radiation

Grief was our first reaction when a civilized nation so prepared for earthquakes was devastated. Those of us who live in earthquake country found it hard to tamp down the fear that we can't protect ourselves from nature. Japan, so much better prepared than the West Coast, actually did quite well with the once-in-a-millennium earthquake (the previous largest in that area was M8.3, in 869 CE), but the tsunami killed thousands, left hundreds of thousands homeless, and may have a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.[read more]

This is a guest post by NNadir.David Mabb, British, 2002.(Cross posted from Daily Kos, along with an amusing poll and with references to diaries therein. Link to the Kos Diary.)A news item in the June 2, 2011 issue of Nature, (page 10) which may be the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, reports that 2010 carbon emissions...[read more]

Over the past several months, a thought has been at the back of my mind about nuclear safety. I feel is important to enter this issue into the ongoing discussion about Nuclear Power in our country.[read more]

Image via Wikipedia In a Treehugger interview on Climate Change and Intergenerational Justice, NASA’s James Hansen says it is very unfortunate that “a number of nations have indicated that they’re going to phase out nuclear power… The truth is, what we should do is use the more advanced nuclear power. Even the old nuclear power is much...[read more]

I’m astonished that this interview ran on CNN. I had concluded that nothing short of a China Syndrome event could make the US media mention that still unfolding disaster again. Now that we have an admission from TEPCO that there was a complete meltdown of three cores, and we’re seeing radiation pop up in the US and other places around...[read more]

Several months ago, I signed up to receive press releases from Representative Ed Markey, mainly so you don’t have to endure the pain yourself. On June 21, 2011, I received one titled Markey, Welch to GAO: No Way to Assess Integrity of Buried Pipes at Nuclear Reactors that offers some food for thought about the coordinated effort to...[read more]

CEO Jacques Besnainou sees startup of effort by 2015 The head of the U.S. operation of French state-owned nuclear giant Areva told a breakfast meeting of news reporters hosted by the Energy Daily on June 6 that the solution to the U.S. bottleneck in managing spent nuclear fuel is a recycling center. Jacques Besnainou, CEO of Areva’s...[read more]

Distrust of the nuclear utility and government bureaucracy seen as too close to TEPCO cited as reason for some misguided interventionsThe Prime Minister of Japan, Naoto Kan, (right) personally interfered with crisis communications and gave technical orders on the use of sea water to cool nuclear reactors at Fukushima with little or no...[read more]

The utility has 15 million gallons of radioactive liquid created by efforts to cool its crippled nuclear reactors TEPCO is a bearer of a water problem that sets daunting challenges ahead of its ambitious plan to decommission the Fukushima reactor site. In many ways, getting the millions of gallons of radioactive water out of buildings...[read more]

TEPCO has detected radiation of up to 4,000 millisieverts per hour in the air at the building housing reactor unit 1 at the Fukushima nuclear facility. Readings were collected from a robot sent into reactor unit 1 on June 3rd. Heavy steam has also been observed rising from the floor of reactor unit 1.Record Radiation Levels at...[read more]

Computer predictions of failure at Fukushima World Nuclear News has a report that computer analysis of reactor damage at Fukushima has indicated more serious fuel melting has probably occurred than previously thought at units 2 and 3. Two simulations show the water levels in the reactor pressure vessels far below where battered...[read more]

In reading some feedback to my posts at the Energy Collective regarding the analysis of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima there have been concerns voices not only in response to my posts, but in general to the accuracy of information provided on what's happening in Japan.I thought it would be valuable therefor to continue to provide...[read more]

Blue Ribbon Commission opts for conventional wisdom A federal advisory committee on the future management of spent nuclear fuel has labored long to get it hands wrapped around the issue. This week the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC) issued a series of draft recommendations. While some of them document obvious...[read more]

In a recent ANS Nuclear Cafe post, I mentioned the radiation hormeis theory proposed more than three decades ago by Dr. Don Luckey, a biochemist and nutritionist who wrote a book in 1980 titled Hormesis With Ionizing Radiation. According to Dr. Luckey and a number of other researchers in the field, a small dose of radiation can provide...[read more]

Cherry picking is for farmers In the OP ED pages of the New York Times, Helen Caldicott, a long-time anti-nuclear campaigner, writes “Unsafe at Any Dose” that physicists are ignoring health effects from ingested or inhaled radioactive materials. She goes on to say that only doctors, like her, are qualified to measure and assess the...[read more]