Nuclear Free: November 2011

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant operator 'ignored tsunami warning'

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant operator 'ignored tsunami warning'
Tokyo Electric Power rejected report warning the nuclear plant could be at risk from 10-metre high tsunami, media claim
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 November 2011

The Fukushima Daiichi plant as the tsunami approached. Seawater flooded power lines, causing a meltdown in three of the six reactors.

The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant ignored warnings that the complex was at risk of damage from a tsunami of the size that hit north-east Japan in March, and dismissed the need for better protection against seawater flooding, according to reports.

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Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) officials rejected "unrealistic" estimates made in a 2008 internal report that the plant could be threatened by a tsunami of up to 10.2 metres, Kyodo news agency said.

The tsunami that crippled backup power supplies at the plant on the afternoon of 11 March, leading to the meltdown of three reactors, was more than 14 metres high.

Evidence that the utility was unprepared for the tsunami, despite previous warnings, came as the firm announced that the manager of the Fukushima plant, Masao Yoshida, was being treated for an unspecified illness and would leave his post on Thursday.

The company refused to disclose the nature of Yoshida's illness, but said it was not related to his exposure to radiation during the nine months since the crisis began. "On doctors' advice, I have no choice but to be hospitalised for treatment," Yoshida, 56, reportedly said in a message to staff. "It breaks my heart to have to bid farewell in this way to all of the people with whom I have worked since the disaster."

Yoshida, who led the department overseeing the plant's management when the 2008 report was submitted, has been credited with preventing a more serious accident in March.

In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, he approved the continued injection of seawater into one of the damaged reactors, despite being told to abandon the measure by Tepco officials. He was later reprimanded, but won praise from experts who said he had helped cool overheating fuel rods and prevent a worse disaster.

Yoshida had not spoken publicly about the accident until earlier this month, when he told reporters that the situation at Fukushima Daiichi had improved considerably and that the reactors would be brought to a safe state, known as cold shutdown, by the end of the year. But he added: "Several times during the first week of the crisis, I thought I was going to die."

The accident was triggered when seawater flooded power supply lines, disabling cooling systems and triggering a meltdown in three of Fukushima Daiichi's six reactors.

The 40-year-old plant was built on the assumption that the biggest tsunami that could be expected on the Fukushima coast would be 5.7 metres high. Even at that height, the 2008 report said, water levels onsite could exceed 15 metres.

Kyodo quoted Tepco sources as saying the plant might have been better prepared for the disaster had it taken the report seriously.

Greenpeace, meanwhile, called on Japan not to restart nuclear reactors taken offline for stress tests and maintenance checks until it improves its disaster-response plans. It said simulation maps of potential accidents being used to devise emergency response efforts did not take into account accidents of the severity of the Fukushima disaster.

Greenpeace said Japanese government officials had conceded that the Speedi simulations were inadequate, as they are confined to low-level releases of radiation over a six-mile radius. Contamination from the Fukushima accident has spread over a much wider area.

The emergency response effort was "slow, chaotic and insufficient, and it appears that the government has learned nothing from it", said Junichi Sato, executive director of Greenpeace Japan. "These maps show that there is a strong risk of reactor restarts being pushed through without a proper, science-based assessment on the real risks being conducted, and without proper precautions being taken to protect the communities around the plants."

More than 80% of Japan's nuclear reactors will lie idle once Kansai Electric Power suspends operation of a reactor for inspection at a plant in western Japan on Friday. The move will leave all but 10 of the country's 54 reactors out of service.

The danger contamination poses to food supplies was underlined this week when officials in Fukushima confirmed that 9kg of a batch of contaminated rice had been sold to consumers this month. The discovery came soon after they banned shipments of another batch of rice containing excessive levels of radioactive caesium.

The rice, grown at three farms in the town of Date, contained up to 1,050 becquerels of caesium per kg, compared with the government-set upper limit of 500 becquerels. In response, the government imposed a ban on Tuesday on rice shipments from the area, while local officials said they were trying to trace the consumers.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Fukushima Workers Risk Radiation to Feed Families

A Visit to J-Village
Fukushima Workers Risk Radiation to Feed Families
By Cordula Meyer
9/21/2011

Since the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, the power plant's operator TEPCO has relied on temporary workers to help bring the reactors under control. Many of the workers, whose radiation levels are measured daily, say they are not doing the work for Japan, but for the money. SPIEGEL visited J-Village, which is strictly off-limits, and met the unsung heroes of Fukushima.

Milepost 231 now marks the end of the road. Barricades prevent traffic from proceeding farther north on Highway 6, a four-lane road that leads to the ruin of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Men in uniform are waving stop signs. In the evening twilight, a red illuminated sign flashes the following message: "No access… disaster law." Two policemen armed with red glow sticks vigorously turn away every lost driver.

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Three of their colleagues are blocking the exit to the right. They yell at anyone approaching on foot.

A total of 20 officers guard this intersection, day and night. To the right of the road block, the highway leads to J-Village, a former training center for the Japanese national soccer team. Since March 11, Japan's largest soccer complex has been transformed into the base camp for Japan's peculiar heroes -- the workers who are trying to regain control of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

More than 1,000 of these workers prepare themselves for their shifts here, day after day. The TEPCO power company, which is the operator of the stricken nuclear power plant, sponsored construction of the sports facility years ago. Since it has become the hub for the nuclear cleanup workers, though, the company has sealed off the area to the media and the general public.

Only buses and vans with a TEPCO authorization on the front windshield are allowed to pass. The vehicles shuttle workers to the reactors and back to J-Village. The heads of the exhausted men are visible through the buses' windows: Many of them have fallen asleep during the over 30-minute trip home.

In one of the buses that struggles up the hill to J-Village sits Hitoshi Sasaki, 51, wearing a white Tyvek suit. The construction worker started here three weeks ago. His job is to surface a road to the destroyed reactor. The job involves laying down steel struts that will make it possible to support a 600-ton crane, which will be used to pull a plastic protective cover over the ruins.

Standing in Line for Radiation Checks

Sasaki's first stop in J-Village is the gymnasium to the right of the main building. Long lines of workers wearing protective suits and masks march up to the building.

There are boxes at the entrance of the gym, and Sasaki pulls the plastic covers off of his shoes and places them in the first box. Then the respirator, the white protective suits made of synthetic paper and the gloves are each placed in additional boxes.

A number of workers trudge toward the gym; hardly anyone speaks. Some stumble when they have to stoop over to strip off the plastic covers from their shoes. Others rip off their suits with both hands, as if every tenth of a second counts before they can finally remove the hot and sweaty suits from their bodies. Then they stand in line for radiation checks.

Most workers wear only long-sleeved dark-blue underwear under the suits. Those who have to spend particularly long periods in the oppressive heat and humidity are also allowed to wear turquoise vests under their protective suits. These vests contain a coolant designed to protect the men from heat exhaustion. Several workers have already collapsed. In August alone, 13 were admitted to an emergency room set up in front of reactors 5 and 6. A 60-year-old worker died in May, presumably of a heart attack.

A team of workers who have been quickly trained in radiation levels checks each man's exposure.

The inspectors are wearing protective suits, blue caps and paper masks. Under the basketball hoop at the end of the gym, folding tables have been set up with four mobile Geiger counters, and next to these are three permanently installed radiometers.

The inspectors are holding bulky instruments and gazing at the gauges. They move the sensors first over the head of each worker, then left and right along the arms, chest, abdomen and legs. During the check, the workers stand on a mat with an adhesive film designed to capture radioactive particles. Many of the men are young and look as if they are in their early twenties, but a number of weary old men are also among them.

Temporary Workers Doing the Dirty Work

One of the workers feels that the public has a right to know what is happening in J-Village. He has decided to speak with SPIEGEL, although he would prefer not to give his name. He will be referred to as Sakuro Akimoto here. On busy days, he says, more than 3,000 workers pass through the radiation detection station.

Every day a brigade is deployed to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in an attempt to bring the stricken reactor under control. The workers toil in sweltering heat and dangerously high radiation levels. The maximum annual dose for workers in Japanese nuclear power plants is normally 50 millisievert. After consulting with the authorities, TEPCO has decided to raise the maximum allowed dose to 250 millisievert, high enough to significantly increase the likelihood of developing cancer.

Some 18,000 workers have helped manage the disaster since March 11. Most of them are not employed by TEPCO, but by subcontractors, who in turn recruit their workers from temporary employment agencies. Before the tsunami, many of these temporary workers had already done their fair share of the dirty work at other nuclear power plants.

Most of them are not doing this to save Japan, but to feed their families. Sasaki, the construction worker, has also come for the money. He was approached by a company from Hokkaido in northern Japan where he lives. As a young man, he had helped with major overhauls at other power plants.

Each morning, says Sasaki, he dons his suit and mask in J-Village, and makes a second stop behind the plant's gates. Here he has to put on a lead vest, and over this an additional protective suit made of especially thick material, safety glasses, a mask that covers his entire face, and three different pairs of gloves, one on top of the other. "It is so unbearably hot," says Sasaki. "I feel like pulling the mask right off my face, but that's not allowed anywhere." Nonetheless, there are reports of workers who take off their masks, sometimes to smoke a cigarette.

'It Looks Much Worse There Than on TV'

There are meetings in the morning where every worker finds out what he is doing that day, after which the buses head off to the reactor. Sasaki is only allowed to work one hour per day, or at most 90 minutes, otherwise he will receive an excessively high dose of radiation. Then he heads back to J-Village, and on to his boarding house in Iwaki- Yumoto, where he shares a room with three men. Days like this have him on the go for six hours.

Sasaki is a small but muscular man. His arm muscles ripple under his black T-shirt.

He vividly remembers how he saw the destroyed reactor for the first time in mid-August. "It looks much worse there than on TV," he says. "Like New York after September 11. Destruction everywhere." He hasn't told his family that he works at the plant. He doesn't want them to worry.

He has his own worries. He needs the money, which is just under €100 a day. But if things keep going like this, he says that he will only be able to do the job a few more weeks until he reaches his company's radiation limits.

Workers Pushed to Their Limits

TEPCO is preparing to spend decades in J-Village. Workers have spread gravel around the large soccer stadium and in a number of adjacent areas. Here they have placed row after row of gray trailers. There are 40 per row and they sit two stories high, extending right up to the blue plastic seats in the stands.

The stadium's large scoreboard still hangs behind this makeshift community. The stadium clock has stopped at 2:46 p.m., which was the moment when the earthquake cut off the electricity here and at the power plant 20 kilometers (12 miles) away. Now, the power is on again and white neon lights illuminate the rows of trailers.

In one room the workers can pick up bento boxes. Next door TEPCO has built a laundromat with more than a hundred washing machines. Behind the main building in J-Village, buses are parked on the former soccer fields and debris is stored in large plastic bags on the tartan track.

Stacks of Contaminated Suits

In the courtyard of the main building, TEPCO has had a small store built, where workers can purchase cigarettes and tea. Some of them, still wearing their work overalls, have gathered around a number of ashtrays and are smoking in silence.

There is an Adidas advertisement glued to one of the doors and an obsolete warning sign: "No SPIKES!" An exhausted worker is asleep on the floor in the hallway.

In the window of the atrium hang huge banners for TEPCO Mareeze, the soccer team that belongs to the energy company. In the center of the building stands a panel with a large white and green map of J-Village. There was a time when this was there to help athletes find their way around. Now, a man in a TEPCO uniform stands here and uses a red felt pen to post the current radiation levels for over a dozen different places on the premises.

Three TEPCO employees are sitting nearby with their laptops. The workers hand them their daily dosimeters. In return, they are given a receipt that resembles a cash register sales slip and shows the dose of radiation that they have received that day.

In the corridors hang large framed photographs of famous moments in soccer history.

One of them shows German goalkeeper Manuel Neuer during the match between Germany and England at the 2010 World Cup. Outside on the covered playing field, eight goal posts have been pushed aside and are nestled together. Workers' underwear has been hung out to dry on one of the crossbars.

At the entrance someone has used pink tape to attach a sign to the bare concrete: "Caution! Contaminated material." Behind this sign, used protective suits and masks are stacked in piles that are 4 to 5 meters high.

Three Shifts Around the Clock

A stooped-over man in a white and blue uniform leads the way to the far corner, where radioactive dirt is lying in a kind of rubber pool. The man says the dirt was washed off cars that had been close to the reactor. Nearby, someone has taped markers to the artificial turf, much like the ones that runners use to gauge their run-ups. Here, however, workers have written radiation levels on the tape. With every meter that you approach the pool, the radiation levels increase: 4.5 microsievert, 7.0 and then, finally, one meter away: 20 microsievert.

The men from the radiation detection team bring new bags full of refuse from the gym out onto this field every few minutes. The work here at J-Village is less dangerous than at the reactor.

"There are two types of jobs," says Sakuro Akimoto. "Either you work in J-Village for many hours with less radiation or in Daiichi for fewer hours, but at radiation levels that are 10 to 100 times higher." Akimoto is tall and wiry. He wears his hair short and loves casual jeans. He started working 30 years ago, right after leaving school, for a company that does maintenance work for TEPCO.

There are hardly any other jobs in the village where he comes from, which is located near the power plant. On March 11, he was working at the plant and was able to flee in time to escape the tsunami. His village was evacuated. A few weeks later, he says, he received the order to come to J-Village, "whether I wanted to or not." But he says he also felt a sense of responsibility because the plant had brought so many jobs to the region.

The members of the radiation detection team are now working in three shifts around the clock. He has often seen workers "at their limit -- not only physically, but also mentally."

Most jobs are simply dirty work, he says. According to Akimoto, many of his co-workers who work for subcontractors had no choice but to come here. "If they refuse, where will they get another job?" he asks. "I don't know anyone who is doing this for Japan. Most of them need the money." Whenever possible, highly qualified workers like Akimoto are only exposed to comparatively low levels of radiation. After all, they will be needed later.

A Move to Raise Radiation Thresholds

In an internal paper, Japan's nuclear safety agency NISA warns that there will soon be a lack of technicians because too many have exceeded their radiation limits. As early as next year, NISA anticipates that there will be a shortage of 1,000 to 1,200 qualified workers, "which will severely affect the work at Fukushima Daiichi and at nuclear power plants throughout the country."

The nuclear safety agency's solution is simple: create higher thresholds. It recommends raising the limits to allow workers to be exposed within a few years to significantly greater amounts of radiation than before.

By mid-August, 17,561 men had been registered at the Health Ministry as radiation workers. There are plans to monitor their health in a future study. Six of them have been exposed to radiation levels exceeding the high limit of 250 millisievert. More than 400 people have been exposed to levels exceeding the normally allowed 50 millisievert.

And TEPCO simply does not know about some of its workers. Despite months of searching, the company can no longer locate 88 workers who were employed in the power plant from March to June. The company had merely handed out badges to contractors without meeting the workers in person. Worker IDs with barcodes and photos have only recently been introduced.

Earning €100 Per Day

Hiroyuki Watanabe is a city council member from Iwaki, the city that lies to the south of J-Village. For the past two years, he has been trying to determine where TEPCO recruits its workers. "The structure is dodgy," says Watanabe. "It is amazing that one of Japan's largest companies pursues such business practices."

In fact, TEPCO has been using shadowy practices to acquire its workers for a number of years. In 2008, Toshiro Kitamura from the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum criticized the Japanese power company for "outsourcing most of its maintenance work of nuclear power plants to multi-layered contractors." The industry expert's main concern, however, was the safety risk, since these workers are not as familiar with the reactors as permanent employees.

According to Watanabe, TEPCO has budgeted up to €1,000 per person per day to pay the workers. But unskilled workers, he says, often receive only about €100 of that money. "These are men who are poor or old, with no steady job and limited employment opportunities," he says. Some of them don't even have a written employment contract, he contends. When they reach their radiation exposure limit, he adds, they lose their jobs and the employment agency finds a replacement.

Watanabe wants to ensure that all workers are paid appropriately. Even the lowest ranking workers should have a trade union, he says. "If we have a problem, we have nobody to turn to," says a young worker who is eating dinner along with seven co-workers at the Hazu restaurant in Iwaki-Yumoto. They are drinking beer and sake with their meal and smoking countless cigarettes. The men actually don't want to talk about the power plant -- but they go ahead and do it anyway. They also talk about their families and the fear of the radiation and its consequences.

'Somebody Has To Do It'

Next door in the laundromat, 24-year-old Yutaka is stuffing his socks and T-shirts into a washing machine. He is wearing plaid shorts and a polo shirt with a matching collar. Every night in his boarding house room, he calculates his current level of radiation exposure.

"To be honest, it makes my wife worried," he says. He has no intention of quitting, however. "Somebody has to do it," he says. Yutaka is in charge of the break room. His wife has been living far from here ever since they were evacuated. "I don't know if we will ever be able to return," he says.

The presence of so many workers has fundamentally changed Iwaki-Yumoto. This small town on the southern edge of the exclusion zone was known for its hot springs, which attracted large numbers of tourists. Now, there are no more tourists, and many residents have also fled. The hot springs are still very popular, though now it is with the workers. Between 1,000 and 2,000 of them live here now, says a hotel owner in the city. There are plans to move many of them soon to new trailers on the playing fields of J-Village.

One of the workers in Iwaki-Yumoto comes from the now-abandoned village of Tomioka in the restricted area. He smokes Marlboro menthols, and his arms and legs are covered with tattoos. During the day, he works in front of reactor 4, assembling plastic tubes for the decontamination system.

The hardest thing for him, he says, is the daily trip to work. The bus drives past his house twice a day, passing directly in front of the bar where he used to play pachinko, a Japanese game similar to pinball.

"I feel sad when I see it all so empty," he says. He says he dreams of returning there some day to play pachinko again.

Translated from the German by Paul Cohen

URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,786650,00.html

RELATED SPIEGEL ONLINE LINKS:

Photo Gallery: The Japanese Workers of J-Village
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-72931.html

Studying the Fukushima Aftermath: 'People Are Suffering from Radiophobia' (08/19/2011)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,780810,00.html

Poisoned Fields: The Painful Evacuation of a Japanese Village (06/01/2011)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,765949,00.html

A Green Future for Europe's Biggest Economy: What Germany Must Learn from Chernobyl and Fukushima (04/27/2011)
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,759228,00.html

Thailand Support No Nuclear Energy Facebook Groups Pages

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รวมพลคนไทยไม่เอาโรงไฟฟ้านิวเคลียร์ (No Nuclear in Thailand)
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นิวเคลียร์+โกงกิน+ประเทศชาติ= หายนะของชาติ

Sunday, November 27, 2011

U.S. to restart construction of N-reactors / Toshiba arm to deliver new model

U.S. to restart construction of N-reactors / Toshiba arm to deliver new model
The Yomiuri Shimbun
Nov. 27, 2011

After 34 years, the United States is expected to resume construction of nuclear reactors by the end of the year, and Toshiba Corp. will export turbine equipment for the reactors to that country early next month, it was learned Saturday.

According to sources, construction will begin by the year-end on the Nos. 3 and 4 reactors of the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant in Georgia and the Nos. 2 and 3 reactors of the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Generating Station in South Carolina.

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The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to shortly approve the construction and operation of the reactors, which have been designed by Westinghouse Electric Co., a subsidiary of Toshiba.

The U.S. decision to resume construction of reactors is expected to pave the way for Japan to export related equipment to the United States, observers said.

The reactors to be constructed are of the AP1000 type, an advanced 1,100-megawatt pressurized water reactor, and are targeted to go into operation in 2016 at the earliest.

The AP1000 can better withstand disasters--the outer structure is so strong it can withstand the impact of a large airplane crashing into it--and is designed to automatically cool down over a 72-hour period even after external power is lost. Four AP1000 reactors are currently being built in China.

Toshiba will export to the United States core equipment for the reactors that helps convert steam back to water, the sources said.

Before the construction of a reactor can begin, it needs to receive a final safety assessment report from the NRC as well as NRC approval for its construction and operation.

The NRC issued final safety assessment reports for the four reactors in summer after the onset of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

U.S. electric power companies, which plan to construct the four reactors, have already started procuring equipment and have entered the final stage in preparation for the construction of the four reactors, as the utilities are likely to receive NRC approval soon.

The United States has 104 reactors in operation, making the country the world's largest nuclear energy producer. However, after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant meltdown in 1979, construction of new nuclear power plants was suspended.

Former U.S. President George W. Bush, who called for less dependence on Middle East oil, shifted policy toward resumption of construction of nuclear power plants. Since 2007, many electric power companies have applied to build new nuclear power plants. The NRC is currently screening 26 new reactors.

Following the meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the NRC placed priority on safety assessments for existing nuclear power plants, delaying the screening of new projects.

No construction on reactors has been carried out in the United States since January 1978.

Capitalizing on the planned construction of the four reactors, the Toshiba-Westinghouse alliance will try to secure more orders for advanced reactors from other countries.

China's Qinshan nuclear power plant in safe operation for 20 years

China's Qinshan nuclear power plant in safe operation for 20 years
2011-11-26

(Xinhua)

BEIJING, November 26 (Xinhua) -- China's first-ever nuclear power plant, Qinshan nuclear power plant has maintained safe and stable operation for 20 years, according to a symposium held by China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) on Saturday.

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During the past two decades, Qinshan nuclear power plant, situated not far away from Shanghai, has caused no accidents that either endangered human safety or impacted the environment, and all its nuclear radiation indicators are not beyond the background radiation levels of the natural environment.

From December 1991 when it started operation to October 2011, the Qinshan nuke generated 40.5 billion kWh of electricity, equivalent to saving 16 million tonnes of standard coal, or cutting 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and 1.2 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide emissions.

Sun Qin, president of CNNC, said at the symposium that nuclear power remains a practical choice for China at the current stage, and that the company will continue exerting efforts to ensure nuclear security and explore more advanced technologies for safe and efficient development of nuclear energy in the nation.

The first phase of Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant was the first nuclear power plant on the Chinese mainland which was designed, built and operated independently by domestic engineers.

The plant also has second and third phases.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Survey finds that opposition to nuclear power has grown

Survey finds that opposition to nuclear power has grown
25 November 2011
theengineer.co.uk

Public opposition to nuclear power has grown since 2005, according to a survey of 23,231 adults in 23 countries.

Conducted by GlobeScan for the BBC, the survey shows that many people believe renewable and not nuclear energy can meet future needs.

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According to a statement, most of those polled in countries with operational nuclear plants are opposed to building new reactors.

Thirty-nine per cent said their country should ’use the nuclear power stations we already have, but not build new ones’, while 30 per cent gave affirmative responses to the statement that said ’nuclear power is dangerous and we should close down all operating nuclear plants as soon as possible’.

The poll, carried out between June and September this year, following the Fukushima crisis in Japan, also indicated that the UK and US are going against this trend and becoming less opposed to nuclear power than others.

The survey was fielded in 12 of the 31 countries that currently operate nuclear power plants. In these countries, opinion is divided as to how extensively nuclear power should be used. Twenty-two per cent agreed that ’nuclear power is relatively safe and an important source of electricity, and we should build more nuclear power plants’.

Eight of these countries were polled in 2005 by GlobeScan about their views and the results suggest that there has been a sharp increase in opposition to nuclear power in five of them.

The proportion opposing the building of new nuclear power stations has grown in Germany from 73 per cent to 90 per cent, but also increased significantly in Mexico from 51 per cent to 82 per cent, in Japan from 76 per cent to 84 per cent, and in France from 66 per cent to 83 per cent.

In contrast, while still a minority view, support for building new nuclear plants has grown in the UK from 33 per cent to 37 per cent, is stable in the US, and is also high in China, at 42 per cent, and Pakistan, where 39 per cent support nuclear.

Among the countries polled that do not have active nuclear plants, support for building them is highest in Nigeria at 41 per cent, Ghana at 33 per cent and Egypt with 31 per cent support.

The poll also indicated that the belief that conservation and renewable energy can fill a gap left from a move away from fossil fuels and nuclear energy is now the consensus view.

Respondents were asked to state whether they thought that their country ’could almost entirely replace coal and nuclear energy within 20 years by becoming highly energy-efficient and focusing on generating energy from the sun and wind’, with 71 per cent agreeing that it could.

Doug Miller, chairman of GlobeScan, said: ‘The lack of impact the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan has had on public views towards nuclear power in the UK and the US is noteworthy. This contrasts with significantly increased opposition to nuclear new-build in most countries we’ve tracked since 2005.

‘The biggest impact has been in Germany where the Merkel government’s new policy of shutting all its nuclear energy facilities is supported by 52 per cent of Germans in this poll.’

Opposition to Nuclear Energy Grows: Global Poll
25 November 2011
http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbc2011_energy/

Friday, November 25, 2011

Tritium from Nuclear Power Plants

Tritium from Nuclear Power Plants

TRITIUM from Nuclear Power Plants: Its Biological Hazards
http://www.nirs.org/radiation/tritium/tritiumhome.htm

Tritium is radioactive hydrogen and is widely used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. It is also found int the discharge water of nuclear reactors.
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/tritium/

Beyond Nuclear Fact Sheet l Tritium: a universal health threat released by every nuclear reactor
http://www.nuclearfreeplanet.org/beyond-nuclear-fact-sheet-l-tritium-a-universal-health-threat-released-by-every-nuclear-reactor-.html

Groups, individuals petition NRC to suspend all nuclear reactor licensing in wake of Fukushima disaster
April 16, 2011
http://www.naturalnews.com/032098_nuclear_reactors_petition.html

Its Getting Worse in Tokyo
March 19, 2011
http://www.naturalnews.com/031757_Tokyo_radiation.html

Radioactive tritium leaking from 20 USA nuclear plants
10/15/2010
http://nuclear-news.net/2010/10/16/radioactive-tritium-leaking-from-20-usa-nuclear-plants/

Scientists: American public being poisoned by radiation once thought harmless
October 25, 2006
http://www.naturalnews.com/020890.html

Friday, November 18, 2011

Iran Support No Nuclear Energy Facebook Groups Pages

No to Iran Nuclear Power Stations
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http://nuke6.blogspot.com/2011/10/support-no-nuclear-energy-nuclear-free.html

Greenpeace Iran
http://www.facebook.com/Greenpeace.Iran
88

Greenpeace IRAN
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Greenpeace-IRAN/177288968976499
10

United Against Nuclear Iran
http://www.facebook.com/UnitedAgainstNuclearIran
26967

War is the worst solution to Iran's nuclear issue
http://www.facebook.com/pages/War-is-the-worst-solution-to-Irans-nuclear-issue/145137965499098
1637

1 MILLION STRONG AGAINST A NUCLEAR IRAN
http://www.facebook.com/pages/1-MILLION-STRONG-AGAINST-A-NUCLEAR-IRAN/483491790045
1258

United Against Nuclear Iran - California Chapter
http://www.facebook.com/pages/United-Against-Nuclear-Iran-California-Chapter/173556625989684
97

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Vietnam Support No Nuclear Energy Facebook Groups Pages

Greenpeace Vietnam
http://www.facebook.com/Greenpeace.Vietnam
69664

Against Nuclear Power Plants in Vietnam
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=371810865210
38

International
http://nuke6.blogspot.com/2011/10/support-no-nuclear-energy-nuclear-free.html

Uncertainty lingers for China’s nuclear power policy

Uncertainty lingers for China’s power policy
By Leslie Hook in Beijing
11/15/2011
FT

Less than a week after the Fukushima disaster, China suspended approvals for new nuclear plants and announced a sweeping review of nuclear safety and atomic energy laws and regulations.

It was an abrupt U-turn for China’s technocratic leaders, a group of mostly engineers who have historically embraced nuclear power as a solution for China’s energy needs.

http://www.facebook.com/nuclearfree
http://www.facebook.com/nukefree

China’s move was a blow to the global nuclear industry as the country had played a pivotal role in the global nuclear renaissance of the past decade. Twenty-seven reactors are under construction in China today, more than 40 per cent of the global total, according to data from the World Nuclear Association, and about 10 more were on track to be approved this year before the suspension.

Uncertainty now lingers over China’s nuclear sector. The government says it will resume new approvals after completing the Atomic Energy Law as well as new safety codes, but few details about those policies have emerged during the drafting process.

Zhang Guobao, a senior energy policymaker, has said the new rules may be completed next spring.

“You have to remember that China has not renounced nuclear power,” he recently told state media. “After next March we hope that the international and Chinese understanding toward nuclear will take a turn for the better, and perhaps resume its path of development.”

Despite such reassurances from Chinese officials, analysts have quietly lowered their forecasts for China’s nuclear installations over the next decade.

“We have cut down our nuclear power capacity target from around 86GW in 2020 to 56GW in 2020,” says Rajesh Panjwani, analyst at CLSA in Hong Kong.

Others point out that China’s pause in nuclear development could create an opening for more advanced technologies to enter the Chinese market.

“The suspension of new approvals will probably slow down the original plant build-up and may change the technology mix a little bit, favouring the third generation technologies that are intrinsically safer,” says Zhou Xizhou, associate director of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Beijing.

So-called “third generation” reactors are considered to be safer than previous reactors because they employ passive cooling systems making it much less likely that a nuclear meltdown or radioactive leak will occur.

Both Westinghouse’s AP1000 and Areva’s EPR – competing “third generation” designs – are being built in China. The AP1000 is the foundation for an indigenous Chinese third-generation reactor, the CP1000, which is expected to be the backbone of China’s new nuclear build-up in the decade to come.

China is also developing another promising nuclear technology: “pebble bed” reactors, so called because they are fuelled by pebble-shaped balls of thorium or uranium. These reactors are a fraction of the size of traditional reactors and are considered much safer to operate.

This summer construction quietly started on a demonstration pebble bed reactor project that, according to the World Nuclear Association, is the most advance modular project in the world and will eventually operate 18 small reactors in Shandong province.

China National Nuclear Corporation and China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, China’s leading nuclear companies, have said little about the approval suspension beyond announcing that they had completed mandatory post-Fukushima safety reviews at their plants.

But they remain confident in China’s nuclear future. As Su Qin, head of CNNC, put it in a recent speech: “For China, developing nuclear power is not a choice, but a necessity.”

Monday, November 14, 2011

List Of Notable Nuclear Power Groups

American Nuclear Society (United States)
Areva (France)
Atomenergoprom (Russia)
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (Canada)
Department of Energy (United States)
British Energy (United Kingdom)
Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority
Électricité de France (France)
EnergoAtom (Ukraine)
Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy
Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy Australia
EURATOM (Europe)
Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Russia)
Atomic Energy Commission of India (India)
Institute of Nuclear Power Operations
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
KazAtomProm (Kazakhstan)
National Atomic Energy Commission - CNEA (Argentina)
Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (South Africa)[1]
Nuclear Energy Institute (United States)
Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (Pakistan)
Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Russia)
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (United Kingdom)
World Nuclear Association (International)
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Pro-Nukes Pro-Nuclear

http://www.facebook.com/nuclearfree
http://www.facebook.com/nukefree

Friday, November 4, 2011

Intelligent absorbent removes radioactive material from water

Intelligent absorbent removes radioactive material from water
By Darren Quick
November 1, 2011
gizmag.com

Nuclear power plants are located close to sources of water, which is used as a coolant to handle the waste heat discharged by the plants. This means that water contaminated with radioactive material is often one of the problems to arise after a nuclear disaster. Researchers at Australia's Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have now developed what they say is a world-first intelligent absorbent that is capable of removing radioactive material from large amounts of contaminated water, resulting in clean water and concentrated waste that can be stored more efficiently.

http://easss.com/health

The new absorbent, which was developed by a QUT research team led by Professor Huai-Yong Zhu working in collaboration with the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) and Pennsylvania State University, uses titanate nanofiber and nanotube technology. Unlike current clean-up methods, such as a layered clays and zeolites, the new material is able to efficiently lock in deadly radioactive material from contaminated water and the used absorbents can then be safely disposed of without the risk of leakage - even if the material were to become wet.

When the contaminated water is run through the fine nanotubes and fibers, the radioactive Cesium (Cs+) ions are trapped through a structural change. Additionally, by adding silver oxide nanocrystals to the outer surface, the nanostructures are able to capture and immobilize radioactive iodine (I-) ions used in treatments for thyroid cancer, in probes and markers for medical diagnosis, and also found in leaks of nuclear accidents.

"One gram of the nanofibres can effectively purify at least one ton of polluted water," Professor Zhu said. "This saves large amounts of dangerous water needing to be stored somewhere and also prevents the risk of contaminated products leaking into the soil."

"Australia is one of the largest producers of titania that are the raw materials used for fabricating the absorbents of titanate nanofibres and nanotubes. Now with the knowledge to produce the adsorbents, we have the technology to do the cleaning up for the world," added Professor Zhu.

Source: QUT