Urge BRC to secure risky radioactive wastes!

Radioactive wastes are at risk of accidents, attacks, and leaks. Please urge the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future to recommend to Congress, the Energy Secretary, and the President hardened on-site storage as a vital interim measure of homeland security and public health and environmental protection.

Please take action. Cut and paste the sample "BRC public comment" below into an email, and email it in to: brc@nuclear.energy.gov. Be sure to sign it with a full contact address. Feel free to change it however you see fit, by adding your own thoughts and concerns. Thanks! 

BRC public comment:

Dear Members of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future,

High-level radioactive wastes are at risk of accidents, attacks, and leaks. In your final report due out by January 29, 2012, please recommend to Congress, the Energy Secretary, and the President that hardened on-site storage be required as a vital interim measure of homeland security and public health, safety, and environmental protection.

The on-going Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in Japan has dramatically shown the risks of storing highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel in indoor water pools. Pool cooling water circulation systems were damaged or destroyed by the ravages of the earthquake, tsunami, reactor meltdowns, and explosions that began on March 11^th. For months now, desperate and dangerous efforts to cool the high-level radioactive wastes have continued, including failed helicopter water drops, and refilling the pools from afar with fire engines, riot control water cannons, and other ad hoc pumps. The thermally hot wastes have then boiled the water away, forcing these efforts to be repeated. If the pools boil dry, the wastes could catch fire and unleash catastrophic amounts of hazardous radioactivity directly into the environment, to blow downwind, flow downstream, and contaminate the food chain over a vast region.

The same could happen all of a sudden if a large after-shock topples the listing Unit 4, or causes the bottom to drop out of the Unit 4 high-level radioactive waste storage pool, which is being shored up with steel jacks.

Such boil down or drain down accidents could happen here. So too could a terrorist attack. A number of pools at commercial atomic reactors have already sprung leaks in the U.S., releasing hazardous radioactivity into soil, ground- and surface waters, including Indian Point, NY; Connecticut Yankee; Hatch, GA; and Salem, NJ. Many individual pools in the U.S. hold more waste than all 4 units at Fukushima Daiichi put together, including at the identically designed (General Electric Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors) Vermont Yankee, Oyster Creek in NJ, Ferm 2 in MI, etc.!

For a decade, hundreds of environmental groups have been calling for hardened on-site storage, as an interim alternative to pool risks, as well as to current “overflow parking,” outdoor dry casks at reactor sites, themselves vulnerable to accidents, attacks, and eventual leaks.

In your final report due out before January 29, 2012, I strongly urge you to recommend hardened on-site storage as a vital matter of homeland security, as well as public health, safety, and environmental protection.

Sincerely,

Unit 3 blowing up Unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi doesn't make radioactive waste storage pools safe

Shattered Unit 4 as it appeared on March 24th, 9 days after its "mysterious" explosionIn the earliest days of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe, the prevailing storyline on the explosion which destroyed the Unit 4 secondary containment reactor building was that the high-level radioactive waste storage pool had boiled dry, its wastes had caught fire, explosive hydgrogen gas was generated, which then blew up the building. But as posted at Beyond Nuclear's website, at the end of May, a U.S. Dept. of Energy spokesman revealed that the actual culprit may have been the Unit 3 reactor meltdown. The Mainichi Daily News now reports that Tokyo Electric Power Company is asserting just that, that hydrogen gas from the Unit 3 meltdown(s), rather than being vented out the stack shared with Unit 4, flowed instead into the Unit 4 secondary containment reactor building, blowing it up.

The likes of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and President Obama's and Energy Secretary Chu's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future will likely spin such news into a message of "pools are safe." This is not true. Fukushima Daiichi's pools storing high-level radioactive waste at Units 1, 2, 3, and 4 have had to be repeatedly re-filled with water, through various ad hoc, desperate, and dangerous means (such as failed helicopter water drops, as well as fire trucks, riot control water cannons, concrete pump trucks, etc. firing water from a radiologically safe(r) distance), due to the cooling water continually boiling away for lack of operable circulation systems.

No emergency procedures if problems arise in high-level radioactive waste storage pools

In a video entitled "Why Fukushima Can Happen Here: What the NRC and Nuclear Industry Dont Want You to Know" posted at the Fairewinds Associates website, nuclear engineers Dave Lochbaum of Union of Concerned Scientists and Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds explain what went wrong at Fukushima Daiichi, then show how similar catastrophes can happen right here in the U.S., not only in General Electric boiling water reactors of the Mark 1 containment design, but in any atomic reactor. The event, sponsored by C-10 and other environmental groups, took place in June 2011 at the Boston Public Library.

At one point, Dave Lochbaum explains that there are no procedures in place for nuclear power plant personnel to follow during a crisis involving a high-level radioactive waste storage pool. The upside, he joked, is if such safety regulations don't exist, then at least the industy can't violate them. The downside, of course, is a pool accident could unleash catastrophic quantities of hazardous radioactivity onto the waves and winds, to contaminate people and ecosystems downwind and downstream.

Fairewinds warns Japan against burning Fukushima fallout radioactive contamination

In a Fairewinds Associates video dated August 21st, Arnie Gundersen warns against the current practice in Japan of burning radioactively contaminated substances with the high radiation level of 8,000 bequerels per kilogram or less -- including the trick of "blending" more contaminated materials with less contaminated in order to average out to "burnable" levels. The problem? Fukushima fallout that has settled on the land and objects is re-suspended in the air, to re-contaminate areas that have been checked and declared to be of low contamination or contamination free, increasing their contamination levels.

Arnie also explains how high levels of radioactive sulfur were formed at Fukushima Daiichi, to then show up in the atmosphere in California, as a recent scientific study confirms (Gundersen misspeaks -- chlorine, not sodium, in seawater absorbing neutrons forms radioactive sulfur). The vast amount of neutrons needed to generate so much radioactive sulfur, Gundersen explains, is evidence that nuclear criticality or chain reactions continued long after the March 11 earthquake caused control rods to snuff out the nuclear reactions in the Units 1, 2 and 3 cores before the melt downs began.

Fairewinds re-asserts severe damage at Fukushima Daiichi high-level radioactive waste storage pools

In Fairewinds Associates' latest video entitled "Newly Released TEPCO Data Proves Fairewinds Assertions of Significant Fuel Pool Failures at Fukushima Daiichi," dated August 26th, Arnie Gundersen explains that Tokyo Electric Power Company's own documentation of radioactive cesium contamination of high-level radioactive waste pool water shows severe damage has occurred in the irradiated nuclear fuel stored there. Arnie bolsters his assertion that the high-level radioactive waste storage pool at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 is severely damaged by pointing to a recent high-resolution photo, shown here.