Lessons from Fukushima: new Greenpeace report a warning on nuclear risks

Jan Beranek blogs on a new report just published by Greenpeace International on the "Lessons of Fukushima." He provides links to a 12 page executive summary, as well as the full 52 page report.

"Fukushima in review: A complex disaster, a disastrous response"

Yoichi Funabashi and Kay Kitazawa are chairman of the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, and staff director of the Foundation's Independent Investigation Commission on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident, respectively. They have published an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) entitled "Fukushima in review: A complex disaster, a disastrous response." It's an overview of a 400 page study on the lessons to be learned from the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe, first reported by the New York Times on Feb. 27. The BAS abstract reads:

"On March 11, 2011, an earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The emerging crisis at the plant was complex, and, to make matters worse, it was exacerbated by communication gaps between the government and the nuclear industry. An independent investigation panel, established by the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation, reviewed how the government, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), and other relevant actors responded. In this article, the panel's program director writes about their findings and how these players were thoroughly unprepared on almost every level for the cascading nuclear disaster. This lack of preparation was caused, in part, by a public myth of "absolute safety" that nuclear power proponents had nurtured over decades and was aggravated by dysfunction within and between government agencies and Tepco, particularly in regard to political leadership and crisis management. The investigation also found that the tsunami that began the nuclear disaster could and should have been anticipated and that ambiguity about the roles of public and private institutions in such a crisis was a factor in the poor response at Fukushima."

The article announces that the full report, in Japanese only, would be released at the end of Feb. However, the English translation will not be ready until sometime this summer.

Beyond Nuclear quoted on Palisades' radioactive risks

Anti-nuke watchdogs have long called for Palisades' shutdown. Here, Don't Waste Michigan board members Michael Keegan, Alice Hirt, and Kevin Kamps speak out at the Aug. 2000 Nuclear-Free Great Lakes Action Camp. The reactor's steam, and Lake Michigan, are visible in the background.In the past five days, Rosemary Parker at the Kalamazoo Gazette has quoted Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps in two articles focused on the radioactive risks of the Palisades atomic reactor on the Lake Michigan shoreline. On. Feb. 19th, in an article entitled "Is Southwest Michigan ready for nuclear emergency?", she reported:

'...But nuclear watchdog groups point to the hundreds of hours of additional oversight required by the NRC, the plant's aging equipment, the many glitches at the plant in recent months. The group Beyond Nuclear immediately responded to the change of Palisade's regulatory status with calls to "close it down before it melts down."

...Kevin Kamps, whose title is "radioactive waste watchdog" for the antinuclear group Beyond Nuclear, envisions a more unnerving worst-case scenario, akin to the disastrous 1986 explosion at  Chernobyl in Ukraine, where radioactive contamination was released into the atmosphere and traveled for miles.

In his view, disaster at Palisades could put the city of Chicago's drinking water supply at risk, wipe out Southwest Michigan's fruit belt orchards, destroy the area's tourism industry for years and make ghost towns out of thriving lakeshore communities.'

Parker also quoted Kevin's response to recent high-risk accidents at Palisades in a Feb. 16th article.

Kevin was born and raised in Kalamazoo. His anti-nuclear power activism began at Palisades in 1992.

Update on February 21, 2012 by admin

Tina Lam at the Detroit Free Press also reported on NRC's safety downgrade at Palisades, mentioning: "Beyond Nuclear, an anti-nuclear group, said Palisades is risky to those who get drinking water from Lake Michigan, and it should be shut down."

Impossibility of evacuating S.E. MI, N.W. OH, and S.W. Ontario raised as objection to Fermi 3 new reactor proposal

Michael Keegan of Don't Waste Michigan, on behalf of an environmental coalition (including Beyond Nuclear, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, Citizen Environmental Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, and the Sierra Club Michigan Chapter) officially intervening against the Fermi 3 new reactor proposal, has raised the impossibility of evacuating southeast Michigan, northwest Ohio, and southwest Ontario in the event of a catastrophic radioactivity release at the Fermi nuclear power plant on the Lake Erie shoreline in Monroe, Michigan (just over 10 miles north of the Ohio state line, and a mere 8 miles, as the crow flies across Lake Erie, from Ontario). This objection was one of many.

(A comprehenisive, running list of comments, media coverage, and nuclear utility and NRC responses is now posted on Beyond Nuclear's website.)

Nuclear utility, radioactive waste shipper, join effort to train first responders for hazmat emergencies in Northwest Ohio

The Toledo Blade has reported that FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC), owner and operator of the problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor on the shoreline of Lake Erie, as well as CSX railway, poised to haul high-level radioactive waste across the country, have joined with a local community college as well as the State Public Utilities Commission to train local first responders in hazardous materials emergency response. Davis-Besse represents perhaps the single greatest radiotoxic risk in northwest Ohio, although radioactive waste shipments by road, rail, or waterway are especially vulnerable to radioactivity releases due to attack or accident, including as they pass through or near major metropolitan population centers.

In 2003, Kevin Kamps, now Beyond Nuclear's Radioactive Waste Specialist, was arrested, along with Toledo colleague Mike Ferner, protesting a radioactive waste shipment through northwest Ohio. The Big Rock Point radioactive reactor pressure vessel, weighing 290 tons, was being shipped by train when protestors caught up to it in a Toledo area railyard. It had already caused a derailment in its wake in southeast Michigan, where its weight apparently damaged the train tracks, causing another train that came along later to derail, according to a local fire chief interviewed on local t.v. news. The shipment continued on to cause a similar derailment in its wake in the Carolinas. It was bound for Barnwell, South Carolina, where it was buried in a ditch at a leaking "low-level" radioactive waste dump, very near the Savannah River Site nuclear weapons complex, as well as the Vogtle nuclear power plant (not to mention the African American community of Shell Bluff, GA). High-level radioactive waste shipments carried out by CSX, as well as other rail, road, and barge shipping companies, would be of much greater radiological hazard than this radioactive reactor pressure vessel (so-called "low-level" radioactive waste).