Archive for the ‘Nukes’ Category

Saturday, March 19, 2011

By Carol Morello and Steven Mufson
Washington Post

MIDDLETOWN, PA. – Almost 32 years after America’s worst nuclear crisis at Three Mile Island, people who live in the shadow of the reactor’s cooling towers can instantly distinguish among sirens designating three different levels of alert.

The crisis here on March 28, 1979, led to "changes throughout the world’s nuclear power industry," as a state historical plaque on Route 441 notes. It also altered the mindset of this small town in central Pennsylvania, creating a permanent state of vigilance that has been heightened this past week by Japan’s nuclear catastrophe.

"What’s happening in Japan has brought back a lot of memories," said Robert G. Reid, who is still Middletown’s mayor, just as he was in 1979 when he dispatched his family to Connecticut but stayed behind to guide the town’s response. "But we’re much better prepared now than we were in 1979."

Over the decades, Three Mile Island has become a touchstone for attitudes toward nuclear power: a symbol of fear for anti-nuclear activists and of the success of emergency safeguards for nuclear supporters.

Comparisons between what happened at Three Mile Island and what is unfolding at the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant are inevitable. On Friday, Japan’s nuclear agency raised the severity of the crisis on the International Nuclear Events Scale from Level 4 to Level 5, the same number the United States used to classify the far less serious accident at Three Mile Island.

A different disaster

The crisis at Three Mile Island started with the venting of steam at 4 a.m., became a partial meltdown, and didn’t fully end until the last of the filtered water from the flooded containment building finally evaporated in 1993.

But there was never any loss of electrical power, no earthquake or tsunami, only a mechanical problem compounded by human error. The only explosion took place inside the containment vessel, and it withstood the blast. Water pumped in to cool the reactor stayed inside the containment structure.

While pregnant women and small children were ordered to evacuate, the decision to leave was voluntary for everyone else.

"We proved at Three Mile Island that all that [radioactive] stuff stays inside the containment structure," said Howard Shaffer, an engineer at the American Nuclear Society. "That’s why I call it the garbage can over the tea kettle. Its whole mission in life is for this event. We ran a test for that, inadvertently, at Three Mile Island."

But veterans of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission remember Three Mile Island as a time of disarray.

Victor Gilinsky, an NRC commissioner then, learned of the incident when he arrived at work March 28, 1979, a Wednesday. Staffers told him that a small pinhole in the zirconium alloy jacket around the uranium pellets used as fuel had caused overheating in the reactor, but that there was no danger.

"It was not until Friday that we realized the fuel damage might be substantial," said Gilinsky in an article on the 30th anniversary of the accident. "It was five weeks later that we learned that the reactor operators had measured fuel temperatures near the melting point on that early Wednesday morning. We didn’t learn for years – until the reactor vessel was physically opened – that by the time the plant operator called the NRC at about 8 a.m., roughly one-half of the uranium fuel had already melted."

The unexpected extent of the damage offers a window into Japan’s shattered Fukushima Daiichi complex, where Gilinsky predicts the damage inside the reactors will be much worse than expected, too. Because of the types of gases that have been emitted by the Japanese reactors, it appears likely that three of them have had substantial meltdowns of their fuel rods.

A billion-dollar cleanup

The Three Mile Island experience also suggests that the cleanup in Japan will be a mammoth undertaking.

Luke Barrett, a nuclear consultant, was involved in the crisis response and cleanup effort, which cost $1 billion. "For the first year, no human went into the containment building," Barrett said, because of the high radiation levels.

The NRC gave money to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to develop robots that could work inside the reactor. Later, the technology was put to work in auto plants and in the cleanup of nuclear waster at Hanford, Wash., a former plutonium production site.

Japan contributed $18 million to the effort, and sent 20 nuclear engineers who spent the better part of a decade living around Middletown. Before they all went home in 1989, they donated about a dozen cherry trees as a symbol of friendship. Those trees are expected to bloom right around the March 28th anniversary of the accident.

Today, Middletown has 10,000 residents, about the same as in 1979. Some who evacuated during the crisis never returned, said the mayor. But development around Middletown, which is nine miles from the state capital of Harrisburg, has brought many more people to live in the surrounding area.

In 1979, the plant was owned by General Public Utilities (now part of Ohio-based FirstEnergy). It’s now run by Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear plant operator with 17 facilities in three states.

"The new owners have done a good job of PR," said Reid. "They notify me if anything happens at the plant. If a fish jumps out of the water, they call me."

Trust and caution

The plant routinely tests its emergency plans, said Ralph DeSantis, a spokesman for Three Mile Island. On April 12, the company will conduct a full-scale exercise testing its sirens and the activation of emergency centers, he said.

A local citizens group maintains a network of 30 radiation monitors, and keeps in touch with plant workers, said its coordinator, Eric Epstein. It also stocks 30,000 doses of potassium iodide.

"I’d rather it not be here," he said, gesturing toward the plant. "It’s a haunting reminder of what happened here. But it’s a reality. We provide an extra level of protection."

Trust levels remain high in a middle-class subdivision that lies just across the river and a two-lane highway from the four cooling towers, two of which are working and emitting steam that wafts overhead like a cumulus cloud, visible for miles.

"I’m not afraid of the island," said Maggie Williams, a nail salon owner who met her husband, a radiology technician, when he came to Middletown to work at Three Mile Island after the accident.

The couple live so close to the plant that when her husband worked there, Williams could hear him paged on the intercom. "I figured we wouldn’t be living here if he didn’t think it was it was safe," she added as she walked her three small dogs down Meadow Lane.

Deb Fulmer, who can look up while gardening and see the cooling towers about 1,000 feet away, said plans in place now give her more confidence than she had in 1979, when she evacuated with a four-week-old baby in her arms.

"The fear comes from not having a plan when something happens, for what to do, where to go, what the sirens mean," she said. "Now we know."

Yet Fulmer, a nurse who helps in disaster zones and expects to go to Japan eventually, is unsure where she placed her potassium iodide pills. And she had to search to locate the evacuation routes in the phone book, because she hasn’t looked for years.

The lessons of Three Mile Island, she said, are: "Have a plan. And you’ve got to trust [that] your government is going to get you outta here."

Anti-nuclear sentiment

Others, however, are more wary.

Mary Osborn, who lives almost seven miles away, has become an activist against nuclear power, joining the dwindling number of demonstrators who show up every anniversary at 4 a.m. outside the plant’s gates.

She keeps scrapbooks with photos of mutated flowers, vegetables and deformed animals that she attributes to the 1979 radiation release. She said she tasted metal in the air the morning of the accident, and has long suspected that a growth on her neck that she had removed was due to that.

The television in her living room has been turned to CNN nonstop since the Japan nuclear crisis began.

"This week, it’s like TMI never stopped," she said, wearing a "They Lie" T-shirt adorned with "No Nukes" buttons and the badge her ex-husband wore when he helped build the plant. "It’s been a nightmare."

NRC historian J. Samuel Walker said epidemiological studies of some 32,000 people who lived within a five-mile radius of the reactors have shown no increased incidence in cancer that could be attributed to radiation releases from the accident.

But some residents are skeptical. "We have friends who got colon cancer and have no history of it in the family," Bonnie Blocher said as she prepared to get her nails done at Williams’s home salon. "How do we know the studies were accurate?"

Walker’s view is that during the 1970s, "proponents of nuclear power had underestimated the risks of a severe accident and that nuclear critics had overstated the likely consequences."

Improvements in reactor design and performance — as well as concerns about climate change — have boosted support for nuclear power. But Walker warned against complacency.

"Before the accident, nuclear experts were confident that they had solved the most important reactor safety issues," he has written. "This confidence and the complacency it fostered were shattered on the morning of March 28, 1979."

mufsons(at)washpost.com
morelloc(at)washpost.com

March 16, 2011

Neil Wilson, AAP
Herald Sun

JAPANESE and Australian share markets today regained some lost ground as confidence wavered by the hour with the Fukushima nuclear threat.

Japan’s Nikkei initially had its strongest rebound in a few years of 6.5 per cent while the two ASX key indexes were up by 1.12 per cent before falling back but still posting the Australian market’s first gains in eight days.

ASX indexes followed the Japanese market up, then down to finally rally again toward a positive close after a day of uncertainty in Tokyo.

The benchmark S&P/ASX200 index finished up 29.5 points, or 0.65 per cent, at 4,558.2 points, while the broader All Ordinaries index was up 34.1 points, or 0.74 per cent, at 4,644 points.

On the ASX 24 at 4.31pm, the March share price index futures contract was 32 points higher at 4,567 points, with 125,885 contracts traded.

The Nikkei jumped back from its luncheon slump to be 5.68 per cent higher despite deep concerns over a new earthquake and raised radiation levels from the damaged nuclear site 150km away.

Three fresh earthquakes shook the Tokyo area today at 12.50pm ( 2.50 pm Melb. time) and the crisis over fires in the nuclear plant goes on.

Some multinational firms – including Citigroup and ICAP – gave their expats the option of leaving and many sent their families away from the capital or Japan altogether. Some Japanese companies were redeploying workers away from Tokyo.

The pull back from yesterday’s losses was far from universal in Asian markets.

Singapore’s Straits Times index was up by 0.58 per cent late in the day’s trade, the Seoul composite by a healthy 1.77 per cent but Hong Kong’s Hang Sen was 0.22 per cent down.

Japan’s central bank again injected funds to maintain liquidity for domestic consumers and businesses, with 3.5 trillion yen $43.81 billion release into the economy, following the $183 billion investment two days ago.

Nikkei investors boosted international firms including car makers, with Toyota up 9.1 per cent, Nissan up by 6 per cent and and Honda by 3.9 per cent after days of lower share prices due to plant closures.

Manufacturers which supply 40 per cent of electronic components and 20 per cent of the world’s electronics goods also clawed back some of their losses, with Sony up nearly 9 per cent, Canon 3.1 per cent and Toshiba by 4 per cent.

The movement came after Wall Street closed down 1.1 per cent – a slighter drop than most feared – by rallying towards the end of its session on a positive economic outlook from the US Federal Reserve.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric claims the fire was quickly put out but more smoke was seen billowing from the plant just after 12.30pm (Melb. time) amid reports of storage ponds boiling in plant No.3 and continuing scheduled blackouts across Japan.

Tokyo Electric shares had plunged by 25 per cent in most recent trading, with its losses since the tsunami raising questions on whether it could remain viable.

International anlaysts were also questioning Japan’s AA2 credit rating from Moody’s and how the nation would be able to fund its reconstruction with a debt to GDP ratio already among the highest in the developed world. The nation’s low external debt and high domestic savings rate was pointed out as one iof its strengths.

Falls were smaller in the US overnight and investors were following the confidence of US Treasury officials in the American recovery.

Wall Street opened significantly lower but recovered somewhat during the day, helped by comments from the Federal Reserve that the US economy was on "firmer footing".

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 1.1 per cent to 11,855.42, the S&P 500 dropped 1.12 per cent to 1,281.87 and the Nasdaq composite index fell by 1.25 per cent to 2667.33.

CMC Markets chief strategist Micahel McCarthy said the possibility of a major meltdown disaster had receded somewhat in the minds of investors, though more fluctuations were possible.

"That’s not to make light of the humanitarian disaster that has already occurred, but in terms of the economy, at this stage it is not enough to derail Japan let alone the world," Mr McCrathy said.

Mr McCarthy said the market was ignoring ongoing deterioration in the Middle East’s political situation and the surprisingly soft oil price.

He said uranium stocks shone today on the ASX, regaining between a quarter and a third of their plunge on Monday and Tuesday.

Rio Tinto Ltd-majority owned Energy Resources of Australia was up 73 cents, or 10.33 per cent, at $7.80 and Extract Resources added 46 cents, or 5.75 per cent, to $8.46.

Paladin Energy gained 44 cents, or 13.5 per cent, to $3.70 after saying in late trade that it continued to believe the medium and long-term outlook for nuclear power remained positive.

"Recent events could further exacerbate the supply situation, ironically putting Paladin in an even better position with respect to global demand," the miner said in a statement on Wednesday.

Rio Tinto was up $1.53 at $78.94 and fellow mining giant BHP Billiton put on 60 cents to $43.57.

Banking stocks were mixed, with Commonwealth Bank up 25 cents at $50.00 and Westpac down 13 cents to $22.46, while ANZ inched one cent lower to $22.62 and NAB was seven cents firmer at $24.35.

Among energy stocks, oil and gas giant Woodside was up 37 cents at $41.95 while coal miner Macarthur Coal put on 59 cents, or 5.69 per cent, to $10.95.

The spot price of gold in Sydney at 4.35pm was $US1,397.40 per fine ounce, down $US17.37 from Tuesday’s closing price of $US1,414.77.

Preliminary national turnover was 4.49 billion securities worth $7.40 billion, with 844 stocks up, 404 down and 295 unchanged.

RT America March 16, 2011 Interview with Investigative Journalist Greg Palast

March 16, 2011

By ELIZABETH SOUDER

Dallas Morning News

New reactors are in the extreme expensive, and unless the government, vendors, investors and major clients share the burden, it’s hard to make a financial case to build in Texas’ deregulated electricity market.

The company has been negotiating for years with its Japanese vendor, Toshiba Corp., and investment partners, the utilities owned by the cities of San Antonio and Austin. NRG wants to share the financial risk of building the reactors. In Texas, power companies must build plants on their own and only make money by selling electricity.

Credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service said: "In light of recent events and the capital needs nevertheless unfolding at TEPCO, we would not be surprised if TEPCO’s efforts to invest internationally were scaled back materially."

The massive expense

Both Texas projects require government loan guarantees because of the massive expense. The Department of Energy has the money to guarantee loans for probably one more nuclear expansion project. NRG is a front-runner in the competition.

"There’s lot of passions on this issue, and nuclear’s as much a political issue as things are a science issue," said David Johnson, a managing director at Protiviti business consulting firm.

March 11, 2011

By Nora Ankrum
Austin Chronicle

New coalition opposes nuke proposal

A new environmental coalition has formed in opposition to NRG Energy’s proposal that the city enter into a nuclear power purchase agreement with the South Texas Project. City-owned Austin Energy owns a 16% share of STP’s two operating units; NRG plans to build two new units there and is looking for customers to buy power from it. The Solar Sí Nuclear No coalition held a press conference Tuesday with representatives of some 14 different organizations present, along with former Austin Mayor Frank Cooksey (1985-1988) and Matagorda County resident Susan Dancer, who said the financial prosperity originally promised Matagorda residents when STP was built there have never materialized; meanwhile, she said, "our environment has been permanently disadvantaged." Cooksey recalled STP’s cost overruns, noting that he served as mayor during the time when AE’s electric rates first absorbed the high costs. He also pointed to safety concerns: "I think it is immoral to create these [spent] fuel rods without having an adequate solution to safely store them and render them harmless," he said. NRG has distanced itself from STP’s past, saying that the new design is based on a unit already built in Japan without the budget and timing mishaps associated with STP. Nonetheless, the SEED Coalition’s Karen Hadden said the PPA could cost the city $13 billion to $20 billion it might otherwise invest in wind and solar. AE spokesman Carlos Cordova confirmed those numbers as "in the ballpark for the proposal that we have heard."