Environment

July 16, 2019 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Bomb Test Fallout Spread Farther and Deeper Than We Knew

The Muir Glacier, in Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, has undergone well documented and very rapid retreat. According to Wikipedia, from 1892 to about 1980, it retreated nearly 20 miles; and from 1941 to 2004, it retreated over 7.5 miles and thinned by over 800 meters or 2,600 feet. Ocean water has filled the valley, replaced the ice, and created Muir Inlet at right. Photos by United States Geological Survey.

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2019

By Kelly Lundeen

From the South and North Poles, to the deepest ocean trenches, human-made radioactive material is being discovered in new places. Two recent studies reveal the distances that radioactive effluent and fallout have been dispersed. One international research team found radioactivity in all 17 glaciers they tested in both of the Earth’s hemispheres.

Another global study found the first evidence of fallout from bomb tests in marine life in the deepest place on Earth. With unabated production of radioactive waste, runoff, gases, and accidents, it’s no surprise to find it farther away and deeper than ever.

Fallout Found from High Glacier to Deep Ocean

The first study found measured amounts of radioactive cesium-137 and americium-241 in glacial sediments thousands of times greater than expected. “Our samples are exceptional in terms of the levels of fallout radionuclides that we find outside of nuclear exclusion zones” (contaminated “no-go” areas), said Caroline Clason, a member of the study team and a lecturer in Physical Geography at the Univ. of Plymouth, UK. “We’re talking about weapons testing from the 1950s and 1960s onwards, going right back in the development of the bomb,” Clason told Agence France-Presse. “If we take a sediment core you can see a clear spike where Chernobyl was [in April 1986], but you can also see quite a defined spike in around 1963 when there was a period of quite heavy weapons testing.” While most of the fallout from Fukushima has yet to return to land, evidence is already appearing.

After an accident or explosion, radioactive particles travel through the atmosphere and fall to Earth as radioactive rain or snow. Radioactive particles in snow fall on glaciers settling into the temporarily stable environment. However, Clason warned, “we all know that glaciers are increasingly melting and that material has to go somewhere.” The study did reveal some good news: the unique glacial sediment where radioactive particles settle is very efficient at accumulating those contaminants and may provide opportunities for bioremediation.

As radioactive glacial sediments enter the ocean, it will affect marine life which has already been doused with radioactivity. That is the subject of “Penetration of Bomb Carbon-14 into the Deepest Ocean Trench,” published in April by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). (If carbon-14 sounds familiar, you may remember that it is used to determine the age of geological samples using carbon dating.) An AGU news release explains, “Thermonuclear weapons tests conducted during the 1950s and 1960s doubled the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere when neutrons released from the bombs reacted with nitrogen in the air.” Bomb test carbon has been recorded in marine life at the ocean’s surface since the late 1950s. As these animals die and fall to the ocean floor, deep sea crustaceans as far as seven miles (11 kilometers) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean in the Mariana Trench, feed on their remains and the radioactivity is passed through the food web. “However, the penetration of bomb [test] carbon-14 into the deepest fauna has not been reported until now,” the study said.

The amount of human-made radioactivity moving into the Pacific is mushrooming. New concern is being raised by the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres over a leaking concrete dome built in the Marshall Islands. The concrete covers a large volume of radioactive debris that was collected from the detonation of 67 bomb tests done by the US, contaminating the islands and their people. Radioactive materials from the testing were pushed into an unlined pit and capped with the concrete. Mr. Guterres recently visited the islands, amplifying the voices of Marshall Islanders worried about radioactivity leaching into the ocean through the bottom of the hole, and the increasing potential for damage to the concrete dome by tropical storms.

From the depths of the oceans to the polar regions, more areas are being impacted by the radioactive legacy of humans, impacts accelerated with climate change which itself is rapidly accelerating.

—Sources: The London Sunday Express, May 19; American Geophysical Union, May 18 & 8, 2019; Agence France-Presse, May 16 & Apr. 10, 2019; CNN, May 13, 2019; Live Science, Apr. 15, 2019; European Geosciences Union April 10, 2019.

July 6, 2019 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Fukushima Disaster Response and Recovery a Vexing Radiation Colossus

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2019

By John LaForge

Eight years into Fukushima’s 3-reactor catastrophe of earthquake, tsunami and meltdowns, and after the industry’s and government’s multiple recovery schemes, an overview is in order.*

The three reactor meltdowns at Fukushima-Daiichi caused the worst dump of radioactivity to the Pacific Ocean in history. “This event is unprecedented in its total release of radioactive contamination into the ocean” wrote Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for PBS News Hour in March 2016. Buesseler has been recording Fukushima’s Pacific Ocean contamination since it started on 3/11/11. While Fukushima is often called the “2nd worst” radiation accident behind Chernobyl, Buesseler said, “More than 80% of the radioactivity from the damaged reactors ended up in the Pacific—far more than reached the ocean from Chernobyl.” Buesseler reported that this radiation gusher continues. “It is incorrect to say that Fukushima is under control when levels of radioactivity in the ocean indicate ongoing leaks, caused by groundwater flowing through the site and enhanced after storms,” he wrote.

“The worst airborne radiation spill in 25 years.”: Like the 1986 Chernobyl disaster that spread radiation across the Northern Hemisphere, Forbes reported March 28, 2011 that the US EPA recorded Fukushima’s radioactive iodine-131 in rainwater in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts at levels above what the agency allows in drinking water. The EPA’s air monitoring also found Fukushima’s radioactive iodine-131 in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, and Nevada. Nothing close to this immense, hemisphere-wide radiation dispersal has happened since Chernobyl.
Japanese foods were tainted widely. Traces of radioactive cesium were found in a popular baby formula according to Japan Today, Dec. 7, 2011. Hundreds of thousands of babies may have eaten it before it was pulled from store shelves. The Japan Times reported April 22, 2011 that Fukushima’s iodine-131 was detected in the breast milk of women living near Tokyo, 150 miles from the meltdowns. The public demanded an investigation into the impact on mothers and babies. In April 2013, Japan’s Ministry of Health reported that levels of cesium-137 and cesium-134 found in produce and rice crackers 225 miles away from Fukushima “are high enough to cause residents to exceed the annual radiation exposure limit in just a few months, or even weeks.”
Fukushima is the world’s worst reactor disaster by volume of fuel melted and waste in cooling pools. Major reactor meltdowns at Santa Susanna in California (1959), Windscale in England (1957), Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania (1979), and Chernobyl in Ukraine (1986), involved a single reactor fuel inventory. Fukushima’s meltdowns involve three reactors full of melted and mangled fuel rods, and an additional 1,573 waste fuel rods in damaged condition in damaged pools of cooling water. The three masses of melted reactor fuel may never be recovered or containerized.
Fukushima caused the largest evacuation in the history of nuclear power: 160,000 evacuated from the zone first set at 12, and later expanded to 19 miles. (116,000 were forced to leave Chernobyl’s dead zone.) Two weeks after the start of the meltdowns, people from between 12 to 19 miles away were encouraged to “voluntarily evacuate.” The US government recommended that US citizens stay 50 miles away.
Of the colossal volumes of radioactive debris produced by the catastrophe, the New York Times provided this list in March 2017: 400 tons of contaminated cooling water produced every day since March 2011; 3,519 containers holding 60,000 tons of radioactive mud or sludge; 64,700 cubic meters of discarded protective clothing; branches and logs from 220 acres of deforested land; 200,400 cubic meters of radioactive rubble; and 3.5 billion gallons [17 million cubic yards] of radioactive soil. According to Greenpeace, 11 million tons of this radioactive soil is to be incinerated, which spreads airborne radioactive contamination in fly ash from smoke stacks, and leaves behind radioactively contaminated bottom ash in need of containment. (Will the consequently contaminated soil again be collected for re-incineration?)
The vexing problems of disaster response have seen ever-changing estimates of the amount of radiation released. The amount released to the air was “twice as large as previous estimates by research institutions both in Japan and overseas,” according to a Feb. 2012 report by the Meteorological Research Institute. The volume and variety of contaminated materials that have been collected for disposal is astounding. Greenpeace reported in December 2017 that while towns like Iitate and Namie had contaminated topsoil scraped off from populated areas, the problem remained because the soil removal left “islands … which are surrounded by forested mountains, for which there is no possible decontamination.” Consequently, cleaned-up areas “are subject to recontamination through weathering processes and the natural water and lifecycle of trees and rivers.” Because of how long cesium-137 persists in the environment, “this will be an on-going source of significant recontamination for … 300 years.”
The failure of the “ice wall,” designed to divert groundwater away from the three reactor foundations which were cracked open by the record 9.0 earthquake, means that hundreds of tons of water keep pouring every day into the wreckage of the reactor chambers. There the water is contaminated by contact with the masses of melted uranium fuel and either rushes out to sea or is collected for filtration in the failed Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS).
The notorious failure of the ALPS, which was intended to partially clean up highly contaminated cooling water and groundwater, means that possibly 1-million tons of waste water now held in 1,000 giant tanks near the coastline is not cleaned up at all, and must be filtered again by an as-yet-unknown method that needs to be designed and engineered from scratch. Meanwhile the tanks are vulnerable to another earthquake that could happen any time. One Japan Times headline on March 29, 2018 warned, “Seven years on, radioactive water at Fukushima plant still flowing into ocean, study finds”.

Detailed and well-documented reports by Greenpeace provide some of the best background and investigative information. See:

* Reflections in Fukushima: The Fukushima Daiichi Accident, Seven Years On, March 2018

* Nuclear Scars: The Lasting Legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima, March 2016

* Fukushima Fallout: Nuclear business makes people pay and suffer, February 2013

* Lessons from Fukushima, February 2012

April 24, 2019 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Superior Refinery Blast and Fire Raise Persistent Questions

Beyond the Berm: liquid asphalt gushed from a tank that was punctured by shrapnel from an explosion at the Husky Energy oil refinery in Superior, Wis., last April 26. The oil and other chemicals then burned for 9 hours. (Robert King/Duluth News Tribune/Reuters)

Following last April’s Husky Energy oil refinery explosion, fire, and resulting evacuations, it took a year for Husky to officially declare its intention to continue the use of hydrogen fluoride (HF) at its Superior, Wis. operations. In its Apr. 3^rd announcement, the Canadian company said it would keep using the deadly chemical and upgrade some safety features.

HF is a contact poison capable of causing blindness, cardiac arrest and even death from fluid buildup in the lungs. Swallowing only a bit may be fatal. HF burns through skin, eyes, lungs and the GI tract, and seeks the bones. HF even interferes with nerve function, so symptoms of exposure may not be immediate, and HF burns may not initially be painful.

The April 26, 2018 explosion “was felt for miles” according to the Mpls StarTribune. The blast was so violent that shrapnel from the explosion was blown 200 feet, according to an August 2, 2018 Factual Update by the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, “puncturing the side of [a] steel tank and spilling over 15,000 barrels of hot asphalt into the refinery.” How much “over 15,000” the update didn’t say. This liquid asphalt caught fire around 12:15 p.m. and burned for nine hours.

An evacuation order covering a 3-mile radius around the refinery, and a 10-mile down wind rectangle to the south, was imposed to get people away from the fire’s plume of toxic smoke and from a possible leak of the HF. Luckily, no HF was dispersed by the explosion and fire, and the evacuation order was lifted at 6 a.m. the next day.

The evacuation order extended for a 3-mile radius around the refinery and a 10-mile rectangle downwind.

Fire Fighters Used Toxic Chemicals Too

To extinguish the asphalt blaze, fire retardant containing dangerous compounds was used in large quantities. Consequently, “Water has shown trace amounts of perfluoralkyl sulfonate, a chemical found in firefighting foam…,” the Duluth News Tribune reported on May 7, 2018. Exactly what water, the paper didn’t say. Was it in St. Louis Bay, firefighting runoff, the sewer system, nearby Newton Creek, all of the above?

Perfluoralkyl sulfonate is one of some 3,000 infamous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. PFAS are a kind of poison known as “forever” or “persistent” chemicals because they don’t break down in the environment. Under the title, “Risk Management for Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS)”, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says it is “particularly concerned” about PFAS chemicals because they “are persistent in the environment, bio-accumulative in wildlife and humans, and are toxic to laboratory animals and wildlife, producing reproductive, developmental, and systemic effects in laboratory tests.”

Nevertheless, EPA still allows widespread use of PFAS contaminants even though Harvard scientists say in a 2015 study that an infinitesimal amount — “one part-per-trillion (ppt)” — is likely to be harmful to human health. The study reported that “existing drinking water limits … may be more than 100-fold too high.” Researcher Pat Elder with CivilianExposure.org, told Nukewatch on April 23, “Trace amounts of PFAS can cause miscarriages, testicular cancer, and have been linked to liver and kidney cancers.”

Last October, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Superior Refining Company LLC for eight serious violations of OSHA’s process safety management procedures including failing to control the use and release of highly hazardous chemicals. The company was fined $83,150. The fine adds to a long record of bad faith by the refinery: in 2008, then owner Murphy Oil paid a $179,000 fine for safety violations including the switching off of hazard alarms; in 2015 new owners Calumet was fined $16,500 for breaking rules regarding flammable liquids, hazardous waste and emergency response.

That Was Then: Officials Once Demanded Alternatives to Hydrogen Fluoride

Not much attention has been paid to PFAS since it was found in the water. The focus of EPA, OSHA, the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, and the cities of Superior and Duluth has been Husky’s hydrogen fluoride danger. On May 1 last year, Superior Mayor Jim Paine and Duluth Mayor Emily Larson both called on Husky Energy to stop using the HF. US Rep. Betty McCollum, D-MN, chimed in last May 9, calling on Marathon Petroleum in St. Paul Park to stop using HF. Husky waited until this month to say it’s sticking with HF.

After initially noting some disappointment, Mayor Paine told Nukewatch over the phone that he was now satisfied with assurances made by Husky that planned improvements will make its use of HF safer. Mayor Larson issued a statement around April 3 saying she was frustrated and angered by the decision. “I recognize that alternatives to [HF] may be more complicated, and more expensive, but those reasons pale in comparison to the potential devastation this choice can cause” which, Larson wrote, “unacceptably elevates danger to our environment and our people.”

Local activists with the group Twin Ports Action Alliance have planned several events this weekend marking the shocking event’s first anniversary. Many questions still demand answers: How many wells were tested? To what depth were the wells tested (600 feet may be clear, while 150 feet may not). Where were the testing wells? What amounts of PFAS were found? Did the equipment detect 1 ppt, or does not find less than 100 ppt? Were individual homeowners’ wells tested? Has a plume of PFAS extended from the source? How Far? What is the direction of groundwater flow? Is the municipal water supply system tested for PFAS? Was the sewer system contaminated? Is the sludge being tested for PFAS? Inquiring minds want to know.

March 13, 2019 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Fukushima Recovery a Vexing Radiation Colossus

By John LaForge

Over 19 million tons of radioactively contaminated soil have been collected in 1-ton bags and stacked in thousands of places in Japan, since the triple meltdowns of March 2011. Eleven million tons could be incinerated. KYODO photograph.

On its 8^th anniversary, a brief rundown of Fukushima’s triple reactor catastrophe and the failed recovery schemes is in order.*

Fukushima caused the worst dump of radioactivity to the Pacific Ocean in history. “This event is unprecedented in its total release of radioactive contamination into the ocean” wrote Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for PBS News Hour in March 2016. Buesseler has been recording Fukushima’s Pacific Ocean contamination since it started 3/11/11. While Fukushima is often called the “2nd worst” radiation accident behind Chernobyl, Buesseler said, “More than 80% of the radioactivity from the damaged reactors ended up in the Pacific — far more than reached the ocean from Chernobyl.” Buesseler reported this radiation gusher continues. “It is incorrect to say that Fukushima is under control when levels of radioactivity in the ocean indicate ongoing leaks, caused by groundwater flowing through the site and enhanced after storms,” he wrote.

The worst airborne radiation spill in 25 years: Like the Chernobyl disaster that spread radiation across the Northern Hemisphere, Forbes reported March 28, 2011 that the US EPA recorded Fukushima’s radioactive iodine-131 in rainwater in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts at levels above the max allowed in drinking water. The EPA’s air monitoring also found Fukushima’s radioactive iodine-131 in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, and Nevada. Nothing close to this immense, hemisphere-wide radiation dispersal had happened since Chernobyl in 1986.

Japanese foods were tainted widely. Traces of radioactive cesium were found in popular baby formula according to Japan Today, Dec. 7, 2011. How many hundreds of thousands of babies had eaten it? The Japan Times reported April 22, 2011 that Fukushima’s iodine-131 was detected in the breast milk women living near Tokyo, 150 miles from the meltdowns. The public demanded an investigation into the impact on mothers and babies. In April 2013, Japan’s Ministry of Health reported that cesium-137 and cesium-134 found in produce and rice crackers 225 miles away from Fukushima “are high enough to cause residents to exceed the annual radiation exposure limit in just a few months, or even weeks.”

Fukushima is the world’s worst reactor disaster by volume of fuel melted and waste in cooling pools. Major reactor meltdowns at Santa Susanna in California (1959), Windscale in England (1957), Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania (1979), or Chernobyl in Ukraine (1986), involved a single fuel inventory. Fukushima’s meltdowns involve three reactors’ full of melted and mangled fuel rods, and an additional 1,573 uranium fuel rods in damaged condition in damaged pools of cooling water. The three masses of melted fuel may never be recovered much less containerized.

Fukushima caused the largest evacuation in the history of nuclear power: 160,000 evacuated from the zone first set at 12, and later expanded to 19 miles. (116,000 were forced to leave Chernobyl’s dead zone.) Two weeks after the start of the meltdowns, people from between 12 to 19 miles away were encouraged to “voluntarily evacuate.” The US government recommended that US citizens stay 50 miles away.

Of the colossal volumes of radioactive debris produced by the catastrophe, the New York Times listed these on March 2017: 400 tons of contaminated cooling water produced every day since March 11, 2011; 3,519 containers holding 60,000 tons of radioactive mud or sludge; 64,700 cubic meters of discarded protective clothing; branches and logs from 220 acres of deforested land; 200,400 cubic meters of radioactive rubble; and 3.5 billion gallons [17 million cubic yards] of radioactive soil. According to Greenpeace, 11 million tons of this radioactive soil is to be being incinerated, spreading new airborne contamination. (Will the resultant contaminated soil itself be collected and incinerated.)

This most vexing of reactor disasters has seen ever-changing estimates of the amount of radiation released. The amount released to the air was “twice as large as previous estimates by research institutions both in Japan and overseas,” according to a Feb. 2012 report by the Meteorological Research Institute. The volume and variety of radioactive waste is astounding. Greenpeace reported in December 2017 that while heavily contaminated towns like Iitate and Namie had topsoil scraped off from populated areas, the problem remained because the soil removal left “islands … which are surrounded by forested mountains, for which there is no possible decontamination.” Consequently, the cleaned-up areas “are subject to recontamination through weathering processes and the natural water and lifecycle of trees and rivers.” Because of how long cesium-137 persists in the environment, “this will be an on-going source of significant recontamination for … 300 years.”

The failed “ice wall” made to divert groundwater away from the reactors’ foundations — smashed and cracked by the earthquake — means that hundreds of tons of water keeps pouring every day into the wreckage of reactor chambers where it is contaminated by contact with the masses of melted uranium fuel, and either rushes out to sea or is collected for filtration in the failed Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS).

The notorious failure of the APLS, intended to partially clean up highly contaminated cooling water and groundwater, means that one-million tons of waste water now held in 1,000 giant tanks near the coast is not cleaned up at all, and must be filtered again by an as-yet-unknown method that needs to be designed and engineered from scratch. Meanwhile the tanks are vulnerable to another earth quake that could happen any time. Japan Times reported March 29, 2018, “Seven years on, radioactive water at Fukushima plant still flowing into ocean.”

*Detailed well-documented reports by Greenpeace provide some of the best background and investigative information. See:
* Reflections in Fukushima: The Fukushima Daiichi Accident, Seven Years On,” March 2018 (https://www.greenpeace.org/canada/en/publication/1657/reflections-in-fukushima-the-fukushima-daiichi-accident-seven-years-on/)
* Nuclear Scars: The Lasting Legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima,” 9 March 2016 (http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/publications/reports/climate-energy/2016/nuclear-scars/)
* Fukushima Fallout: Nuclear business makes people pay and suffer,” 16 February 2013
(https://www.greenpeace.de/sites/www.greenpeace.de/files/20130218-Greenpeace-Report-Fukushima-Fallout.pdf)
* “Lessons from Fukushima,” February 2012 (http://www.greenpeace.org/slovenia/Global/slovenia/Dokumenti/Lessons-from-Fukushima.pdf)

Superior Refinery Blast and Fire Raise Persistent Questions

Fire Fighters Used Toxic Chemicals Too

That Was Then: Officials Once Demanded Alternatives to Hydrogen Fluoride

Fukushima Recovery a Vexing Radiation Colossus

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Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2019

By Kelly Lundeen

Fallout Found from High Glacier to Deep Ocean

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2019

By John LaForge

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2019

Fire Fighters Used Toxic Chemicals Too

That Was Then: Officials Once Demanded Alternatives to Hydrogen Fluoride

Contact Us

Donate To Nukewatch

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