Dr. C Busby talked about supplement scandal and contamination situation to Fukushima Diary. fukushima-diary.com

University releases interactive map of Japanese food radiation levels. mainichi.jp

Led by GOP Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, 47 Republican senators have signed an open letter to Iranian leaders emphasizing Congress’s role in signing off on a potential deal over Iran’s nuclear program and warning that anything not approved by Congress “is a mere executive agreement.” washingtontimes.com

Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon told The Guardian newspaper last week she would no longer condition policy support in Westminster on the removal of Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet from the region. atlanticsentinel.com

 

 

 

According to their new policy, TEPCO is supposed to publish all the radiation data of water and dust that directly affect the environment in principle and expects Japanese and international experts to check the data. fukushima-diary.com

The government plans to launch a campaign in major cities to promote the need for permanent disposal facilities for high-level nuclear waste from power plants, sources close to the matter said Saturday. japantimes.co.jp

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved Ameren Missouri’s request for a 20-year-license extension for its Callaway Energy Center, effectively giving the facility permission to operate until 2044. connectmidmissouri.com

Police in Paris detained five Greenpeace activists on Monday after they dangled from a bridge and unfurled banners on the Seine River that call for cuts in nuclear power, the environmental group said. abcnews.go.com

A rise in contaminated water in the “C” drainage channel at  Fukushima  was detected around Thursday.  fukuleaks.org

They are burning the contaminated rubble and soil from Fukushima and turning the ash into “Eco Cement” and using it to build publicly, including construction for the Olympic games. zengardner.com

 Pakistan test-fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile on Monday, the military said, less than a week after the first high-level talks with arch-rivals India for nearly a year. defensenews.com

For both 2013 and 2014, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission scored a zero on use of strong authentication to secure their computer networks and the sensitive data managed by the agency, an executive branch report said. nuclearstreet.com

          Assessing the risks associated with different actions is something that we do every day. Whether it has to do with taking an umbrella because it might rain or taking a medication that has nasty side effects, we are always weighing the risks against benefits, pros and cons. Our lives are full of  tradeoffs. Scientists have worked to created procedures for evaluating risk and reward in a formal framework. This is very important because leaders are always trying to decide the best course of action with respect to serious social, environmental and economic issues. Nuclear power is major source of electrical generation in the U.S. and it has a lot of attendant risks. How does the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission assess the risk of a nuclear power plant?

       The NRC has three primary questions that it asks when assessing risk.

1. What can go wrong?

2. How likely is it to go wrong?

3. What at the consequences if something goes wrong.

They refer to this set of questions as the “risk triplet.” The most important issues to consider are those that have a high likelihood and a serious consequence. After such considerations, analysis moves on to low likelihood and serious consequences. Finally, some thought can be given to low likelihood with low consequences.

       The primary tool for risk analysis at nuclear power plants is something called probabilistic risk assessment (PRA). Engineers use mathematical techniques to work out probabilities for the risk triplets. From the outcome of this analysis, an “event tree” and a “fault tree” are created. These “trees” map out sequences of possible occurrences and consequences in a systematic way. An event tree starts with an initiating event and then shows the different ways that subsequent events play out with either a positive or negative outcome. Fault trees are used to consider what the probability is for each of the different event sequences in the event tree.

      When a chain of events results in the failure of a system, the fault tree allows the engineers to work through what went wrong at what stage in order for the system to crash. In some cases one of two things might go wrong. In other cases, several things can go wrong together. When working on system design, special attention is given to those possible event sequences that lead to system failure with serious consequences. The most dangerous possibilities receive the most attention in designing a system that is unlikely to fail in those ways.

       One problem with the risk assessment process is that sometimes the engineers are simply not aware of some things that could go wrong. Some system failures are a surprise. A second problem is the fact that estimations of the probability of a particular event can be very wrong. Unfortunately, this is a place where politics can enter what should be an engineering question. Sometimes, parties involved in the promotion of a nuclear power plant will deliberately play down dangers in order to gain public support. And, finally, with respect to the third member of the risk triplet, projections of the consequences of system failure at a nuclear power plant are minimized in the name of profits. Risk assessment is a very important part of engineering and should be executed without respect to political or economic consideration.

 Event tree example:

UCLA Researchers express significant concern on the safety of the population and environment worldwide following the Fukushima disaster. enenews.com

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Friday more work needed to be done to reach a deal on Iran’s contested nuclear program as a deadline at the end of March looms over the talks. news.yahoo.com

Former Idaho Govs. Cecil Andrus and Phil Batt fired off a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Energy on Thursday threatening a federal lawsuit over a deal between the current governor and the Department of Energy to allow a shipment of spent nuclear fuel into Idaho. spokesman.com

The Kentucky state Senate passed a bill that would end a moratorium on building new nuclear reactors in the state. power-eng.com

 

 

Part 2 of Iranian Breakout Time Misperceptions (Please read Part 1 first):

3. Proponents of the breakout time criterion claim that this process is the most likely way that Iran would create nuclear weapons at known Iranian nuclear facilities. This is contradicted by the fact that other nations such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, Romania and North Korea have all built clandestine sites to secretly work towards nuclear weapons. Two of Iran’s nuclear facilities had been secret until uncovered by U.S. intelligence. If Iran does decide to work on creating a nuclear arsenal, it is most likely that it will be at secret sites that would not be open to inspection. This could be called “sneakout” as opposed to “breakout.”

4. Proponents of the breakout time criterion claim that the shorter the estimated breakout time, the more the U.S.’s ability to prevent an Iran bomb is reduced. The truth is that any detection by current inspections of weapons grade uranium at any Iranian nuclear facility would trigger alarms that would result in immediate attention by the U.S. and other countries involved in the negotiations with Iran. Contingency plans for military intervention could be drafted and implemented in days which means that estimates of breakout in months are not the determining factors for a response.

5.  Proponents of the breakout time criterion claim that the shorter the estimated breakout time, the more likely it is that Iran will attempt it. On the other hand, Iran has had an estimated breakout time of a few months for four years and they have not made an attempt to build a bomb yet. Currently Iran is negotiating for monitoring and inspections that would expand the estimated breakout time to a year. U.S intelligence says that Iran has had the scientific, technical and industrial capacity to produce nuclear weapons since 2007 but has not chosen to do so.

         Breakout time is a simple way of assessing nuclear weapons activity but it is not sufficient to really answer the question of how long it would take a particular nation to actually design, build, test and manufacture an nuclear arsenal that could serve as a real deterrent to hostile neighbors. Iran’s leaders are very shrewd at negotiating. They are balancing external threats against international sanctions. They are working hard to drive the best bargain that they can.

         Some factions in the U.S. Congress have advocated an attack on Iran for years. Israel has hinted that if the U.S. does not participate in military action against Iran soon, Israel will unilaterally attack Iranian nuclear sites. This would be a very dangerous move for Israel and could destabilize the Middle East even further. Negotiations are rapidly approaching a deadline for a nuclear deal with Iran. Negotiators are afraid that the hawks in the U.S. Congress will ram through legislation that would impose much harsher sanctions on Iran if a deal cannot be finalized by the deadline. Critics say that this action by the U.S. could make future negotiations much more difficult.

Iranian nuclear facilities:

Fukushima is Japan’s and the world’s radiation nightmare that will not go away in our lifetimes nor our children’s or grandchildren’s. sorendreier.com

A deal in the Iran nuclear talks looks possible after the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif suggested that a 10-year moratorium might be acceptable to Tehran.  iknowtoday.com

Excluding Russia from the SWIFT banking system would be a measure of last resort if the crisis in Ukraine escalates, the British and Polish foreign ministers said Friday. arabnews.com

After more than a decade of extra-stringent oversight, Nuclear Fuel Services will soon return to normal levels of Nuclear Regulatory Commission involvement. johnsoncitypress.com