My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

         I have blogged about injury to workers at Hanford as a result of exposure to vapors from nuclear waste storage tanks. During this spring and summer, forty two workers have received medical evaluation because they may have been exposed to toxic fumes vented from the Hanford waste tanks. There have been other incidents of such exposure in the past. Unfortunately the changes that were made to deal with the problem have fallen short of protecting the workers. While the Hanford authorities played down the injuries and said that everyone recovered and returned to work, some of the exposed workers claim that they have permanent injuries. Now the Hanford Tank Vapor Assessment Team (HTVA)  has been dispatched from the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) to look into the situation.

         Over the next few days, the Team will take tours, attend briefings, review procedures, observe work at the tank farm, meet with the Chemical Vapors Solutions Team and meet with focus groups of tank farm workers. The plan is for the  HTVA Team to return to Hanford in mid-August, issue an interim report at the end of September and issue a final report before January. Member of the Team have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. No information from the Team’s investigations is expected before mid-August.

         The Hanford tank farm is managed by Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS). WRPS has asked SRNL to conduct this independent investigation with the participation of nationally recognized experts. It is hoped that the HTVA will make recommendations that will protect workers in the future from exposure to these toxic fumes.

         This whole situation is an example of a repeating pattern at Hanford. We are assured that there is safety culture at Hanford to protect the workers from harm. Then something happens that injures workers. Meetings are held, reports are issued and changes may be made. Simultaneously, the Hanford authorities issue press releasing assuring the public and the workers that the problems were minor and have been quickly and comprehensively addressed. Time goes by and more workers are injured. And the whole cycle repeats.

         Hanford is one of the most radioactively contaminated areas on Earth. Decades of nuclear weapons development took place with scant concern for safety of the workers or integrity of the environment. With over a trillion dollars spent on weapons development, now the federal government has to work hard to come up with a billion dollars for cleaning up the mess that they made. With radioactive releases into the atmosphere and groundwater, Hanford remains a serious threat to the people living in the area.

        I have attended a number of public hearings held by Hanford authorities regarding the clean up. They show up with glossy brochures about the great work they are doing. They are always confident that this time they really know how to deal with the problems encountered in the clean up. On the other hand, they are hard pressed to give satisfactory answers to non-profit groups who have been studying the contamination and clean up plans. The U.S. Department of Energy has been repeatedly  caught lying and breaking the law at Hanford. I have little confidence in their integrity and competence.

Radioactive tsunami debris found far from Fukushima plant. enenews.com

Radioactive materials detected off California. enenews.com

The Canadian nuclear regulator has approved a one-year extension to the operating licence of the Darlington nuclear power plant.  world-nuclear-news.org

Ur-Energy says Shirley Basin has the potential to be its next Wyoming production centre.  world-nuclear-news.org

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

         In my last post, I discussed the groups that are encouraging the federal government to develop a new nuclear warhead and launch vehicle called the Long-Range Stand Off cruise missile. Ironically, just after writing that post I came across an article that said Obama was accusing the Russians of violating a treaty when they tested a new ground launched long range nuclear cruise missile. So presumably, if the U.S. developed the new missiles it would be in violation of the same treaty that the U.S. is accusing the Russians of violating.

        The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty was signed in 1987 by the United States and the Soviet Union. The U.S. Congress ratified the treaty in 1988 and it went into effect on June 1 of that year. The treaty calls for the elimination of nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between three hundred and thirty four hundred miles.

        The Soviet Union fell in 1991 and Russia assumed control of the old Soviet nuclear arsenal. In 2007, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, stated that he did not believe that the INF Treaty “served Russia’s interests.” A week later, the Russian military’s chief of general staff said that Russia could pull out of the INF Treaty. He said that the Russian decision on the INF Treaty would depend on the actions of the U.S. with respect to a proposed Ground-Based Midcourse Defense missile defense system, parts of which the U.S. had been planning to deploy in Poland and the Czech Republic. Those plans were abandoned in favor of a different missile system. The American Enterprise Institute has suggested that the real reason that the Russians are concerned about the INF Treaty is that China is not a signatory. China continues to develop missile systems that are banned in the U.S. and Russia.

      In 2012, the U.S. accused the Russians of violating the treaty. The missiles that triggered the U.S. charges were the R-500 cruise missiles and a short range ICBM. This month, the U.S. formally notified the Russians that they were in violation of the INF Treaty. Russian official responded by reiterating that the INF treaty was unsuitable for Russia because other Asian countries were not bound by the treaty and were developing the banned weapons systems.

      The U.S. is working on the Prompt Global Strike (PGS) system in an attempt to get around the INF Treaty provisions. Currently, a nuclear attack could hit any target in the world in under an hour. Any conventional weapons response to hostilities could take days to weeks to mobilize. The PGS project is dedicated to developing the ability to strike any target in the world in an hour with conventional weapons.

      While I applaud treaties to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons, our experience seems to be that treaties are often broken or circumvented at the whim of the signatories. The complete elimination of nuclear weapons should be our focus, not the banning of very specific types of warheads and delivery systems.

On 7/26/2014, a Fukushima resident posted a video on Youtube to report the actual contamination situation in Kohriyama city. fukushima-diary.com

India’s Additional Protocol for nuclear safeguards has been brought into force after the country handed over the instrument of ratification to the International Atomic Energy Agency. world-nuclar-news.org

An underground nuclear waste dump in New Mexico that leaked radiation in February was cited by federal mine safety inspectors for dozens of workplace violations, almost all of which have been remedied, officials said Monday. news.yahoo.com

Political support in Congress is coalescing around funding to continue construction of the over-budget MOX fuel plant at the Savannah River Site, despite the Obama administration’s plan to close it. nuclearstreet.com

 

 

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.

         I have posted before on attempts to remove nuclear weapons from the arsenals of nations. Nuclear disarmament was once a major political issue with hundreds of thousands of people across the world gathering to protest nuclear weapons. As the focus shifted from the Cold War to the “war on terror,” public concern over nuclear weapons has waned.

         As I have said in previous posts, a fraction of the nuclear arsenals on Earth today would be enough to destroy human civilization and cause the death of billions of people. No one can “win” a nuclear war. The U.S. and Russia still each have around forty five hundred operational nuclear warhead which is a major reduction for the more than twenty thousand warheads that each had during the height of the Cold War. The U.S. and Russian arsenals are pointed at each other and can launch in minutes.

        Accidents and mistakes have almost triggered nuclear war several times. The Obama administration has been a strong supporter of nuclear disarmament. There is a five year moratorium on allocating any U.S. federal funds for designing an “interoperable” warhead that could be used on both ICBMs and submarine launched missiles.

       The supporters of nuclear weapons in the federal government, nuclear weapon laboratories and the nuclear arms industry have been lobbying recently for a new type of warhead and delivery vehicle called the Long-Range Stand Off Weapon (LRSO). The cruise missile is a standoff weapon. A pilot can launch a cruise missile in the air and the missile will fly below radar to hit a far away target. The pilot and his plane will not be close to or threatened by the nuclear blast. The LRSO is a new version of a cruise missile vehicle that would be launched by our fleet of B-52 and B-2 heavy bombers.

       The Air Force sent out a solicitation to defense contractors requesting new approaches for manufacturing the new LRSO missile. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrup Grumman and Raytheon have all begun to investigate the possibilities of manufacture and sale of LRSO missiles.

       The U.S. has been a strong supporter of nuclear disarmament since the end of the Cold War. The U.S is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Unfortunately, while reducing nuclear warhead inventories, the U.S. has simultaneously supported various programs intended to “maintain and modernize” our nuclear arsenal which will not reduce the number of warheads and may lead to the creation of new warheads and delivery vehicles such as the LRSO. Russia is also claiming to support nuclear disarmament while “modernizing” its arsenal. In addition, other countries that have sworn off nuclear weapons such as Japan and Ukraine are now talking about the possible need for them to develop their own nuclear arsenals.

         All nuclear weapons on Earth should be eliminated before a tragic accident or misunderstanding leads to global nuclear war, nuclear winter and the end of human civilization. “Modernization” is not a reasonable alternative to disarmament and the U.S. should not spend another dollar to develop new nuclear weapons.

B-2A Bomber:

Wild monkeys living in forests of Fukushima have lower blood cell counts than monkeys from northern Japan, and carry detectable levels of cesium in their bodies, researchers have found. sorendreier.com

Local authorities in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan on Sunday started handing out iodine tablets to residents living within 5 km of the Sendai nuclear power plant, which may be restarted in the fall. japantimes.co.jp

The prompt restart of Japan’s nuclear power reactors would have “big advantages” for the country’s economy and environment, according estimates by the Institute of Energy Economics of Japan. world-nuclear-news.org

Workers at the Turkey Point nuclear plant south of Miami found a dead crocodile in its water intake last week, which merited a report to regulators but did not affect plant operations. nuclearstreet.com

 

 

 

 

My Geiger counter is in the shop for maintenance.