Global support for nuclear plummets - lower than coal

In the wake of new nuclear power plant build rebukes in both Germany and Italy, a new poll conducted by international research company Ipsos for Reuters News finds that global support for nuclear energy has dropped quickly to 38% (down 16 points from 54%) to now become lower than support for coal (48%)—fuelled by a 26% jump in new opponents to nuclear power (above 50% in India, China, Japan and South Korea) who indicate that the recent crisis in Japan caused their decision. Ipsos also released a detailed power point presentation of their findings. The survey of nearly 19,000 people in 24 countries also showed that nearly three-quarters of people think nuclear energy is only a limited and soon obsolete form of energy. Solar energy topped the charts with 97% of respondents strongly favoring it, closely followed by 93% for wind power.

Tritium leaks at 48 US nuclear power plant sites, AP reports

An important exposé by Jeff Donn of the Associated Press on June 21 that shows that "radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping." The story confirms the findings in our 2010 report, Leak First, Fix Later. Beyond Nuclear also contributed background on the story. Some leaks migrated off site and at three sites — two in Illinois and one in Minnesota — leaks have contaminated drinking wells of nearby homes, the AP report shows. Read the full AP investigation.

Appendix A of the Beyond Nuclear report "Leak First, Fix Later" lists the radioactive leak events at each of the US nuclear power plants through April 2010.

Support the Beyond Nuclear Petition to NRC to suspend operation of 23 Fukushima-style reactors in the United States

Become a co-petitioner to NRC and support the Beyond Nuclear call for the suspension of the 23 Fukushima-style reactors operating in the United States.

Co-petition with Beyond Nuclear's April 13, 2011 call upon NRC to suspend the operation of the 23 GE Mark I Boiling Water Reactors in the US and:

1) Convene public meetings in each of the Mark I Emergency Planning Zones to take public comment for incorporation into President Obama's charted review by NRC on the wisdom of continued operation of the dangerous Fukushima-style nuclear reactors here in the US;

2) Revoke a 1989 approval of an experimental venting system installed on the deeply flawed US Mark I reactor containment system as was also installed on the Fukushima nuclear power plants and failed to prevent the meltdowns of the three Japanese reactors operating at the time of the earthquake and tsunmai. Ask NRC to require all US Mark I operators to submit a license amendment request for any further modifications to the weak containment design in a process that is accorded full public hearing rights and;

3) Require Mark I operators to install emergency backup power to assure cooling of hundreds of tons of radioactive waste in storage pools located on top of each reactor builidng outside of containment in the event of loss of offsite power. NRC should further require operators to offload high-level radioactive waste (irradiated nuclear fuel assemblies) from these vulnerable densely packed storage pools to hardened onsite storage in dry casks.

Note: The Beyond Nuclear petition was amended with the US NRC on June 8, 2011 to include Brunswick Units 1 & 2 (NC). The April 13 petition identified that the Brunswick Mark I containment structures were not identical to the other 21 US Mark I units, but subsequently identified to have installed the same controversial venting system. Therefore, the two Brunswick units have been added to the call for a suspension of operations for a total of twenty-three (23).

"Bad combination: Floodplains, nuclear materials and understated risk"

The West Lake Landfill, photo by Bob CrissThe St. Louis Beacon has posted an article entitled "Bad combination: Floodplains, nuclear materials and understated risk," about a radioactive waste dump (pictured at left) containing some of the oldest hazardous remnants of the Atomic Age, upstream of St. Louis and drinking water intakes, now put at risk by flooding in the area. The article was written by Bob Criss, a professor in the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University, and coauthor of the 2003 book, "At the Confluence: Rivers, Floods, and Water Quality in the St. Louis Region." His article also warns about the risks of Missouri River flooding at the Fort Calhoun and Cooper nuclear power plants in Nebraska.

Fukushima's "evil twin," the Cooper atomic reactor in Nebraska, also at risk from Missouri River flood

Photo of flooding at Cooper on Monday, June 20thNot only Fort Calhoun's pressurized water reactor is at risk from rising Missouri River flood waters in Nebraska. Joe Jordan at NebraskaWatchdog.org reports that the General Electric Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor named Cooper, just south of Omaha on the Missouri River, will have to shut down if the flood waters rise just two more feet. Although Beyond Nuclear has warned that such a flood, combined with a threat to the primary electric grid, such as a thunderstorm or tornado, could plunge Cooper into station blackout and meltdown, the nuclear utility NPPD downplays the risks. NPPD assures that the reactor can be shut down within 3 seconds if need be. But the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's Units 1, 2, and 3 did automatically SCRAM within seconds of the earthquake on March 11th. However, the unavoidable radioactive decay heat still needed to be cooled for days, so the earthquake and tsunami destruction of the primary electrical grid and even the back up emergency diesel generators plunged Fukushima Daiichi into station blackout, with no cooling, resulting in full-scale meltdowns of Units 1, 2, and 3's reactor cores within as little as several hours, or at most a few days. Whereas Fukushima Daiichi had emergency back up batteries that lasted 8 hours, Cooper's may last as little as 4 hours. And Cooper's storage pool very likely contains vastly more high-level radioactive waste than Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4's, which may have boiled dry, allowing the waste to catch fire, generate hydrogen gas, and explode, which severely damaged the secondary containment building, allowing direct radioactivity releases to the environment. NRC, which regards them as non-safety related, does not require US reactors' high-level radioactive waste storage pools to be connected to emergency back up power supplies. Several newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Times, the World Nuclear News, and the Omaha World-Herald, have also reported on the flood risks at Cooper and Fort Calhoun. KETV mentions that the floodwaters overflowing levees near Cooper have closed highways, roads, and bridges, even complicating nuclear workers' travel to the atomic reactor. It failed to mention the potential impacts that could have on radiological emergency evacuation for the surrounding population, however.