant was built to withstand only a 7.9 magnitude quake – despite the fact that an earthquake of 8.0 magnitude or greater has struck northeastern Japan once every century for the last 400 years.
United States also at risk of a Fukushima-type accident
An earthquake-triggered nuclear accident on the scale of Fukushima – or worse – could easily happen in the United States.
From News Focus:
“California, the land of earthquakes, has two nuclear reactors built near fault lines, Diablo Canyon and San Onofre. The alarming prospect is that the Diablo Canyon plant was only designed with a maximum stress level of 7.5. The San Onofre plant, built between the major metropolitan areas of San Diego and Los Angeles, has a maximum stress level of only 7.0. Again, all of this in prime earthquake country.”
The San Onofre plant, which is situated close to the ocean, has a concrete wall designed to withstand a 25 foot tsunami. The tsunami that struck Japan in 2011 was 33 feet high.
The Hanford Reactor, situated on the Columbia River in the state of Washington, is another potential disaster site. The aging facility with its eight reactors is already leaking radioactive coolant into the groundwater and could pose a huge risk to the entire region and beyond if a major earthquake occurred in the area.
Why are nuclear power plants being built on fault lines?
How could anyone be so stupid as to build a nuclear reactor along a major fault line? A 2011 report published by Harvard Law School may provide at least a partial answer.
In the paper – titled “Why Power Companies Build Nuclear Reactors on Fault Lines: The Case of Japan” – author J. Mark Ramseyer argues that the reason the Tokyo Electric Company built its reactor on a known fault line was because it knew it “would not pay the full cost of a melt-down anyway.”
“In nuclear power, ‘unpayable’ potential liability is routine,” Ramseyer wrote. “Privately owned companies bear the costs of an accident only up to the fire-sale value of their net assets. Beyond that point, they pay nothing.”
In other words – at least in the case of Tokyo Electric and the Fukushima plant – companies who build nuclear plants are not financially liable for the potential damage they may cause.
And so it appears that they can build them wherever they want.
Sources:
]]>Article by Tracy Lowe
Cesium-134, the so-called fingerprint of Fukushima, was measured in seawater samples taken from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach in Oregon, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are reporting.
Because of its short half-life, cesium-134 can only have come from Fukushima.
Also for the first time, cesium-134 has been detected in a Canadian salmon, the Fukushima InFORM project, led by University of Victoria chemical oceanographer Jay Cullen, is reporting.
In both cases, levels are extremely low, the researchers said, and don’t pose a danger to humans or the environment.
Massive amounts of contaminated water were released from the crippled nuclear plant following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. More radiation was released to the air, then fell to the sea.
Woods Hole chemical oceanographer Ken Buesseler runs a crowd-funded, citizen science seawater sampling project that has tracked the radiation plume as it slowly makes its way across the Pacific Ocean.
The Oregon samples, marking the first time cesium-134 has been detected on U.S. shores, were taken in January and February of 2016 and later analyzed. They each measured 0.3 becquerels per cubic meter of cesium-134.
Buesseler’s team previously had found the isotope in a sample of seawater taken from a dock on Vancouver Island, B.C., marking its landfall in North America.
Meanwhile, in Canada, Cullen leads the InFORM project to assess radiological risks to that country’s oceans following the nuclear disaster. It is a partnership of a dozen academic, government and non-profit organizations, including Woods Hole.
Last month, the group reported that a single sockeye salmon, sampled from Okanagan Lake in the summer of 2015, had tested positive for cesium-134.
The level was more than 1,000 times lower than the action level set by Health Canada, and is no significant risk to consumers, Cullen said.
Buesseler’s most recent samples off the West Coast also are showing higher-than background levels of cesium-137, another Fukushima isotope that already is present in the world’s oceans because of nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s.
Those results will become more important in tracking the radiation plume, Buesseler said, because the short half-life of cesium-134 makes it harder to detect as time goes on.
Cesium-134 has a half-life of two years, meaning it’s down to a fraction of what it was five years ago, he said. Cesium-137 has a 30-year half-life.
A recent InFORM analysis of Buesseler’s data concluded that concentrations of cesium-137 have increased considerably in the central northeast Pacific, although they still are at levels that pose no concern.
“It appears that the plume has spread throughout this vast area from Alaska to California,” the scientists wrote.
They estimated that the plume is moving toward the coast at roughly twice the speed of a garden snail. Radiation levels have not yet peaked.
“As the contamination plume progresses towards our coast we expect levels closer to shore to increase over the coming year,” Cullen said.
Even that peak won’t be a health concern, Buesseler said. But the models will help scientists model ocean currents in the future.
That could prove important if there is another disaster or accident at the Fukushima plant, which houses more than a thousand huge steel tanks of contaminated water and where hundreds of tons of molten fuel remain inside the reactors.
In a worst-case scenario, the fuel would melt through steel-reinforced concrete containment vessels into the ground, uncontrollably spreading radiation into the surrounding soil and groundwater and eventually into the sea.
“That’s the type of thing where people are still concerned, as am I, about what could happen,” Buesseler said.
Scientists now know it would take four to five years for any further contamination from the plant to reach the West Coast.
[email protected], 503-399-6779 or follow at Twitter.com/Tracy_Loew
Tracking the plume
Scientists are beginning to use an increase in cesium-137 instead of the presence of cesium-134 to track the plume of radioactive contamination from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster. These figures show the increase in cesium-137 near the West Coast between 2014 and 2015.
Graphic courtesy Dr. Jonathan Kellogg of InFORM, with data from Dr. John Smith, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Dr. Ken Buesseler, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
Our Radioactive Ocean
Learn more about Ken Beusseler’s crowd-funded, citizen-science seawater sampling project at http://www.ourradioactiveocean.org/.
See test results at http://www.ourradioactiveocean.org/results.html.
Read more at: statesmanjournal.com
]]>Article by Motoko Rich
Tuesday’s quake quickly brought evacuation warnings along the coast that was ravaged just over five years ago. For about 90 minutes, fears of the 2011 nuclear disaster were raised as a cooling system in one reactor in another nearby plant shut down. It was restored without incident.
The public broadcaster NHK exhorted residents of Fukushima Prefecture to leave coastal areas immediately. “Please move as far away from the shoreline as possible,” the announcer said. “Please remember the Great East Japan earthquake.”
A tsunami wave of about 55 inches hit the port of Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture about an hour and a half after the quake hit, and NHK said minor injuries had been reported. The first tsunami waves hit the coast at Onahama in Fukushima Prefecture at about 23 inches. At the Fukushima nuclear plant, the tsunami waves rose to about three feet. No deaths were immediately reported.
The Japanese weather service reported a preliminary magnitude of 7.4 and issued a warning of a tsunami of about 10 feet. (The United States Geological Survey reported a lower magnitude, 6.9.)
The warnings were lifted in the early afternoon, and people were allowed to return to their homes.
The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, reported that a cooling system in one of the reactors at Fukushima Daini, a nuclear facility not far from the ruined Daiichi plant, had stopped but said there was enough water in the reactor to keep the 2,544 spent fuel rods cool in the short term. But the utility later said the system had resumed operations after 90 minutes.
The Fukushima Daini power station, about seven miles south of Daiichi, has not produced electricity since the 2011 calamity, in which it suffered earthquake damage. Most of Japan’s nuclear power plants have been shut down since soon after the disaster amid public concern about their safety. Fukushima Daini’s reactors are turned off, but the plant still has uranium fuel in a storage pool that must be kept cool by pumping water through the reactors.
After the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami five years ago, three reactors at the Daiichi plant melted down after tsunami waves breached the power station’s protective sea walls and inundated the facility. The water flooded buildings and destroyed diesel-powered electricity generators that were supposed to keep critical systems functioning in a blackout.
Since the 2011 disaster, Tepco has been cleaning up and has started the decommissioning process. Officials reported that they found no damage or radiation release after initial inspections Tuesday morning.
Tepco has struggled with the aftermath of the 2011 disaster. About 7,000 workers, most of them contractors, are still at the site for the cleanup and decommissioning, which is projected to take as long as 40 years. One of the biggest problems is the huge amount of hazardous waste that has been generated. There are more than 700 tanks, about 1,000 tons each, that workers have built to store water that has continuously seeped into the melted reactors from the ground since the disaster. After Tuesday’s earthquake, Tepco said it had suspended the transfer of contaminated water to the tanks.
In an effort to stem the groundwater flow, Tepco has built an underground wall of frozen dirt 100 feet deep and nearly a mile in length in an effort to halt the flood of groundwater into the damaged reactor buildings. The so-called ice wall is not yet fully frozen, and groundwater continues to flow into the reactors every day.
Tepco appeared to have learned some lessons from the 2011 disaster, when it failed to give timely updates. On Tuesday, Tepco released information about the status of its plants almost immediately.
At the peak of the 2011 nuclear disaster, 160,000 people fled or were evacuated from around the plant. Almost 90,000 people have not returned.
The disaster also fundamentally changed the course of nuclear power in energy-poor Japan, which had invested heavily in its 50-odd nuclear power stations in its quest to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and energy imports.
On Tuesday, the government was taking no chances on warning residents in tsunami zones to evacuate. Sirens rang continuously in the communities near the coast. NHK, the public broadcaster, kept a huge red banner on the top of the screen all morning reading, “Flee immediately!”
The 2011 disaster killed almost 16,000 people as sea waves rose as high as 130 feet at Miyako in Iwate Prefecture. An additional 2,500 were reported missing and never found.
Read more at: nytimes.com
]]>Article by Chron.com
Back in 2011, the once-flourishing city was devastated after a tsunami caused a nuclear meltdown. Now it is trying to ramp up tourism by paying people to visit the recovering area.
Of course, most good things come with a catch. The city will pay for everything as long as the travelers agree to promote Fukushima on social media.
Their plan is that people will see some of the photos of the province and want to travel there, and it seems to be working because tourism has been significantly increasing.
Read more at: chron.com
]]>The earthquakes and subsequent tsunami which inundated the Daiichi nuclear facility on March 11, 2011 have been well-documented. We all know that the design and location of the plant made it extremely vulnerable to the multiple reactor meltdowns that occurred. We are also well aware of policy failures that led to evacuation in to the path of radiation for some as well as the lies told to the public about the depth of the crisis and the reality of the meltdown. (1) The result was the destruction of the bond of trust between the Japanese government and the people of Japan.
Article by David Wagner
As in many places around the world, entrenched special interests have taken precedence over the will of the people. What became crystal clear to me from the Fukushima experience was how easy it was for unelected officials (bureaucrats), who are beholden to no one, to make decisions affecting the people of Japan with no consequence to their seats of power. Even in the private sector, few have been punished for their negligence. Making matters worse, the Tokyo Electric Power Company – the epicenter of the entire calamity – continues to run the facility as costs to clean the containment buildings skyrocket. The “ice wall” – that $320 million dollar effort to stop water from reaching the ocean – has yet to work as promised. (2)
There are any number of remaining risks at Fukushima which deserve continuing attention and action by the decision-makers of Japan. In my mind, there is no greater risk to Japan at present than the hundreds of tanks containing highly radioactive waste water sitting on the plant site a few meters from the ocean – the same site where only 6 years ago waves reaching 40 meters smashed up along the coast. (3) Let us also not forget the many thousands of bags holding contaminated soil also near the site. Imagine what could happen if another catastrophic earthquake produced tsunami of similar height now. The potential for these storage tanks to rupture or completely collapse is immense. And what would happen to all the highly contaminated water and sacks of soil? They would firstly be drawn inland by the power of the incoming waves only to be pulled back in to the ocean as the waves subsided.
To this day, there has not been a clearly agreed-upon solution to deal with this disaster- waiting-to-happen. No ocean wall has been built to protect the massive site. So the tanks and bags just sit there.
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/world/asia/27collusion.html
(2) http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/science/fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-plant-cleanup-ice-wall.html?_r=0
(3) http://nautil.us/blog/no-one-knows-what-to-do-with-fukushimas-endless-tanks-of-radioactive-water