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Ukraine: Cooling Pond at Reactor Site at Risk

By John LaForge

The cooling pond at the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power complex in Ukraine is in danger of collapse as a result of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and the draining of its reservoir, according to the French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN). Without the reservoir on the other side to counteract it, the internal pressure of the water in the waste fuel cooling pool could break the dyke around it, the IRSN said in a June 7 report. Officials at Ukraine’s Energoatom corporation, replied that any collapse of the dike would be partial “even in a worst-case,” and that there would still be sufficient water to keep the six reactor cores and the waste fuel cool. Since the collapse of the Kakhovka dam on June 6, its reservoir has been draining into the Dnipro River, has lost over three-quarters of its volume of water, and was expected to drop below the water intakes used to pump water into ponds used to cool the reactors, the waste fuel rods, and the diesel generators at the site. The Zaporizhzhia reactors have been shut down for the past eight months, but fuel inside reactors and in the cooling ponds still requires cooling. — Reuters, June 12; The Guardian, June 8, 2023

Photo Credit: Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

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Nukewatch Staffer Appeals to European Court, Claims Unfair Trial Court Decisions in Germany

Wearing “Weapons Inspectors” signs, Susan Crane, left, and John LaForge got into Germany’s Büchel air base on Hiroshima Day 2018 and climbed atop one of the bunkers that likely houses some of the US nuclear bombs stationed there.
By Nukewatch Staff

Nukewatch co-director John LaForge has appealed to a European human rights court claiming that his criminal trespass convictions stemming from nuclear weapons protests in Germany were based on unfair judicial errors.

LaForge was convicted of two charges of trespass and damage to property after separate protest actions at Germany’s Büchel Air Force Base, 80 miles southeast of Cologne. The base stations approximately 20 U.S. hydrogen bombs, that German pilots train to use in attacks on Russia, as part of a controversial program called “nuclear sharing.”

Now, in an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France filed June 9, LaForge argues that the ECHR’s rules were violated by German courts which, he claims, effectively denied him the right to present a defense. The ECHR reviews complaints from across the European Union if defendants, who have exhausted their legal alternatives in European member states, can demonstrate that their convictions were made in error. The ECHR will initially consider LaForge’s “application,” and then decide whether it merits formal review, a process that can take many months.
LaForge’s convictions were affirmed by the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, Germany’s highest, which over the last 20 years has refused to hear 19 similar appeals by anti-nuclear weapons activists. In January this year, LaForge became the first U.S. citizen incarcerated in Germany in the long-running, international campaign against “nuclear sharing” and the threatened use of the U.S. nuclear weapons at Büchel.

LaForge was sent to Glasmoor prison near Hamburg for 50 days, and was released February 28. A second U.S. citizen, Dennis DuVall, a member of Veterans for Peace who now lives in Germany, finished a 60-day sentence on April 19, 2023 for a similar charge.

In the appeal, filed by attorney Anna Busl of Bonn, LaForge argues that the German courts erred by refusing to consider expert witness testimony, which he says would have corroborated his defense of “crime prevention.” In particular, the courts refused to hear from University of Illinois Professor of International Law Francis A. Boyle, author of The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and many other books. “The courts mistakenly neglected to consider international law, binding on the United States and Germany, that criminalizes planning and preparation of nuclear weapons attacks, and which forbid the transfer of nuclear weapons from the United States to Germany,” LaForge said.

The appeal to the ECHR is not altogether new in the campaign to oust the U.S. weapons. In April 2022, Stefanie Augustin and Marion Küpker of Germany’s campaign “Büchel is Everywhere: Nuclear Weapons-Free Now!” filed an appeal which has not yet been answered. In addition, Johanna Adickes of Germany filed an appeal April 26, and two other resisters, Ariane Dettloff of Germany, and Susan Crane of California, intend to appeal later this year.

In a related initiative, while nuclear resisters were facing trial and prison sentences in Germany, Oscar Arias, the former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and Jonathan Granoff, president of the Global Security Institute, recommended in July 2022 that the U.S. withdraw all its nuclear weapons from Europe as a demonstration of good will and trust building that they said could move Russian President Putin to support negotiations leading to a cease fire and eventually an end to the war in Ukraine.

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1945 Infant Mortality Tells the Story of Trinity

By Bernice Gutierrez, Mary Martinez White, Paul Pino, and Tina Cordova

We are the downwinders of New Mexico, victims of the world’s first ever nuclear bomb explosion at the Trinity Site in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. As an added assault on our health, we were also downwind of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. We ask you to support passage of amendments to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) which will expand coverage to New Mexico and other forgotten downwinders across the American west and Guam. Currently the RECA only provides payments of restitution to a few counties in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah.
We are three Hispano cousins who have lost more than 50 family members to cancer. In relation to the Trinity bombing, we have endured a sickening spike in infant mortality, as well as highly increased exposures to toxic plutonium that rained down on New Mexico after the bomb was detonated. Now we are fighting for downwinder parity, and ask for your help.

— Bernice Gutierrez, Mary Martinez White, and Paul Pino, Steering Committee of The Tularosa Basin Downwinder’s Consortium.

Every July, the Tularosa Basin Downwinder’s Consortium holds a candlelight vigil to remember the victims of Trinity, the world’s first atomic bomb detonation.

The Trinity Site is often described as remote and uninhabited, yet there were families living as close as twelve miles from the bomb site and according to census data there were approximately 500,000 people living within a 150-mile radius of Trinity. In addition, 49,579 New Mexicans fought in World War II. New Mexico had the highest rate of military service and the highest proportion of fatalities among all the states in the U.S. Men were being killed on the battlefields while their families were being killed at home in New Mexico.
The bomb was incredibly inefficient and overpacked with 13 pounds of weapons-grade plutonium, but only three pounds of the plutonium was fissioned. The remaining ten pounds ascended some 40,000 feet in the fireball created by the blast, and then fell from the sky blanketing New Mexico. Plutonium, the most dangerous substance known to humankind, has a half-life of more than 24,000 years.

The plutonium contaminated our soil, water, crops, livestock, grazing land, wildlife and people. Our water sources included rain barrels, cisterns, holding ponds, lakes, streams, and ditches. In July people would have been working outside most of the day. Unknowing, innocent victims were growing their own food, hunting, and working with livestock. Children were playing outside all day. No one was officially warned then, afterwards, or since, of the danger.

Our suffering is obscured on many levels. A heavily footnoted article by Kathleen M. Tucker and Robert Alvarez titled “Trinity: The Most Significant Hazard of the Entire Manhattan Project” in the July 15, 2019 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, reports a horrendous spike in infant deaths after Trinity. The infant mortality rate for 1945 in New Mexico was 100.8 per 1,000 live births, the highest in the country! Prior to 1945, the infant mortality rate had been on a 10-year decline.

Since the federal government refuses to study the deaths of our babies, we are forced to do it ourselves. We have researched available New Mexico death certificates and church records for 1945 and found that hundreds of babies died in 1945. In one instance, in Santa Rita Catholic church in Carrizozo, forty miles from ground zero, we found a 350% percent spike in infant mortality.

What you can do

Help us shine a light on this hidden history. Support the documentary “First We Bombed New Mexico” by Lois Lipman which is nearing distribution and still needs funds to complete. Please also plan to attend our art exhibit “Trinity, Legacies of Nuclear Testing” in Las Cruces, New Mexico July 15 to September 23, 2023. Stand with us in solidarity as we hold our annual Candlelight Vigil on the evening of July 15, 2023. If you cannot be with us in-person please place a luminaria at your home. As the government ignores us, we fear the upcoming movie, Oppenheimer, will ignore us as well. Through the film’s Facebook page, encourage the producers to add a clip of our history after their credit roll. And please encourage everyone to visit our web site at www.trinitydownwinders.com to keep track of our progress, and to make a donation.

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Drive for Illegal Uranium Mining in New Mexico; Cleanup Obligations Unfulfilled

By Leona Morgan

Due to the push for climate solutions and the geopolitics currently at work in Ukraine, there is increased interest in producing uranium for both energy and weapons, threatening those living near uranium sites. Regardless of its end use, new or increased uranium mining results in the same death and destruction for frontline communities, with no guarantee of proper cleanup or compensation.

In 2014, the Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining with many others successfully prevented new uranium extraction in northwestern New Mexico, a few miles south of the 1979 Churchrock Uranium Spill site.

A warning sign is seen next to the entry to the Northeast Church Rock uranium mine in Pinedale, New Mexico, U.S. July 19, 2018. Picture taken July 19, 2018. REUTERS/Pamela J. Peters.

That project was first licensed approximately 30 years ago, and stopped by decades of community resistance that created layers of Navajo Nation policy: the 2005 Diné Natural Resources Protection Act which prohibits new uranium mining, and the 2012 Radioactive Materials Transportation Act limiting transport of new radioactive products. There is also a 2012 legally binding agreement between the Navajo Nation and the previous company which requires cleanup of existing contamination on other lands before starting new mining activities.

After the mining project was stopped, Laramide Resources Ltd. acquired the land and necessary U.S. federal and state permits to do in situ leach mining near Churchrock, and uranium processing in Crownpoint, New Mexico at its central processing facility.

In late 2022, Diné community members reported that Laramide Resources was illegally drilling for uranium in the Churchrock area. The site was active with equipment and workers, but has since been vacated. Laramide’s drilling samples were transported 40 miles to Crownpoint, for testing in preparation of mining. All these activities now violate Navajo Nation law.

Nearby, separate yet interconnected, the Red Water Pond Road Community Association (RWPR) and others continue to challenge General Electric’s “cleanup” plan, which is to move uranium mine wastes on top of the unlined 1979 Churchrock Uranium Spill site waste, both in close proximity to Diné residents (See Summer 2021 Nukewatch Quarterly for more info). The “cleanup” of more highly radioactive wastes would be to move them to the White Mesa uranium mill in southeast Utah. RWPR demands that uranium wastes be removed from the community completely and not in a way that could possibly set up conditions for a second Churchrock Spill. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued the Final Environmental Impact Statement in January greenlighting the cleanup plan.

Every year, the RWPR hosts a gathering to reflect on the 1979 Churchrock Uranium Spill and ongoing work to protect their community. This year, RWPR invites the public to the Annual Uranium Legacy Remembrance and Action Day on July 15, 2023 starting with a prayer walk at 7 a.m., 12 miles north of Red Rock State Park on State Road 566 near Churchrock, New Mexico.

— NM Political Report, May 1; Counter Punch, April 28; Laramide Resources, March 24; Federal Register, Jan. 13, 2023

— Leona Morgan (she/her) is a Diné activist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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Domino Effect: 12-Year Series of Failed Fixes at Fukushima

By John LaForge

Japan’s record-breaking earthquake and tsunami waves of March 2011— which first smashed the reactors’ foundations and the electrical grid, then destroyed back-up power generators — led to a “station blackout” and the meltdown of three large reactors at Fukushima Daiichi.

At the time, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) had refused to upgrade its sea wall to a sufficient height, although the firm had been warned of the risk of extreme tsunamis. The result was a catastrophic, unprecedented simultaneous triple reactor meltdown: a radioactive pollution catastrophe that has never before been seen on Earth.

Although Tepco’s cost-cutting on the sea wall was only the first in a string of pollution-intensive failures that have followed like dominoes, it led in July 2022 to convictions of four top Tepco executives for negligence and a fine of $92 billion. Tepco itself had predicted in June 2008 that the site could be hit by a tsunami over 50 feet in height after a major earthquake.

South Korean protesters lampooned Japanese authorities who said you could drink the 1.37 million tons of radioactive wastewater they intend to pump into the Pacific Ocean.

In the 12 years since the meltdowns, Tepco’s disaster response efforts, always heralded as “fixes,” have been a series of hugely expensive failures: the “advanced” wastewater filter system “ALPS” has failed; the groundwater “ice wall” barrier has failed; containers made for radioactive sludge left by ALPS have failed; and plans to deal with millions of tons of collected debris now kept in plastic bags are being fiercely resisted by Japanese citizens.

Tons of cooling water is still poured into Fukushima’s triple wrecks every day to keep the hot melted fuel from again running amok. Additionally, groundwater continues to gush through countless foundation cracks and fissures caused by the earthquake, into what’s left of the structures’ sub-floors. All this water becomes highly radioactive as it passes over and through the three giant masses, some 880 tons, of melted and mangled uranium and plutonium fuel.

You read that right. Fukushima’s destroyed reactor No. 3 was using “mixed oxide” fuel made with plutonium, which is a major piece of the three deadly corium masses. (See sidebar on this page.) This plutonium contaminates not just the cooling water and groundwater contacting the melted fuel, but the ALPS apparatus and its filters, and the containers used to store the highly radioactive waste sludge extracted by ALPS.

Failed ALPS means million-tonne do-over

Tepco’s jerry-rigged system dubbed Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) has never worked as planned. “The ALPS system failed to reduce radioactive elements, as claimed by the owner,” Power Technology, reported June 2, 2021. Senior East Asia Greenpeace researcher Shaun Burnie wrote in June 2023, “The ALPS has been a spectacular failure.”

Tepco has repeatedly said ALPS would remove 62 radioactive materials — all but tritium and carbon-14 from the continuously expanding volume of wastewater. Some of the deadly isotopes picked up when the water runs over and through the three melted masses of reactor fuel include cesium, strontium, cobalt, ruthenium, carbon-14, tritium, iodine, plutonium, and over 54 others.

Consequently, Tepco says it will re-filter over 70 percent of the 1.37 million tonnes of wastewater stored in giant tanks on site. Approximately 875,000 tons of contaminated water must be put through the system again, a process that will leave behind more of the highly radioactive and corrosive waste sludge.

Shaun Burnie’s reporting on ALPS is worth quoting at length:

“About 70 percent or 931,600 cubic meters of the wastewater needs to be processed again (and probably many more times) by the ALPS to bring the radioactive concentration levels below the regulatory limit for discharge. Tepco has succeeded in reducing the concentration levels of strontium, iodine, and plutonium in only 0.2 percent of the total volume of the wastewater, and it still requires further processing. But no secondary processing has taken place in the past nearly three years. Neither Tepco nor the Japanese government [have] said how many times the wastewater needs to be processed, how long it will take to do so, or whether the efforts will ever be successful. Greenpeace reported on these problems and why the ALPS failed nearly five years ago, and none of these issues has been resolved.”

Ice wall also melts

Tepco intended to reduce the volume of groundwater gushing into the reactor building foundations by digging a $350 million “ice wall” into the earth between the destroyed reactors and the mountains behind. The company placed 1,568 heavy pipes filled with coolant 90 feet deep. It was to freeze the ground to form a deep impenetrable barrier, diverting groundwater to either side of the destroyed six-reactor Fukushima complex and prevent it seeping inside. It has failed to do so. In 2016, the Times of London reported that the scheme had only a “minor impact” on the volume of groundwater rushing in, which at the time still averaged 321 tonnes a day. Tepco announced then that it would retrofit the system and fix the leaks, but Science/The Wire reported in January 2022 that the company had admitted that its ice wall was “partially” melting. About 150 tonnes per day still gushes in.

Filtered sludge burning through containers

The ALPS filter has produced over 4,000 large containers filled with highly radioactive slurry and sludge left from the treatment.

Like the use of the word “advanced” in the name of the failed ALPS machinery, the heavy cylinders used for the caustic, highly radioactive sludge are called “High Integrity Containers” or HICs. In fact they are made of plastic and have degraded far faster than Tepco anticipated.
By March 2, Tepco had filled 4,143 containers, according to the daily Asahi Shimbun. At 30 cubic feet each, the cylinders now store a total of about 124,290 cubic feet of the highly radioactive sludge that will soon require expensive repackaging and, eventually, isolation from the biosphere for thousands of years.

Over two years ago, on June 8, 2021, Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) announced that 31 of the containers had “exceeded their lifespans” and were corroded badly enough by the harsh toxic material that they must be replaced. The NRA also warned that another 56 cylinders would need replacing within two years.

Japan’s Mainichi newspaper reported that the government regulators blamed Tepco for “underestimating the radiation the 31 plastic cylinders were exposed to.” The company then claimed it would start moving the contents to new containers.

The Asahi Shimbun reported April 27, 2023, that the HICs must be stored in concrete boxes that can block radiation.

Rad waste to be dumped, deregulated

As we go to press, Tepco has begun testing its large tunnel, with which it intends to begin dispersing 1.37 million tonnes of contaminated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. The government has steadfastly ignored fierce local and international opposition to the plan from the fishing community, marine scientists, Pacific Island nations, environmentalists, South Korea, and China. So far only South Korean politicians have suggested bringing international legal action against the dumping.

Since the 2011 meltdowns spewed radioactive materials broadly across Japan’s main island, some 22-million tonnes of cesium-contaminated soil, leaves, and debris have been scraped from the ground and stored in large bags. Citizens are struggling desperately prevent authorities from using the radioactive waste in road building or burning it in incinerators. The bags are currently stacked in tens of thousands of piles all over the region.

Even more protest was raised last February when the NRA announced it would allow Tepco to severely weaken its monitoring of radioactivity in the dumped waste. The NRA said it reduced the number of radioactive elements to be measured from 64 to 34.

The environment minister of Hong Kong, a coastal metropolis of 7.5 million people, charged in June that Japan is “violating its obligations under international law and endangering the marine environment and public health.” Minister Tse Chin-wan wrote in the daily Ta Kung Pao that the city would “immediately prohibit imports of seafood caught off the coast of Fukushima prefecture.”

– CGTN, April 23, 2023

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