Part One of Two Parts: 

            I have written many posts about nuclear weapons. A great deal of ink is being spilled about the negotiations with Iran over their nuclear program and the possibility that they may develop a nuclear bomb some day. While I think that the deal that has been worked out is a good one and that keeping one more country from acquiring nuclear weapons is a laudable goal, we already have too many nuclear warheads on the planet.

         A few nuclear nations such as the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel possess hundreds of nuclear warheads. It is estimated that the detonation of only a hundred of these warheads could result in a nuclear winter that would end our human civilization. This danger is beyond acceptable.

        The U.S. and Russia both have thousands of warheads ready to launch at each other. The warning and launch systems of both countries are aging and deteriorating. While disarmament is being discussed and treaties are being negotiated, both countries are committing to upgrading their nuclear forces. Recently the Russians have been rattling the nuclear saber in Eastern Europe and flying nuclear bombers inside the territorial airspace of other countries. This is sheer madness. No one can “win” a nuclear war.

         I have blogged in the past about times that the world teetered on the brink on the nuclear abyss and it often came down to one man who refused to push the button that would have annihilated humanity. Here are a few more close calls to consider.

        In November of 1961, dedicated communication between the U.S. Strategic Air Command in Nebraska and the network of U.S. early warning radar sites was cut off. SAC tried the backup phone lines but could not get through. Then they tried to call NORAD on the regular civilian phone lines but that didn’t work either. Fearing that the Soviet Union had launched a massive attack and wiped out all the radar stations along with NORAD, SAC started warming up the engines on the nuclear bombers. Fortunately, a B-52 that was flying over one of the radar stations saw that it had not been destroyed and the alert was cancelled. It turned out that all the communication lines for SAC went through a single telephone relay station in Colorado. A motor at the relay station had overheated and cut off all the phone lines in and out of SAC.

       I have already blogged about the Cuban missiles crisis when a Soviet ship went off course and crossed the blockade line that the U.S. had set up around Cuba. Although standing orders required that the captain of the U.S. naval vessel monitoring that part of the blockade line consider any crossing of that line a military provocation, he rightly assumed that the Soviet ship was off course and held off issuing an order for retaliatory action.. The Soviet ship sailed back across the line and we did not start World War III. 

       During the Cuban missile crisis, in October of 1962, a guard at a U.S. military base saw someone trying to climb over a fence around his base. The guard activated the intruder alarm system which also sent out messages  to warn other military bases. At Volk Field in Wisconsin, the wrong alarm was triggered. It signaled that we had been attacked by the Soviet Union and ordered nuclear bombers stationed at the base to take off and head for the Soviet Union. The bombers were taking off when a truck rushed onto the runway and flashed its lights to signal the pilots of the bombers to abort their take off.   

See Part Two

 

Muon scanners for Fukushima Unit 2 are the wrong size. fukuleaks.org

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, expects an inter-governmental agreement on the key commercial terms of a project to build Egypt’s first nuclear power plant will be ready to sign this autumn. world-nuclear-news.org

A group of companies has filed a lawsuit against the Commonwealth of Virginia seeking to overturn the state’s 33-year-old uranium mining moratorium. world-nuclear-news.org

Southern California Edison, owners of the shut down San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, said Wednesday the company was disappointed with a ruling by a California Public Utilities Commission administrative law judge regarding communications with state regulators that could result in millions of dollars in fines. nuclearstreet.com

        On August 3, 2015, U.S. President Obama and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the final draft of the Clean Power Plan – ” a historic and important step in reducing carbon pollution from power plants that takes real action on climate change. Shaped by years of unprecedented outreach and public engagement, the final Clean Power Plan is fair, flexible and designed to strengthen the fast-growing trend toward cleaner and lower-polluting American energy. With strong but achievable standards for power plants, and customized goals for states to cut the carbon pollution that is driving climate change, the Clean Power Plan provides national consistency, accountability and a level playing field while reflecting each state’s energy mix. It also shows the world that the United States is committed to leading global efforts to address climate change.”

       The role of nuclear power has been a major issue in drafting the CPP. Proponents claim that nuclear power is a low-carbon source and should be included in the mix of supported technologies. Critics say that there are a lot of uncounted costs and uncertainties to nuclear power so it should not be included in the mix.

       One of the big questions with respect to nuclear power is what to do about the existing nuclear power plants that may have to close because they cannot compete with cheap natural gas and oil. Supporters of nuclear power say that the Clear Power Plan should include financial support for low carbon nuclear power plants that are not competitive.

        The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the mandate to cancel the license of any nuclear power plant that cannot make a profit for the owners. Two plants have already been close in the U.S. recently because one was losing money and no buyer could be found. The other was deteriorating and was too expensive to repair. IN 2013, six nuclear plants were listed by Moningstar as being at risk for shut down due to economic problems,

 1. Indian Point, NY, owned by Entergy
2. Ginna, NY, Exelon
3. Fitzpatrick, NY, Entergy
4. Three Mile Island, PA, Exelon
5. Davis Beese, OH, FirstEnergy
6. Pilgrim, MA, Entergy

Exelon has also been expressing concerns about its Byron, Quad Cities and Clinton plants in Illinois. They have been pressing for cancelation of tax breaks for wind power and asking for state money to help the power plants stay in operation.

         Unfortunately for these existing plants, the final draft of the CPP offers no support. The EPA states that “On further consideration, we believe it is inappropriate to base the BSER (Best System of Emission Reduction) on elements that will not reduce CO2 emissions from affected electric generating units below current levels. Existing nuclear generation helps make existing CO2 emissions lower than they would otherwise be, but will not further lower CO2 emissions below current levels. Accordingly… the EPA is not finalizing preservation of generation from existing nuclear capacity as a component of the BSER.”

        So the final draft of the CPP will not support direct aid or endorse state aid to these uncompetitive aging nuclear power plants as part of the national plan to support sources of energy that reduce carbon emissions. Ultimately, the CPP took a compromise position with respect to nuclear power.

Damaged nuclear fuel containers found in Fukushima Unit 3 pool after removal of massive piece of debris. enenews.com

Finnish ownership of Fennovoima, which plans to build the Hanhikivi 1 nuclear power plant, now exceeds 65% following new financial commitments from three domestic companies. The processing of Fennovoima’s construction licence application can now proceed. world-nuclear-news.org

Prices and demand in the uranium market remain flat because of oversupply, but the long-term outlook for nuclear energy is positive, underpinned by strong fundamentals, Canada-based uranium producer Cameco said. nucnet.org

Nuclear Bomb Survivors Speak Out Against Nuclear Power in Japan. newsweek.com

 

 

       The debate over the dangers of radioactive materials to human health has been raging for over a hundred years since the discovery of radioactive elements. It can be easily demonstrated that high levels of radiation cause immediate harm to human tissue. Moderate levels of radiation can have long terms effects on human health. The natural environment contains radiation emitted from uranium and radium in the soil and rocks. We evolved with this natural background radiation and some think that it is not harmful and may even be beneficial to health. The idea of low level radiation strengthening tissue against higher levels of radiation is known as “hormesis.” It has been rejected by most of the scientific community.

        The NRC has just accepted a petition from three people representing the Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information that the NRC amend its “Standards for Protection Against Radiation.” Currently the NRC abides by the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model which holds that radiation is always harmful and there is no “safe” threshold below which radiation is not damaging. The LNT model states that “biological damage caused by ionizing radiation (essentially the cancer risk) is directly proportional to the amount of radiation exposure to the human body (response linearity).”

       The three petitioners are in health related fields. They claim that there is no solid evidence that low doses of radiation are harmful to human health and that compliance with the current limits on exposure are an unnecessary expense for their professions. A Dr. Doss, one of the petitioners, said that he was filing the petition on behalf of Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information, whose mission is to “help prevent unnecessary, radiation-phobia-related deaths, morbidity, and injuries associated with distrust of radio-medical diagnostics/therapies and from nuclear/radiological emergencies through countering phobia-promoting misinformation spread by alarmists via the news and other media including journal publications. “

       Australian Dr. Peter Karamoskos, a nuclear radiologist and a public representative on the radiation health committee of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency said in a 2011 article, ““There seems to be a never-ending cabal of paid industry scientific ”consultants” who are more than willing to state the fringe view that low doses of ionizing radiation do not cause cancer and, indeed, that low doses are actually good for you and lessen the incidence of cancer.”  He continues with “Ionizing radiation is a known carcinogen. This is based on almost 100 years of cumulative research including 60 years of follow-up of the Japanese atom bomb survivors. The International Agency for Research in Cancer (IARC, linked to the World Health Organization) classifies it as a Class 1 carcinogen, the highest classification indicative of certainty of its carcinogenic effects.”

        The HealFukushima.org Alert issued a bulletin on what adoption of the hormesis concept could do: “If adopted, this would permit all current radioactive releases, leaks, and ongoing emissions from nuclear power plants, and decrease evacuation zones, as well as allow Fukushima, Chernobyl, WIPP (New Mexico nuclear waste disposal site), Hanford, Oak Ridge, Nevada and Alaska test sites, Santa Susanna, Farallons nuclear waste dump, depleted uranium, nuclear weapons, and other international emissions, as long as the government deems them to be “low level”, to impact Americans under the fantasy of a hormesis effect.
No protective measures or public safety warnings would be considered necessary. Clean-up measures could be sharply reduced. Protection for medical and screening personnel working around radiation-emitting equipment could be reduced.
In a sense, this would legalize what the government is already doing – failing to protect the public and promoting nuclear radiation….
The NRC standardneeds revised to be more protective. Just like non-ionizing wireless radiation exposure, impact is not necessarily linear. Chronic low dose can be much worse than a one-time high dose.”

       Critics of the NRCs discussions of hormesis claim that much of the motivation for considering lowing radiation exposure standards would reduce the responsibility and expense of both government and industry to protect people from the repercussions of nuclear accidents.

Alternative assumptions for the extrapolation of the cancer risk vs. radiation dose to low-dose levels, given a known risk at a high dose: supra-linearity (A), linear (B), linear-quadratic (C) and hormesis (D).

 

 

A worker reported to the Fukushima  onsite office saying he felt unwell. He was transported to Iwaki hospital and died soon after arriving. TEPCO has given no further details about what kind of work he was doing or his cause of death. fukuleak.org

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has launched a special inspection at Honeywell Metropolis Works in Illinois to assess a uranium hexafluoride (UF6) leak that occurred during maintenance activities on 1 August. world-nuclear-news.org

The final version of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan does not include aid to existing nuclear power plants at risk of closing because they can’t compete with cheaper natural gas and renewables—a list that includes some of the nation’s most controversial reactors, including Indian Point and Three Mile Island. forbes.com

Iran has filed a complaint with the International Atomic Energy Agency alleging that the U.S. has already broken terms of the nuclear weapons deal, citing comments made by White House press secretary Josh Earnest. washingtontimes.com

 

        The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is located near Carlsbad, New Mexico. It was completed fifteen years ago and dedicated to the permanent geological disposal of radioactive wastes association with the manufacture of U.S. nuclear weapons. In February of 2014, a drum of waste exploded and twenty workers were exposed to a small amount of radiation. The filtration system failed to contain the radioactive particles from the drum and they escaped from the WIPP facility. Some were detected twenty miles away near Carlsbad.

         The drum that exploded had been shipped from Los Alamos National Laboratory. It was determined that the drum of waste had been treated with a new absorbent material to solidify the waste. The new absorbent had combined with some of the materials in the waste and created an explosive compound that ultimately destroyed the drum. Hundreds of barrels from LANL contained the new absorbent. Some had been shipped to WIPP, some went to a nuclear storage facility in Texas and some remain at LANL. Any of these drums may explode. The facility was shut down in order to complete analysis of the accident and to effect repairs. There were plans to reopen the facility in March of 2016.

       It has just been announced that the planned reopening of WIPP has now be postponed because of “unanticipated challenges.” A new date for  reopening the facility has not been given. Dana Bryson, acting manager for the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office, said in a statement on Friday: “We are disappointed that we will not meet the original target date for beginning waste emplacement.” A press release from the U.S. Department of Energy also said that  “While the WIPP recovery program continues to make significant progress, the original target date of March 2016 for resuming waste emplacement operations is no longer viable due to a variety of unanticipated issues.” Some of the issues that need to be resolved include heightened DoE safety standards and problems with the ventilation system.

       There are multiple reasons for this accident and they should not have been “unanticipated.” The new absorbent at LANL was used after a technician warned that someone should check on the chemistry of the new absorbent for possible problems. The records for the contents of the drums were incomplete or non-existent. The chamber where the drum exploded should have been sealed because it had been filled. The sealing of chambers was mandated by the official procedures to be thick plugs of concrete and steel. Sometime after the facility had opened, the plugs were abandoned and thin steel doors were used. Then even the use of the steel doors stopped.

         If the procedures at LANL and WIPP had been properly followed, there were a number of occurrences which should have raised red flags and been addressed. Had adherence to regulations been monitored and enforced properly, this accident would never have happened. They need to repair the ventilation system and seal the chamber properly but they don’t just need new safety regulations. They need to make sure they follow safety regulations that are already in place.