General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsChange of thinking comes to Nuclear Power Plant Owners
The previous thinking was that no nuclear power plant could blow up.
So there were no plans for what happens when a nuke plant did blow up. There were no plans in place that would cover how to gather nuclear contamination and how to seal off an exploded, smoking, dangerous plant.
Since Fukushima that thinking has been discarded. Forced with the reality that it could happen again, any day now, owners of these ticking time bombs are looking at reality of Fukushima's paltry cleanup efforts, and finally thinking ahead to that awful day when another one bites the dust and blows sky-high.
Are you ready? Do you have plans to run away like 160,000 people around Fukushima have done - maybe never to return?
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)According to a new study published in Oecologia, decomposers—organisms such as microbes, fungi and some types of insects that drive the process of decay—have also suffered from the contamination. These creatures are responsible for an essential component of any ecosystem: recycling organic matter back into the soil. Issues with such a basic-level process, the authors of the study think, could have compounding effects for the entire ecosystem.
The team decided to investigate this question in part because of a peculiar field observation. “We have conducted research in Chernobyl since 1991 and have noticed a significant accumulation of litter over time,” the write. Moreover, trees in the infamous Red Forest—an area where all of the pine trees turned a reddish color and then died shortly after the accident—did not seem to be decaying, even 15 to 20 years after the meltdown. “Apart from a few ants, the dead tree trunks were largely unscathed when we first encountered them,” says Timothy Mousseau, a biologist at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, and lead author of the study. “It was striking, given that in the forests where I live, a fallen tree is mostly sawdust after a decade of lying on the ground.”
Wondering whether that seeming increase in dead leaves on the forest floor and those petrified-looking pine trees were indicative of something larger, Mousseau and his colleagues decided to run some field tests. When they measured leaf litter in different parts of the exclusion zones, they found that the litter layer itself was two to three times thicker in the “hottest” areas of Chernobyl, where radiation poisoning was most intense. But this wasn’t enough to prove that radiation was responsible for this difference.
To confirm their hunch, they created around 600 small mesh bags and stuffed them each with leaves, collected at an uncontaminated site, from one of four different tree species: oak, maple, birch or pine. They took care to ensure that no insects were in the bags at first, and then lined half of them with women’s pantyhose to keep insects from getting in from the outside, unlike the wider mesh-only versions.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/forests-around-chernobyl-arent-decaying-properly-180950075/?no-ist
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)4.1 Million Displaced, 10,000 Square Miles Uninhabitable If Disaster Happens
The groups pointed to the findings of an unpublicized NRC study of spent fuel storage at Peach Bottom, a reactor in Pennsylvania. This investigation showed that if even a small fraction of the inventory of a Peach Bottom reactor pool were released to the environment in a severe spent fuel pool accident, an average area of 9,400 square miles (24,300 square kilometers) would be rendered uninhabitable for decades, displacing as many as 4.1 million people.
As the groups point out in their petition, the NRC has never before acknowledged such dire pool fire risks in its reactor licensing decisions. The information undermines the NRC’s conclusion in prior environmental studies for reactor licensing and re-licensing that the impacts of spent fuel storage during reactor operation are insignificant.
The NRC has concluded that the “safety” benefit of reducing the density of spent fuel in storage pools would not be great enough to justify an order requiring all operating reactor licensees to thin out their pools. But the NRC focused on the risk of cancer, which is only one effect of a pool fire. The groups contend that NRC must protect not only public health and safety but the environment as well. The environment includes a host of broader values, such as ecological health and socioeconomic well-being. The Fukushima accident illustrates the fact that land contamination and dislocation of people can have enormous effects on society and the environment, regardless of the number of deaths or cancers.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=64786#
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/12/fukushima.html
Putting Fukushima In Perspective: There was no background radioactive cesium before above-ground nuclear testing and nuclear accidents started. Wikipedia provides some details on the distribution of cesium-137 due to human activities:
Small amounts of caesium-134 and caesium-137 were released into the environment during nearly all nuclear weapon tests and some nuclear accidents, most notably the Chernobyl disaster.
***
Caesium-137 is unique in that it is totally anthropogenic. Unlike most other radioisotopes, caesium-137 is not produced from its non-radioactive isotope, but from uranium. It did not occur in nature before nuclear weapons testing began. By observing the characteristic gamma rays emitted by this isotope, it is possible to determine whether the contents of a given sealed container were made before or after the advent of atomic bomb explosions. This procedure has been used by researchers to check the authenticity of certain rare wines, most notably the purported “Jefferson bottles”.
As the EPA notes:
Cesium-133 is the only naturally occurring isotope and is non-radioactive; all other isotopes, including cesium-137, are produced by human activity.
What people call “background” radiation is really the amount of radiation deposited into the environment within the last 100 years from nuclear tests and nuclear accidents (and naturally-occurring substances, such as radon).
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=60685#
bananas
(27,509 posts)<snip>
... while the number of evacuees has been reduced from the roughly 470,000 just after the disasters, some 267,000 people remain displaced from their hometowns
<snip>
In Fukushima, 30 or so people still die every month because of causes that are officially recognized to be linked to the calamity. Also called “nuclear accident-related deaths,” these tragic losses of life throw into sharp relief the dire consequences of a severe nuclear accident that forces many people to live as evacuees for a prolonged period.
<snip>
bananas
(27,509 posts)World Needs to Get Ready for the Next Nuclear Plant Accident
By Yuriy Humber Apr 4, 2014 12:39 AM PT
Three major atomic accidents in 35 years are forcing the world’s nuclear industry to stop imagining it can prevent more catastrophes and to focus instead on how to contain them.
<snip>
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)They have failed to stop catastrophes, it seems they have finally admitted.
They see what kind of cash flow there is for containing Fukushima. Smells like money!!
Now doing what they should have been doing from day one: planning for the aftermath of failure.
And we are supposed to trust these people?
