"The Hottest Particle"

Arnie GundersenAs posted on the Fairewinds Energy Education website:

Three years ago, Fairewinds was one of the first organizations to talk about “hot particles” that are scattered all over Japan and North America’s west coast. Hot particles are dangerous and difficult to detect. In this video Mr. Kaltofen discusses the hottest hot particle he has ever found, and it was discovered more than 300 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi site. If Fairewinds Energy Education was a Japanese website, the State Secrets Law would likely prevent us from issuing this video.  Arnie Gundersen [photo, left] provides a brief introduction and summary to the video.

EPA Analysis: Neighbors Could Be At Risk If Landfill Fire Reaches Radioactive Waste

As reported by St. Louis Public Radio, "[a] new analysis by scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency suggests there could be risks to area residents if an underground fire were to reach radioactive waste at the West Lake Landfill."

In the early 1970s, the radioactive wastes from the Manhattan Project were illegally dumped in the Missouri River floodplain, near residential communities and not far upstream from major drinking water intakes for St. Louis area residents.

Beyond Nuclear board member Kay Drey has been a long-time watchdog on the West Lake Landfill. For example, in 1989 she was interviewed by the St. Louis Post Dispatch in a major exposé on the "Legacy of the Bomb" for the St. Louis area.

Fukushima nuclear evacuees resist being treated like "guinea pigs," pressured to re-occupy evacuation zone

Although reported by Reuters on April 1st, it is unfortunately not an April Fool's Day joke. The Japanese national and Fukushima prefectural governments have allowed a small number of residents to re-occupy their homes within the 20-kilometer (12.4-mile) evacuation zone around the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant today.

While the article compares the radioactivity levels in Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan to Denver, Colorado, USA, it does not specify whether or not the Denver radioactivity levels include plutonium fallout from catastrophic fires at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons factory upwind in 1957 and 1969. And while the article reports that a Tokyo to New York jetliner flight exposes passengers to higher hourly radiation exposures, it neglects to mention the difference between external, natural (cosmic) radioactivity exposures over just several hours, versus internal exposures to artificial radioactive isotopes (such as tritium lodged near DNA molecules, Cs-137 in heart and thyroid tissue, Sr-90 in bone, Pu-239 in lung tissue, etc.) for the rest of one's life.

The article reports that while in evacuation shelters for the past three years, due to their parents' fear of radioactivity exposures, the children of Tamura have gotten only 30 minutes per day of outdoor play time, much less than most prison inmates in the U.S. are allowed in outdoor recreational time each day. How much outdoor play time the handful of children returning to Tamura will be allowed now that they are back in their radioactively contaminated homes, is unclear.

The article reports: 

'...Kitaro Saito, who is in his early 60s, will stay outside Miyakoji, despite wanting to return to his large hillside house there, because he thinks the government is using residents as "guinea pigs" to test if more people can return home.

' "Relatives are arguing over what to do," he said, warming his hands outside his temporary home among rows of other one-room trailers. "The town will be broken up." ' (emphasis added)

Recently, Mari Takenouchi, a reporter and founder of Save Kids Japan, was officially charged with criminal contempt by a member of the nuclear industry-affiliated group called "ETHOS" after she also described the treatment of nuclear evacuees as akin to "guinea pigs," among other statements she made. ETHOS also advocated for leaving people in contaminated areas in Belarus and for feeding children contaminated food following the Chernobyl catastrophe.

The Reuters article also fails to mention that Tokyo Electric Power Company's compensation payments to nuclear evacuees will end after a certain number of months, once they have returned to their now radioactively contaminated communities in the former evacuation zones. This, in addition to their health concerns about chronic radioactivity exposures, is part of the reason why many nuclear evacuees refuse to go back home.

Alexaner Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus -- the country hardest hit by the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe -- has used similar pressure tactics to force nuclear evacuees there to return to radioactive areas. Chernobyl evacuees were threatened with loss of their meager yet essential government compensation payments, a thin lifeline, unless they returned to their former homes and began farming the land again, despite its radioactive contamination.

Update on April 2, 2014 by admin

In response to the news of Tamura's resettlement, Pieter Franken, the co-founder and Japan director of SAFECAST, has stated: "Though good news for the residents, what is being missed out is that the area mentioned had fairly low levels of pollution. In fact many people were evacuated to Koriyama and other cities with quite higher levels than Tamura (despite it being in the exclusion zone). So in a way, the evacuation should have been the other way around." Pieter Franken was featured on Democracy Now! in a recent broadcast interview.

Franken's irony-laden account points out the importance of using citizen-based radiation monitoring to assess radiation contamination, not reliance on government and industry for this information. Considering the uneven deposition of radioactive isotopes that occurs initially after a disaster like Chernobyl or Fukushima, and the subsequent cycling of radioactive isotopes in the environment which could change this measurement profile, regular measurement is prudent.

How close are you to a nuclear power plant?

Sample image from an ESRI nuclear power plant proximity calculationThis online mapping program by ESRI can tell you your proximity to the nearest atomic reactors. Just allow the program to utilize your current location, or type in any address in the Lower 48, and find out!

This program was included in March 10, 2014 NBC News coverage of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe's 3-year mark, in an article entitled "U.S. Nuclear Agency Hid Concerns, Hailed Safety Record as Fukushima Meltded" by investigative reporter Bill Dedman.

Statement by The Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance regarding the PSB's decision to grant a Certificate of Public Good to Vermont Yankee

Vermont Yankee is a GE BWR Mark I, identical in design to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1-4.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Statement by The Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance regarding the PSB's decision to grant a Certificate of Public Good to Vermont Yankee

April 1, 2014

The Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance has been working to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant for over 40 years.   The decision on Friday, March 28, 2014 by the Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) moves us a significant step closer to the closure of Vermont Yankee and the beginning of its decommissioning. 

We commend the PSB for addressing Entergy’s history of untrustworthiness.   Additionally, the PSB addressed some of our concerns regarding Entergy by over-ruling a number of Entergy’s remaining objections.  The PSB rejected Entergy’s claims for full federal preemption citing a US Supreme Court precedent and asserted dual jurisdiction over areas not involving radiological safety.

We appreciate that by granting the Certificate Public Good (CPG) conditioned on the Memorandum of Understanding negotiated by the state and Entergy the PSB expects Entergy to live up to the commitments signed in the settlement with the state of Vermont.  Our concerns remain the expedited transfer of the dangerous, irradiated spent fuel rods from the pool into dry cask storage; protection of the workers and the community throughout the decommissioning process; continued thermal discharge into the Connecticut River; the creation of a citizen’s advisory board and finally, the shortfall of decommissioning funds.

We are thankful to all the intervening parties and citizen activists who persevered through decades of struggle to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. We continue to be wary of Entergy Nuclear.  Though we are in new stage of endeavor, there remains a critical need for continued public vigilance for a safe, thorough and responsible decommissioning process leading to the final restoration of the site.