NRC Commissioners Revisit an Old Question: How Safe Are U.S. Reactors?
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Fukushima task force has confronted the commissioners with a central quandary of their mission: When are nuclear plants safe enough?The six-person Near-Term Task Force that dived into the implications of Japan's nuclear disaster concluded in its July 12 report that "continued operation and continued licensing activities do not pose an imminent risk to public health and safety."Then the task force followed with a dozen major recommendations, some of which would order nuclear plant operators to strengthen defenses against extreme flooding or earthquakes when necessary and to harden vents that would carry away explosive hydrogen gas from damaged reactor cores in the two types of reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. They must also extend plants' capabilities to protect reactors and spent fuel pools in an extended blackout of primary and backup electric
"The industry said they would do it. The proof came whether they had. And they hadn't, so now it's time to regulate it." The task force recommendation to harden venting systems should be fast-tracked too, he said. "I'm not willing to wait five years to deal with containment venting. To throw everything into rulemaking would be a serious mistake. There are things that need to be done now," Mattson said.
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/07/20/20climatewire-nrc-commissioners-...
Emergency Condition Red !!!
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We have no medicine.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/us_health_care_system_unprepared_...
We have no medicines, disaster plans or evacuation routes.
I remain a tepid supporter of atomic energy. That does not remotely translate into support for the nuclear power industry or the status quo. The two are as different as romance and rape. The nuclear power industry, as presently constituted, is a dangerous malignancy on the body politic. The malignancy must be surgically removed for the benefit of continued life on Planet Earth.
General Electric, TEPCO, Hitachi, Toshiba, Siemens, Areva et al lulled the world to sleep with fairy tales, pseudo-scientific platitudes, outright lies and open bribery. They have hobbled truth, imprisoned reality, distorted science and breached our defenses. They have repeatedly said that it can not happen here. But it can happen here. In fact, it just did.
Nuclear power has an inherent level of risks. These firms have deliberately increased the risks by the use of MOX fuel. These power uprates greatly increase the thermal and mechanical stresses on corroded, aging reactors. Control is much more tenuous with the added plutonium. The public health consequences of a containment breach are multiplied by the plutonium. The saga of Fukushima Reactor-3 is a case study in why we must say NIX-2-MOX. The rapid fire failures of three GE Mark-1 nuclear power plants has devastated a wide swath across Japan. An epidemic of Acute Radiation Syndrome, Chronic Radiation Maladies, Cancer and Multi-Generational Genetic Mutation is now underway.
We have no medicine. We have no disaster training. We have no evacuation plans. We have no secure food supplies. We are surrounded by design-defective, aging, corroded, over-worked, plutonium-laced, control-compromised death-machines. The so-called ‘disaster-response-plans’ assume that nothing can go wrong. If anything does go wrong, the planned response is a blank sheet of paper. We are in an Emergency Condition Red!
The nuclear power industry has declared war on America, Japan and indeed the world. These renegade merchants of death have launched an all-out offensive against health, truth, reason and science. This gang of malevolent criminals has struck a death blow to Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture and holds a knife to the throat of most of the United States. Fukushima has destroyed the Japanese economy, as surely as Chernobyl destroyed the Soviet Union economy. Unless forcefully restrained, they will destroy the tattered remains of the American and European economies. They are criminally insane.
It is time to shoot back. The citizenry of Japan, the USA and around the world, must take the battle to General Electric, TEPCO, Hitachi, Toshiba, Siemens, Areva et al. MOX fuel must be immediately banned from nuclear power reactors. All GE Mark-1 and GE Mark-2 systems must be immediately down-rated to 85% of their original design power rating. These aging GE death-traps should be restricted to a maximum 45-year operational life.
Past and present management teams for General Electric, TEPCO, Hitachi, Toshiba, Siemens, Areva et al should be brought to justice. They have become a much greater national security threat than Al-Qaeda. The tactics of the War On Terror will serve us well in the present war on these nuclear merchants of death. Lock them in GITMO or take them to the Hague.
C'mon man
"The tactics of the War On Terror will serve us well in the present war on these nuclear merchants of death. Lock them in GITMO or take them to the Hague."
Cmon man we live in a capitalist society people reap profits from all sorts of horrible ways For sure but this is a ridiculous statement.
Piracy and Lunacy
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The nuclear power industry is utterly unrelated to private enterprise or a properly regulated public utility. Unfortunately, for the present, we are aboard the "The Queen Anne's Revenge", flying the Jolly-Roger' flag, and sailing under the command of Captain Edward Teach (Blackbeard).
Piracy more accurately describes our present economy and government, than any other term that comes to mind.
More Japanese will die from the Fukushima conflagrations than from the atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They have no counter-radiation medicine; as also we have NONE.
Japan worked to prevent evacuation over most of the affected area, in exact lockstep with published USA plans.