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Wisconsin’s Reactor Construction Limits Repealed

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2016

After two previous attempts failed, the Republican-controlled state Assembly and Senate finally succeeded in repealing a 33-year-old statute that prevented new reactor construction in the state.

Moved by the 1979 Three Mile Island reactor accident and the precautionary principle, the 1983 law required that a federal dump site for high-level radioactive waste be up and running before new reactors could be built. The statute also required the state public utilities commission (PSC) to certify that the cost of electricity from a nuclear generator would be less “burdensome” than that from other sources.

With heavy majorities now in both state houses, the statute’s pre-conditions were derided as “out of date” and “unnecessary,” even though a federal solution to high-level waste disposal is as far off as it was in 1983. In spite of spirited opposition from environmentalists and even proponents of the original law, it was ousted largely along party lines.

As John Dunn of Mauston, Wisc. said in a letter to state senators, with repeal, the PSC will not have to consider decommissioning costs of retired nuclear reactors when weigning the comparitive costs of various electric generation systems. But the PUC does have to consider the decommissioning costs for wind generation.

Decommissioning of the Kewaunee reactor on Lake Michigan, which was closed in 2014, is reportedly going to take up to 40 years

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Waste Fire Report Contradicts “All Clear” by Responders and Press 

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2016

On the cover of our Winter Quarterly, we reported on the surprise October 18 explosions and fire that ignited in a radioactive waste trench—closed for 23 years—in the desert near Beatty, Nevada. Unexplained at the time, the Nevada Department of Public Safety has since published a 305-page report of its investigation into the alarming accident.

Because the site is state-owned, the Nevada DPS Fire Marshal Division was responsible for investigating what it called the “industrial fire” that burned for over 24 hours.

The DPS has concluded that heavy rainfall drenched one of the waste trenches so deeply that water reacted explosively—or “exothermically”—with buried metallic sodium in the waste. Metallic sodium reacts with H2O, to produce highly flammable hydrogen and can then explode.

Until the dump closed in 1992, radioactive materials were buried in 22 trenches inside steel drums, cardboard and wood crates. The DPS says 116 drums of metallic sodium—packed in oil—were dumped in the shallow trench that ignited.

The report’s summary assures readers of two significantly different conclusions: (1) that the authorities “detected no radioactive release from the site”; and (2) that “there was no release of radioactive materials.”

In fact, the report actually says that while No. 1 may be true, No. 2 almost certainly is not.

The report says witnesses, “observed debris ejecting out of the crater fifty (50) to sixty (60) feet into the air.” In his affidavit, witness Bob Marchand, General Manager of the US Ecology Nevada dump facility adjacent to the abandoned (burned) dump, says “there was a sudden release …of soil and debris from the fire crater.” Marchand recalled that “there would be a period of fairly significant bright red flame followed by a period of relative inactivity until another release… This cycle continued for several hours.”

Eye witnesses reported hearing “some sounds of bangs,” seeing bright orange flames shooting up five feet, and smoke coming from the area labeled “Radioactive Materials.” The second sentence in an affidavit by witness John Dyer is, “The security guard, Rick [Richard Stoddard], asked if I had just heard a loud explosion.” Later, “We saw the ground erupt with flame, smoke and flying debris.” Stoddard’s affidavit says around 11 a.m., “I heard what sounded like a sonic boom.” Then around 12:00 “we heard some muffled small explosions.” At approximately 1:30, “It was then that the largest explosion happened, and we took cover.”

When the DPS report gets to its conclusions about the accident, it waxes inconsistent and self-contradictory. DPS Fire Marshal Division officer Martin Azevedo reports, “The reaction was not an explosion” but an “exothermic reaction.” Whole 55-gallon steel drums were part of the “ejected material” catapulted from the trench. Azevedo admits, “We located debris 190 feet to the east at its furthest point from the crater.”

Fine print can be dangerous

Rather than detecting no release of radioactive materials, the report actually confirms otherwise.

In the Dept. of Health & Human Services “Radiation Control Program” section of the report, DHHS says that Marchand (of US Ecology) told them his “radiation dose rate survey meter, reported no detected radiation above 2x background (Upwind and 300 feet from the site).”

To translate, upwind of the fire—opposite its plume of smoke—gamma radiation was found to be twice as high as normal. This was all on October 18, before outside radiation detection teams arrived. On October 19, ground testing was done by the Nevada National Guard Civil Support Team 92, and like the day before, they reported “no detectable radiation above 2x background.”

How did this warning of a doubling of “background” radiation away from the fire’s plume of smoke get truncated—by the Executive Summary and by daily news reporters—into “no detectable radiation”? Who cut the three additional and crucial words?

Throughout the report, witnesses to the fire on October 18 like John Dyer note “smoke drifting northwest,” and “we heard small popping sounds, similar to fireworks,” and “the smoke had dissipated,” and “As before, the smoke was drifting to the northwest.”

The state National Guard arrived the next day, well after the wind blew (video recorded) plumes of smoke away from the fire and its repeated explosions. October 19 is when US EPA’s Remote Sensing Lab did some aerial testing and came up with (surprise!) nothing. “All clear,” it said.

Almost all the official assurances and “statements of fact” that appeared in news accounts at the time of the fire turn out to have been nuanced misdirection or deliberate falsehoods. So the Beatty, Nevada radioactive waste fire is another lesson in reading the news, reading between the lines, then reading the fine print.

—JL

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Would a Treaty Declaring  Nuclear Weapons Illegal Work if the US Doesn’t Sign On?

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2016
By Russ Wellen, Foreign Policy in Focus

It might be news to you, but a treaty banning nuclear weapons is being negotiated. As the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) states in its presentation “Ban Nuclear Weapons Now”:

The prohibition of weapons typically pre- cedes and stimulates their elimintion, not the other way around.

… Negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons should be undertaken by committed nations even without the participation of those armed with nuclear weapons. The alternative is to continue allowing the nuclear-armed nations to control the process and perpetuate two-tier systems and treaty regimes that have no power to compel disarmament.

At the UN, three in four nations—including all of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa—have supported the goal of prohibiting nuclear weapons. They must now translate this support for the goal of a ban into action to start negotiations on a treaty.

In December, the UN General Assembly established a working group, backed by 138 nations, to explore measures, presumably the treaty, to make nuclear weapons illegal. Its first meeting began at the end of January in Geneva. In the Los Alamos Study Group blog “Forget the Rest,” Executive Director Greg Mello shares a letter he sent to the working group:

The nuclear weapon states believe their arsenals are fully legitimate—fully supported not just by international law but also by reason, morality, and their own governments’ responsibilities to prevent war. That is how they see it. Why should there be good faith negotiations to get rid of something as legitimate and important as nuclear weapons (in their view)?

… States can only accomplish this through law, conventional law, which is to say by a treaty that prohibits nuclear weapons. By definition, there is no other way.

This work “has to be done by non-nuclear weapon states, not by nuclear weapon states,” which, of course, “will resist.” Next Mello explains how a ban treaty could actually result in nuclear-weapon states signing on. For example:

A growing ban would reach deep into the human conscience, affecting everything, including career decisions. It would affect corporate investments as well as congressional enthusiasm for the industry. I have spoken with nuclear weapons CEOs who know it is a “sunset” field with only tenuous support in the broader Pentagon, despite all the nuclear cheer-leading we see.

… I believe a ban would also help decrease popular support in the US for war and war expenditures in general. Why? There is a tremendous war-weariness in the US, right alongside our (real, but also orchestrated) militarism. A growing ban on nuclear weapons would be a powerful signal to political candidates and organizations that it is politically permissible to turn away from militarism somewhat, that there is something wrong with the levels of destruction this country has amassed and brandished so wildly and with such deadly and chaotic effects.

Whether or not you believe in deterrence, it’s tough to argue with that.

—Foreign Policy in Focus is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies.

 

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Triple Reactor Disaster: Fukushima Five Years On

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2016

Five years into the Fukushima-Daiichi triple reactor meltdowns and radiation disaster, officials from the Tokyo Electric Power Co., its owners, have said leaks from the six-reactor complex with “at least” two trillion Becquerels of radioactivity entered the Pacific between August 2013 and May 2014. Relentless drainage of contaminated water from the site is estimated to be about 300 tons a day and has continued for 60 months. “[W]e should be carefully monitoring the oceans after what is certainly the largest accidental release of radioactive contaminants to the oceans in history,” researcher Ken Buesseler, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, said Sept. 27.

However, Japan isn’t even monitoring seawater near Fukushima, according to The Ecologist. (“Japanese government and IAEA ignore radiation risks to coastal population,” Sept. 28.)

The Quarterly, in nearly every issue since the crisis began, has followed the deluge of accidents, leaks, faulty cleanup efforts, and widespread contamination of workers, citizens, food and water.* Our effort to inform our readers is in part a response to the lack of mainstream US news coverage of the disaster. It is also a reminder of the daily potential for catastrophic radiation releases in the United States stemming from the 23 Fukushima-clone GE Mark I reactors in this country.

Japanese media coverage of the catastrophe, along with analysis by independent scientists and researchers is mostly available online. We have relied on them extensively, along with several recent books, to analyse and report on Japan’s ongoing disaster response, water, soil and food contamination, cancer studies, lawsuits by US sailors, Japanese evacuees and others, and the government’s and industry’s ever-changing decommissioning and waste managment plans.

As Japan Times reported last October, “Extremely high radiation levels [inside the three destroyed reactors] and the inability to grasp the details about melted nuclear fuel make it impossible for [Tepco] to chart the course of its planned decommissioning of the reactors.”

Greenpeace to study disaster’s effect on Pacific

On February 26, Greenpeace International launched a major investigation into Fukushima’s effects on the Pacific Ocean. The gusher of radioactively contaminated water into the Pacific has continued unabated for five years.

In a press release, Greenpeace said its investigation will be conducted aboard a Japanese research vessel using a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) with a sensitive gamma radiation “Spectrometer” and sediment sampler.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who headed the government when the disaster began, joined the crew of Greenpeace’s Flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, on the opening day of the study, and called for a total phase out of nuclear power.

“I once believed Japan’s advanced technology would prevent a nuclear accident like Chernobyl from happening in Japan,” Kan said. “But it did not, and I was faced with the very real crisis of having to evacuate 50 million people [from Tokyo and surrounds]… Instead, we should shift to safer and cheaper renewable energy with potential business opportunities for our future generations.”

In the press release, Greenpeace noted that “In addition to the initial release of liquid nuclear waste during the first weeks of the accident, and the daily releases ever since, contamination has also flowed from the land itself, particularly nearby forests and mountains of Fukushima, and are expected to continue to contaminate the Pacific Ocean for at least the next 300 years.”

Shaun Burnie, Senior Nuclear Specialist with Greenpeace Germany said, “There is an urgent need to understand the impact this contamination is having on the ocean, how radioactivity is both dispersing and concentrating and its implications. Tepco … has no credible solution to the water crisis they created and is failing to prevent further contamination of the Pacific Ocean.”

Criminal charges leveled against reactor executives

Japan’s first criminal charges against executives of Tepco were filed February 29 against three former officials who are alleged to have refused to take precautionary measures that could have prevented the loss of off-site power (known as a “station blackout”) and the resulting out-of-control overheating and complete meltdown of reactor fuel in three units. The three are accused of professional negligence resulting in death and injury, specifically having ignored research and specific warnings about the inadequate height of the seawall protecting the reactors and about the improper location of emergency backup diesel generators which were destroyed by the surging tsunami.

Over 14,000 Japanese citizens filed the lawsuit which was initially dismissed and then reinstated on appeal.

Starting from scratch

Last October, then 4½ years into the unprecedented self-destruction of three reactors, Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency announced the opening of an institute to “develop” techniques to inspect and eventually decommission Fukushima’s three destroyed reactors.

Radiation levels inside the devastated reactor cores remain too high for workers to make inspections.

Because of the unprecedented complexity of the disaster, the new “Remote Technology Development Center” is starting from scratch. The daily Asahi Shimbun reported that “Experts hope…the facility will lead to a reduction in the number of failures of devices deployed.” All the robots sent inside to try and locate the melted fuel have been destroyed by the thermal heat and harsh radiation.

Naohiro Masuda, Tepco’s chief of decontamination and decommissioning, told the Associated Press Dec. 18, “This is something that’s never been experienced. A textbook doesn’t exist for something like this.”

The ultimate goal of Fukushima reactor dismantling work is to remove the melted uranium fuel rods. Researchers don’t yet know how to patch up the cracks in wrecked chambers under the failed reactor, and the new institute is tasked with inventing a first-ever technique to repair the leaking container. It needs to be made watertight, because removal of the melted fuel has to be done under water.

The planners also must invent a system of possible routes by which to remove the still-unseen melted fuel. Designers also need to develop methods to reduce the radiation doses that will inevitably be endured by workers.

Two mayors agree to host waste dump sites

After first opposing the central government’s plans, two local governments in Fukushima Prefecture have agreed to Tokyo’s proposal for permanent radioactive waste disposal. The sites, one at an existing facility in the town of Tomioka, and another at Naraha, have been chosen for disposal of “designated waste” in exchange for certain economic incentives, including the construction of an industrial park. The subsidies are reported worth about $81 million.

“Designated waste” is defined as material with between 8,000 and 100,000 Becquerels of radioactivity per kilogram. Oddly, the Japan Times called this material “low-level nuclear waste,” while the daily Asahi Shimbun called the same material “highly radioactive.”

Under the plan, the Tomioka facility, now run by a private group called Ecotech Clean Center, will be nationalized, and will then bury some 650,000 cubic meters of the designated waste. This waste, mostly incinerator ash, sewage sludge and rice straw, is a tiny fraction of the estimated 22 million cubic meters of waste that’s been collected in large black bags and stored outdoors at hundreds of sites in 11 different prefectures.

Wastes with higher levels of radiation are to be kept at temporary facilities being built near the doomed Fukushima Daiichi reactor complex. (Japan Times & Asahi Shumbun, Dec. 3, 2015)

A proposal floated a week later by the Ministry of Industry is to bury high-level radioactive waste under the seabed. Asahi Shimbun reported December 12 that an expert panel made the recommendation, saying the waste could be transported by ships.

What was unsafe yesterday called safe today

Following the start of the disaster in 2011, the permissible external radiation exposure limit was dangerously raised by the government. One milliSievert (mSv) per year was raised to 20 mSv for residents in areas affected with radioactive fallout. For radiation workers in the nuclear industry the annual limit was raised from 100 mSv to 250 mSv.

Robert Hunzinker reported in CounterPunch December 14 that the Physicians for Social Responsibility complained that the 20 mSv “allowable dose” means that for children there’s a 1 in 200 risk of getting cancer; and over two years the risk increases to 1 in 100.

Cesium found in 5% of Korean and Russian seafood 

An analysis of 150 samples of fish, kelp and sea mustard sold in discount stores in South Korea found cesium-137 in eight, or 5.3%. The highest rates of contaminated fish in the survey were Russian cod (13%) and Russian pollock (11.5%). In December, South Koreans with the Citizen’s Radiation Monitoring Center called for a halt to imports of Japanese seafood.

Sea wall making matters worse

In October Tepco completed a long seawall dug into the shore between the ocean and the damaged reactor buildings. Intended to halt the flow of contaminated groundwater to the Pacific, the dam has cause groundwater levels to rise. Tepco had planned to dump less contaminated groundwater from newly dug wells into the sea, but has found the water to be so heavily poisoned with tritium that sea dumping was not allowed. Now the company is dumping the fast rising groundwater into highly contaminated reactor buildings—where the water is expected to become severely contaminated by coming into contact with the mass of hot melted uranium fuel inside. (Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 26, 2015)

2 more reactors set for restart

The Fukui District Court in western Japan has ruled that the Takahama reactor 3 and 4 may be allowed to restart, in spite of legal efforts by local residents who argued that an earthquake larger than the reactors’ defenses were built for could devastate the region much like the Great East Japan Earthquake that wrecked Fukushima. The reactors were to go back on line in late January 2016.

Singapore, European Union to weaken food import rules

The government of Singapore is set to follow the European Union (EU) in weakening food and farm product import rules that had been imposed following the start of the Fukushima disaster, which sent plumes of radioactive contamination broadly across farm land and into the Pacific Ocean.

The EU had required all Fukushima food to arrive with radiation inspection certificates. The EU still restricts rice, mushrooms and some seafood items. Kyodo News reported that after Japanese diplomatic efforts 14 countries have ended their import restrictions, but several dozen others have kept them in place.

—JL

*A hard copy compilation of Nukewatch Quarterly reports on Fukushima is available for $10. 

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Twin Reactors at Indian Point, 25 Miles from NYC, Leak Radioactive Water—Again

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2016
By Arianne Peterson

Entergy Corp. notified the State of New York February 5 that it had found “alarming levels” of radioactivity in three monitoring wells at its Indian Point Nuclear Facility near Buchanan, New York, 25 miles from the Bronx. One well’s radioactivity had increased by nearly 65,000 percent, and initial tritium* readings from the well water were as high as 8 million picocuries+ per liter—400 times the limit for drinking water set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Entergy is the New Orleans-based nuclear utility that operates the twin, 40-year-old reactors at Indian Point, supplying 25 percent of New York City’s electricity.

According to officials with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the leak was caused by a drain overflow as workers were transferring radioactive water. A sump pump that was supposed to filter the water into another treatment system was apparently out of service. While tritium was the predominant contaminant, the leak is also likely to contain strontium-90, cesium-137, cobalt-60, and nickel-63—heavier isotopes that move more slowly.

Environmental groups, including Riverkeeper and the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, cite the leak as one more reason to decommission the aging facility, which contains two operating and one permanently closed nuclear power reactors.

“Indian Point had seven different malfunctions since May of 2015… the next one could be a catastrophe,” said Paul Galley of Riverkeeper, a grass roots group dedicated to protecting the Hudson River from the Indian Point reactors next to it. The Hudson is used as a primary drinking water source for at least seven communities and a backup source for 9 million residents of New York City and Westchester County. The NRC and Entergy consider the facility’s periodic radioactive spills to be safe because they are diluted by the rest of the river water.

“The NRC says there is no safe level of tritium contamination,” Gallay said. “When tritium is released in concentrations as high as 400 times the standard for drinking water, it is not out of the realm of possibility that people recreating in the Hudson River will come into contact with that material, or consume fish that ingested some of this material. There is certainly a risk to the environment.”

Entergy holds a permit that allows it to regularly pour radioactive contaminants from Indian Point into groundwater, the Hudson River, and the air. In 2008, the company reported it had intentionally released 877 curies (877 trillion picocuries) of liquid radioactive effluent into the Hudson. A 2005 leak from a crack in its 400,000 gallon onsite waste storage pond prompted Entergy to dig dozens of test wells. According to a 2010 report from Beyond Nuclear, “the radioactive leaks under Indian Point have created at least two large underground radioactive ‘lakes’ containing concentrations of tritium, strontium-90 and likely other longer lived isotopes.”

“Tritium,” explained David Lochbaum, nuclear safety expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, “is just the first item reported. It tends to be the leading edge of any spill since it is the lightest and most mobile of the radioactive contaminants. The other isotopes slow down as they go through the soil. That other stuff is on its way, however. Tritium just wins the race.”

The decades of leaks and safety violations at the site—as well as the fact that there is no effective evacuation plan to help protect the 20 million people living within 50 miles of the reactors in the event of a larger accident—have caused New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to urge federal officials not to renew the facility’s operating license. Indian Point’s 40-year licenses for its two operating reactors expired in 2013 and 2015 respectively. The NRC is still considering Entergy’s 2007 application for a 20-year renewal of each. Gov. Cuomo, who in December ordered an investigation into the facility and the risks it poses to the surrounding area, has also ordered an investigation into the recent leak, saying, “This failure continues to demonstrate that Indian Point cannot continue to operate in a manner that is protective of public health and the environment.”

Besides the age and condition of the 42- and 40-year-old reactors, the station’s three miles of inaccessible underground piping—which cannot be inspected and have leaked in the past—are a major cause for regulatory concern.

Susan Shapiro of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition called on the NRC to penalize Entergy for exceeding its operating license and its state discharge permit. She said, “If you have a mom and pop gas station and they have an underground leak, they would be immediately shut down until the leak is plugged. In New York State, all groundwater has to be potable and contamination is not permitted. But Entergy is getting away with contaminating our groundwater just because they are under the auspices of a government agency that doesn’t feel as strongly about our water. For me, that is shocking.”

—Beyond Nuclear, “Leak First, Fix Later,” 2010; New York Daily News, Feb. 7 & 8; and Energy Matters, Feb. 12, 2016.

*Tritium is the radioactive form of hydrogen and is produced in great quantities inside nuclear reactors and inside waste fuel rods stored onsite in deep pools of cooling water.

+One picocurie (abbreviated as pCi) is one trillionth of a curie. A curie (abbreviated as Ci) is a large measure of radioactivity, defined as radioactive decay at a rate of 37 billion atomic disintegrations per second.

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