TEPCO to Dump Fukushima Radiation Into the Pacific Ocean

by WashingtonsBlog

TEPCO is planning on dumping all of the radioactive water stored at Fukushima into the ocean.

The industry-controlled nuclear regulators are pushing for dumping the radiation, as well.

As EneNews reports:

Juan Carlos Lentijo, head of IAEA’s mission to Fukushima Daiichi, Dec. 4, 2013: “Controlled discharge is a regular practice in all the nuclear facilities in the world. And what we are trying to say here is to consider this as one of the options to contribute to a good balance of risks and to stabilize the facility for the long term.”

Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, Dec. 4, 2013: “You cannot keep storing the water forever. We have to make choice comparing all risks involved.”

Xinhua, Dec. 4, 2013: Lentijo said that TEPCO should weigh the possible damaging effects of discharging toxic water against the total risks involved in the overall decommissioning work process. [...] Tanaka highlighted the fact that while highly radioactive water could be decontaminated in around seven years, the amount of water containing tritium will keep rising, topping 700,000 tons in two years. [...] nuclear experts have repeatedly pointed out that [tritium] is still a significant radiation hazard when inhaled, ingested via food or water, or absorbed through the skin. [...] fisherman, industries and fisheries bodies in the Fukushima area and beyond in Japan’s northeast, have collectively baulked at the idea of releasing toxic water into the sea [...] TEPCO will be duty-bound to submit assessments of the safety and environmental impact [...]

NHK, Dec. 4, 2013: IAEA team leader Juan Carlos Lentijo [...] said it is necessary and indispensable to assess the impact the tritium discharge might have on human health and the environment, and to get government approval as well as consent from concerned people.

Japan Times, Dec. 4, 2013: “Of course . . . public acceptance for this purpose is necessary,” said Lentijo, adding strict monitoring of the impact of the discharge would also be essential.

AFP, Dec. 4, 2013: [L]ocal fishermen, neighbouring countries and environmental groups all oppose the idea.

See also: Gundersen: They want to dump all Fukushima’s radioactive water in Pacific — Tepco: It will be diluted, then released — Professor suggests pumping it out in deep ocean (VIDEOS)

In the real world, there is no safe level of radiation.

And there are alternatives.

Dr. Arjun Makhijani – a recognized expert on nuclear power, who has testified before Congress, served as an expert witness in Nuclear Regulatory Commission proceedings, and has been interviewed by many of the largest news organizations – told PBS in March:

We actually sent a proposal to Japan two years ago, some colleagues of mine and I, saying you should park a supertanker or a large tanker offshore, and put the water in it, and send it off someplace else so that the water treatment and the water management is not such a huge, constant issue. But [the Japanese declined].

TEPCO – with no financial incentive to actually fix things – has been  irresponsible and has only been pretending to contain Fukushima. And see this.

Instead of doing something to contain the radiation, they’re going to dump it.

Fukushima Daiichi Reactors Were in Meltdown After Earthquake, But Before Tsunami

TEPCO's Darkest Secret 
By DAVID McNEILL and JAKE ADELSTEIN

It is one of the mysteries of Japan’s ongoing nuclear crisis: How much damage did the March 11 earthquake do to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors before the tsunami hit?  The stakes are high: If the quake structurally compromised the plant and the safety of its nuclear fuel, then every other similar reactor in Japan will have to be reviewed and possibly shut down.  With virtually all of Japan’s 54 reactors either offline or scheduled for shutdown by next April, the issue of structural safety looms over the decision to restart every one in the months and years after.

The key question for operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) and its regulators to answer is this: How much damage was inflicted on the Daiichi plant before the first tsunami reached the plant roughly 40 minutes after the earthquake?  TEPCO and the Japanese government are hardly reliable adjudicators in this controversy. “There has been no meltdown,” top government spokesman Edano Yukio famously repeated in the days after March 11.  “It was an unforeseeable disaster,” Tepco’s then President Shimizu Masataka improbably said later.  As we now know, meltdown was already occurring even as Edano spoke.  And far from being unforeseeable, the disaster had been repeatedly forewarned.

Throughout the months of lies and misinformation, one story has stuck: “The earthquake knocked out the plant’s electric power, halting cooling to its six reactors.  The tsunami – a unique, one-off event - then washed out the plant’s back-up generators, shutting down all cooling and starting the chain of events that would cause the world’s first triple meltdown.  That line has now become gospel at TEPCO. “We had no idea that a tsunami was coming,” said Murata Yasuki, head of public relations for the now ruined facility.  “It came completely out of the blue” (nemimi ni mizu datta).  Safety checks have since focused heavily on future damage from tsunamis.But what if recirculation pipes and cooling pipes burst, snapped, leaked, and broke completely after the earthquake -- before the tidal wave reached the facilities and before the electricity went out? This would surprise few people familiar with the nearly 40-year-old reactor one, the grandfather of the nuclear reactors still operating in Japan.

Problems with the fractured, deteriorating, poorly repaired pipes and the cooling system had been pointed out for years. In 2002, whistleblower allegations that TEPCO had deliberately falsified safety records came to light and the company was forced to shut down all of its reactors and inspect them, including the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant.  Sugaoka Kei, a General Electric on-site inspector first notified Japan’s nuclear watchdog, Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) in June of 2000.  The government of Japan took two years to address the problem, then colluded in covering it up -- and gave the name of the whistleblower to TEPCO.

In September 2002, TEPCO admitted covering up data about cracks in critical circulation pipes in addition to previously revealed falsifications. In their analysis of the cover-up, The Citizen’s Nuclear Information Center writes:

“The records that were covered up had to do with cracks in parts of the reactor known as recirculation pipes.  These pipes are there to siphon off heat from the reactor. If these pipes were to fracture, it would result in a serious accident in which coolant leaks out. From the perspective of safety, these are highly important pieces of equipment. Cracks were found in the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant, reactor one, reactor two, reactor three, reactor four, reactor five.”

The cracks in the pipes were not due to earthquake damage; they came from the simple wear and tear of long-term usage.  On March 2, 2011, nine days before the meltdown, the Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) warned TEPCO of its failure to inspect critical pieces of plant equipment, including the recirculation pumps. TEPCO was ordered to make the inspections, perform repairs if needed and report to NISA on June 2nd. It does not appear that the report has been filed as of this time.

The problems were not only with the piping. Gas tanks at the site also exploded after the earthquake. The outside of the reactor building suffered structural damage. There was no one really qualified to assess the radioactive leakage because, as NISA admits, after the accident all the on-site inspectors fled.  And the quake and tsunami broke most of the monitoring equipment so there was little information available on radiation afterwards.

The authors have spoken to several workers at the plant. Each recites the same story: Serious damage to piping and at least one of the reactors before the tsunami hit. All have requested anonymity because they are still working at or connected with the stricken plant.  Worker A, a 27-year-old maintenance engineer who was at the Fukushima complex on March 11, recalls hissing, leaking pipes.

“I personally saw pipes that had come apart and I assume that there were many more that had been broken throughout the plant.  There’s no doubt that the earthquake did a lot of damage inside the plant. There were definitely leaking pipes, but we don’t know which pipes – that has to be investigated. I also saw that part of the wall of the turbine building for reactor one had come away.  That crack might have affected the reactor.” 

The walls of the reactor are quite fragile, he notes.

“If the walls are too rigid, they can crack under the slightest pressure from inside so they have to be breakable because if the pressure is kept inside and there is a buildup of pressure, it can damage the equipment inside the walls. So it needs to be allowed to escape.  It’s designed to give during a crisis, if not it could be worse – that might be shocking to others, but to us it’s common sense.”

WORKER B, a technician in his late thirties who was also on site at the time of the earthquake recalls what happened.

“It felt like the earthquake hit in two waves, the first impact was so intense you could see the building shaping, the pipes buckling, and within minutes, I saw pipes bursting. Some fell off the wall. Others snapped. I’m pretty sure that some of the oxygen tanks stored on site had exploded but I didn’t see for myself.  Someone yelled that we all needed to evacuate. I was severely alarmed because as I was leaving I was told, and I could see, that several pipes had cracked open, including what I believe were cold water supply pipes. That would mean that coolant couldn’t get to the reactor core. If you can’t get sufficient coolant to the core, it melts down. You don’t have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out.”

As he was heading to his car, he could see that the walls of the reactor one building itself had already started to collapse. “There were holes in them. In the first few minutes, no one was thinking about a tsunami. We were thinking about survival.”

Worker C was coming into work late when the earthquake hit.

“I was in a building nearby when the earthquake shook. After the second shockwave hit, I heard a loud explosion. I looked out the window and I could see white smoke coming from reactor one. I thought to myself, ‘this is the end.’”

When the worker got to the office five to fifteen minutes later the supervisor immediately ordered everyone to evacuate, explaining, “there’s been an explosion of some gas tanks in reactor one, probably the oxygen tanks. In addition to this there has been some structural damage, pipes have burst, meltdown is possible. Please take shelter immediately.” (It should be noted that several explosions occurred at Daiichi even after the March 11th earthquake, one of which TEPCO stated, “was probably due to a gas tank left behind in the debris”.)

As the employees prepared to leave, the tsunami warning came. Many of them fled to the top floor of a building near the site and waited to be rescued.

The suspicion that the quake caused severe damage to the reactors is strengthened by reports that radiation leaked from the plant minutes later.  Bloomberg has reported that a radiation alarm went off at the plant before the tsunami hit on March 11.  The news agency says that one of the few monitoring posts left working, on the perimeter of the plant “about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) from the No. 1 reactor went off at 3:29 p.m., minutes before the station was overwhelmed by the tsunami.”

The reason for official reluctance to admit that the earthquake did direct structural damage to reactor one is obvious.   Onda Katsunobu, author of TEPCO: The Dark Empire who sounded the alarm about the firm in his book (2007) explains it this way:

“If TEPCO and the government of Japan admit an earthquake can do direct damage to the reactor, this raises suspicions about the safety of every reactor they run. They are using a number of antiquated reactors that have the same systemic problems, the same wear and tear on the piping.”  

Kikuchi Yoichi, a former GE engineer who helped build the Fukushima nuclear power plant says unequivocally that, "the earthquake caused the meltdown not the tsunami.”  In his recent book Why I’m Against the Nuclear Plants I Helped Build), he explains that poorly maintained water pipes and circulation system failure were the cause of the triple meltdown. Kikuchi in his book writes (p. 51)

 “At Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, at first the plan was to use the water coffin approach. In other words, to fill the containment vessels with water and cool down the pressure vessel and ensure a safe and stable state. However, once (TEPCO) understood that the containment vessels  had been damaged, they gave up this plan. Because water was probably leaking all over the place from the pipes, from the start this was an unreasonable scenario.”

Tanaka Mitsuhiko, a former nuclear power plant designer and science writer asserts that at least the Number One reactor melted down as a result of the earthquake damage.  He describes it as a loss of coolant accident (LOCA).

"The data that TEPCO has made public shows a huge loss of coolant within the first few hours of the earthquake. It can't be accounted for by the loss of electrical power. There was already so much damage to the cooling system that a meltdown was inevitable long before the tsunami arrived."

He says the released data shows that at 14:52 on March 11, before the tsunami had arrived, the emergency circulation equipment of both the A and B systems automatically started up. "This only happens when there is a loss of coolant."  Between 15:04 and 15:11 the water sprayer inside the containment vessel was turned on. Tanaka says that it is an emergency measure only done when other cooling systems have failed.

By the time the tsunami arrived and knocked out all the electrical systems, circa 15:37, the plant was already on its way to melting down.

Tanaka believes that a fault in the Mark I reactor, the same type as the number one reactor, was another contributing factor to the meltdown. On November 5, 1987, NISA began an evaluation of the Mark 1 reactors to consider how much stress they could take before a LOCA would occur. The results of that evaluation have not been made public.

There are currently ten remaining Mark type reactors in Japan, according to Tanaka's research. He believes that each one is the equivalent of a ticking time bomb. 

Sugaoka Kei, who conducted on-sight inspections at the Fukushima plant, was the man who first blew the whistle on TEPCO’s data tampering with critical machinery. He says that he wasn’t surprised that a meltdown took place after the earthquake. He sent the Japanese government a letter dated June 28, 2000 warning them of the problems there. It took the Japanese government almost two years to act on that warning.

Sugaoka asserts in his letter that TEPCO left in place and continued to operate a severely damaged steam dryer in the plant even ten years after he pointed out the problem. The steam dryer had never been properly installed and was 180 degrees out of place. Sugaoka states, “It wasn’t a surprise that a nuclear accident happened there. I always thought it was just a matter of time. This is one of those times in my life when I’m not happy I was right.”

Worker A says there were “probably pieces of equipment on site that had never been checked.”

“Let’s say you have a refrigerator – the manufacturer recommends it be checked every ten years.  But it’s surrounded by many other kinds of equipment in the plant, all with different requirements for checking.  So if the refrigerator check is missed, it will be another 10 years before it is done.  Sometimes checks might not happen for decades.  In a strong earthquake, that equipment could fail.  That’s TEPCO’s responsibility. They’re supposed to make the schedule.” 

Onda Katsunobu says,

“I’ve spent decades researching TEPCO and its nuclear power plants and what I’ve found, and what government reports confirm, is that the nuclear reactors are only as strong as their weakest links, and those links are the pipes.”

During his research, Onda spoke with several engineers who worked at the TEPCO plants. One told him that often piping would not match up the way it should according to the blueprints. 

In that case, the only solution was to use heavy machinery to pull the pipes close enough together to weld them shut. Inspection of piping was often cursory and the backs of the pipes, which were hard to reach, were often ignored.  Since the inspections themselves were generally cursory and done by visual checks, it was easy to ignore them. Repair jobs were rushed; no one wanted to be exposed to nuclear radiation longer than necessary.

Onda adds, “When I first visited the Fukushima Power Plant it was a web of pipes. Pipes on the wall, on the ceiling, on the ground. You’d have to walk over them, duck under them—sometimes you’d bump your head on them. It was like a maze of pipes inside.”

It’s not very difficult to explain what happened at reactor one and perhaps the other reactors as well, Onda believes.

“The pipes, which regulate the heat of the reactor and carry coolant are the veins and arteries of a nuclear power plant; the core is the heart. If the pipes burst, vital components don’t reach the heart and thus you have a heart attack, in nuclear terms: meltdown. In simpler terms, you can’t cool a reactor core if the pipes carrying the coolant and regulating the heat rupture—it doesn’t get to the core.”

Hasuike Touru, a TEPCO employee from 1977 until 2009 and former general safety manager of the Fukushima plant, also says:

“The emergency plans for a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima plant had no mention of using sea-water to cool the core. To pump seawater into the core is to destroy the reactor. The only reason you’d do that is that no other water or coolant was available.”

Before dawn on the 12th, the water levels at the reactor began to plummet and the radiation began rising. Meltdown was taking place. The TEPCO Press release on March 12 just after 4 a.m. states: “The pressure within the containment vessel is high but stable.” There was one note buried in the release that many people missed. “The emergency water circulation system was cooling the steam within the core; it has ceased to function.”

According to the daily Chunichi Shinbun and other sources, a few hours after the earthquake, extremely high levels of radiation were recorded within the reactor one building. The level of contamination was so high that a single day exposed to it would be fatal. The water levels of the reactor were already sinking. 6 hours and 20 minutes after the earthquake on March 11th at 9:08 the radiation level was 0.8 mSv every ten seconds. In other words, if you spent 20 minutes exposed to those radiation levels you would exceed the five-year limit for a nuclear reactor worker in Japan.

At 9:51 pm, under CEO orders, the inside of the reactor building was declared a no-entry zone.  Around 11 pm, radiation levels for the inside of the turbine building, which was next door to the reactor reached levels of 0.5 to 1.2 mSv per hour.

The meltdown was already underway.

Oddly enough, while TEPCO later insisted that the cause of the meltdown was the tsunami knocking out emergency power systems, at the 7:47 pm TEPCO press conference the same day, the spokesman, in response to questions from the press about the cooling systems, stated that the emergency water circulation equipment and reactor core isolation time cooling systems would work even without electricity.  The emergency water circulation system (IC) did in fact start working before the power loss and continue working after the power was lost as well.

Sometime between 4 and 6 am, on May 12, Yoshida Masao, the plant manager decided it was time to pump seawater into the reactor core and notified TEPCO. Seawater was not pumped in until hours after a hydrogen explosion occurred, roughly 8:00 pm that day. By then, it was probably already too late.

On May 15, TEPCO went some way toward admitting at least some of these claims in a report called “Reactor Core Status of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit One.”  The report said there was pre-tsunami damage to key facilities including pipes.  “This means that assurances from the industry in Japan and overseas that the reactors were robust is now blown apart,” said Shaun Burnie, an independent nuclear waste consultant. “It raises fundamental questions on all reactors in high seismic risk areas.”

As Burnie points out, TEPCO also admitted massive fuel melt --16 hours after loss of coolant, and 7-8 hours before the explosion in unit 1.  “Since they must have known all this -- their decision to flood with massive water volumes would guarantee massive additional contamination - including leaks to the ocean.”

No one knows exactly how much damage was done to the plant by the quake, or if this damage alone would account for the meltdown. However, eyewitness testimony and TEPCO’S own data indicates that the damage was significant. All of this despite the fact that shaking experienced at the plant during the quake was within it’s approved design specifications. Says Hasuike:

“What really happened at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant to cause a meltdown? 

TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) and the government of Japan have provided many explanations. They don’t make sense. The one thing they haven’t provided is the truth. It’s time that they did.”

Nuclear Fiddling, While Los Alamos Burns (2 articles)

 (I've read people downplaying the dangers of Fukushima--"It's not that bad," say they. And I've read some of the same people downplaying the Fort Calhoun emergency with the same "It's not that bad." Los Alamos: 30,000 barrels of plutonium waste... the largest wildfire in New Mexico  histor...the two are less than 30 miles from one another, and the fire has breached the perimeter of the facility. Is this that bad? I'm afraid we have no idea how bad it will be.--jef) 

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Nukes, Fire and Secrecy
Burning the Truth at Los Alamos
By CAROL MILLER

The week began with news of the explosive growth of a fire bearing down on the town of Los Alamos. As of late Monday, Las Conchas fire is moving through the Jemez mountains towards the mesas and canyons of the community of Los Alamos. A photo of the hospital circulating online shows it edged by a wall of fire. We can only hope the community is spared from destruction, especially since it has never fully recovered from the trauma of the 2000 Cerro Grande fire.

Even if the outcome ultimately is a best-case scenario — a disaster averted — June 27, 2011 was day one of another major nuclear scare for New Mexico. It is difficult to write an about a situation that is changing minute by minute.

However, having been through this before, I will assume until proven wrong, that when Los Alamos burns, the first victim is the truth. Second, information will come in bits and pieces. It takes research and analysis to get at the whole truth.

For example, the official Los Alamos website reported that a fire that jumped the road into Technical Area 49, stating: "Emergency officials say the Las Conchas fire, which had burned to the southern edge of New Mexico State Route 4 at the Lab's southwest boundary, crossed the road to the north early this afternoon … About one acre burned and the Lab has detected no off-site releases of contamination."

Does that careful wording mean that releases were detected on-site and if so will anyone tell the public what the releases were? That phrasing sent me looking for information about TA 49 to learn the kinds of contamination it holds.

The site had been used years ago for underground experiments approved by Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. Although the tests ended in the 1960s, TA 49 has a long paper trail documenting decades of leaks, ground water contamination by plutonium, and multiple failed efforts to stop the contamination and remediate the site. Six areas within TA 49 are designated Potential Release Sites (PRSs). A 2003 study states that on-site contamination levels at TA 49 are 40 kg of plutonium, 93 kg of uranium- 235, 170 kg of uranium-238, 11 kg of beryllium, and possibly more than 90,000 kg of lead; all toxic and very harmful to human health.

Threats from fire in Los Alamos are not just radiologic. In addition to sites contaminated by radiation, toxic chemical and heavy metal waste sites also dot the weapons compound.

Despite the number of toxic locations, Gov. Martinez joined the chorus of people saying that all hazardous materials are safe. That is just not true. She may have been assured of the safety of the small category of highly toxic radioactive elements referred to collectively as "special nuclear materials." These special nuclear materials are plutonium, uranium-233, and uranium-235. Special nuclear materials (SNM) are the guts of nuclear bombs. 

We have to hope the fire does not reach Technical Area 55, Area G, a dump filled with tens of thousands of 55 gallon drums of nuclear waste mostly just sitting on the ground. After the Cerro Grande fire in 2000 finally died and the public was allowed back into Los Alamos, I observed that only the two-lane road had kept the fire from reaching the dump. The fire last time was too close to Area G for comfort.

If the fire heads that way, it will take the perfect combination of luck and skill by our emergency responders to again protect Area G from fire. In recognition of our gratitude to the responders, we need to assure that every best practice of preventive and protective health be provided to them, including personal protective equipment.

If fire enters the bomb plant itself, more protection should be provided, including but not limited to radiation-monitoring badges, on-site laundry, as well as appropriate screening and follow-up based on actual individual exposure, and good record keeping for long term follow-up.

The failure to protect the health and safety of emergency responders during the Cerro Grande fire must not be repeated. 

Formerly a national "laboratory," the lead operator is Bechtel, a for-profit corporate octopus with tentacles around the world. Bechtel was awarded the management of Los Alamos in 2005 with the former operator the University of California demoted to a junior partner role. A nuclear bomb facility in a dangerous wildfire zone is too risky.

As we see over and over again, it is not possible to out-engineer Mother Nature. We have to once and for all finally just say no to nukes.

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The Fire This Time
By DARWIN BOND-GRAHAM

On May 4, 2000 a controlled burn on Cerro Grande Mountain, deep in the Bandelier National Monument, escaped control of the US Forest Service. The flames would rage across New Mexico's highlands for over one month until contained. It would take another month to fully extinguish. Hundreds of homes were burned to cinders, most in the city of Los Alamos, and final damage estimates were in the $1 billion range.

The Cerro Grande fire was an expansive conflagration by any standard, but what set it apart from other super-fires of the last decade was that it burned through a highly secretive government facility, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

LANL is not just any government lab. LANL is the epicenter of the US nuclear weapons program. It is the home base of the weaponeers, the thousands of Department of Energy employees and subcontractors who have tethered their careers, livelihoods, and identities to the atom bomb's continuing role in American foreign, and domestic policy. In this respect LANL is the brain trust (or moral pit, if you prefer) of US nuclearism. LANL is also now the center of US plutonium manufacturing for nuclear weapons; the Lab is host to billion dollar factories dedicated to storing, milling (one could even say supplicating to) this most deadly material. Expansions are underway.

More generally, LANL is one of the most secretive and militaristic institutions in America. Many New Mexicans complain about the Lab as a colonizing force. Communities in its most immediate sphere of influence, the Espanola Valley, suffer from the exorbitant political influence it wields over the entire state's affairs, and the negative economic impact it bestows. The problems are deeply cultural and psychological even; the poor towns and counties downwind and downstream of LANL are among the poorest in the nation, with the highest rates of heroin and methamphetamine addiction, suffering epidemic violence, and disturbing instances of suicide, especially among the young. Living in the shadow of the lab (on clear days it's easy to spot LANL's buildings, and even one of its massive nuclear waste dumps from downtown Santa Fe), New Mexicans have long feared catastrophe.

So when the Cerro Grande fire, incinerating pine and juniper trees like match sticks, crossed onto LANL property eleven years ago and torched over 100 lab buildings, many assumed the worst. The disastrous potential then was enormous. Spread across 43 square miles, LANL is made up of dozens of "technical areas." Many of these technical areas were the sites of toxic and radioactive experimentation throughout the Cold War, and deadly materials are scattered about the lab's soil, concentrated in the canyons by runoff, and bioaccumulated in some vegetation.

When news broke that Cerro Grande was torching Lab property, burning buildings to the ground, downwind communities such as San Ildefonso and Santa Clara Peublos, and Santa Fe panicked, assuming that radioactive and toxic fallout were headed toward them in volatile clouds of ash and smoke. Worse still was the fear that one of LANL's nuclear waste dumps, such as Area G, might be blazing, lifting huge concentrations of radioactivity in the atmosphere.

At the time my organization (which I did not yet serve on the board of), the Los Alamos Study Group, chartered a plane and made several flights over the Lab and fire areas. Like the rest of the community, the news media, and even the Department of Energy itself, we were being kept in the dark about what was going on at the Lab. The Lab's hierarchy, then a management team of men appointed by the University of California's Board of Regents, kept as much of the disaster a secret as possible. It was impossible to know if the worst was occurring.

New Mexico and the nation escaped the worst then. The fire certainly did have numerous ecological and health consequences for New Mexico, but the fears of mass radioactive contamination have since proven unfounded according to many scientific studies. Of course some locals vehemently counter these same studies with tales of cancers and birth defects among their family, and their farm animals, and note that the researchers who have "proven" no significant exposure from the fire event were on the payroll of the lab. True enough, and we will never really know all of what happened, and what costs we bear from it. Such is the nature of the technoscientific age of "progress" and poison we are steeped in.

In the end though, Cerro Grande, for all its feel of catastrophism, proved a bullet mostly dodged. The Lab vowed in Boy Scout fashion to be prepared and built a $21 million Emergency Operations Center out of which to coordinate future responses to fires and, after 9-11, other kinds of "unforseen" events.

Yet here we are again, in 2011 with a raging wildfire, this one already 50% larger than Cerro Grande, still growing, and moving faster, according to veteran firefighters. It's being called the Las Conchas fire. It too temporarily breached LANL property, although having not yet burned any Lab buildings, and has caused the company town of Los Alamos, where many of the Lab's weaponeers live, to evacuate.

It would be a mistake, however, to again fixate on the most immediate images of catastrophe this blaze conjures. The fears are so great, especially in the wake of the tsunami that has caused meltdowns at several of Japan's nuclear reactors, and the predictable and deplorable actions of that government and the giant Tokyo Electric Power Company in keeping the extensiveness of that radiological disaster secret. Even so, the likelihood that Las Conchas will rupture nuclear waste drums stored at Area G, or send up deadly plumes of legacy radioactive wastes from contaminated soils and plants is slim.

All this is not to say that Las Conchas isn't a disaster, or that severe dangers don't lurk in the flames. In fact it's much worse than any of this fixation on possible radioactive contamination implies. The Las Conchas fire is a major disaster tucked into a larger and unfolding world-shattering catastrophe. It is among a cohort of wildfires that may be phasing in a new ecology in the American West, one without forests. The scientific literature is overflowing with studies of the current impacts of rising average temperatures and reduced precipitation on forests lands. 

Future models forecasting the effects of such trends have been run countless times with different data sets. While there are a range of findings, the majority point toward greatly increased stresses upon western North American forests due to climate change. There are even detailed studies, nearly all of them, indicating that climatic changes will increase the number and severity of fire events beyond the parameters reconstructed through paleodendrological evidence. Wildfires are likely be the punctual culmination of various stresses, in one quick moment transforming forests into deserts where trees may never again grow in any great numbers.

As Chip Ward has written about the recent Wallow Fire in Arizona:

"These past few years, mega-fires in the West have become ever more routine. Though their estimates and measurements may vary, the experts who study these phenomena all agree that wildfires today are bigger, last longer and are more frequent. A big fire used to burn perhaps 30 square miles. Today, wildfires regularly scorch 150-square-mile areas. Global warming, global weirding, climate change--whatever you prefer to call it--is not just happening in some distant, melting Arctic land out of a storybook. It is not just burning up far-away Russia. It's here now. The seas have warmed, ice caps are melting and the old reliable ocean currents and atmospheric jet streams are jumping their tracks."

It is such a terrible irony that the fire that symbolizes the future of western North America blazes on the edge of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In recent years, especially under Obama, LANL has seen its budget grow quickly, fueling a construction boom of nuclear weapons capital projects. Billions of dollars worth of construction is taking place within a lab site known as the "Pajarito Corridor". The biggest project, around which all else revolves, is the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Project (CMRR), a boorishly descriptive yet also magniloquent name for a nuclear weapons factory that is designed to boost the lab's manufacturing capacity for bomb pits, the small spheres of plutonium metal that make a nuclear weapon go boom.

Last year there was some news of the Obama administration's pact with Senate Republicans to spend upwards of $180 billion on new nuclear weapons infrastructure far into the future. LANL's capital projects are the costliest single component of this larger portfolio of American nuclear militarism. The CMRR itself will cost over $6 billion when all is said and done. Alone the CMRR is the biggest construction project in New Mexico's history excepting perhaps the highways system. All together the construction boom at LANL might rival even that.

New Mexico is burning. The southwest is burning. It's not just the Las Conchas fire. There have reportedly been 1000 fires around the state in the last year. There are upwards of 40 major fires burning across New Mexico right now. Las Conchas probably just became the biggest fire in New Mexico's history.

While building nuclear weapons might not quite be fiddling, you get the idea. While America burns, its leaders are busy pouring scarce money and manpower into nuclear weapons. The fire in New Mexico is both symbolic and literal in this sense.

Earlier this year New Mexico's senior Senator Jeff Bingaman proudly announced to his constituents how the federal budget his party crafted would boost public lands, and environmental projects in the state. For public lands? $28 million in projects including, $8.8 million to replace the old and unsafe lighting and electrical system in Carlsbad Caverns National Park; $3.5 million for operations at the Valles Caldera National Preserve (which is now burning in the Las Conchas fire), and; $3.4 million to purchase the 5,000-acre Miranda Canyon property adjacent to the Carson National Forest in Taos County.

Bravo Jeff.

LANL's budget for 2011 exceeds $2 billion. They're building a fence around LANL's plutonium factory that alone will cost hundreds of millions. While the feds spend chump change to make pretend investments in our dying public lands, replacing light bulbs at Carlsbad Caverns and such, they're pumping billions into a bomb factory in the high desert.

On the Brink of a Meltdown (3 articles)

The Japanese Earthquake and the Fukushima II Reactor
By ROBERT ALVAREZ

We shouldn't need yet another major nuclear power accident to wake up the public and decision-makers to the fact that there are better, much safer ways to make electricity.

In the aftermath of the largest earthquake to occur in Japan in recorded history, 5,800 residents living within five miles of six reactors at the Fukushima nuclear station have been advised to evacuate and people living within 15 miles of the plant are advised to remain indoors.

Plant operators have not been able to cool down the core of one reactor containing enormous amounts of radioactivity because of failed back-up diesel generators required for the emergency cooling. In a race against time, the power company and the Japanese military are flying in nine emergency generators. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton announced today that the U.S. Air Force has provided cooling water for the troubled reactor. Complicating matters, Japan's Meteorological Agency has declared the area to be at high risk of being hit by a tsunami.

The plant was operating at full power when the quake hit and even though control rods were automatically inserted to halt the nuclear reaction, the reactor core remains very hot. Even with a fully functioning emergency core cooling system, it would take several hours for the reactor core to cool and stabilize. If emergency cooling isn't restored, the risks of a core melt, and release of radioactivity into the environment is significantly increased. Also, it's not clear if piping and electrically distribution systems inside the plant have been damaged. If so, that would interfere with reactor cooling. A senior U.S. nuclear power technician tells me the window of time before serious problems arise is between 12 and 24 hours.

Early on Japanese nuclear officials provided reassurances that no radiation has been released. However, because of the reactor remains at a very high temperature, radiation levels are rising on the turbine building – forcing to plant operators to vent radioactive steam into the environment.

But the devastating Japanese quake and its outcome could generate a political tsunami here in the United States. For instance, in California it may become impossible for the owners of the San Onofre and Diablo Canyon reactors to extend their operating licenses with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The quake is also likely to further deflate the "nuclear renaissance" balloon.

These two reactors are sitting in high seismic risk zones near earthquake faults. Each is designed to withstand a quake as great as 7.5 on the Richter scale. According to many seismologists, the probability of a major earthquake in the California coastal zone in the foreseeable future is a near certainty. The U.S. Geological Survey reports the largest registering 8.3 on the Richter scale devastated San Francisco in 1906.

"There have been tremblers felt at U.S. plants over the past several
years, but nothing approaching the need for emergency action," Scott Burnell, a spokesman at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Reuters today.

As the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe approaches next month, the earthquakes in Japan serve as a reminder that the risks of nuclear power, when things go seriously wrong. The Chernobyl accident required nearly a million emergency responders and cleanup workers. More than 100,000 residents from 187 settlements were permanently evacuated because of radioactive contamination. And area an equal to half of the State of New Jersey was rendered uninhabitable.

Fortunately, U.S. and Japanese reactors have extra measures of protection that were lacking at Chernobl, such as a secondary concrete containment structure over the reactor vessel to prevent escape of radioactivity. In 1979, the containment structure at the Three Mile Island reactor did prevent the escape of a catastrophic amount of radioactivity after the core melted. But, people living nearby were exposed to higher levels of radiation from the accident and deliberate venting to stabilize the reactor. Also, within one hour the multi-billion dollar investment in that plant went down the drain. In the meanwhile, let's hope that the core of the Japanese reactor can be cooled in time. We shouldn't need yet another major nuclear power accident to wake up the public and decision-makers to the fact that there are better, much safer ways to make electricity.

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First the Quake, Then the Lies
Don't Worry, It's Just a Little Radiation

By KARL GROSSMAN

And with the major malfunction at the Fukushima nuclear power plant comes the lies…

That’s the way it’s always been when it comes to nuclear technology: deception has always been a central element in the push for it.

As desperate efforts were made Friday to keep coolant flowing—to prevent a nuclear meltdown—“radioactive vapor” was being released from the plant, reported the Associated Press. It quoted Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano as saying the amount of radioactivity was “very small.”

And it “would not affect the environment or human health,” added AP.

Really.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. nuclear industry trade group, presented a page on its website devoted to the post-earthquake situation involving nuclear plants in Japan which opened with pronouncement: “The Japanese prime minister and the industry’s safety agency say all plants in the country are safe and that there has been no radiation release from any reactors. Utilities there are managing issues with cooling water systems at the Fukushima plant…”

To sweeten its tale further, the NEI page featured a quote from the chief PR man at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Eliot Brenner: “In fact, all nuclear power plants are built to withstand environmental hazards, including earthquakes. Even those plants that are located outside of areas with extensive seismic activity are designed for safety in the event of such a natural disaster."

Don’t worry.

And CNN Friday posed this question in a dispatch on its website: “Do nuclear plants have failsafe systems?” The answer: “Yes. They are designed with an inter-connected system of fail-safes that ensure there are multiple ways of counteracting a malfunction.”

In fact, like any machinery, nuclear plants can—and regularly do—undergo accidents.

The big difference with atomic energy: the malfunctions can end up killing large numbers of people and impact on other life as well.

If the attempt now going on in Japan to keep the coolant flowing fails, a loss-of-coolant or meltdown accident could occur—a disaster that could have catastrophic impacts on Japan and much of the world.

Radioactive material is used in a nuclear plant as a heat source—to boil water and produce steam that turns a turbine that generates electricity. Huge amounts of radioactive material are made to go through a chain reaction, a process in which atomic particles bombard the nuclei of atoms, causing them to break up and generate heat.

But to keep the nuclear reaction in check—to prevent the material from overheating—vast amounts of coolant are required, up to a million gallons of water a minute in the most common nuclear plants that have been built (“light water” reactors). That is why nuclear plants are sited along rivers and bays, to use the water as coolant.

If the water which cools the reactor “core”—its 200,000 to 300,000 pounds of radioactive fuel load—stops flowing, the “emergency core cooling system” must send water in. If it fails, a loss-of-coolant or meltdown accident can occur.

In such an accident, the core of nuclear fuel, which in less than a minute can reach 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, burns through the cement bottom of the nuclear plant and bores into the earth. This is what U.S. nuclear scientists have dubbed the “China syndrome”—based on a nuclear plant on their side of the planet undergoing an accident seemingly sending its white-hot core in the direction of China.

In fact, the radioactive core doesn’t—in any location—go to China but it descends to the water table underlying a plant. Then, in a violent reaction, molten core and cold water combine, creating steam explosions and releasing a plume of radioactive poisons.

The problem at Fukushima Diachi nuclear facility is that one of its six reactors lost all its power as a result of the earthquake. Back-up diesel generators didn’t work, so battery power became necessary to keep coolant water flowing. If the battery power is depleted and electric power is not otherwise restored, a loss-of-coolant accident or meltdown would ensue.

“The emergency shutdown has been conducted but the process of cooling down the reaction is currently not going as planned,” explained Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano.Friday.

Thus Japan declared a state of “atomic power emergency” and people living within three kilometers of the Fukushima facility were advised to evacuate.

But if the coolant flow is not maintained and a loss-of-coolant accident with a “breach of containment” occurs, people way beyond three kilometers around Fukushima would be impacted. The radioactive releases in the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident affected the entire northern hemisphere, as a book published last year by the New York Academy of Sciences documents. And Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, authored by Dr. Alexey Yablokov, Dr. Vassily Nesterenko and Dr. Alexey Nesterenko, finds that medical records between 1986, the year of the accident, and 2004 reflect 985,000 deaths as a result of the radioactivity released. Most of the deaths were in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, but others were spread through the many other countries the radiation from Chernobyl struck.

Where the radioactivity spreads after a nuclear plant meltdown is largely a function of where winds take the radioactivity and of the rain that causes it to fall out.

Perhaps the biggest lie ever regarding nuclear power has been the claim by the International Atomic Energy Agency—created to boost and somehow at the same time regulate nuclear power—that perhaps 4,000 people will die as a result of Chernobyl.

Where the radioactivity spreads after a nuclear plant meltdown is largely a function of where winds take the radioactivity and of the rain that causes it to fall out.

The Japanese nuclear crisis comes amid a global drive to “revive” nuclear power. After the Chernobyl disaster, good sense—and the survival instinct—caused people all over the world to say no to new nuclear power plants.

A leader in this is U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a nuclear scientist. He came to his DOE post after being director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, part of the U.S. government’s chain of national nuclear laboratories. Some got their start during the Manhattan Project of World War II creating atomic weaponry. All have since pushed commercial nuclear power, too.

In a speech last month to President Obama’s “Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nature Future,” Chu declared: “The Obama administration believes that nuclear energy has an important role to play as America moves to a clean energy future.” He declared that nuclear power is “carbon free energy"—disregarding the reality that the “nuclear cycle,” from mining and milling to fuel enrichment and so on, contributes to global warming. And he spoke, in his February 12th address, of “upgrades to our existing reactor fleet” and a move to “speed the development of next generation reactors.”

Japan’s jump into nuclear power is especially ironic considering it was on the receiving end of the bombs built by the Manhattan Project. Furthermore, it is situated on a string of volcanic islands vulnerable to earthquakes. Of course, Japan is not alone on this score: in the U.S., the Diablo Canyon nuclear facility in California was built less than three miles from the Hosgri earthquake fault.

Nuclear power plants are, in fact, life-threatening wherever they are—they represent the most dangerous way to boil water ever devised.

Wind, solar and geothermal energy and other forms of safe, clean power would not cause massive deadly damage because of an earthquake.

But don’t tell that to the atomic Pinocchios pushing nuclear technology.

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Nukes on a Faultline
Japan's Quake Could Have Irradiated the Entire United States

By HARVEY WASSERMAN

Had the violent 8.9 Richter-scale earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit off the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation across the entire United States.

The two huge reactors each at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are not designed to withstand such powerful shocks. All four are extremely close to major faults.

All four reactors are located relatively low to the coast. They are vulnerable to tsunamis like those now expected to hit as many as fifty countries.

San Onofre sits between San Diego and Los Angeles. A radioactive cloud spewing from one or both reactors there would do incalculable damage to either or both urban areas before carrying over the rest of southern and central California.

Diablo Canyon is at Avila Beach, on the coast just west of San Luis Obispo,wasser between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A radioactive eruption there would pour into central California and, depending on the winds, up to the Bay Area or southeast into Santa Barbara and then to Los Angeles. The cloud would at very least permanently destroy much of the region on which most Americans rely for their winter supply of fresh vegetables.

By the federal Price-Anderson Act of 1957, the owners of the destroyed reactors---including Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison---would be covered by private insurance only up to $11 billion, a tiny fraction of the trillions of dollars worth of damage that would be done. The rest would become the responsibility of the federal taxpayer and the fallout victims. Virtually all homeowner insurance policies in the United States exempt the insurers from liability from a reactor disaster.

The most definitive recent study of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster puts the death toll at 985,000. The accident irradiated a remote rural area. The nearest city, Kiev, is 80 kilometers away.

But San Luis Obispo is some ten miles directly downwind from Diablo Canyon. The region around San Onofre has become heavily suburbanized.

Heavy radioactive fallout spread from Chernobyl blanketed all of Europe within a matter of days. It covered an area far larger than the United States.

Fallout did hit the jet stream and then the coast of California, thousands of miles away, within ten days. It then carried all the way across the northern tier of the United States.

Chernobyl Unit Four was of comparable size to the two reactors at Diablo Canyon, and somewhat larger than the two at San Onofre.

But it was very new when it exploded. California's four coastal reactors have been operating since the 1970s and 1980s. Their accumulated internal radioactive burdens could exceed what was spewed at Chernobyl.

Japanese officials say all affected reactors automatically shut, with no radiation releases. But they are not reliable. In 2007 a smaller earthquake rocked the seven-reactor Kashiwazaki site and forced its lengthy shut-down.

Preliminary reports indicate at least one fire at a Japanese reactor hit by this quake and tsunami.

In 1986 the Perry nuclear plant, east of Cleveland, was rocked by a 5.5 Richter-scale shock, many orders of magnitude weaker than this one. That quake broke pipes and other key equipment within the plant. It took out nearby roads and bridges.

Thankfully, Perry had not yet opened. An official Ohio commission later warned that evacuation during such a quake would be impossible.

Numerous other American reactors sit on or near earthquake faults.

The Obama Administration is now asking Congress for $36 billion in new loan guarantees to build more commercial reactors.

It has yet to reveal its exact plans for dealing with a major reactor disaster. Nor has it identified the cash or human reserves needed to cover the death and destruction imposed by the reactors' owners.

Rising Tensions in the Persian Gulf

Whatever Happened to Containment and Diplomacy?
By BRIAN M. DOWNING

Once again US political and military figures are hinting at military attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Few looking back on US ventures in the Middle East will be struck by exceptional farsightedness or appropriate gauging of likely consequences.

Instead, many of those ventures were based on naive understandings of forces in the region and equally naive understandings of the utility of military force. Iran has numerous options to counter any US strike – many of them quite sobering.

Iran has considerable influence in Iraq, far more than does the US. Important political parties were set up in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war and ties have long endured. A sign of Iraqi leanings was offered after the recent elections when parties sent emissaries not to Washington, but to Tehran.

Iranian influence in Iraq could be used against the US. It has already been used to order the US out by the end of 2011. The deadline could be stepped up as an insult, but more lethal responses are likely. The Shiite-dominated army and militias not yet integrated into it could turn on US troops, most likely in surreptitious, low-intensity attacks with what might be called plausible denial, putting the US in the contorted position of fighting the democratic government it prides itself on installing. Alternately or in conjunction with Iraqi forces, Iranian Quds Force personnel could cross the porous border to conduct guerrilla warfare.

Iraq, with guidance from Iran, could turn on the Sunni Arab population. Over the last year, the Sunni Arabs have launched a terror bombing campaign, killing hundreds of Shiites. The government’s response has thus far been restrained, but it may be biding its time for a harsh response to remind the Sunnis of their marginal status in national affairs, placing the US in the position of defending the Sunni militias it armed and protected during the Surge.

Iran could also retaliate in Afghanistan. Iran has no affection for the Taliban. In Tehran’s eyes, they are uncivilized Sunnis, who are responsible for the 1998 slaughter of ten Iranian diplomats and thousands of Shiite Hazaras. Iran supported the Northern Alliance in ousting the Taliban in 2001 and dropped its support for Burhanuddin Rabbani in the post-Taliban election, and shifted support to the US candidate, Hamid Karzai.

Nonetheless, Iran sends the Taliban small amounts of weapons and trains a handful of their fighters in the craft of IEDs. Support is thus far of minimal importance in the insurgency, but it is a reminder to the US that it can escalate the fighting and casualties, thereby making Afghanistan what Iraq was four years ago.

The Straits of Hormuz would make another arena for a vengeful Tehran. The narrow entrance to the Persian Gulf sees a great deal of US traffic, both merchant and naval. “Swarming” tactics – sending large numbers of planes and missiles toward a few ships in the hope of overwhelming their defenses – could sink several US vessels, perhaps even a carrier.

More likely, Iran would make only a token effort in the Straits, one that signaled the potential for more serious responses. This could be done by firing a missile or artillery round across the bow of a US ship or an oil tanker. In a matter of an hour of word reaching world trading desks, the price of oil would spike $20 dollars or more. The oil shock would hit the world at a time of economic weakness and fiscal crisis, aggravating US standing in the world – even among longstanding allies. Oddly, the price rise would bring increased revenue into Iran.

Responses against Israel would be more difficult. Hizbullah, Iran’s ally in Lebanon, would be a likely agent of retaliation, but Israel’s devastating airstrikes on Lebanon in 2006 has reduced Hizbullah’s willingness to absorb more punishment. Hamas, Iran’s Palestinian partner, has little military capability, despite Iranian training and arms. Their militias showed little effectiveness in the recent Israeli incursion into Gaza, and the ease with which Israel targeted Hamas leaders suggests numerous informers.

The difficulty in retaliating in Israel will not lead to Iranian quiescence, it could lead to retaliation against Jewish targets outside the country and American ones as well. Palestinian groups, seeing a de facto annexation of the West Bank taking place, might rejoin the deadly effort they began forty years ago.

* * *

Containment and diplomacy, despite uncertainties, offer attractions over tension and attack. Easing tensions would lead to greater cooperation in Iraq and Afghanistan and aid reformist momentum inside Iran. The US must recognize the appeal of political reform in Iran, or at least the disruptive effects of western youth culture there.