The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Brad Jacobson

The Worst Yet to Come? Why Nuclear Experts Are Calling Fukushima a Ticking Time-Bomb
Experts say acknowledging the threat would call into question the safety of dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants in the U.S.

May 4, 2012 |


More than a year after the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the Japanese government, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) present similar assurances of the site's current state: challenges remain but everything is under control. The worst is over.

But nuclear waste experts say the Japanese are literally playing with fire in the way nuclear spent fuel continues to be stored onsite, especially in reactor 4, which contains the most irradiated fuel -- 10 times the deadly cesium-137 released during the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident. These experts also charge that the NRC is letting this threat fester because acknowledging it would call into question safety at dozens of identically designed nuclear power plants around the U.S., which contain exceedingly higher volumes of spent fuel in similar elevated pools outside of reinforced containment.

Reactor 4: The Most Imminent Threat

The spent fuel in the hobbled unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi not only sits in an elevated pool outside the reactor core's reinforced containment, in a high-consequence earthquake zone adjacent to the ocean -- just as nearly all the spent fuel at the nuclear site is stored -- but it's also open to the elements because a hydrogen explosion blew off the roof during the early days of the accident and sent the building into a list.

Alarmed by the precarious nature of spent fuel storage during his recent tour of the Fukushima Daiichi site, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon subsequently fired off letters to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko and Japanese ambassador to the U.S. Ichiro Fujisaki. He implored all parties to work together and with the international community to address this situation as swiftly as possible. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/155283/the_worst_yet_to_come_why_nuclear_experts_are_calling_fukushima_a_ticking_time-bomb/

[JDPriestly]

1. San Onofre down but may open in June.

The domed plant just south of San Clemente has been closed since Jan. 31, when a steam generator tube in the plant's reactor Unit 3 began leaking, releasing a small amount of radioactive steam. Unit 2 was already offline for planned maintenance.

Since then, more than 500 of the plant's nearly 39,000 tubes in both reactor units have been taken out of service due to excessive wear.

San Onofre's four steam generators were replaced within the last several years at a cost of $671 million, an expense that is to be recovered from ratepayers.

Pickett characterized the problem as a "manufacturing defect" but said Edison has yet to determine whether the issue was caused by design problems or by the way the equipment was put together.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0503-san-onofre-20120504-40,0,2154453.story

[enough]

2. Those 31 US reactors store "incredible volumes" of spent fuel in elevated pools outside containment.

from the article>

There are 31 G.E. Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors (BRWs) in the U.S., the type used at Fukushima. All of these reactors, which comprise just under a third of all nuclear reactors in the U.S., store their spent fuel in elevated pools located outside the primary, or reinforced, containment that protects the reactor core. Thus, the outside structure, the building ostensibly protecting the storage pools, is much weaker, in most cases about as sturdy, experts describe in interviews with AlterNet, as a structure one would find housing a car dealership or a Wal-Mart.

Not what Americans might expect to find safeguarding nuclear material that is more highly radioactive than what resides in the reactor core. The outer containments surrounding these spent fuel pools in these U.S. reactors patently fail to meet the NRC's own "defense in-depth" nuclear safety requirements.

But these reactors don't merely suffer from the same storage design flaw as those at Fukushima Daiichi.

In the U.S., the nuclear industry has been allowed to store incredible volumes of spent fuel for decades in high-density pools that were not only originally designed to retain about one-fourth or one-fifth of what they now hold but were intended to be temporary storage facilities. No more than five years. That was before the idea of reprocessing irradiated fuel in this country failed to gain a foothold over 30 years ago. Once that happened, starting in the early 1980s, the NRC allowed high-density storage in fuel pools on the false assumption that a high-level waste repository would be opened by 1998. But subsequent efforts to gain support for storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada have also been scrapped.

More recently, the NRC arbitrarily concluded these pools could store this spent fuel safely for 120 years.

snip>

[DCKit]

3. K&R for the comments as much as the OP. nt

[jerseyjack]

4. Now that you have read this, write a letter to your newspaper. I just did.

[chervilant]

5. Anti-nuke Activists

have been addressing this issue for decades. The Pro-Nuke cabal has routinely hidden the high costs of storing nuclear waste (AND, the fact that they haven't developed adequate technology to 'dispose of' nuclear waste). They won't even TOUCH the topic of how dangerous is all that 'spent' fuel!

This excerpt from the article encapsulates what we'll likely witness:

An even more catastrophic worst-case scenario follows that a fire in the pool at unit 4 could then spread, igniting the irradiated fuel throughout the nuclear site and releasing an amount of cesium-137 equaling a doomsday-like load, roughly 85 times more than the release at Chernobyl.

It's a scenario that would literally threaten Japan's annihilation and civilization at large, with widespread worldwide environmental radioactive contamination.

[Demeter]

6. Why else the push for Yucca Mountain?

It's the biggest headache in the world, and the nuclear fetishists are in total denial, still.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. The Eastern Wash, state nuke plant at Hanford has been leaking radioactive water

into the Columbia River for decades, just recently are stories beginning to surface about it.

[suffragette]

12. And they've revised plutonium estimates upward, been repressing safety inspectors and have issues

with new facility.

Hanford Nuclear Site Bosses Stop Workers From Raising Safety Concerns, Says Federal Report
http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2011/06/hanford_nuclear_site_bosses_st.php

The bigwigs in charge of the $12.2 billion nuclear cleanup effort at Hanford aggressively prevent workers from raising safety concerns, and if they do, punish them for it.
That's one of the conclusions drawn in a biting new report by the federal Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.

The report follows an investigation by the DNFSB that was started after Hanford contractor Dr. Walter Tamosaitis was demoted for raising concerns that the cleanup effort had major flaws that could lead to a radiation leak or even a full-scale meltdown.


Hanford Nuclear Safety Manager Questions Waste Treatment Plant

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=145326474

RICHLAND, Wash. – Waste in underground tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation may have much more plutonium than previously thought. That's according to a report by a Hanford contractor that's just been leaked to public radio. It's also according to the latest high profile whistleblower to raise serious concerns about a waste treatment plant being built at the Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington.

Here is why you should care about what Donna Busche says. She told me she's the manager for environmental and nuclear safety at Hanford's waste treatment plant.

~~~

Here are some of Busche's main concerns:

Hanford engineers have recently revised their estimates for how much plutonium is in the nuclear site's sludge. Listen to these numbers: Hanford engineers used to think they had 10 kilograms of plutonium in the tanks. They now believe they've got between 30 and 130 kilograms. Let's put that in perspective: The nuclear bomb at Nagasaki had about 6 kilograms of plutonium. In the worst case scenario Busche says Hanford could have 13 times more plutonium than previously thought.


DOE wants dismissal from Hanford whistleblower case
By Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald


http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2012/05/04/1927527/doe-wants-dismissal-from-hanford.html

Tamosaitis is not seeking money from DOE. Instead, he wants the court to prohibit DOE from pressuring employees to take positions not based on scientific principles and to require DOE to draft a plan to ensure a balance between meeting deadlines at nuclear facilities and making sure decisions are based on sound science.

His attorney argued that Congress listed "abate the violation" as the primary remedy in the Energy Reorganization Act and that the court has discretion on how to do that.



DOE finds performance issues at Hanford vit plant, raising concerns about Bechtel management
By Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald
Published Saturday, May. 05, 2012
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2012/05/04/1927527/doe-wants-dismissal-from-hanford.html

Significant performance issues at the Hanford vitrification plant have raised serious concerns about Bechtel National's management system, according to a newly released Department of Energy report.

The concern came to light in the most recently released weekly staff report of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which said that DOE had identified a Priority Level 1 finding "associated with the potential breakdown in contractor management and their less than adequate performance."

~~~
Issues also included a lack of required design margin to address corrosion in vessels that will hold high level radioactive waste within the vitrification plant and an Office of Inspector General audit report made public earlier this week that addressed missing quality records for some high level radioactive waste vessels.

~~~

"The performance issues described indicate BNI's corrective action process has not been fully effective and BNI has not been rigorous in ensuring contract requirements and technical and quality expectations are being met," the DOE report said.

Bechtel is working closely with DOE to ensure adequate design and safety margins and necessary documentation is in place to provide confidence that the facility will operate safely, Nelson said.

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. Bravo to you for posting all this!!

Same song, different day, all over the globe.
Then people wonder why cancer rates are increasing all over.

[suffragette]

15. Exactly so

[dixiegrrrrl]

14. Bechtel Corporation (Bechtel Group) is the largest construction and engineering company in the US

5th-largest privately owned company in the US.

I shoulda known.
Halliburton and Betchel, hand in glove with the govrnment..actually OWNS the government.

"The Bechtel family has owned Bechtel since incorporating the company in 1945. Bechtel's size, its political clout, and its penchant for privacy have made it a constant subject of scrutiny for journalists and politicians since the 1930s. Bechtel owns and operates power plants, oil refineries, water systems, and airports in several countries including the United States, Turkey, and the United Kingdom."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechtel

"In southeastern Washington state, Bechtel National, Inc. is designing, constructing and commissioning the world’s largest radioactive waste treatment plant for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
When complete, the Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) will process and stabilize
56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste currently stored at the Hanford Site."

http://www.hanfordvitplant.com/

[Esse Quam Videri]

7. I'm actually somewhat relieved -

Relieved, in that, for the last couple of weeks there has been at least one thread a day on DU about this catastrophe. For those of us who have been following this from the start it is a relief that others are finally starting to take notice of the dire situation at Fuku. Now, if only the MSM will start reporting on it.

[Moostache]

8. Don't hold your breath...

The M$M is a disgrace to their predecessors in every way imaginable.

They chase ratings or follow orders to remain in lockstep protecting the Corpratocracy and their sugar daddy/paymasters.
The only hope of getting issues like this - issues that will cost trillions of dollars to fix - addressed at all is to have people tell their friends and family about them relentlessly...

[bvar22]

9. Relax!!!

"I know SCIENCE.
They're just venting a little steam.
These plants are perfectly safe.
They are engineered to withstand Terrorist Attacks and Natural Disasters.
They are so safe, they can be built on active Earthquake Faults near Cities, Oceans and Fisheries.
Did I mention that I know SCIENCE, and you don't!"

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. Remember how long Tepco denied any meltdowns?

"units 1-3 at Fukushima Daiichi, where the meltdowns occurred"
says the article.
THREE plants, now they admit to
and people in the know say #4 is probably also melted down.

[RobertEarl]

16. Reactor #3

Remember when that sucker blew?

There was a huge mushroom cloud.

It was so energetic that it threw several very large chunks of the building 4-500 feet in the air.

#3 had a fuel pool too. And it melted to the ground.

As for radioactive dispersion around the world, #3 alone surpassed even Chernobyl.