Tritium contamination of growing stockpile of radioactive water leads to outcry against release to Pacific at Fukushima Daiichi

In an article entitled "Flow of Tainted Water Is Latest Crisis at Japan Nuclear Plant," the New York Times has reported that continuing leaks of groundwater into the rubblized Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is causing a flood of radioactively contaminated water requiring a sprawling -- and ever growing -- complex of water storage tanks.

As the New York Times reports:

'...But the biggest problem, critics say, was that Tepco and other members of the oversight committee appeared to assume all along that they would eventually be able to dump the contaminated water into the ocean once a powerful new filtering system was put in place that could remove 62 types of radioactive particles, including strontium.

The dumping plans have now been thwarted by what some experts say was a predictable problem: a public outcry over tritium, a relatively weak radioactive isotope that cannot be removed from the water.

Tritium, which can be harmful only if ingested, is regularly released into the environment by normally functioning nuclear plants, but even Tepco acknowledges that the water at Fukushima contains about 100 times the amount of tritium released in an average year by a healthy plant...

...The public outcry over the plans to dump tritium-tainted water into the sea — driven in part by the company’s failure to inform the public in 2011 when it dumped radioactive water into the Pacific — was so loud that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe personally intervened last month to say that there would be “no unsafe release.”

Meanwhile, the amount of water stored at the plant just keeps growing.

“How could Tepco not realize that it had to get public approval before dumping this into the sea?” said Muneo Morokuzu, an expert on public policy at the University of Tokyo who has called for creating a specialized new company just to run the cleanup. “This all just goes to show that Tepco is in way over its head.”...'

It should be pointed out that tritium is not a "relatively weak radioactive isotope," but rather a relatively powerful one, once incorporated into the human body. Tritium is a clinically proven cause of cancer, birth defects, and genetic damage.

It must also be corrected that ingestion is not the only pathway for tritium incorporation -- inhalation, and even absorption through the skin, are hazardous exposure pathways.

ANA's 25th anniversary "DC Days" a big success

Diane Curran, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, Kathleen Sullivan, and Kristen Iversen receive ANA awards during DC Days on April 16, 2013 at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. Behind them is a quilt of anti-nuclear tee shirts from across the U.S. and even overseas, created by ANA's past executive director, Susan Gordon.For several weeks in the lead up to the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability's (ANA) annual "DC Days," Beyond Nuclear promoted participation on its website and in its weekly email bulletin. DC Days is one of the most ambitious and effective annual anti-nuclear lobby efforts at the federal level nationwide!

The event, from April 14 to 17, was a big success. ANA is a coalition of three dozen groups, of which Beyond Nuclear is proud to have been a member for the past five years. While many of the groups are grassroots watchdogs living in the shadows of the U.S. Department of Energy's nuclear weapons complex facilities, ANA also has an explicit anti-nuclear power policy position. Thus, Beyond Nuclear and ANA are a perfect match!

Scores of participants from across the country took part, from the training day on Sunday, to the lobby days on Capitol Hill and across the Obama Executive Branch agencies, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps was honored to be tapped by ANA to "team lead" several lobby visits in both the U.S. House and Senate.

A highlight of DC Days is the annual awards reception on Capitol Hill. This year's awards went to the following well deserving recipients: U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), Chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, for his longstanding commitment to the cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear [Weapons Complex] Reservation in Washington State; Diane Curran, Washington D.C.-based attorney at the law firm Harmon, Curran, Spielberg + Eisenberg, LLP, for her tireless legal efforts, on behalf of environmental coalitions, such as her victory against the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) bogus Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision, her victory for security upgrades on high-level radioactive waste storage at Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in CA, etc.; Kathleen Sullivan, disarmament educator and anti-nuclear activist, for her documentary film "The Ultimate Wish: Ending the Nuclear Age"; Kristen Iversen, for her internationally acclaimed book Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats; and Bobbie Paul, retiring executive director of Georgia Women's Action for New Directions (WAND), and Judith Mohling of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, for the extraordinary activism of not just the past year, but their lifetime achievements.

See ANA's 2013 fact sheets here, which formed the basis for the lobby visits to Capitol Hill and Obama administration agencies such as DOE, NRC, EPA, etc.

Here is another photo of Diane Curran, Sen. Wyden, Kathleen Sullivan, and Kristen Iversen receiving their awards, taken by Tom Clements of FOE in South Carolina. Tom himself won an ANA activist of the year award in 2009, as shown in the DC Days photo from that year posted on ANA's website.

Visit ANA's website to learn more about its critical work on nuclear weapons and nuclear power issues.

Much needed donations to ANA can be made online, or checks can be sent to:

ANA, 

903 W Alameda Street, #505, 

Santa Fe, NM 87501. 

All contributions are tax-deductible.

Environmental resistance continues against federal rollbacks on radiation protection standards

Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) and Committee to Bridge the Gap (CBG) have led a coalition of dozens of environmental, public interest, and safe energy groups -- including Beyond Nuclear -- in responding to the NCRP's (National Commission on Radiation Protection) proposed regulatory rollback on radioactivity protections, by its arbitrarily and capriciously short deadline for public comment of April 15th. See the coalition comments here.

The irony of April 15th -- "Tax Day" -- for a public comment deadline, is that NCRP was paid by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS, a taxpayer funded agency) to empanel numerous federal officials from such agencies as DHS, DOE, and EPA, to draft this major rollback on radiation protections. These officials -- whose salaries are paid by American taxpayers -- are supposed to protect the citizens and residents of this country against the risks of radioactivity, but are instead doing the exact opposite.

Both CBG at its website, and NIRS at its website, have posted updates on not only NCRP's proposed regulatory rollback, but also parallel proposals by EPA and even other federal agencies.

Doug Guarino with the National Journal's Global Security Newswire reported on April 11th that President Obama's nominee for EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy, refused to answer his question about this radiation protection rollback. McCarthy has led the regulatory rollback effort at EPA, over objections from EPA officials at the agency's Superfund division, from her perch atop EPA's nuclear industry-friendly Office of Radiation and Indoor Air.

Guarino reported that not only did McCarthy refuse to answer questions about the radiation regulatory rollbacks, but a McCarthy EPA assitant also physically shoved a reporter.

Guarino broke the story on NCRP's proposed regulatory rollback, as posted below.

On April 15th, Guarino also reported that EPA has now officially granted 90 days for public comment on its proposed radiation protection regulatory rollbacks. Just one example of the proposed rollbacks is viciously radioactive I-131 (linked to an epidemic of thyroid cancer and other pathologies in the regions surrounding Chernobyl, especially in children exposed to fallout) in drinking water: EPA has proposed a 27,000-fold decrease in protections.

Please contact President Obama, your U.S. Senators, and your U.S. Representative to protest this absolutely outrageous proposal. Urge them in the strongest possible terms to retain current EPA Superfund radioactivity contamination clean-up standards as the norm for dirty bomb, nuclear power plant disaster, radioactive waste shipping accident, etc. recovery efforts. You can be patched through to your Members of Congress via the U.S. Congressional Switchboard at: (202) 224-3121.

President Obama can be contacted by calling the White House at 202-456-1111, writing him online via the White House web form, or writing him at: President Obama; The White House; 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW; Washington, DC 20500.

For the past two weeks, on its website and in its weekly email bulletins, Beyond Nuclear has been posting updates on the Obama administration's proposed regulatory rollbacks on radiation protection standards.

Former NRC Chairman Jaczko calls for all U.S. atomic reactors to be shut down

Gregory Jaczko, who served as U.S. NRC Chairman from 2009-2012As reported by the New York Times, former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chairman Gregory B. Jaczko recently came to the realization that all U.S. atomic reactors have unfixable safety flaws, and should be shut down. He added, however, that "new and improved" so-called small modular reactors could take their place.

Jaczko thinks that perhaps none of the reactors that have received NRC rubber-stamps for 20-year license extensions will ever last that long, in reality, let alone an additional 20-year extension NRC is currently flirting with the idea of allowing (40 years of initial operation, plus two 20-year license extensions, adding up to 80 years of operations!).

Oyster Creek, NJ (a Mark I) is the oldest still-running reactor in the U.S., although it is already planned to close by 2019, ten years short of its 20-year extension. Dominion Nuclear has also announced the permanent shutdown of Kewaunee in WI next month, although it still have decades of permitted operations on its license.

Ironically, Jaczko himself approved many 20-year license extensions, including at Palisades in MI (opposed by NIRS and a state-wide environmental coalition) and Vermont Yankee (opposed by the vast majority of Green Mountain State residents and elected officials). Jaczko even voted to not hearing Beyond Nuclear's contentions at the Seabrook, NH and Davis-Besse, OH license extension proceedings regarding renewable alternatives, such as wind power, to the 20-year extensions at the dangerously degraded old reactors.

Jaczko reached out to Beyond Nuclear in May 2012 to set up a meeting between his entourage from NRC and concerned local residents and environmental group representatives near Palisades after he toured the problem-plagued reactor. During the closed-door meeting, concerned locals pressed Jaczko on why the 42-year-old, dangerously age-degraded reactor was allowed to operate. He responded, ironically enough, given his yes vote on Palisades' license extension in 2007, that once NRC grants an atomic reactor a license to operate, there is little that can then be done about it.

Jaczko did, however, earn the enmity of the nuclear power industry and his fellow NRC Commissioners, as by his past work against the proposed Yucca Mountain dumpsite, his invocation of emergency powers during the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, and his votes against proposed new reactors in GA and SC because Fukushima "lessons learned" had not yet been applied or required. Although Jaczko often voted the industry's way, as above, he didn't always (often the sole dissenting vote), making him "insufficiently pro-nuclear" for the nuclear establishment, as Beyond Nuclear board member and investigative journalist Karl Grossman put it.

Jaczko was first appointed to the NRC Commission in 2005. In 2009, President Obama appointed him the chair the agency, which he did till 2012. He had previously worked on Capitol Hill, as a staffer for U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), and as a science fellow for U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), working on the Yucca Mountain and other nuclear power and radioactive waste issues.

Pilgrim opponents out in force at NRC meeting

As reported by the Duxbury Reporter, a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) public meeting about Entergy's Pilgrim atomic reactor took place on Tues., April 2nd. It included a discussion of Entergy's recently announced plans to build a dry cask storage facility for Pilgrim's more than 40 years of piled up high-level radioactive waste. Every single irradiated nuclear fuel assembly ever generated at Pilgrim is currently still stored in its indoor, elevated storage pool, outside of any robust radiological containment structure, and at risk of fire and catastrophic radioactivity release.

The Reporter has also reported that, in advance of the meeting, environmental advocates EcoLaw demanded access to documents about the proposed dry cask storage installation, but the Town of Plymouth has denied access, citing safety and security concerns.

The Patriot Ledger reported that the reception for the NRC in Plymouth was angry and even scathing. Plymouth Selectmen questioned NRC, expressing dramatically increased concern after the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe at identically designed reactors in Japan -- General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors. Mary Lampert of Pilgrim Watch, who fought against Pilgrim's 20-year license extension rubber-stamp by NRC for over six years (a record nationwide), called for safety upgrades at the reactor, including real-time, fully transparent monitoring of the proposed new dry cask storage facility. Cape Cod Downwinders called for Pilgrim's immediate, permanent shutdown.

As reported by the Cape Codder, decades old anti-nuclear sentiment in Chatham, near Pilgrim, has revved up yet again. A local drive is on to officially request Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick to urge NRC to reconsider its 20-year license extension rubber-stamp at Pilgrim. It should be remembered that Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1, the oldest reactor at the site and the first to melt down there, would not have even been operating on March 11, 2011 except that it had been granted a license extension not long before the fateful earthquake and tsunami.

The Old Colony Memorial posted a 5 minute video showing how the meeting got off to a "rough start," as members of Cape Downwinders protested the NRC's "casual...open house" format, demanding instead a formal town hall meeting type format. Cape Downwinders conducted an Occupy Wall Street style "Mike Check," refusing to become "radiation refugees" and calling for Pilgrim's permanent shutdown.