"Not on our Great Lakes: anti-nuclear activist criticizes proposed Ontario waste site"

Jim Bloch of The Voice, serving northern Macomb and St. Clair Counties in eastern Michigan, has reported on the speaking tour of Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps across Michigan, which featured showings of the documentary film "Into Eternity" about the proposed geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste in Finland. The tour was organized by Kay Cumbow of Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination (CACC), to ring the alarm about the DGR ("Deep Geologic Repository," or DUD, as Greenpeace Canada's Dave Martin dubbed it, for Deep Underground Dump) targeted by the nuclear utility Ontario Power Generation (OPG) at the Bruce Nuclear Complex on the Ontario shoreline of Lake Huron, 50 miles from Michigan and upstream of such communities on the U.S. side as Alpena, Bay City, Port Huron, and Detroit.

Although supposedly "only" for so-called "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes from 20 atomic reactors in Ontario, as Bloch reports, the DUD could easily morph into a catch-all for every category of radioactive waste, including high-level, from 22 operable and additional shutdown reactors across Canada. Concerned citizens and environmental groups are urged to express their opposition to Canadian decision makers by visiting the proposal's environmental assessment website. The Great Lakes (photo, above left), 20% of the world's surface fresh water, and drinking water supply for 40 million people in the U.S., Canada, and a large number of Native American/First Nations, would be put at radiological risk.

It's interesting that OPG chose to cut off its consideration of earthquakes in the area at just 180 years ago: 200 years ago, the New Madrid quakes of 1811 and 1812 -- the largest in North American recorded history -- were powerful enough to impact the Great Lakes region, even though they were epicentered in Missouri. Native American oral history in Michigan, for example, speaks of tsunami-like waves on the Great Lakes. The DUD's entrance tunnel mouth would be located about a half-mile from the Lake Huron shore, as would its surface facilities for handling and storing radioactive wastes.

Gordon Edwards: "SNC-Lavalin and the Demise of CANDU Competence"

Dr. Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), has written this essay, "SNC-Lavalin and the Demise of CANDU Competence." SNC-Lavalin, a Quebec-based multi-national corporation, recently took over Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd.'s (AECL) CANDU reactor division for the bargain basement price of just $15 million. Its situation since can only be described as in meltdown. Its stock value has plummeted, with $1.5 billion in losses, prompting a shareholder class action lawsuit. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided its Montreal headquarters, related to $56 million in "untraceable and un-accounted for payments, presumed to be bribes." And a former SNC-Lavalin vice president, with close ties to the Gadhafi family in Libya, which he used to land a controversial Libyan prison contract, is now in a Swiss prison himself, charged with "fraud, money-laundering, and corruption of officials." Another SNC-Lavalin consultant is now in a Mexican jail, charged with "consorting with organized crime, falsifying documents, and human trafficking." Meanwhile, CANDU nuclear engineers are leaving the company in droves, and remaining nuclear engineers are threatening a major strike, due to deep cuts in pay and pensions threatened by SNC-Lavalin. Dr. Edwards warns this dangerously undermines CANDU competence -- and an attached news article shows how the strike and departures could well impact CANDU operations in New Brunswick and Ontario, Canada, as well as a number of overseas countries with CANDUs.

Fears continue over potential collapse of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 high-level radioactive waste storage pool

Common Dreams has reported on May 28th in an article entitled "Growing Fear Over Fukushima Fuel Pool 4 as Wall Bulge Detected".

The article is based largely on New York Times reporting in an article entitled "Concerns Grow About Spent Fuel Rods at Fukushima Daiichi," by Hiroko Tabuchi and Matthew L. Wald on May 26, 2012.

The New York Times reported that Goshi Hosono, Japan's environment and nuclear minister, inspected "the No. 4 reactor building at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, Saturday, May 26, 2012. The visit by Hosono, apparently aimed at demonstrating the safety of the facility, came amid renewed concerns about conditions at the plant's No. 4 reactor after its operator reported a bulging of the building's wall. (Toshiaki Shimizu, Japan Pool) [Yellow reactor containment dome at center background.]" (see photo, left; note that the high-level radioactive waste pool is located beneath the white plastic tarp just beside Hosono on his left).

The New York Times also quotes Hiroaki Koide, an assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute and one of the experts raising concerns: “The No. 4 reactor is visibly damaged and in a fragile state, down to the floor that holds the spent fuel pool. Any radioactive release could be huge and go directly into the environment.”

(Koide spoke on May 5th at the University of Chicago. Beyond Nuclear partner Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS) information tabled at the event, while Beyond Nuclear covered the Chicago Green Festival.)

The New York Times also quoted Tadahiro Katsuta, an associate professor of nuclear science at Tokyo’s Meiji University: “Japan did not want to admit that the nuclear fuel cycle might be a failed policy, and did not think seriously about a safer, more permanent way to store spent fuel.”

(In August 2010, Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps was introduced to Dr. Katsuta in Tokyo, not long after Kevin had visited Fukushima Daiichi. In September 2010, Dr. Katsuta requested that Kevin help him arrange meetings in Washington, D.C. Dr. Katsuta was working in collaboration with Dr. Frank Von Hippel at Princeton University on a study regarding alternatives to reprocessing irradiated nuclear fuel in Japan. While the Nuclear Energy Institute's Steve Kraft, and the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future's Allison Macfarlane, gladly accepted Dr. Katsuta's invitation to meet, not one office at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted the request. This despite initially positive responses from a number of NRC Commissioners' offices, as well as NRC's Spent Fuel Project Office, its international relations office, etc. Apparently, the kabosh was put on any meetings taking place at NRC once the Office of Public Affairs found out. NRC's OPA is headed by Elliot Brenner, who previously headed communications for Dick Cheney.)

Update on May 31, 2012 by admin

On May 30th, Thom Hartmann, host of The Big Picture, interviewed Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear about the latest news on Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4's high-level radioactive waste storage pool (this discussion begins at minute 7:30 -- prior to that, Thom and Kevin discuss the breaking news of Fukushima radioactively contaminated bluefin tuna documented on the California coast).

Bluefin tuna contaminated with Fukushima Daiichi cesium documented on U.S. West Coast

Bluefin tuna can grow to be 10 feet long and weigh 1,000 pounds. They can swim as far as 45,000 miles in a 16 month period of time.Common Dreams, Reuters, and the Guardian (including a videoof the Japanese government's response to the news) have reported that bluefin tuna which had migrated from Japan's east coast to the U.S. west coast tested positive for elevated levels of radioactive cesium in August 2011, about four months after massive radioactively contaminated water releases to the Pacific Ocean took place at Fukushima Daiichi. Bluefin tuna is a prized seafood. Although the levels of radioactive cesium-137 and cesium-134 are reportedly lower than Japanese and U.S. permissible levels for consumption, the U.S. National Academy of Science has long maintained that any exposure to radioactivity, no matter how low the dose, carries a health risk of cancer, and that these risks accumulate over a lifetime.

The Reuters article gives the false impression that radioactive cesium-137 is somehow naturally occurring. While Ce-137 was released from atmospheric atomic bomb tests for decades beginning in 1945, and thus can be termed a part of "background" radioactivity levels, this should not be confused with "natural background," for atomic weapons blasts, and their radioactive fallout, are far from "natural." Cs-137, with a 30 year half-life and 300 to 600 year hazardous persistence, was released in large amounts by the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, especially in March and April 2011. Cs-134, with a 2 year half-life (and 20 to 40 year hazardous persistence), contamination in bluefin tuna is unmistakably of Fukushima Daiichi origin.

Update on May 31, 2012 by admin

In a segment entitled "Charlie the Tuna Glows in the Dark?", Thom Hartmann, host of The Big Picture, interviews Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps about Fukushima's radioactive "chickens (of the sea) coming home to roost," along the California coast.

Update on June 5, 2012 by admin

While NPR (Nuclear Power Radio? National Plutonium Radio?) saw fit to downplay the significance of Fukushima's radioactive cesium-137 in bluefin tuna on the California coast to the point of downright denial, the Chief Cabinet Secretary of the Japanese Prime Minister admitted that a global monitoring network may be needed. Robert Alvarez of Institute for Policy Studies also rebutted NPR's trivialization.

Angst or Arithmetic: why Germans are so skeptical about nuclear energy

The first in a six-part series from the Heinrich Böll Foundation, deals with the roots of nuclear energy's unpopularity in Germany. It begins:

"The fact that Germany, in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, redoubled its efforts to phase out nuclear energy has nothing to do with hysteria or postwar angst. on the contrary, a majority of Germans, including much of the political class, has been unconvinced of its merits since the early 1980s; the source of this anti- atom consensus lies not in emotional populism but rather in the persuasive, fact- based arguments of a powerful, grassroots social movement that has long included nuclear physicists and other bona fide experts." By Paul Hockenos. Read the full report here.

This paper is part one of a six-part series on the German Energy Transition. The authors are experts on different issues such as renewable energies, rural communities, social movements, and nuclear power.