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January 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Defective Reactor Parts Scandal in South Korea Sees 100 Indicted

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2013-2014
By John LaForge 

A vast conspiracy of bribery and faked certification of power reactor parts in South Korea has resulted in the indictment in October of 100 people, including a former top state utility official. 

At issue are what prosecutors say are fabricated quality reports concerning parts inside 14 (New York Times) or perhaps 20 (Wall St. Journal) of the country’s 23 commercial nuclear reactors. 

The scandal surfaced in November 2012, and five reactors were shut down following the discovery of the faked safety certificates. Several engineers and reactor parts suppliers were jailed for their involvement in the corruption. 

The scandal grew in May when two more reactors were found running with safety control cables that were approved using faked certificates. The government then began an investigation. Prosecutors have pledged to study over 120,000 test certificates issued over that last 10 years. 

Boxes of cash were found in the home of one Korea Hydro official, and officials of Hyundai Heavy Industries have been arrested on bribery charges. 

As a result of the May revelations, Kim Kyun Seop, President of South Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power, the country’s nuclear reactor operating firm, was dismissed, and the CEO of Korean Electric Power Corp. (Kepco) Engineering and Construction, An Seung-Kyoo, was also fired. Kepco runs all 23 of the country’s reactors, three of which are not in use. 

Earlier, South Korean President Park Geun-Hye reportedly called the corruption in the nuclear power complex “unpardonable” and likened the industry to a mafia. 

What AP news reports called “fabricated Environmental Qualification test reports” falsely verified the quality of cables that “control valves responsible for cooling nuclear fuel or preventing the release of radioactive materials during an emergency.” The Wall St. Journal reported Oct. 10 that parts suppliers are “suspected of bribing officials to accept their products with faked certification.” 

Armand Presentati

The cables reportedly failed nine of 12 tests of their ability to withstand changes in voltage and pressure during a “loss of coolant accident” — the sort of meltdown disaster that struck Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979 and Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. 

In addition to the defective cables at the four shutdown reactors, counterfeit cabling was reportedly discovered at two reactors now under construction. 

The defective cables have been replaced at several of the reactors, and on Oct. 28 the government and Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) confirmed that $2.8 billion had been spent on the project. 

By November, the government had found that eight parts suppliers had sold KHNP 7,682 parts using forged quality certificates between 2003 and 2012. Last year the government said that over 10 years, more than 10,000 components were sold using fabricated warranties. One firm contracted to test reactor parts, Saehan Total Engineering Provider, skipped sections of exams, doctored test results and even certified parts that failed the tests. 

In June, 10 of the country’s 23 reactors were offline for various reasons. In October Reuters reported that three of six reactors currently under construction had been delayed by allegations of unsafe designs 

— CNN, Nov. 5; Reuters & New York Times, Oct. 28, Wall St. Journal, Oct. 12; and Agence France Presse, Aug. 13; and Bellona (Norway) June 11, 2013

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure

January 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nuclear Wa$te — of Billion$

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2013-2014
By Lisa Kasenow 

Editor’s note: 

Cancelled, unused and destroyed reactors give the lie to industry boosters who speak of its “24/7 reliability.” Shutdowns, fires, explosions, leaks, meltdowns and hugely expensive re-builds add up to a record of nuclear malfeasance. The industry has been such a financial failure that Forbes magazine thundered from its Feb. 11, 1985 cover, “The failure of the US nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale. …only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money has been well spent. … The scale of the US nuclear power program’s collapse is appalling: 75 plants cancelled since 1978, including 28 already under construction…” By 1999, a total of 121 reactors had been cancelled, squandering about $50 billion in 1995 dollars.* Lisa Kasenow sent Nukewatch an outline of the more recent financial disasters: 

1. Ten partially-constructed nuclear power reactors have been cancelled. All 10 were scrapped more than 10 years after they had been ordered, and half were cancelled 18-22 years into construction. Three possible terminations — Tennessee Valley Authority’s Bellefonte 1 & 2, and Watts Bar 2 — are still under construction today, even though these reactor orders date from 1970. 

2. Nuclear power units scratched before construction work had begun number 117, and in most cases the cancellations occurred years after the reactors were ordered. 

Of the 117 reactors abandoned after being ordered, half of them were stopped 4-10 years after being ordered, and 20% were halted 8-10 years after the order was made. 

The TVA wins the gold medal for nuclear wasted money, because it’s responsible for the abandonment of 10 and possibly 11 federally permitted reactors. Bellefonte 1 & 2; Hartsville A1, A2, B1 & B2; Phipps Bend 1 & 2; Yellow Creek 1 & 2 and possibly Watts Bar 2. 

3. There are 21 fully-constructed and licensed commercial reactors that no longer supply electricity. These 21 commercial reactors were in operation for an average of 17 years each. Of these, 14 have high-level radioactive waste (used fuel) on site. 

The longest operating time for one of these reactors is 34 years, while the shortest was under one year. More than half operated for less than 20 years. Twenty-eight percent were operational for less than 10 years. Three Mile Island Unit 2 operated for one year. Pathfinder in South Dakota ran for 30 minutes. Shoreham operated for less than one year and then closed. 

* Arjun Makhijani, The Nuclear Deception,1999, p. xiv. 

— Lisa Kasenow is a retired physics, chemistry & biology teacher and fulltime anti-nuclear activist in Florida.

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radioactive Waste

October 18, 2013 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Vermont Yankee Joins Landslide of Falling Reactors 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2013

Campaigning for the shut down of the faulty Vermont Yankee reactor, thousands participated in rallies, parades, public hearings, nonviolent sit-ins, lockdowns and blockades. It will close next year. See the story on the back page. 

From left to right, top: July 1, 2012, 38 people were arrested with a “Trojan Cow”; Mar. 23, 2012, mimes joined a protest where 130 were arrested; The “Expandable Brass Band” in Brattleboro, Apr. 16, 2013. Middle: Linda Pon Owen assists Frances Crowe in chaining shut the driveway, Oct. 19, 2012; Robin Panagakos and Gregg Crawford joined 1,000 protesters Apr. 14, 2012; A flotilla about water pollution, Connecticut River, Sept. 19, 2012; the relentless Shut it Down Affinity Group, Sept. 21, 2010. Bottom: New Year’s day blockade, 2011; banner at the main gate, Dec. 13, 2011; a parade on Mar. 21, 2012; a 2001 protest. 

Below: An exterior transformer fire erupted June 18, 2004; and a worker leaked this photo of the famous Aug. 21, 2007 cooling water system collapse.

Filed Under: Direct Action, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter

October 18, 2013 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Cleanup or Cover-up: Japan’s Improvised Management of Reactor Meltdown Disaster Denied Ongoing Ocean Contamination 

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2013
By John LaForge 

On Aug. 20, Tepco acknowledged that 300 tons of highly radioactive water had leaked from one of at least five of the 1,000 storage tanks it has hastily constructed to hold contaminated water (top photo, below). The waste water is generated by the continuous watering-down of extremely hot uranium fuel that has melted through the bottom of three destroyed Fukushima reactors and the hot waste fuel rods stored for decades in the now earthquake-damaged cooling pools. 

Tepco also reported August 20 that measurements of radioactive tritium in seawater near reactor No. 1 are the highest ever recorded — higher than at the height of the company’s deliberate, last-resort dumping of 11,500 tons of primary reactor coolant directly into the ocean in March and April 2011. 

The water is poisoned with cesium, strontium, americium, tritium and other ferociously radioactive isotopes. Tepco says it has not found the spot in the 1,000-ton steel tank from which the water was still leaking, but was transferring the water from the bad tank and removing contaminated soil. 

The company estimated that the radioactivity in the 300 tons amounted to 24 trillion becquerels, or 80 million becquerels per-liter. Reuters interviewed professor emeritus Michiaki Furukawa of Nagoya University who said, “That is a huge amount of radiation. The situation is getting worse.” Hideka Morimoto, a spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, told the AP “We are extremely concerned.” 

The leaking tanks were constructed with rubber seams intended to last about five years, and were bolted together rather than welded. According to Tepco, 350 of the 1000 tanks were similarly built on the cheap rather than using welded joints which are more expensive and more watertight.

Continuous ocean contamination, unstoppable leaks 

Tepco’s August acknowledgement of major tank leaks came a month after the company’s belated admission that 300 tons of highly contaminated water have been pouring into the Pacific every day ever since the March 11, 2011 disaster began. These 300 tons of contaminated water per day amounts over 30 months to at least 270,000 tons of water-borne radionuclides, a hemorrhage that continues unabated. 

The company admitted it has no idea where the leaks are located. On July 26, Tepco president Naomi Hirose confessed, “If you asked whether we have adequately learned the lessons of the disaster, the answer would be that we haven’t.” 

The Tokyo daily Asahi Shimbun, reported last December that “A huge volume of highly radioactive water, used to cool down the fuel, has since been leaking from the reactor” and the sources of the leaks were unknown. 

Disaster “out of control” — Tepco executive 

Tepco executive Kazuhiko Yamashita, said Sept. 13, “I think the current situation is that it is not under control.” 

Yamashita’s blunt condemnation flatly contradicted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s testimony to the International Olympic Committee, given a week earlier, in which the PM claimed “the situation is under control.”

Tank leaks pouring contaminated water into Pacific 

The unprecedented ocean contamination stems from the colossal power of the March 11, 2011 magnitude 9.0 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake — the worst in Japanese history — and the consequent 52-foot tsunami — which smashed the six-reactor Fukushima-Daiichi compound, causing explosions and three reactor meltdowns. 

The meltdowns began spewing a colossal amount of cesium, strontium, plutonium, iodine-131 and other deadly elements to the atmosphere and to the Pacific and in some respects never stopped doing so. 

The bizarre phenomenon of about 400 tons of contaminated groundwater running into the reactor buildings every day is a consequence of the giant quake and its destruction of the six-reactor complex’s underground infrastructure, piping, trenches, tanks and buildings. But because the company’s system of partial decontamination only filters about 100 tons of water per day, 300 tons are running through the destroyed reactor complex and into the Pacific. 

Millions of gallons of water are continuously being poured into the three wrecked reactors and into cooling pools that store tens of thousands of extremely hot and highly radioactive waste fuel rods (“spent fuel”). This cooling water along with groundwater is moving through the massive cracks, breaks and faults and spreading to the sea. 

The company has announced an improved, expensive, untested “freezing” of a one-mile-long section of ground that could block the run-off, but which will not be completed until 2015. It’s also injecting a chemical solution into the coastline embankment as a “solidifying” experiment.

From bad to worse 

In a front-page New York Times article September 4, Martin Fackler called the crisis a “worsening situation.” Fackler is the author of Credibility Lost: The Crisis in Japanese Newspaper Journalism After Fukushima. 

Long before Tepco made its August admission, the magazines Science and Nature reported (in October 2012) that the initial dispersal of radioactivity from Fukushima — both as atmospheric fallout and direct discharges to the Pacific — represented the largest accidental release of radiation to the ocean in history — ten to 100 times more than the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in Ukraine. Co-authored by oceanographer Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, the report said that contamination in fish in the area was so high that large, ongoing releases of radioactively contaminated water must be taking place. 

Buesseler’s allegations were denied for months by both Tepco and the Japanese government. Tepco rebuffed the information even after the chief of Japan’s federal nuclear watchdog agency said the site had probably been leaking contaminated water since the March 2011 disaster began. 

Tepco’s denials and delays have been condemned by experts in harsh terms. According to the Nation August 19, Dale Klein, a past chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission blasted Tepco executives, “These actions indicate that you don’t know what you are doing, and that you do not have a plan.” 

Over 430,000 thousand tons of highly contaminated water is being stored in tanks at the site, as Tepco floods the reactors’ cores using an improvised system to cool the melted fuel. Water from the cooling scheme runs into basements and trenches that were cracked open by the earthquake and which have been leaking since the disaster began.

Tank farm radiation leaks at deadly levels 

Tepco said Sept. 3 that it detected a radiation level of 2,200 millisieverts-per-hour near one storage tank — up from a previous high of 1,800 millisievert/hr on August 31. Both levels are high enough to kill an unprotected person in a few hours. Tepco’s earlier radiation estimates of 100 milliseiverts/hr were highly inaccurate because, according Dr. Arjun Makhijani speaking on PBS News Hour, monitors used for the earlier reports maxed out at 100 milliseiverts per hour. 

Thousands of workers occupy the contaminated grounds doing remediation work. Tepco acknowledged in July that 11 times the number of its employees than it had earlier told the World Health Organization have been exposed to high levels of radiation. Tepco now says 10 percent of the workers are at risk of developing thyroid cancer.

Fish stocks contaminated 

With thousands of tons of contaminated water gushing from the reactors, the groundwater and from storage tanks, radioactive contamination is inexorably destroying the fishing industry in Eastern Japan. On September 5, South Korea banned all fish imports from a large area around Fukushima Prefecture. The news sent shock waves through a staggered fishing community that has already suffered several billion in losses. 

Fish of all kinds are being found contaminated with cesium-137 and iodine-131 from the ongoing contamination. In 2011, the Japanese allowed 2,000 becquerels-per kilogram (bq/kg) to contaminate seafood, vegetables, dairy products and mushrooms. In April 2012, the government tightened the limit to 100 bq/kg. 

In July, sea bass caught near Hitachi, Ibaraki, 55 miles southwest of Fukushima, were found contaminated at 1,037 bq/kg — 10 times the 100 bq/kg government limit. Last year, shipments of contaminated Pacific cod were halted by the government. Black sea bream caught 60 miles north of Fukushima had 3,300 bq/kg of cesium; greeling within 12 miles of the site were found with a record 25,800 bq/kg. Indeed, all bottom-feeding or demersal fish “consistently showed the highest counts” of cesium, said Ken Buesseler in a Science article last year. The demersal include cod, conger eel, flounder, halibut, pollock rockfish, skate and sole. 

Bad fish aren’t limited to Japanese water. Albacore tuna caught off Washington and Oregon last Oct., and Blue fin tuna off of California were also found contaminated with Fukushima cesium. 

Tepco has said it will take 40 years to containerize all the radioactive equipment, melted fuel, high level waste and waste water at the site. This is likely an underestimate, as owners of Wisconsin’s Kewaunee reactor have said it will take 40 years to decommission that unit which is undamaged.

Government limits on cesium poisoning allowed in food vary widely. Below in becquerels-per-kilogram, as of Dec. 27, 2011: 

Drinking water Milk General foodstuffs Baby food

Japan 10 50 100 50

United States 1,200 1,200 1,200 1,200

European Union* 1,000 1,000 1,250 400

Codex (UN) 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000

*Only applied to items produced within the EU. When Japanese agricultural products are imported to the EU, Japan’s provisional limits are applied. Source: http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/12/27/japans-new-limits-for-radiation-in-food-20-times-stricter-than-american-and-eu-standards/

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

October 18, 2013 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

‘Extra Pollution Allowed’ in EPA’s Draft Radiation Disaster Planning Docs 

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2013
By John LaForge 

On April 15, the EPA issued new so-called Protective Action Guides (PA guides) for dealing with large-scale radiation releases. The rules are meant to provide federal, state and local officials with protocols for responding to and cleaning up after reactor disasters or other industrial explosions, fires or spills — like the catastrophic triple meltdowns at Fukushima, Japan. 

As published in the Federal Register, they would allow drinking water contamination 20,000 times less stringent than the EPA’s current rules. They also suggest that officials cleaning up after a radiological accident do not have to follow EPA Superfund guidelines for environmental remediation. 

As such, the new PA guides are a government bailout of the utilities, that will, if unchanged, save reactor owners the staggering costs of adequate disaster decontamination. Industry has for years pushed for weaker regulation. In 2002, Roger Clarke, then President of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), warned in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Some people think that too much money is being spent to achieve low levels of residual contamination.” Since Fukushima, government and industry officials have said that using rigorous EPA/Superfund standards would be too expensive at several sites, including the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (see story below). 

According to comments by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club, the PA guides “essentially admit that nuclear power is so dangerous that it could contaminate vast areas with extraordinarily high radiation levels, but rather than protect the people, [EPA] is proposing that government just let people be exposed to massive carcinogenic risks.” 

The PA guides took effect in April but can be amended or rescinded. 

The new PA guides: 

* Weaken drinking water standards for radioactivity and no longer comply with current Safe Drinking Water Act limits.

* Eliminate a 1992 nuclear disaster recovery recommendation from EPA that no one should be exposed to more than 5,000 millirems of radiation over 50 years. This benchmark may have eliminated the possibility of following the far weaker National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP) recommendation that people could be exposed to 2,000 millirems/year, or 100,000 millirems over 50 years. 

* Weaken or eliminate existing protections and increase permitted dose limits far beyond what the EPA now uses for radiation, which particularly endanger women, infants and children. 

* Weaken current rules established by the EPA regarding relocation due to radiation doses to the thyroid and skin and weaken the limit of 5 rem over 50 years. 

* Recommend outdated 1998 guidelines that allow markedly increased levels of radioactivity in food. 

* Allow radioactive waste to go to regular landfills, incinerators or recyclers or to hazardous waste sites. 

EPA documents show intent to weaken cleanup regs 

Douglass Guarino, writing September 11 in The National Journal for Global Security Newswire reports that he obtained EPA records about the PA guides. In them Paul Kudarauskas, of EPA’s Consequence Management Advisory Team, said last March that US residents are used to “cleanup to perfection,” but that in view of the Fukushima catastrophe, “People are going to have to put on their big-boy pants and suck it up.” 

In one response, Dave Kraft, the Director of the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, demanded that EPA rescind the PA guides and fire Mr. Kudarauskas. 

Daniel Hirsch, President of Committee to Bridge the Gap, emphasizes that the NCRP’s plans for implementing the new PA guides would allow the public to be exposed to more radiation. “In essence,” Hirsch reports, the PA guides say “nuclear power accidents could be so widespread and produce such immense radiation levels that the government would abandon cleanup obligations” forcing people to absorb and live with far more cancers. 

One document released to Guarino/GSN is a talk by Mike Boyd, an official in the agency’s radiation office, given about the new Protective Action guide during a May meeting in Paris in which Boyd praised cleanup standards suggested by the private NCRP and the nongovernmental ICRP. Both bodies recommend exposure standards to governments for industry workers and the public. 

However, the recommendations of these two groups have been previously criticized as too lax by the EPA, state cleanup officials and environmental activists because they suggest cleanup standards “thousands of times less rigorous than what has ever been permitted in the United States.” 

No exposure to radiation is safe, since even the smallest dose has cellular-level effects that can lead to immune dysfunction, birth defects, cancer and other diseases. The definitive National Academy of Sciences’ 2006 report Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, BEIR-7, declared “It is unlikely that there is a threshold below which cancers are not induced.” 

In accordance with BEIR-7, official EPA policy assumes there is no safe level of radiation exposure. 

But when John Cardarelli — an official in EPA’s emergency management office and a colleague of Kudarauskas on the EPA Consequence Management Advisory Team — spoke in May 2012 to Japanese emergency managers dealing with Fukushima, he presented sham theories explicitly rejected by the National Academy in BEIR-7. In particular, Cardarelli endorsed the “hormesis” hypothesis (that a little radiation is beneficial, acting like a “vaccination”), which the NAS debunked by name in BEIR-7. 

The EPA’s letter to GSN defends Cardarelli’s presentation, arguing that the “scientific community is not unified on radiation health effects. But to the contrary, every US governmental agency that regulates radiation exposures has adopted the NAS finding that no matter how little, any radiation exposure can cause cancer. 

In a Sept. 2012 talk to an interagency group led by Homeland Security, Cardarelli recommended a 100 millirem-per-year radiation dose limit. About 1-in-300 people would be expected to develop cancer if exposed to this level for 30 years, according to NAS and EPA risk models. 

Guarino reports that the authors of the Dept. of Homeland Security paper “have defended their recommendations in part by arguing that the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan contaminated an area the size of Connecticut and demonstrated the impossibility of a Superfund-level cleanup of that scope.” But rather than declare that evacuation is the only safe response to severe contamination, DHS wants to raise radiation dose limits to between 100 and 2,000 millirems per year. Over 30 years, this equates to a cancer risk of between one-in-23 and one-in-466 from long-term radiation exposure. 

Normally, the EPA does not permit cancer risks greater than one-in-10,000. 

Daniel Hirsch, with GAP, says the cancer risk would likely be higher. Accounting for the greatly increased susceptibility of women, infants and children to radiation, or the likelihood that chronic doses would last for an entire 70-year lifetime, up to one-in-six people would be expected to develop cancer, Hirsch said.

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

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