As many as 55 people may have exposed to radiation when a lab accident in northern Japan released ‘exotic soup’ of radioactive material. enenews.com

In Niger, the Arit uranium mine and the Agadez military barracks were attacked by radical Islamic terrorists. radiationnews.blogspot.com

North Korea’s state media on Sunday reiterated Pyongyang’s commitment to building nuclear weapons, dousing limited hopes that the isolated state might engage in talks about its nuclear program under pressure from China. online.wsj.com

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will clarify his government’s plan to resume operation of idled nuclear power plants in a growth strategy to be compiled in mid-June. marketwatch.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on May 27, 2013

Ambient office = .114 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .079 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .109 microsieverts per hour

Iceberg lettuce from local grocery store =  .101 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .118 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .110 microsieverts per hour

Nuclear policy expert Robert Alvarez joined Arnie Gunderson for a discussion the ongoing environmental damage to the Hanford site. fairewinds.org

On 6 – 13 July 2013 Nuclear Abolition Week kicks off with activities across the world for a ban on nuclear weapons. icanw.org

Fukushima radiation has spread worldwide. junogalaxy.blogspot.com.au

Canada is funding three new projects for alternative technetium-99m production for medical use. ans.org

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on May 26, 2013

Ambient office = .064 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .078 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .112 microsieverts per hour

Iceberg lettuce from local grocery store =  .084 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .077 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .060 microsieverts per hour

An atomic research lab in northern Japan has reported a radiation leak that may have affected about 55 people, though none were hospitalized and no impact was expected outside the facility, the lab’s operator said Saturday. mercurynews.com

Hundreds of people living just outside Japan’s Fukushima prefecture say they have been denied adequate compensation after the country’s 2011 nuclear disaster despite suffering elevated radiation levels.  calgaryherald.com

Scana and its South Carolina Electric and Gas subsidiary continue to make headway in building two new reactors at the V.C. Summer nuclear plant, reporting to state regulators that the project is on budget but has seen some milestones drop behind schedule. nuclearstreet.com

Dominion Resources Inc., owner of Kewuanee Power Station, notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on May 14 it had removed all nuclear fuel from the reactor. greenbaypressgazette.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on May 25, 2013

Ambient office = .086 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .104 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .088 microsieverts per hour

Hass avacado from local grocery store = 079 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .107 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .086 microsieverts per hour

              The last couple of posts to this blog featured boosters of nuclear power claiming that with the construction of new reactors in the U.S., the future is bright for nuclear power. I believe that the past year’s worth of posts to this blog detail just how wrong that assessment is. The boosters brush off past nuclear accidents as not really that serious and claim that the new reactors will be even safer and more immune to accidents. Nuclear fallout from bombs and accidents is a serious concern but there is another kind of  “nuclear “fallout. My posts and links about Fukushima show how a nuclear disaster such as Fukushima reverberates throughout the country of origin and, indeed, the entire world. There are social, political, economic and health impacts that are still causing problems almost two years after the disaster. Even if a nuclear disaster does not immediately kill a lot of people, the repercussions go on for years and cost billions of dollars.

              France is considering what to do about their nuclear power program. A recent analysis suggested that France should either commit to continue getting eighty percent of their power from nuclear sources or they should immediately start to wind down their dependence on nuclear power. One of the problems with continuing to use nuclear power is the fact that there are many unsolved problems and countries such as Germany are eliminating nuclear power. The disaster at Fukushima has caused a worldwide reappraisal of the wisdom of using nuclear energy to generate electricity and generated a ground swell of public rejection of nuclear energy. The analysis concluded that of the two main choices, ending nuclear power would be the better one. One of their arguments is that the pool of skilled personnel needed to run their reactors is diminishing. Many nuclear professionals will be retiring soon and young people considering what to study in college may turn away from nuclear engineering because of the uncertainty of nuclear power’s future in France. Unfortunately, the analysis also concluded that it was most likely that France would choose neither of the main alternatives and would, instead, engage in a protracted debate on nuclear power which would cause even more problems in the long run than getting out of or committing to stay in nuclear power now.

              There are new stories emerging from Fukushima that claim that it is getting to be more and more difficult for the operators of the stricken Fukushima power plant to find the skilled workers that it needs to keep working on recovery from the disaster. One reason is that some of the staff are reaching their limit of long term radiation exposure and will have to retire for health reasons. Another reason is that there are many better paying jobs in the construction industry rebuilding from the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the Fukushima power plant. There is also the possibility that as reactors are being built in other countries, Japanese nuclear professionals may be lured away to work outside of Japan.

             TEPCO, the operators of the Fukushima plant, claim that they are not aware of any problems with staffing. One possible reason for this is the fact that TEPCO subcontracts with other firms for staffing. Some of these firms, in turn, subcontract from other firms. In some cases, there may be as many as five levels of contractors between TEPCO and the companies that are actually hiring people. The reports of a lack of available workers are coming from the lower level contractors so TEPCO is not really aware of the problem.  A survey in December of 2012 found that over half the works at Fukushima were not actually working for the particular contractors who were supposed to be employing them.

             The world wide attraction of nuclear engineering jobs took a big hit from the Fukushima disaster. Another big nuclear disaster will make working in the industry even less attractive. The staffing problem is just another one of the peripheral problems haunting the global nuclear industry aside from the big problems such as accidents and waste disposal.

Nuclear workers in training:

Last week TEPCO announced at a press conference that they would be unable to build the underground wall hoped to block some of the water infiltration and leaking at the plant. www.simplyinfo.org

Scientists said Tuesday they have detected radioactive cesium from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in plankton collected from all 10 points in the Pacific they checked, with the highest levels at around 25 degrees north latitude and 150 degrees west longitude. japantimes.co.jp

Areva has confirmed that 15 people were injured in a terrorist attack at its Somair uranium mine in Niger, one of which later died the same day. world-nuclear-news.org

Environmental pressure group Greenpeace on Tuesday said it flew a paraglider over a nuclear reactor building in south-western Sweden and dropped an item upon it from the air to show how vulnerable the facilities were. kentucky.com

Geiger Counter Readings in Seattle, WA on May 24, 2013

Ambient office = .127 microsieverts per hour

Ambient outside = .085 microsieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = .071 microsieverts per hour

Sliced mushrooms from local grocery store = .104 microsieverts per hour

Tap water = .091 microsieverts per hour

Filtered water = .083 microsieverts per hour

             A recent post on the Extreme Tech blog said that nuclear power was our only hope and that opposing it was a huge hypocrisy on the part of environmentalists. The post starts off by talking about the coming huge increase in electricity demand in China and India in the near future and how they are burning coal to generate electricity. The post rightly states that coal is a very dirty fuel that is highly polluting. The author, Graham Templeton, goes on to trash oil and natural gas, citing pollution and climate change.

            The report talks about new technologies for pollution control of fossil fuels but dismisses them as too little and too late. He mentions the billions of gallons of coal slurry that are radioactive and an environmental hazard. He brushes off the environmental degradation of fracking as a possible reasonable price to pay to reduce air pollution, a rather cavalier attitude when tap water in fracking areas can burn like gasoline.

             With respect to the increasing carbon dioxide causing global warming, he describes some new carbon sequester techniques that will help pull carbon out of the atmosphere but the writer also dismisses these as insufficient in light of continuing pollution from fossil fuel use. He also finds the current existing technologies for carbon sequestration to be wanting.

             Finally he takes aim at solar, wind and other alternative technologies and says that they are not ready yet to play a major role in energy generation. So what does he have to say about how we could meet the electricity demands of the future?

             Why nuclear reactors are the way! They are a mature technology, very safe, and the waste they generate is not even as bad as the radioactive coal slurry. Fukushima? Why that proves how tough and safe the current generation of reactors are. Even an earthquake and a tsumami didn’t really do that much damage. And radiation that has been released worldwide by nuclear explosions and accidents hasn’t really hurt anyone. So he says that any environmentalist who is against nuclear power is a hypocrite.

            In a popular metaphor, reading this article made my head explode. The radiation from Fukushima circled the whole northern hemisphere. If the spent fuel pool at reactor number four is hit by another quake and comes crashing down, the fuel rods will burn and release a hundred times the radiation of Chernobyl. The cores that melted down at Fukushima are likely to pour radiation into the ocean for decades. All the spent nuclear fuel pools in the U.S. are going to be full and there won’t be a permanent storage until 2048 in the U.S. at the earliest. The temporary storage tanks are corroding. The Hanford reservation tanks are leaking. Illnesses and deaths attributable to radiation are very hard to track and identify unless the radiation is immediate and intense.

             The financial community is not interested in investing in nuclear plants. The cost of new reactors is rising above estimates, there are delays and lawsuits. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has done a poor job of regulation. Members of the nuclear industry have allowed shoddy construction, failed to maintain equipment, falsified reports, persecuted whistleblowers, ignored leaks, etc. Alternative energy sources are increasing exponential in capability and decreasing exponentially in cost.

             I do not disagree that current use of fossil fuels are highly polluting and dangerous. I do disagree that nuclear power is the answer to our future energy needs. A combination of conservation and alternative energy sources will have to serve until more futuristic alternative such as nuclear fusion and/or solar power satellites are available.