Sunday, December 22, 2013

The Excitement in the Early Days of Nuclear

There is a series of 5 videos on YouTube, showing 2 test at Bikini Atoll which screwed up Bikini forever.     But the thing to note, is the pride, the intense documentation of every aspect of the preparation and placement of ships.    Also noted is the destruction and partial torturous damages to many farm animals that were placed on the ships.

Some animals were shaven to get a more realistic effect of the radiation on human skin.

If you listen to the video's you will see how "impressed" we are with ourselves, no one ever questioning the long term effects or implications.    Only the "need" to assess the damages caused by these bombs (number 4 and 5 ever blown up), and to get ready for the "nuclear age".

I have watched other nuclear detonations, and in all cases, the explosion and mushroom cloud/plume are described as "beautiful".    What the heck are they thinking?   Beautiful?

They recognize the danger of the radiation as a destructive force, and then they dismiss any further danger by stating that once the plume is sufficiently diluted, there is no need to worry or track it any further.    In these cases, they are talking about 45 minutes.

And so it begins!   The Ego and Lies are coming right out of the gate.

Watch the videos below and if you need more, here are 125 videos on nuclear explosions http://www.youtube.com/user/bestatomicblast/videos

NY Post Coverage of the US Navy Sailing it's Sailors into Harms Way, Without Warning the Sailors

Great to see that the sick US Navy sailors who sailed into the Fukushima Plume are getting some mainstream media press now.

Some of the shenanigans are almost laughable if they were not disgusting and dangerous, Navy states “We have a multimillion-dollar radiation-detection system, but ... it takes time to be set up and activated,” Cooper said.

Sheesh, I mean come on...you are sailing to a multiple meltdown and you didn't think to maybe turn on the multi-million dollar radiation systems? How about a $450 Inspector Geiger? This is beyond criminal.

http://nypost.com/2013/12/22/70-navy-sailors-left-sickened-by-radiation-after-japan-rescue/

Wasn't it great when we had a non-radiated ecosystem?

When squids start committing suicide, you know things are bad......

595 Mass Animal Death Events In 2013 So Far (Video)

http://beforeitsnews.com/beyond-science/2013/09/worldwide-mass-animal-suicide-increasing-2443596.html

Event Summary for 2013 – 595 Known Mass Death Events in 86 Countries So Far

16th September 2013 – Crows and Pigeons dropping out of sky dead has “locals in fear” in Bhaktapur, Nepal.
16th September 2013 – Tens of thousands of honey bees “acting drunk” and dying off this past week in Minneapolis, America.
14th September 2013 – Hundreds of dead fish ‘due to lack of oxygen’ found in Marsascala, Malta.
13th September 2013 – 10 dead whales found washed up along Chukotka Coast in Russia.
13th September 2013 – 41 Swallows found dead along a road in Hyogo, Japan.
13th September 2013 – Hundreds of thousands of bees die off in Ningbo, China.
13th September 2013 – Mass fish kill due to pollution in a reservoir in Donetsk, Ukraine.Fish Kill Ukraine
13th September 2013 – Thousands of dead fish float along 10 miles of river in Huangpu, China.
12th September 2013 – 10 Pilot Whales die after 100 beach themselves in Snaefellsnes, Iceland.
12th September 2013 – Thousands of fish and other sealife dead after molasses spill in Honolulu, America.
11th September 2013 – Mass fish kill found on beaches in Caimanera, Cuba.
11th September 2013 – 950,000+ Birds killed due to avian flu in Bologna and Ferrara, Italy.
10th September 2013 – 800+ fish, 2 dolphins and 2 turtles wash ashore dead on a beach in Carazo, Nicaragua.
9th September 2013 – Massive starfish die off baffles scientists in British Columbia, Canada.

9th September 2013 – 3,000 Antelopes die off in Akmola and Karaganda in Kazakhstan.
8th September 2013 – Tens of thousands of fish die in reservoirs in Hunan, China.
6th September 2013 – 850+ trout die due to pollution in a creek in Montsevelier, Switzerland.
6th September 2013 – 5 dead whales found stranded on the coast in Ghana.
6th September 2013 – 2,000 lbs of fish suddenly die in Atascadero Lake, California, America.
6th September 2013 – 5,000 dead fish found in a lake in New Mexico, America.
5th September 2013 – 1 MILLION bees found dead is “a mystery” in Lantian County, China.
5th September 2013 – Thousands of fish and shrimp found dead in Nosara River, Costa Rica.
4th September 2013 – 100 TONS of dead fish found in a river in Wuhan, China. LinkFish die off in Wuhan
4th September 2013 – Mass fish kill “is a mystery” in a river in Toamasina, Madagascar.
4th September 2013 – Thousands of fish found dead in Lake Ismarida in Greece.
4th September 2013 – Tons of dead fish appear in the waters off the coast of Macau, China.
3rd September 2013 – Tons of dead fish wash up on beaches along the coast of Izmir, Turkey.
2nd September 2013 – Thousands of Cattle have died due to drought in Matamoros, Mexico.
2nd September 2013 – Mass fish die off found in a river in Yekaterinburg, Russia. "

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Simple Strategy, Start Getting Nuclear to Pay Its Real Cost

Nuclear is a stupid technology that entraps the best and brightest into it's lie. It is also a way to steal from the future, like printing money, or like making pension promises that are just impossible to keep. They are all theft.

here at the Nuke Pro we have several strategies, one of which is to make nuclear start addressing some of the costs of dealing with the spent fuel. Of course, with Solar PV now at 3 cents per kWH, and plants like Kewaunee (bought dirt cheap at $280M) and they still can't turn a profit in a market of 14 cents per kWH. Well the conclusion is obvious, nuke doesn't pay. And if the new Vogtle ever pull back the moderator rods....and costs $16B, how can that possibly work. Even will socialized insurance costs.

But once we get them to start absorbing the real costs of decommissioning, and not just let the plants sit for 60 years, and not just let the spent fuel sit in pools forever. Then the true cost of nuclear will start to appear.....and the plant closures will rocket forward, as a race to get out gets underway.

By the way, we can't just let these old plants sit for 60 years. WE THE PEOPLE need the infrastructure, as these are the perfect locations to feed in solar farms, molten salt generation, and peaking nat gas generators to smooth out the renewable inputs. Sorry nuker....suck it up and green field it back to where it was, except of course for the transformers, switchgear, power lines, syncronisers, and various distribution panel equipment that will be so useful for the "Fresh Energy". And in case it isn't obvious, if the plant sits for 60 years, all these assets will become worthless.

Who is next? Pilgrim? Palisades? Plenty of candidates. Just pick any Entergy plant and you have a likely target for activist education.

This is a real job creator, not fake government jobs, not entitlements. This is work which must be done. We must get rid of these old plants, and the waste. Dry Cask everything, now, in about 7 years it can all be done. And decommission the plants enough that the useful electrical assets can be used for the Fresh Energy. It is not necessary to completely dismantle the plants now...but there are going to be a lot of nuclear workers who can sure use the work of dismantling. Why not do it all now? The average worst radionuclides have half lives of 30 years, so in 60 years, they will have dropped to 25% of where they are now. So what if a bit more personal protection is needed, what if we need to use a few more robots. We can't let the risks and the assets sit fallow for 2 generations just to let them be a little less hot.

$350 B estimate in the article below sounds high. My high estimate to Dry Cask all the uncasked waste in USA is around $15B.

Nuke Pro out. Drop a comment!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article below from Power Engineering Mag

http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2013/12/nuclear-waste-storage-could-add-more-than-350bn-to-cost-of-nuclear.html

Nuclear waste storage could add more than $350bn to cost of nuclear

12/20/2013

An economist said that the disposal and storage of nuclear waste could add up to $350 billion to the price of nuclear power. The declaration was filed as part of the Draft Waste Confidence Generic Environmental Impact Statement process.
According to a declaration filed Dec. 19 with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by economist Mark Cooper, a senior fellow for economic analysis at the Institute for Energy and the Environment of the Vermont Law School, conservative estimates put the additional costs of at-reactor storage and disposal in a permanent repository between $210 billion to $350 billion. The analysis looks at a range of scenarios, including heavy reliance on on-site reactor storage of nuclear waste in casks and the use of one or more Yucca Mountain-type repositories. The extra cost per unit of nuclear reactor output with nuclear waste storage and disposal would range from $10 to $20 per megawatt-hour of electricity generated by the reactors.
“The economic numbers are crystal clear. Nuclear waste management costs are staggering and should be included in any proper analysis of the economics of nuclear reactors for purposes of issuing new licenses or renewing old ones,” Cooper said. “Given the substantial scale of these costs, any cost-benefit analysis that ‘hides’ such numbers is simply not credible. The fact that some of these costs have been socialized and taken off the shoulders of the industry does not make them any less expensive, burdensome, or relevant in determining the full and true cost of nuclear power.”
Neil Sheehan, public affairs officer with the NRC, said commissioners will evaluate Cooper’s comments along with the hundreds of others received before the report is finalized in 2014.
“With respect to spent fuel storage costs, ratepayers have been contributing a fund to cover those costs for decades,” Sheehan said. “Since no federal repository has yet been opened, numerous plant owners have reached court settlements with DOE to cover ongoing storage costs.”
The Nuclear Energy Institute also said Cooper’s estimates were based on assumptions that used fuel would be stored at nuclear power plants for hundreds of years with no repository.
“It is also unlikely that even with 100 years in storage on sites, fuel would require repackaging, and a disposal price tag that is 3 1/2 times the most recent Yucca Mountain cost estimate,” said Mitch Singer, senior media relations manager with NEI. “And the analysis doesn’t take into account advancing technologies that may well give the nuclear industry more options with possible reduced costs for storage.”

Confirmed Kills = 2, Kewaunee now Crystal River

1 more down, with Kewaunee on lake Michigan, that makes 2 this year. Lets go for 20 this year. Pick your favorite clunker and attack it with letters and emails to the politicians who are shaky ground.

Seriously, with a 60 year decommissioning process that sounds like alot of "jobs". Palisades in Michigan, always in violation of something, shut em down!!!!

But here amazingly....Duke Energy bought this clunker, then the clunker broke, then they botched the repair making it worse than it was, and now they want the rate payers to pay them 1.65B for their investment....typical, bail out the greedy stupid lying corporations and put the bill on the rate payers back.

FROM THE STORY
Duke said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it would seek to recover its investment in Crystal River over a 20-year period beginning in 2017, an amount that spokesman Mike Hughes said was $1.65 billion.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20130205/WIRE/130209798/2055/NEWS?p=all&tc=pgall

NRC Testimony

Cross-Post, from Sparky @Enenews:

Hey Stock, my NRC "Waste Confidence" comment tracking number is 1jx-89es-c4ou. Thanks for the "push". Your encouragement here on Enenews and petition on NukePro was especially helpful. FYI, all comments can be viewed at: http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketBrowser;rpp=25;po=0;dct=PS;D=NRC-2012-0246;refD=NRC-2012-0246-0456

We had over 1000 visitors, I wonder how many provided testimony to the NRC?

Quite a few at ENENEWS did confirm to me that they provided testimony.

And Here is an example of one of the Posts, well done! Note that NRC has only "vetted" 7 comments in the last 3 days of testimony. That is kind of sad.

Rulemaking1CEm Resource
From: RulemakingComments Resource
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 4:47 PM
To: Rulemaking1CEm Resource
Subject: FW: Docket ID NRC-2012-0246 - NUCLEAR WASTE CONFIDENC
DOCKETED BY USNRC—OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY
SECY-067
PR#: PR-51
FRN#: 78FR56775
NRC DOCKET#: NRC-2012-0246
SECY DOCKET DATE: 12/4/13
TITLE: Waste Confidence—Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel
COMMENT#: 00330
From: peteowl@aol.com [mailto:peteowl@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 11:08 AM
To: RulemakingComments Resource
Subject: Docket ID NRC-2012-0246 - NUCLEAR WASTE CONFIDENC
TO: rulemaking.comments@nrc.gov
Comments for the NRC regarding "NUCLEAR WASTE CONFIDENCE"
To: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff
Re: Docket ID NRC-2012-0246
Comments on NRC Waste Confidence
In seventy years of producing nuclear weapons and nuclear energy we have found no way
to dispose of the resultant radioactive waste that will not threaten life on earth.
There is no permanent waste repository. The Yucca Mountain team consisted of the best
people we have with unlimited resources, yet they failed. They didn't fail due to
incompetent management, they failed because they were given an impossible task.
Were there to be a repository available, the transportation of waste to it would be
vulnerable to accidents and to terrorism. One only has to cite the many truck, train and
ocean vessel accidents associated with the transportation of chemicals and fossil fuels to
understand comparable risks.
Failing a national repository, the NRC has not studied the issue of waste storage for each
individual reactor (age, type, site location, ownership, history of problems, accidents,
2
violations) but instead has created a generic wish list for waste storage, lacking workable
specifics. Each reactor must be considered on its own.
In the case of Entergy's Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station (PNPS) in Plymouth, which is of
special concern to we the undersigned, shutdowns and malfunctions have been so
numerous that the NRC itself has flagged the plant for intensive oversight.
Presently on-site storage in dry casks is the only solution, but it is only a relatively shortterm
fix for a problem requiring containment for hundreds of thousands of years. So far the
design for the Interim Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) is underfunded, and its
location is vulnerable to sea level rise, flooding and terrorism. The casks would not be
separated by protective berms although that would obviously lessen the impact of an
aircraft attack.
Although it never agreed to do so, Massachusetts is forced to host a high-level nuclear
waste dump for up to 380 years - if the industry's and regulator's promises are kept. But
past promises (40 years of reactor operations and no waste dump) were not kept. Given
this history, NRC confidence in a waste plan does not give us any confidence.
The NRC has estimated the risk of a core melt with containment breach at a GE Mark 1
Boiling Water Reactor such as Pilgrim at 1 in 1 million reactor-years. Actual reality has
proven the risk to be 1 in 352 reactor-years, 2,841 times more likely than NRC prediction.
At Pilgrim, nearly 3300 bundles of irradiated fuel are stored in an attic pool designed for
880.The NRC's probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) assures us that a high level radwaste
pool can't be drained by an aircraft carrying C4. The PNPS in Plymouth is a Mark 1
reactor that's on a flight path for a major airport - and there are no airspace restrictions.
Even a partial drain down is likely to result in an inextinguishable uranium and plutonium
fire. The only thing between a 747 and the SFP is a thin sheet metal roof. It's not safe
now, and claiming that it will remain safe until 2092 is only wishful thinking.
With climate change, the likelihood of extreme weather events is
increasing along with the potential for catastrophic results affecting
any waste storage facility, especially those near the coast. We are
concerned that seismic risks also have been underestimated.
Could people be evacuated safely if there's a fire at a waste fuel pool? Past experience
with comparatively minor accidents like Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and
Fukushima says no. But in order to maximize the externalization of radwaste costs, within
just a couple of years of final reactor shutdown the NRC will not require evacuation
planning. This is altogether unacceptable.
There is nothing scientific about NRC claims that it can guarantee the safe storage of
nuclear waste for a million years. This waste contains plutonium & uranium with half-lives
3
of 24,000 years and ten billion years, respectively. You needn't have any expertise, just a
little commonsense to realize how insane this is. One million years takes us to the
Calabrian stage of the Pleistocene era, a period of which we know very little, hundreds of
thousands of years prior to the emergence of the Neanderthal. But going forward in time,
we know little if anything about events a decade from now, and we have no way to know
anything about conditions ten thousand centuries from now. That the word 'confidence' is
used by the NRC when talking about safeguarding radwaste for a period of time five
hundred times greater than the Christian era is preposterous!
There is no proven technology to displace something for a million years. Not for 100,000
years, not even for 10,000 years. The longest lived man-made structures are the
pyramids. They've been around for 5,000 years and they failed at their intended purpose.
Entropy isn't addressed by the NRC waste document. The NRC concludes in Section
4.1.3 that the impact of indefinite storage on land use will be small. How does that jive with
real world engineering experience? Real world data says that every 25 years we will have
a major leak of high-level nuclear waste that will render about 250 square kilometers
unusable for millennia. That works out to be 5 million square kilometers or about onethirtieth
of the land area of the entire world.
Petitioners and intervenors have called attention to what is wrong with the NRC Draft
Waste Confidence Generic Environmental Impact Statement (DWC GEIS) and backed up
their criticism with numerous examples of failing to comply with federal laws, faulty
decision-making practices, and poor operating histories. But many of these concerns and
facts have been ignored.
The NRC fails to abide by the intent, language, and provisions of the Atomic Energy Act
(AEA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
We endorse Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Waste at Reactors from the Institute for
Energy and Environmental Research.
We agree with those who ask the NRC to stop building new nuclear facilities, stop
extending the licenses of existing nuclear power plants, to not expose the nuclear workers
and the public by transporting nuclear waste.
In concluding, one elephant in the room stands: the NRC's failure to understand the very
real, well documented, science of radioactive substances which waste produces. A
fingernail of plutonium could kill off, conservatively a large city. Cesium, strontium, and
other radionuclides contained in waste, are some of the most toxic substances on earth,
creating slow and long term illness and well as mutating genes.
The NRC has a duty to protect children and grandchildren for generations to come from
substances which contaminate human beings, the biosphere and the environment and
which can create lasting, adverse, multi-generational changes in the genome. We believe
the DWC GEIS shows that the NRC does not take that duty seriously.
4
Rather than generating more waste, we believe that the prudent approach is to stop
producing nuclear waste.
I request a receipt for this letter, please, be emailed to peteowl@aol.com.
Sincerely Yours,
Lee Roscoe
14 D Frederick Ct.
Brewster, MA. 02631
508 896 3510
peteowl@aol.com
P.S. I am a Woods Hole Ocean Science Journalism Fellow and an EPA award winning
environmentalist.
I want to note that literally thousands of us in Barnstable County from all of its towns voted to shut
Pilgrim Nuclear Station, in large part because of concerns over waste.
I am also a part of Capedownwinders.org on whose behalf in part I send this letter.

California Air Sampling by Greg, trying the HTML Code

California radioactivity monitoring map

Horizontal scale: 5 days
Most recent data point: 2013-12-15 03:50:49 UTC

The display above is generated using data from 10 air-sampling stations in the US EPA's RadNet monitoring network. Each plot shows overall gamma count rates from a given monitor over the past 5 days. Click on a plot image to view detailed data for the corresponding location.

At each station, local air is pumped through a filter to collect particulate matter, and a detector system records beta and gamma rays emitted by the concentrated material. If unusual readings are observed, EPA scientists may retrieve the filter element for more detailed analysis in a laboratory.

Note: After many inquiries, I feel I should stress that it is not appropriate or meaningful to compare the data above to readings from a common Geiger counter.

This site is intended for informational and illustrative purposes. Data presented here may be subject to delays or errors. Accessibility of RadNet data can vary due to review procedures and technical issues, which may affect the timeliness of the data displayed. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or to report a problem.

contact info

Friday, December 20, 2013

Carrington Kill Shot

JASON is an independent group of some 60 scientists that advises the United States government on science and technology that could have national implications. It is run by the non-profit making MITRE Corporation in Virginia.

There is a massive amount of information in the report which was published in November 2011. For the technically minded, transformers are discussed in detail, highlighting the problems that space weather impacts could, and does have on them. There are examples from around the world of the damage caused to electrical grids when a coronal mass ejection hits the Earth. There are details of different types of space weather, their effects and likely outcomes of such incidents.

Kappenman based his findings on past space weather, the effects felt at the time and how the advances in technology since that time would be affected by a similar event.

Page 51-54 of the JASON report is of particular interest. It summarizes Kappenman’s findings. It is somber reading.

More than 300 transformers destroyed.
130 million people in the United States lacking power for several years.
1-2 trillion dollars of economic losses.

A US map of vulnerable transformers with areas of probable system collapse encircled. Credit: National Academy of Sciences.

At risk transformers in the same scenario

( To make the writing legible the map is way too big so you can read the details in the JASON report, page 53, here. )

Kappenman based his findings on past storms. It goes without saying that should future storms be more severe than those the scenario is based on, then the damage caused will also be more severe.

We have become so reliant on electricity in the last 200 years, it’s difficult to imagine life without it. Those who rely on refrigerated medications would be hard hit within hours of the power going off, as would those who rely on regular oxygen cylinder deliveries to their homes.

The usual back up power in hospitals is 72 hours. After that life support machines and operating rooms will cease to function.

Pumps at gas stations will no longer dispense fuel affecting everything from the family car to the food supply.

Water treatment and pumping stations will cease to function, again this will affect a wide range of services we take for granted, drinking water, sanitation and even firefighting will be limited or non-existant for millions. Contestation over water in lakes and rivers will be a source of ongoing conflict for years after the event.

Many factories that make parts for transformers will not be able to do so, leaving the United States at the mercy of foreign powers for transformers and parts. (If those countries have not been affected by the event themselves.)

The very fabric of the only society we know will come to a grinding halt within a week of the grid going down.

The government knows this, they have known it for more than two years yet they have done nothing about it. They are not hardening the grid, they are not changing at least some of it to short line instead of long line runs.

There is no advice given regarding stocking up on food, water and other supplies beyond the recommended ‘store at least a three day supply’ on the FEMA website. I particularly like their advice never to ration water unless told to do so by the authorities…

Without medicines and medical assistant diseases like typhus, typhoid and cholera will move through the population.

A severe space weather event will mean the end of life as we know it. Only the most prepared will survive, and those that do will find themselves in a very different world. Such an event has the potential to put not just the United States, but half the planet back to the stone age, reducing the ability of others in the First World to assist allied nations. A severe solar event would have the ability to affect an entire hemisphere rather than just an individual country.

Geo-political power bases would move to those nations that have a functioning government and electricity. Even people in those countries currently considered to be Third World will be living in conditions far more favorable than those living in a post solar event world, where electricity and sanitation are things children will grow up hearing about rather than experiencing.

It isn’t a case of IF a large flare causes devastation on Earth, it’s a case WHEN.

The Sun is beyond human control, and will remain so. There is nothing we can do to prevent flares, coronal mass ejections and the like. All we can do is increase our knowledge base of the damage they can do and try to mitigate it by preparing ourselves and our families as best we can.

An official report prepared by John Kappenman, an independent consultant, was commissioned by The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2010. The report is summarized in The JASON report on Impacts of Severe Space Weather on The Electrical Grid, project number 13119022.
JASON is an independent group of some 60 scientists that advises the United States government on science and technology that could have national implications. It is run by the non-profit making MITRE Corporation in Virginia.
There is a massive amount of information in the report which was published in November 2011. For the technically minded, transformers are discussed in detail, highlighting the problems that space weather impacts could, and does have on them. There are examples from around the world of the damage caused to electrical grids when a coronal mass ejection hits the Earth. There are details of different types of space weather, their effects and likely outcomes of such incidents.
Kappenman based his findings on past space weather, the effects felt at the time and how the advances in technology since that time would be affected by a similar event.
Page 51-54 of the JASON report is of particular interest. It summarizes Kappenman’s findings. It is somber reading.

More than 300 transformers destroyed.
130 million people in the United States lacking power for several years.
1-2 trillion dollars of economic losses.