Japan Nuclear Expert: “We don’t even know at this point where the melted down core is” under Reactors No. 1, 2 or 3
http://enenews.com/japan-nuclear-expert-dont-point-melted-down-core-reac...
Hiroaki Koide, Nuclear Reactor Specialist and Assistant Professor at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute: With regard to reactors 1, 2 and 3… We don’t even know at this point where the melted core is…
****************************
I propose that the term "China Syndrome" be renamed "Fukushima syndrome" in honor of Fukushima.
All in favor say 'aye'
Since the beginning, I have
Since the beginning, I have had my reservations about BRAWM scientists staying back in Berkeley instead of working on site to provide much needed observance and expertise. There is just no way the matter can be dealt with by satellite.
Contact your senators and express your concerns.
All I can do is shake my
All I can do is shake my head.
The BRAWM scientists are a bunch of post docs and grad students who happened to have access to a germanium detector and wanted to measure the fallout reaching the west coast. They are not the nuclear incident reaction team. I can't imagine what you are expecting them to do if we did ship them off to Fukushima aside from stand there, wave their detectors around, and announce "Yup, that's radioactive all-right."
There actually is a nuclear incident reaction team and they've been assisting out at Fukushima all this time.
At this point Fukushima is just a giant engineering exercise in shoring up the pools, repairing the infrastructure to be able to off-load the pools and getting the spent fuel off to a more stable storage facility.
Hopefully before there is an incident that compromises the pool integrity.
Should be TEPCO's top priority and yes, we should be helping. By all means contact your senator.
The Obama administration
The Obama administration should be offering Japan all the help it needs to secure Fukushima if for no other reason than for the safety of the West Coast of the United States and beyond. The Obama Administration should be "dry casking" our spent nuclear waste immediately.
Dry Casking Opposition
You do realize that there has been strenuous opposition to "dry casking" from the anti-nuclear community. For example, go to the web page of "Mothers for Peace" which is the anti-nuclear community in San Luis Obispo that opposes the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant. PG&E has wanted to off-load the spent fuel in the pools at Diablo Canyon to dry casks for years, and Mothers for Peace has been opposing them in Court.
Diablo Canyon is not unique in having opposition to dry casking. The anti-nuclear community has universally opposed moving fuel to dry casks.
The reason the anti-nuclear community is opposed to dry casks is that they hope to able to force the reactor operators to fill their spent fuel pools to capacity. Once that happens, the reactor operators won't be able to discharge a load of spent fuel from the reactor to the spent fuel pool because there is no more room in the spent fuel pool. In that case, they can't off load the reactor, so they can't put fresh fuel in; and the reactor is unable to restart. They would have effectively shutdown the reactor.
So there is strenuous opposition by the anti-nuclear community in the Courts to prevent dry casking. It is their legal ploy to shutdown the reactors.
Dry Casks at Diablo Canyon
OK, there may have been lawsuits, but:
"Sixteen loaded casks sit bolted to a thick concrete slab behind the Diablo Canyon plant."
Read more here: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2011/06/18/1648509/nuclear-waste-storage-di...
Mothers for Peace LOST in the Ninth Circuit
After years of wrangling, it was only a little over a year ago that the Mothers for Peace LOST their lawsuit attempting to overturn the NRC decision allowing dry cask storage at Diablo Canyon.
I wouldn't be surprised if the lawyers for Mothers for Peace are cooking up another lawsuit in an attempt to reverse the use of dry cask storage at Diablo Canyon.
The idiot anti-nukes never seem to give up; even when shown they are 100% WRONG
San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace vs Nuclear Regulatory Com.
San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace vs. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/02/15/08-75058.pdf
CORRECT!!
In addition, the anti-nukes like Mothers for Peace want to have as much spent fuel in the pools as possible so that if Diablo Canyon had a Fukushima-style accident, the consequences would be worse than they otherwise would be.
That way they would maximize the public's outrage against nuclear power.
Of course, they would be maximizing the hardship on the health and property of the residents near the affected plant as part of the cost of getting their way. Of course, they don't care about that; they just want to get their way.
Misinformation show me this "lawsuit"
No... in fact the NRC has stipulated spent fuel can be housed in uncontained elevated storage pools for up to120 years .why ?because the promise of off site housing of spent fuel in yucca mountain was promised by 1998 and plans have been scraped for yucca .Leading to high density fuel packing in these storage pools .Simply put many of the nations pools are full or quickly reaching capacity.now the fed government is in a sticky situation...tdm
http://myscsierra.org/chapter/nuclear/68-nuclear-energy-news/522-sceag-t...
"Many of the nation’s utilities have been seeking reimbursement from the federal government, and the government has paid for some of it. In one recent development, the government agreed to bear the cost of storing waste for a nuclear plant in Minnesota, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
Disputes between utilities and the government arose because of a 1982 law that required the Department of Energy to begin removing spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste created by utilities. Utilities have made payments into a fund for nearly 30 years to cover the cost.
When the DOE did not remove the material by Jan. 31, 1998, 74 breach-of-contract lawsuits were filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune."
http://myscsierra.org/chapter/nuclear/68-nuclear-energy-news/522-sceag-t...
Direct from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
Direct from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals:
San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace v. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2011/02/15/08-75058.pdf
Mothers for Peace LOST this lawsuit in February 2011
Correct
Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987 which stated that it would be the policy of the USA to NOT reprocess spent fuel but to use a "once-thru" fuel cycle, and have spent fuel stored in a geologic repository. The latter Act specifies that the repository will be Yucca Mountain.
The two Acts of Congress demanded that the Department of Energy negotiate contracts with the nuclear utilities. The nuclear utilities had to pay into a special fund called the Nuclear Waste Fund, and the contracts said that DOE was to have a repository available by 1998.
The DOE didn't make its commitment under the contracts. The nuclear utilities sued the DOE and took the case all the way to the US Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court declined to hear the case, but let stand lower Court rulings that said that the DOE was in default on the contracts, and thus liable for the additional costs of interim dry cask storage:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1998-12-01/news/1998335008_1_nuclear-wa...
WASHINGTON -- The federal government has missed its deadline for setting up a permanent storage site for 30,000 tons of radioactive nuclear fuel, but the Supreme Court refused yesterday to force it to create a site now.
At the same time, the court declined to protect the government from lawsuits from utilities seeking billions of dollars in damages because they must hang onto their volatile waste piles for up to a dozen more years, at heavy cost.
DUMMY - the lawsuit is right where I told you to look for it.
The Mothers for Peace LOST their lawsuit attempting to put a stop to the use of dry casks at Diablo Canyon. But the lawsuit was real.
Here's where Mothers for Peace are WHINING about the fact that they got turned down in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals:
http://mothersforpeace.org/data/2011-02-15-news-release-federal-court-fa...
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the petition by Mothers for Peace to overturn a licensing decision by the NRC regarding the dry cask radioactive waste storage facility at Diablo Canyon.
Interesting how you think
Interesting how you think only about health and property, not nature, the earth, and its ecosystems. Demented, autistic thinking to say the least, no?
The Administration?
You do know that the President doesn't run everything, right? There is that inconvenient Congress and all... to say nothing of ratepayers/corporate owners who have to pick up the cost.
And, if you looked, you would see that several U.S. NPP's use dry casks now.
The problem no longer exists
The problem no longer exists in the minds of almost everyone.