The bulk of the radiation measurements taken at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant since March 2011 will be reviewed because they were taken improperly and are probably too low, Tokyo Electric Power Corporation revealed. japantimes.co.jp

Hawaii Senators introduce bill to require Fukushima radiation monitoring for at least next 5 years. enenews.com

EPA solicits comments from the public on radiation protection standards. enformable.com

Officials in Canada are preparing to introduce new legislation what would increase the liability for civilian damages for nuclear operators from $75 million to $1 billion. enformable.com

Canada newspapers say that the Canadian government has been “profoundly negligent” for not testing for Fukushima radioactive materials.  enenews.com

Two earthquakes shake Fukushima but authorities claim there was no damage. enenews.com

After years of stonewalling, Iran has told diplomats that it plans to cooperate this weekend with U.N. experts probing alleged activities to build nuclear weapons whose existence it has steadfastly denied. foxnews.com

The French government has published a plan for dealing with major nuclear and radiological accidents, covering emergencies both inside and outside France that call for a response from the state at national level. nucnet.org

          My last couple of blog entries have been about illegal dumping of radioactive waste by the Mafia in Italy. I decided to open this discussions to other countries in Europe. Today I am going to blog about illegal dumping in France. French law states clearly that it is not legal to bring nuclear wastes from other countries into French nuclear dump sites.

          The Manche Center for Storage is one of Europe’s biggest storage sites for radioactive waste. It located in a wetland near the nuclear reprocessing plant at La Hague in Normandy, France. It was commissioned in 1967 and the first waste arrived in 1969. At first, the waste was stored in trenches dug into the ground. Later concrete blocks were placed around the barrels of waste which were then covered by a plastic sheet and buried with dirt.

          In the early 1970s, the Center began receiving and storing spent nuclear fuel and other nuclear wastes from French nuclear power plants. In 1976, heavy rainfall, overflow of drainage ditches and a faulty pump caused the contamination of ground water with tritium. In 1984, the concrete walls were added to the containment trenches and other upgrades were made to the site. In 1991, a cover was constructed over the site to prevent water from getting to the waste.

          In 1994, the last package of waste was received and the site reached saturation. The site was closed and management of the site was turned over to the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (ANDRA). About one and one half million packages of waste are stored at the site. 

          In 2006, Greenpeace activists demonstrated at Manche. They had come from the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan to protest the storage of nuclear waste from their countries at Manche in clear violation of French law. They claimed that there were one hundred and forty thousand containers of nuclear waste at the site that had not originated in France. The protesters were demanding that all the containers at the site including those from France be dug up and repackaged.

          Greenpeace provided a study dealing with radioactive contamination of the ground water and the surface streams around the site. In addition to the tritium leak in 1976, an engineer from the Manche site stated that other radioactive materials in the dump including plutonium will eventually leak out of the dump and  threaten the dairy farms around the dump. Greenpeace did win a court victory when ANDRA was found guilty in a French court of illegally storing nuclear waste from Australia. Greenpeace has also attacked ANDRA over the reprocessing of Dutch nuclear spent fuel in the nearby reprocessing plant at La Hague.

          Unfortunately, the French authorities do not even have a complete record of what is stored at Manche. Documents at the site were destroyed in two floods and substitute fake documents were created to replace them. This nuclear waste site is a time bomb ticking away in the French countryside. It is an illustration of the illegal inclusion of nuclear waste in a major national nuclear dump. Even government agencies cannot be trusted to deal properly with nuclear waste.

Manche Center for Storage:

Manche.png

The radiation dose on the “stand” above Fukushima Unit 4 spent fuel pool is 90 μSv/h, according to NRA. Fukushima-diary.com

Eight more Fukushima children have been confirmed as having thyroid gland cancer. Japantimes.co.jp

NRA tells TEPCO to reduce radiation exposure at Fukushima plant. Ajw.asahi.com

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico has temporarily stopped accepting waste but remained secure following a fire underground. Nuclearstreet.com

          My last post was about how the Mafia in Italy was illegally dumping toxic waste including radioactive materials. I focused mainly on the Camorra Mafia in Campania, a southern state of Italy. I briefly mentioned the ‘Ndrangheta Mafia in Calabria, a state in the toe of the Italian “boot.” Today, I am going to delve deeper into the ‘Ndrangheta and the international dumping that is going on. Strict environmental regulations introduced in the 1980s increased the profits for Italian Mafias engaged in illegal dumping.

          A damning report issued by the Italian parliament in 1995 suggested widespread institutional support for such illegal dumping. The report found evidence of national and international trafficking in radioactive waste. Businesses and political lobbying groups were operating with the full support some agencies within governments that were members of the European Union as well as governments outside of the Union. The investigators who put the report together experienced threats and interference in their research from individuals within government agencies.

           The Italian Ente Nazionale per l’Energia Atomica or ENEA (National Agency for Atomic Energy) is the another national nuclear agency that is charged with both promoting the Italian nuclear industry and protecting the environment. As in many other cases, there have been repeated charges that the ENEA is a little too friendly with the nuclear industry that it is suppose to regulate and a little too lax in the enforcement of environmental regulations.

            In 2005, an former member of the ‘Ndrangheta published claims in an Italian magazine that the ‘Ndrangheta had deliberately sunk at least thirty ships including some that were carrying radioactive waste. The magazine article triggered serious investigation of radioactive waste handling. Legitimate waste disposal firms were swept up in the investigation. Over a period of two decades, there have been over thirty questionable sinking of ships in the Mediterranean Sea. Sometimes ships with suspicious cargos sank in fair weather with no signal for help. Often, the crews just vanished.

           The informant claimed that a manager with the ENEA paid the ‘Ndrangheta to dispose of six hundred drums of toxic and radioactive waste that originated in Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany and the United States. The ship carrying the waste was sent to Somalia where the waste was buried after the local officials were bought off. Other employees of ENEA are suspected of paying off the Mafia during the 1980s and 1990s to dump toxic and radioactive wastes. There were also charges that prominent politicians with ties to major Italian political parties were involved in the illegal dumping schemes and made use of the Italian secret service to hide their activities.

           Once again, I have to emphasize that even if it is possible to build safe nuclear reactors and to fuel them and dispose of waste without ecological damage, the problems outlined in this blog indicate that crime syndicates, industries and government agencies often collaborate to skirt nuclear regulations.

Italian Calabrian coast:

calbrian coast.png

Two weeks after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, UC San Diego atmospheric chemists noticed an unprecedented increase in radioactive sulfur in La Jolla’s air, which they realized was coming from the damaged and leaking Japanese power plant. lajollalight.com

Diablo Canyon officials admit to recently discharging more tritium than Fukushima. enenews.com

Canada’s sole uranium conversion plant is offline pending an investigation by regulators into an unplanned shutdown last week. nuclearstreet.com

Police and the Nebraska Public Power District are investigating the death of a worker at the Cooper nuclear plant Tuesday, although the circumstances suggest he died from natural causes. nuclearstreet.com