Fukushima evacuees’ refusal to vacate temporary housing causes reconstruction headache. japantimes.co.jp

On 9/9/2015, another Fukushima worker found dead at the site, according to TEPCO.fukushima-diary.com

World Nuclear Association Director General Agneta Rising challenged the nuclear power industry to kick electricity generation up a notch, saying at the organization’s symposium in London Thursday that the goal should be to increase capacity by 1000 GW by 2050. nuclearstreet.com

An Israeli court put nuclear whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu under seven days’ house arrest Thursday for giving a TV interview more than a decade after completing an 18-year jail term, media said. news.yahoo.com

 

       In the summer of 1950 President Truman had committed the U.S. to the development of a thermonuclear weapon because the Soviet Union had exploded their first nuclear device the previous summer. Truman wanted a more powerful bomb based on hydrogen fusion. A group of physicists, many of whom had worked on the Manhattan Project, were assembled at Los Alamos National Laboratory. A  group of these physicists often met at the Fuller Lodge for lunch.

       Enrico Fermi was one of the diners. Fermi had created the world’s first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He contributed to quantum theory, particle physics and statistical mechanics. A Nobel Prize winner, Fermi was often referred to as the father of the atomic bomb. During these lunches at the Fuller Lodge, Fermi liked to pose rhetorical questions which he would then proceed to answer, sparking lively discussions.

      At one of these lunches, Fermi asked “Don’t you wonder where everybody is.” This question was asked with respect to extraterrestrials. Fermi proceeded to answer his own question by running through the Drake Equation. The Drake Equation was created by Frank Drake, a SETI researcher, to estimate the possible number technologically advanced alien species in our galaxy. Fermi decided that interstellar travel must be impossible or extremely difficult because otherwise we would have been visited by aliens by now.

        Since that conversation, we have learned a great deal more about the factors in the Drake Equation which increases original estimates of the number of possible Earth-like planets in our galaxy. In addition, work on self-replicating machines suggest that even as hard as it appears to be to travel between stars, automated self-replication probes traveling under the speed of light could visit every star in the galaxy within ten million years. Since our galaxy is over thirteen billion years old, that is plenty of time for intelligent races to arise and launch such probes many times. So the Fermi Paradox is even greater today. Where are they?

       Some scientists speculate that intelligent technological species have a tendency to destroy themselves before they reach for the stars. This idea is called the Great Filter. If this is true, then the next question is “What is the Great Filter and does it lie before us or behind us on Earth?” Obviously, one of the great extinction threats that faces humanity is nuclear war. Could the development of nuclear weapons be the Great Filter?

       Work is already underway to analyze light from planets around other stars to see if it is possible to detect molecules in their atmospheres that might indicate the presence of a technological civilization. Some of those findings could show the destruction of a civilization. The explosion of nuclear bomb generate temperatures that are usually only found in the heart of stars. They also generate great bursts of light. Now some scientists are wondering if a lot of nuclear bombs were set off simultaneously on an alien planet, could the light generated be detected by Earth telescopes. The timing would have to be precise because most theorized destruction signatures would only last for decades at most. How sad and ironic if our first detection of an alien civilization around another star was of its destruction.

       So, in answer to Fermi’s original question, we might reply that they have not come because they have destroyed themselves with the very type of weapons that you were working on.

Enrico Fermi:

TEPCO announced the timeline to close the steel piling sea wall at Fukushima. fukuleaks.org

Nahara, Japan has been plagued with problems and high radiation levels yet the Japanese government has characterized the town as being “safe” fukuleaks.org

Areva, the French nuclear reactor manufacturer, faces challenges in making sure that the company manages to complete large projects; making sure that it adapts to post-Fukushima market conditions, and making sure that it addresses the level of debt resulting from past investments. world-nuclear-news.org

Exelon Corporation, owners of the largest fleet of nuclear power plants in the country, said Thursday it would defer its decision on whether or not to continue operating the Quad Cities and Byron nuclear power plants for one year. nuclearstreet.com

 

       Tianjin is the largest coastal city on the northern coast of China. It is the fourth largest city in China and is listed as one of the five national city centers of the People’s Republic of China. Tianjin has been a major seaport since the mid-19 century. It is now a major hub of financial activity and advanced industry with almost three hundred of the Fortune 500 companies setting up branches there.

       The Port of Tianjin is the largest manmade port in China and it covers about fifty square miles with one hundred and fifty production births. It handles five hundred tons of cargo and thirteen million TEU of containers a year making it the fourth largest port in the world for tonnage and the ninth largest in terms of containers. It traffics with six hundred other ports all over the world.

       On  the 12th of August, 2015, there were at least two huge explosions within seconds of each other. Unknown hazardous materials in shipping containers in a warehouse owned by Ruihai Logistics blew up from causes yet unknown. The fires burned for days and caused additional explosions. One hundred and fifty nine people were killed, fourteen are still mission and there were non-fatal injuries to almost eight hundred people.

       Ruihai Logistics is a privately held company established in 2011 to handle hazardous materials. It was licensed by the Port to handle such materials two months before the explosion and has a five hundred square foot site with multiple warehouses. Port regulations that require storage of hazardous materials to be at more than three thousand feet away from public buildings and facilities were not followed and the local residents were not informed of the danger. The Port authorities say that poor record keeping, the destruction of office facilities and major discrepancies with respect to customs regulations made it impossible to know for certain what materials were stored in the warehouse that exploded.

       There were over forty kinds of hazardous chemicals stored at the Ruihai site. It is known that eight hundred tons of ammonium nitrate and five hundred tons of potassium nitrate exploded during the entire episode. Water was initially sprayed on the fire which may have combined with calcium carbide stored there to product acetylene which may have detonated the ammonium nitrate. Over seven hundred tons of sodium cyanide were stored at the site which is seventy times the legal limit for this chemical. People were burned by the rain after the incident.

        The Ruihai temporary license expired in October of 2014. This means that it was operating illegally from October of 2014 to June of 2015. It turns out that the father of one of the men who owns Ruihai was the former chief of police for the Port. His son was able to obtain permits and licenses easily suggesting that his family connections allowed him to avoid the regular process. The son also appeared not to be too concerned about following rules and regulations.

        The reason that I have taken the time to detail the disaster at the Port of Tianjin is because I wanted to make a point about the volatile mixture of hazardous materials and corruption in China. The Chinese government is committed to the construction of dozens of nuclear reactors in the next decade. The Tianjin disaster is an indication of what could happen in the construction of nuclear reactors and the handling of radioactive materials in China. There is great pressure to build the reactors and put them into operation. There is widespread corruption up to the highest levels in China. It is virtually inevitable that there will be major nuclear accidents in China that will injure and kill many people. There will also be massive public backlash against the construction of more reactors after such an accident. The Chinese have always been concerned about civil chaos. For the sake of their own national security and stability, they should rethink their commitment to nuclear power.

Fires burning at Port of Tianjin after explosion:

 

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering a move to eliminate the “Linear No-Threshold” (LNT) basis of radiation protection that the U.S. has used for decades and replace it with the “radiation hormesis” theory—which holds that low doses of radioactivity are good for people. counterpunch.org

Epic flooding in Japan threatening Fukushima causing serious concerns about nuclear power plant in flood zone.  enenews.com

 In a big victory for President Obama, Senate Democrats on Thursday blocked a resolution to reject the Iran nuclear agreement. usatoday.com

Global nuclear power generation capacity could increase by more than 45 percent in the next 20 years but the pace of growth will still fall short of what is needed to curb climate change, an industry organization report showed on Thursday. reuters.com

       I have been blogging a lot recently about nuclear weapons and nuclear war. After the end of the Cold War in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was hoped that nuclear disarmament would proceed and humanity could remove the dark cloud of nuclear war for its future. Unfortunately, although nuclear weapons have been reduced by about eighty percent in the U.S. and Russia, each still has thousands of warheads ready to launch. In addition, other countries have nuclear weapons and are in conflicts with their neighbors that could escalate. Since Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, relations between Russia and the U.S. have deteriorated. Both countries are upgrading their nuclear arsenals. In addition, both are working on new nuclear weapons. Today I will talk about a new U.S. weapon.

       The U.S. has been working on a new nuclear bomb recently for its nuclear arsenal. The bomb is known as the B61-12. It’s yield can be adjusted between a low of equivalent to 300 tons of TNT to a high equivalent to fifty thousand tons of TNT. Even the maximum yield is very small compared to the megaton warheads of our major nuclear missiles. It is very accurate and can land within a hundred feet of its target. Unlike purely gravity-guided bombs, there is a tail assembly on the B61-12 which allows it to be guided after it is dropped from an airplane. This means that it could be used to reliably destroy a target that would have required a much bigger but less accurate bomb. It can be carried by the new generation of F-35 fighter jets.

      Critics of the new bomb say that the increased accuracy increases the possibility that it will actually be used in a conflict. A retired U.S. general pointed out recently that the list of possible targets for a gravity guided nuclear bomb is expanded with the B61-12. This increases the scenarios which might employ nuclear bombs delivered by airplanes. When fully tested, it will be integrated into existing NATO forces and the new F-35 fighters to expand the alliances tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.

      The Russian President has bragged that Russia could defeat NATO because it has more tactical nuclear weapons. If NATO ground troops were overwhelming Russian ground troops, the Russians could use their tactical nuclear weapons to turn the tide. The deployment of the B61-12s in Europe could be an answer to the Russian tactical nuclear challenge.

       In 2010, the Obama administration announced that “it would not make any nuclear weapons with new capabilities.” The White House and the Pentagon claim that the B61-12 is not a violation of that pledge. However, some military experts point out that the creation of a variable yield highly accurate nuclear bomb that can be carried by a stealth fighter like the F-35 certain does add new capabilities to the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

      Much of the criticism of the B61-12 program is based on the cost. When full production begins in 2020, it is estimated that the cost of from four hundred to five hundred of the new bombs will exceed eleven billion dollars. This would make the B61-12 more expensive than any other nuclear bomb ever constructed by the U.S. Perhaps the money could be better spent than wasted on a tactical nuclear weapon that will further destabilize the nuclear balance between the U.S. and Russia.

B61-12:

Japan’s dispute with South Korea over its import restrictions on Japanese seafood imposed after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster is now going to the World Trade Organization. ajw.asahi.com

Fifty-three months after the fateful nuclear disaster, the Sendai nuclear power plant in Kagoshima Prefecture has become the first in Japan to resume after all were taken offline for safety inspections. ajw.asahi.com

An Australian governmental committee has recommended that uranium sales to India should only be allowed to proceed after its concerns about non-proliferation, nuclear regulation and safeguards have been addressed. world-nuclear-news.org

The construction of a nuclear power plant in Kenya based on the Hualong 1 design will be examined under a memorandum of understanding signed between China General Nuclear (CGN) and the Kenya Nuclear Electricity Board (KNEB). world-nuclear-news.org