bananas
bananas's JournalFukushima nuclear clean-up to cost $58 bn
Source: Agence France-Presse
The clean-up after the Fukushima nuclear disaster could cost five times more than estimated, figures have revealed, as Tokyo Electric Power said on Wednesday that steam had been seen again in a reactor building.
It is the third time steam has been observed in the battered structure over the last week.
The government-backed National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology said decontamination work in Fukushima prefecture will cost up to 5.81 trillion yen ($58 billion), far more than the 1 trillion yen the government has so far allocated.
The institute, in a report released Tuesday, said the costs -- including for transportation and storage of radiation-contaminated soil over a large area -- would be in a range between 3.13 trillion yen and 5.81 trillion yen.
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Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/07/24/fukushima-nuclear-clean-up-to-cost-58-bn/
Ex-supervisor at Indian Point nuclear plant charged with falsifying test reports
Source: NBC News
A former supervisor at the Indian Point nuclear plant in New York has been accused of falsifying test results involving emergency generators so the plant would not have to shut down.
Daniel Wilson, 57, of Walden, N.Y., was charged in federal court for the Southern District of New York with engaging in deliberate misconduct and making false statements, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement Tuesday.
The charges stem from tests of the diesel fuel used in emergency power generators that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires the plant to maintain as part of its license.
A criminal complaint says that 2011 tests showed particulate matter in the diesel fuel exceeded NRC limits. Wilson, chemistry manager at the plant from 2007 through 2012, is accused of fabricating resample tests to show that the fuel was within limits, then lying to other employees at the Buchanan, N.Y., plant about it.
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Read more: http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/23/19643670-ex-supervisor-at-indian-point-nuclear-plant-charged-with-falsifying-test-reports?lite
Indian Point supervisor arrested for deliberately falsifying critical safety records
Indian Point supervisor arrested for deliberately falsifying critical safety records
24 Jul 2013
Entergy announced on Tuesday that a former supervisor, who worked at the Indian Point nuclear power plant north of New York City for twenty-nine years, had been arrested for deliberately falsifying critical safety records and lying to federal regulators last year. The utility said that Daniel Wilson, age 57, who was in charge of ensuring compliance in critical safety areas, falsified tests and records related to the quality of fuel in back-up tanks for the emergency diesel generators installed at the nuclear power plant which are necessary to prevent core damage in the event of a loss of power. Federal charges have been brought against the former employee by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, who was released on bail and could be sentenced up to 7 years in prison.
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In a press release U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara stated: “Any alleged deliberate misconduct at a facility like Indian Point is a matter of grave concern to this Office. One need look no further than recent natural disasters to know that at important facilities, backup generators and other systems must be maintained in working order because in an emergency they may be critical.”
While Entergy has claimed that the findings were discovered by employees at the nuclear power plant, they were really found during the period while workers were preparing for a pending NRC inspection, when they knew that federal regulators would want to look at the diesel fuel due to the 2011 findings. During those preparations, Indian Point workers were unable to locate the necessary documentation for the resampling, because resampling had never actually been done by the chemistry manager. When they confronted Wilson, he did not admit what had happened, rather falsified additional official documents which could be used to cover up the problem with the NRC. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission regularly relies on Condition Reports to document incidents of non-compliance and the steps taken by a licensee to correct the problem.
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The article has more details on what happened.
BBC: It’s boiling somewhere inside Fukushima Unit No. 3 - Reactor supposed to be in cold shutdown
BBC: It’s boiling somewhere inside Fukushima Unit No. 3 — Reactor supposed to be in cold shutdown — Situation ‘worrying’
Published: July 23rd, 2013
Title: Fukushima nuclear plant: Japan takes steps over sea leak
Source: BBC News
Date: July 23, 2013
... (Tepco) said steam was seen around the fifth floor of the building housing Reactor No 3 ...
It is not clear what is causing the steam ...
The sight of steam rising is worrying because it means somewhere inside the reactor building water is boiling, says the BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Tokyo.
The badly damaged reactors are supposed to be in what is called “cold shutdown”; the temperature of the cooling water inside the reactor should be well below boiling point.
It is another sign that Tepco still does not fully know what is going on inside the damaged reactors ...
See also: AFP: 'Fukushima reactor site engulfed by steam' -- Kyodo: 'Something like steam' coming from unknown source at Unit No. 3 -- Tepco: 'Continuously wafting through the air' -- Work to remove rubble suspended
Health Officials Stumped by High Rate of Birth Defects around leaking U.S. nuclear site
“Worrisome” spike in deadly birth defects around leaking U.S. nuclear site — Officials claim “it could be a complete coincidence” — No news reports mention it’s by the most contaminated area in Western Hemisphere #Hanford
Published: July 22nd, 2013 at 12:27 pm ET
Title: Washington State Health Officials Stumped by High Rate of Birth Defects
Source: ABC News with Diane Sawyer
Author: Gillian Mohney
Date: July 18, 2013
A high rate of birth defects has confounded Washington health officials, who have been unable to identify a cause.
A report released Tuesday by the Washington State Department of Health said that, since 2010, the neighboring counties of Yakima, Benton and Franklin have an unusually high number pregnancies affected by the [neural tube] birth defect anencephaly, which results in a newborns’ brains being severely underdeveloped.
In the U.S., there are approximately one or two expected cases of anencephaly for every 10,000 annual births ... the health department found that there was an abnormally high number of cases reported from January 2010 to January 2013 with approximately eight cases of anencephaly for every 10,000 births. ...
In addition to looking at supplemental folic health, the department also looked for variations in other risk factors, including family history, pre-pregnancy weight and whether or not the mothers drank water from a private or public source. ...
“There’s one region in the state (that’s had a spike),” said [Donn Moyer, a spokesman for the Washington State Department of Health]. “It could be complete coincidence” ...
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The Hanford nuclear site is located near Richland, WA, between Benton and Franklin counties (White Arrow)
The nuclear bomb simulator that lets users nuke their home cities in 3D
Source: Daily Mail
A new interactive map lets users nuke any location in the world with a nuclear bomb of their choosing.
The Nukemap 3D uses Google Earth images to simulate the nuclear attack and bases the animations on how mushroom clouds have behaved using information from various nuclear tests since the 1940s.
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Nukemap 3D is the third in a series of nuclear bombing simulators created by historian Alex Wellerstein from the American Institute of Physics in Mayland.
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Wellerstein said on his blog: 'We live in a world where nuclear weapons issues are on the front pages of our newspapers on a regular basis, yet most people still have a very bad sense of what an exploding nuclear weapon can actually do.'
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This image shows the cloud from a 10 kiloton blast on Manhattan, as seen from New York harbour. The Nukemap 3D lets you change location, the size of the bomb and the viewing location
If a 20kt nuclear bomb was dropped on Oxford, pictured, the cloud altitude could reach 7,210m. It could cause 11,950 deaths and 42,750 injuries
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2373620/The-nuclear-bomb-simulator-lets-users-nuke-cities-devastation-caused-radioactive-mushroom-clouds.html
Nuke Map 3D is at http://54.213.55.143/nukemap3d/
There seems to be a dns problem, that ip-based url is from Time Magazine: http://nation.time.com/2013/07/22/nuclear-perspective-whats-the-fallout-in-your-neighborhood/
Tepco now admits radioactive water entering the sea at Fukushima No. 1
Source: AFP-JIJI
Fisheries exec shocked by utility's flip-flop on groundwater's flow
Fukushima nuclear plant operator Tepco on Monday admitted for the first time that radioactive groundwater is flowing into the sea, fueling fears that marine life is being poisoned.
The admission came a day after voters handed the largely pro-nuclear Liberal Democratic Party of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — and ally New Komeito — a handsome majority in the Upper House.
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Tetsu Nozaki, chairman of Fukushima Prefectural Federation of Fisheries Co-operative Associations, voiced deep concern.
“It was quite shocking,” he told NHK. “(Tepco’s) explanation is totally different from the one in the past.”
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Read more: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/07/22/national/tepco-now-admits-radioactive-water-entering-the-sea-at-fukushima-no-1/#.Ue2TCY3VArU
TEPCO has been lying about this to help the pro-nuclear right-wing LDP win the election.
Scientists ID the little bastard molecule that causes depression
Source: MSN
Scientists have used a particle accelerator (called the Diamond Light Source) to identify, for the first time, the specific little sh*t of a molecule responsible for causing feelings of stress, anxiety and depression. The awful rat bastard of a particle turns out to be the protein receptor CRF1, which releases certain unsavory hormones when it detects stress molecules released by the hypothalamus. Scientists hope to use the information from this study to develop "small molecule drugs" that interact with the receptor's specific structure to treat these conditions more effectively. Now, which molecule makes us eat the entire jar of Nutella when we're depressed?
Read more: http://now.msn.com/protein-receptor-crf1-identified-as-depression-molecule
Russia Is Building an Inflatable Space Module of its Own
Russia Is Building an Inflatable Space Module of its Own
A leading spacecraft developer in Russia reveals the design of an inflatable space station module, raising some eyebrows on this side of the Atlantic, where Bigelow Aerospace has been developing something similar.
By Anatoly Zak July 18, 2013
A rendering of RKK Energia's inflatable ISS module.
RKK Energia, the manufacturer of the Soyuz spacecraft and the prime contractor on the Russian part of the International Space Station, quietly published in its annual report last week details on an innovative inflatable space habitat.
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The USSR pioneered inflatable structures in space with a flexible air lock that was launched aboard the Voskhod-2 spacecraft in 1965. During that historic mission, the inflatable design enabled the world's first space walk, by Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov. Soviet engineers also used inflatable airbags to soften landings of its early lunar probes. More recently, a Russian firm tried (with mixed results) to return cargo from orbit using an inflatable heat shield. (One small experimental cargo did return to Earth successfully in 2000, but a larger inflatable device was lost during the reentry, and several further reentry attempts were aborted due to launch failures.)
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An official representative of RKK Energia, Anatoly Khabarov said in an email to PopMech that "… unfortunately, at present, our developers can not provide anything for publication." However documents we obtained show that the company had initially considered fitting the inflatable structure into its 7-ton Progress cargo ship, which has been routinely used to deliver supplies and propellant to the ISS. In the past, the Progress was also successfully employed to deliver new modules to the orbiting outpost.
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"It is a first time I've heard of this, I am very surprised … wow!" Michael Gold, director of D.C. operations and business growth at Bigelow, told PopMech. "That would be outstanding [if Russia succeeds in the development of such a vehicle] … it is a great technology and I am glad to see that if the world adapts it, it will really help space exploration and lower its cost, which, obviously, is really important in this fiscally constrained environment."
Gerard Valle, a specialist in inflatable structures at Johnson Space Center and veteran of the Transhab project, agreed that inflatable technology provides favorable volume-to-mass ratio when compared to traditional metal spacecraft. At the same time, he warned, developers still face major technical risks and high costs.
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Warming bay water threatens to shut down Plymouth nuclear reactor
Warming bay water threatens to shut down Plymouth nuclear reactor
By Peter Schworm, Globe Staff
The current heat wave is threatening to shut down the nuclear power plant in Plymouth, as water used to cool the system nears limits on safe temperature.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires that the water drawn from Cape Cod Bay to cool the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station be below 75 degrees. On Tuesday afternoon, the water exceeded that mark for about 90 minutes, forcing the plant to reduce power output temporarily.
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A reactor in Connecticut was shut down for two weeks last August due to water intake temperatures that exceeded the 75-degree limit, the NRC said.
When the limits were put into place, regulators never imagined that rising water temperatures would be a concern, Sheehan said.
“No one could envision a scenario where water temperatures would exceed these limits,” Sheehan said.
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