On August 12th, Thom Hartmann interviewed Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps about the latest from Fukushima Daiichi on his radio show. Kevin teleported in via Skype from the office of Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Chicago.
The chief manager of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Masao Yoshida (pictured left), died of cancer on July 9th aged 58. Yoshida disobeyed Tepco's orders and inundated the three reactors with sea water to provide cooling. Tepco hesitated, as doing so would guarantee the reactors would never be usable again due to salt water corrosion. Yoshida even affirmed the carrying out of Tepco's orders to NOT use sea water, verbally over the phone, while hand writing a note to his assistant to go right ahead and order sea water cooling. Tepco only learned of this at a later date.
As reported by the Asahi Shimbun:
'Radioactivity levels soared 47-fold over just five days in groundwater from a monitoring well on the ocean side of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the plant operator said Aug. 5.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said 56,000 becquerels of radioactive substances, including strontium, were detected per liter of groundwater sampled on Aug. 5 in the “No. 1-5” monitoring well, which is adjacent to the turbine building for the No. 1 reactor. The previous measurement for the well water was made on July 31.
Highly radioactive water has been detected for some time in groundwater near reactor and turbine buildings of the nuclear plant. A record high level of 900,000 becquerels per liter was found in early July in water taken from a different monitoring well.
TEPCO has been struggling to deal with the enormous amounts of water used to cool the damaged reactors and block the flow of contaminated water into the ocean.'
As reported by Reuters, Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority has admitted that Fukushima Daiichi's ongoing radioactive water leaks into the Pacific Ocean now constitute an "emergency" situation. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), responsible for the nuclear catastrophe in the first place, is in charge of dealing with the on-site aftermath. There is growing concern about TEPCO's incompetence -- or worse, lack of commitment -- at rising to that challenge.
TEPCO admits that Fukushima Daiichi has already released 20-40 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium into the Pacific since March 11, 2011 (a becquerel is one radioactive disintegration per second).
As also reported by the Asahi Shimbun:
'...That is about 10 to 100 times the volume emitted over a one-year period of operating the nuclear plant.
“There is only a minor effect on the environment because it is about the same level as the upper limits of emission standards during operating periods,” a TEPCO official said...'.
TEPCO's admission, and spin, is startling. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe, in this regard, is only 10-100 times worse than "normal" operations used to be at the six reactor complex for a single year?! Obviously, Fukushima Daiichi released large amounts of hazardous tritium into the environment as part of its "routine" operations for four decades before the earthquake and tsunami devastated the site!
TEPCO's attitude is not unlike that of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which has washed its hands of an epidemic of tritium leaks into groundwater at U.S. atomic reactors. NRC, at the highest levels, has stood by its assertion that tritium leaks have "no nexus with health and safety." After all, NRC allows tritium to be "routinely" discharged in large amounts into the living environment, by permit, since it cannot be filtered from nuclear power plants' liquid releases.
This of course flies in the face of the fact that tritium -- radioactive hydrogen -- is a clinically-proven cause of cancer, birth defects, and genetic damage. Tritium, with a hazardous persistence of 120 years, can integrate at the most intimate levels of the human anatomy, right down to the DNA molecule. If tritium organically binds, it can remain lodged in the human body for long periods of time, doing significant damage. The health hazards associated with tritium exposure have been well-documented, including in peer-reviewed scientific journals, despite the nuclear establishment's downplaying of the risks to the contrary.
"The Attorney Generals of New York and Vermont have joined the fight against California’s San Onofre Nuclear power plant in an effort to stop federal regulators from erasing all record of a judicial ruling that the public has a right to intervene before major amendments are granted to an operating license.
If the five-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission grants the request of their staff to vacate the ruling of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board and expunge the record, it will eliminate a precedent that affects power plant operations and regulatory practices around the country. In particular, it will affect the six-year fight in New York to shut the Indian Point power plants 25 miles north of New York City; and Vermont’s ongoing effort to shut the Vermont Yankee power plant.
The cross country battle now being waged by NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell is an uphill fight against one of the most powerful professional staffs in the US government and an agency that has a unique view of its own independence.
“The Commission has stated that it is not bound by judicial practice, including that of the United States Supreme Court,” stated Schneiderman and Sorrell in a brief filed June 24 with the NRC challenging the staff request...". Continue reading Roger Witherspoon's article here.
The next proceeding most likely to be immediately and directly impacted by the survival or demise of Friends of the Earths' (FOE) San Onofre precedent involves the replacement of steam generators at FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company's (FENOC) problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor, located on the Lake Erie shoreline in Oak Harbor, Ohio just east of Toledo. A coalition of environmental groups -- Beyond Nuclear, Citizen Environment Coalition of Southwestern Ontario, Don't Waste Michigan, and the Sierra Club -- have challenged FENOC's attempt to avoid transparent, open, and publicly accessible license amendment proceedings, by arguing the new steam generators are "like-for-like" replacements of the old ones.
But the coalition's expert witness, Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer at Fairewinds Associates, Inc., has documented numerous major changes from the degraded old to the new replacement steam generators. Gundersen also serves as FOE's expert witness at San Onofre. Toledo-based attorney Terry Lodge (photo, above left) serves as the coalition's legal counsel.
An Atomic Safety (sic) and Licensing Board (ASLB) panel heard pre-hearing oral arguments regarding the environmental interveners' standing, as well as the merits of its arguments, on July 24th. The ASLB indicated it would rule on the admissibility of the coalition's intervention petition this month.
August 12, 2013