Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds Associates: "Can Spent Fuel Pools Catch Fire?"

Fairewinds Associates Chief Engineer Arnie GundersenReproduced verbatim from the Fairewinds Associates website: "In this Fairewinds’ feature, Fairewinds Associates Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen [pictured, left] analyzes a US government national laboratory simulation video that shows nuclear spent fuel rods do catch fire when exposed to air. This simulation video proves Fairewinds’ assertions that nuclear fuel rods can catch fire when exposed to air, and Arnie discusses the ramifications of this phenomena if the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent fuel pool were to lose cooling water. 

The Sandia National Laboratories video in its entirety can be seen here."

Greg Palast: "Fukushima: They Knew"

Investigative reporter Greg PalastFrom Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island, NY, to Fukushima Daiichi, Japan, in 2011, investigative reporter Greg Palast (photo left) documents that "they knew" that atomic reactor seismic qualifications were not up to real world risks. See Palast's article, "Fukushima: They Knew," here.

Kucinich weighs in on NRC OIG investigation of Ostendorff

U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today weighed in on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation into whether or not NRC Commissioner William C. Ostendorff interfered with another OIG investigation, into why former NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko was kept in the dark about radioactive and acidic water leaks, being caught in buckets in the control room of Entergy Nuclear's Palisades atomic reactor in Covert, Michigan. The Huffington Post broke that story yesterday.

Here is the text of Rep. Kucinich's press release:

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today issued the following statement concerning an investigation by the Inspector General of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission examining the possibility that a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Commissioner undermined a probe of the Palisades [Nuclear] Power Plant in Michigan.

Yesterday, Congressman Kucinich requested the Inspector General investigate the agency’s public response to problems at Davis-Besse. Kucinich’s request came after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a hearing in Ohio to reassure the public about the safety of the plant. Official answers from NRC employees made at that hearing differed dramatically from what NRC engineers had previously told Kucinich and his staff.

“I can’t say the cases are related, but the similarities between these two investigations are troubling. In Michigan, an effort to determine why a radioactive leak was kept from the Chairman of NRC may have been undermined. In Ohio, we witnessed agency officials give public statements that varied dramatically from what engineers had told my staff. I cannot determine what caused this change in the answers of these Region III engineers, but I am concerned that it was in response to political pressure. I hope that the Inspector General is able to restore confidence in the NRC’s ability to provide effective oversight of our nation’s nuclear power plants,” said Kucinich.

Update on September 26, 2012 by admin

On August 15th, Huffington Post's Ryan Grim reported in more detail on the investigation into NRC Commissioner Ostendorff's interference into the Palisades enquiry.

Crack contention against Davis-Besse 20-year extension bolstered by NRC FOIA revelations

"Homer Simpson and Humpty Dumpty act out" the Blizzard of '78 "snow job" root cause theory for shield building cracking at Davis-Besse's front entrance on March 24, 2012. The street theater was held in solidarity with the SAGE Alliance's Shut Down Vermont Yankee day of action, and protested FENOC's cherry-picked "root cause of convenience," first floated on Feb. 28th.The environmental coalition challenging FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company's (FENOC) proposed 20-year license extension at the problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor, near Toledo on the Lake Erie shore, has bolstered its contention on the severe shield building cracking by citing U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) documents revealed through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request submitted by Beyond Nuclear. The coalition has issued a media release about its latest contention supplementation.

Toledo attorney Terry Lodge filed this FOIA supplement, the coalition's fifth this year, since filing the original contention on January 10th, just five days after the environmental intervenors confronted NRC and FENOC about the cracking at a special public meeting at Camp Perry, OH. The others include: (1) a Feb. 27th filing, based on U.S. Rep. Kucinich's (D-OH) revelation that the shield building's outer rebar layer was no longer structurally functional, due to the cracking; (2) a June 4th filing, in response to FENOC's woefully inadequate Aging Management Plan (AMP) for the shield building's cracks; (3) a July 16th filing, in response to FENOC's revised root cause analysis report, which revealed that shield building cracking was first observed not in October 2011, but rather August 1976; (4) a July 23rd filing, based on revelations in FENOC contractor Performance Improvement International's revised root cause assessment report, which revealed 27 areas of skeptical NRC questioning about FENOC's "Blizzard of 1978" theory of shield building cracking (the environmental Intervenors also posted documents supportive of its fourth supplement). The environmental coalition also defended its crack contention, on February 14th, against challenges by NRC staff and FENOC.

Beyond Nuclear has prepared a report, entitled "What Humpty Dumpty Doesn't Want You to Know: Davis-Besse's Cracked Containment Snow Job," which summarizes the coalition's work in 2012 on Davis-Besse's dangerously degraded condition.

"Ukrainian environmentalist brutally beaten to death"

Volodymyr GoncharenkoEJOLT (Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade) reports the horrific news that, four days after conducting a press conference to warn that 180 tons of dangerous chemical and radioactive industrial waste had arrived at the city of Kryvyi Rih (in the Dnipropetrovsk area of Ukraine), which was likely to be "recycled" into the consumer product stream, 57 year old Volodymyr Goncharenko (photo, left) was brutally beaten to death. He was the Chairman of Social Movement of Ukraine: For the Rights of Citizens to Environmental Security.

As reported by EJOLT, "According to Goncharenko, during the past several years, scavengers have removed from the Chernobyl exclusion zone 6 million metric tons of scrap metal that was subsequently smelted at metallurgical combines and reprocessed into new metal. While in theory each metallurgical combine should be equipped with radiation-monitoring equipment to check all incoming scrap, financial shortfalls have meant this was rarely the case. In 2007 Ukraine ranked eighth in global steel production and steel is Ukraine’s leading export. One can only guess how much radioactive scrap metal has ended up in exported steel."

Pavlo Khazan of the Ukrainian Green Party stated: “We collaborated with Volodymyr for 15 years in professional and public areas. The Ukrainian Green Party has no doubt that the murder was linked to his professional activities.” Although the Ukrainian police have opened an investigation into Goncharenko's murder, Khazan feels that to deliver justice in this case, international attention and pressure will be needed.

Please contact the Embassy of Ukraine, urging a thorough investigation of Goncharenko's murder, as well as for an end to the "recycling" of radioactive metals and other materials into the consumer product stream. In the U.S., the Embassy of Ukraine can be written at 3350 M Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20007, faxed at (202) 333-0817, or phoned at (202) 349-2920. Embassies and Consulates of Ukraine elsewhere in the U.S., or in other countries, can also be contacted.

Thanks to Nuclear Energy Information Service in Illinois for alerting us to this story.

Click here to learn more about anti-nuclear resistance to attempts at "radioactive recycling" in North America.