EDITORIAL: Without national debate, radical nuclear policy shift intolerable via Asahi Shimbun

Posted on 2022/12/26 by nfield

[…]

The Kishida administration spent only four months on this policy initiative without making any serious effort to win broad public support. The attempt to chip away at important policy principles comes on the heels of its recent decision to drastically beef up Japan’s defense capabilities.

The administration’s new agenda calls for accelerating the process of restarting idled nuclear reactors, extending the life span of aging reactors and constructing new ones to replace moribund facilities. It deviates sharply from the restrictive policy in place since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. We beg the administration to retract this unacceptable policy about-face.

RASH MOVE BASED ON DUBIOUS LOGIC

Kishida in late August called for debate on promoting nuclear power generation. He did not mention any potentially controversial key elements of the proposal during the July Upper House election, such as “reconstruction” of old reactors, even though this represents a major regime shift. After the election, the administration raced to develop new policy guidelines in a manner that were far from democratic.

It amounts to keeping the nation heavily dependent on nuclear energy for decades to come. This will hollow out the principle of reducing the nation’s reliance on nuclear power “as much as possible,” which has been upheld since the catastrophic triple meltdown more than a decade ago.

[…]

Kishida cited the “ongoing crisis” of a power crunch and rush to realize a carbon-neutral future as reasons for expanding the use of nuclear power.

But the government’s plan to promote nuclear power generation will not help ride out the current energy crisis. Restarting an offline reactor requires following established procedures, so this approach will not increase the nation’s power supply quickly or significantly. Extending the life span of aging reactors and building new ones to replace those destined to be decommissioned will only start producing benefits after 10 or more years. The outlook of these plans is murky and a strong case cannot be made for rushing into the decision.

The government also has its policy priorities askew. The overriding priority is to secure a stable energy supply and reduce the nation’s carbon footprint. This should be accomplished by promoting domestic renewable energy sources, not on expanding nuclear power generation. The government has promised to develop renewable energy into a major power source. It should first make all-out efforts to ramp up power generation using renewable energy sources and, if shortages remain, consider ways to tap other energy sources.

NUMEROUS QUESTIONS UNANSWERED

The proposal to bolster nuclear power generation raises numerous questions.

The older a reactor grows the more uncertain its safety becomes. The legal life span of a nuclear reactor is 40 years in principle but can be extended to 60 years in certain cases. This rule was introduced under a bipartisan agreement after the disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and incorporated into the related law under the jurisdiction of the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA).

But the government has decided to transfer this rule to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which champions nuclear power generation. The move is aimed at paving the way for extending the life span of reactors beyond the 60-year limit by establishing a new system of periodical reactor inspections for safety checks at intervals of 10 years or less. This amounts to nothing more than a fait accomplis to secure reactor operations beyond 60 years without engaging in meaningful policy debate. It could also gut the principle of “the separation between promotion and regulation.”

[…]

The government’s plan also calls for developing and constructing “next-generation innovative reactors.” The only next-generation innovative reactor that appears technologically feasible in the near term, however, is a conventional light-water reactor equipped with a better safety mechanism than the current version. These reactors are already in operation in some countries. But it remains doubtful whether this is really a safety innovation.

In addition to Japan’s susceptibility to major natural disasters, potentially grave nuclear safety hazards include its ability to deal with a a possible military attack like the one that occurred in Ukraine.

But the most fundamental and intractable challenge is how to deal with spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste from nuclear plants, inevitable byproducts of nuclear power generation.

The grim reality is that there is no prospect for establishing a nuclear fuel recycling system or securing a site for final disposal of nuclear waste in the foreseeable future.

The new nuclear policy guidelines offer no answers to these questions. Just as it did in making a radical shift in the nation’s security policy, the Kishida administration is taking advantage of public anxiety to rush headlong into a major nuclear policy change by simply stressing the benefits of the move without responding to legitimate questions and concerns.

The four-month process of making the decision on this policy change indicates the government only acted in line with predetermined conclusions and a certain timeframe in mind.

LESSONS OF FUKUSHIMA

The advisory council for the industry ministry that discussed the proposal did not even scrutinize the core question of how nuclear power generation will help secure a stable energy supply, which is supposed to be the core purpose of the new policy initiative.

Instead, the panel spent ages discussing approaches to extending the life of reactors and building new ones, apparently on the assumption that promoting nuclear power is a given.

Members of the panel were mostly proponents of expanded use of atomic energy. A small number who remained cautious called for national debate on the matter over the next 12 months, but the idea was brushed aside.

[…]

The government says it will solicit public opinions and hold meetings with concerned parties to alleviate any fears. But such steps would be meaningless if they are intended only to placate disgruntled citizens to ease the political pressure of opposition.

Meaningful debate requires the involvement of a wider spectrum of experts, including those who have no interest in nuclear power generation and those who remain skeptical. The country deserves a meticulous and multifaceted debate on all key issues and questions, including whether it is really vital to produce more electricity with nuclear power to achieve a carbon-free future.

The Diet has an important role to play. All the political parties should start independent discussions on this issue.

Any rash change in nuclear policy is unacceptable. Let us not forget the lessons of the 2011 nuclear disaster and consider how best to fulfill our responsibility to future generations.

–The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 23

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Clean Energy or Weapons? What the ‘Breakthrough’ in Nuclear Fusion Really Means via The Wire

Posted on 2022/12/17 by nfield

By M.V. Ramana

  • On December 13, the US Department of Energy announced that the National Ignition Facility had reached a “milestone”: the achievement of “ignition” in nuclear fusion earlier in the month.
  • While the step has been described as a milestone in clean energy, generating electricity commercially or at an industrial scale through fusion is likely unattainable in any realistic sense – at least within the lifetimes of most readers of this article.
  • The main utility that the facility offers nuclear weapons designers and planners is by providing a greater understanding of the underlying science and modernising these weapons.

On December 13, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced that the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had reached a “milestone”: the achievement of “ignition” in nuclear fusion earlier in the month. That announcement was hailed by many as a step into a fossil fuel-free energy future. US Senate majority leader Charles Schumer, for example, claimed that we were “on the precipice of a future no longer reliant on fossil fuels but instead powered by new clean fusion energy”.

But in truth, generating electrical power from fusion commercially or at an industrial scale is likely unattainable in any realistic sense, at least within the lifetimes of most readers of this article. At the same time, this experiment will contribute far more to US efforts to further develop its terrifyingly destructive nuclear weapons arsenal.

[…]

These incredibly high costs also explain why such announcements are made in the first place: without the excitement created by these hyped-up statements, it would be impossible to get funded for the decades it takes to plan and build these facilities. Conceptual design work on ITER began in 1988.

Of course, that timescale pales in comparison to the time period of the first major announcement about fusion-generated electricity. That took place in 1955 when Homi Bhabha, the architect of India’s nuclear programme, told the first International Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva:

“I venture to predict that a method will be found for liberating fusion energy in a controlled manner within the next two decades. When that happens the energy problems of the world will have been solved for ever.”

[…]

NIF and nuclear weapons

NIF’s chief purpose is not generating electricity or even finding a way to do so. NIF was set up as part of the Science Based Stockpile Stewardship Program, which was the ransom paid to the US nuclear weapons laboratories for forgoing the right to test after the United States signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. This is a purpose NIF can start fulfilling without ever generating any electricity. 

The main utility that NIF offers nuclear weapons designers and planners is by providing a greater understanding of the underlying science. As the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s webpage proudly proclaims:

“NIF’s high energy density and inertial confinement fusion experiments, coupled with the increasingly sophisticated simulations available from some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, increase our understanding of weapon physics, including the properties and survivability of weapons-relevant materials”.

Another 1995 document explains that NIF would provide lots of “neutrons with the very short pulse widths characteristic of low-yield nuclear intercepts, that can be used to establish lethal criteria for chemical/biological agents and nuclear warhead targets”. In other words, NIF could help with modelling the use of nuclear weapons to destroy chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. 

NIF might even help with developing new kinds of nuclear weapons. Back in 1998, Arjun Makhijani, who has a PhD in nuclear fusion, and Hisham Zeriffi suggested that NIF could help with the development of pure fusion weapons, i.e., thermonuclear weapons that do not need a nuclear fission primary. If that were to happen – and that is a big if, as is the case with most fusion activities – that would obviate the need for highly enriched uranium or plutonium, which are currently the main obstacles to making nuclear weapons.

NIF, then, is a way to continue investment into modernising nuclear weapons, albeit without explosive tests, and dressing it up as a means to produce “clean” energy. The managers of NIF and the larger laboratory in which it is housed are careful to highlight different promises based on the circumstance they are speaking at. When anthropologist Hugh Gusterson asked a senior official about the purpose of the laser programme, the official replied, “It depends who I’m talking to…One moment it’s an energy program, the next it’s a weapons programme. It just depends on the audience”.

Dangerous distraction

The tremendous media attention paid to NIF and ignition amounts to a distraction – and a dangerous one at that.[…]

But nuclear fusion falls even shorter when we consider climate change, and the need to cut carbon emissions drastically and rapidly. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that to stop irreversible damage from climate change, the world will have to achieve zero net emissions by 2050. Given this relatively short timeline to turn around our economies and ways of living, spending billions of dollars on this sure-to-fail attempt to develop fusion power only amounts to diverting money and resources away from proven and safer renewable energy sources and associated technologies. Investment in research and development into fusion is bad news for the climate.

In the meanwhile, nuclear fusion experiments like those at NIF will further the risk posed by the nuclear arsenal of the US, and, indirectly, the arsenals of the eight other countries known to possess nuclear weapons. The world has been lucky so far to avoid nuclear war. But this luck will not hold up forever. We need nuclear weapons abolition, but programmes like NIF offer nuclear weapons modernisation, which is just a means to assure destruction forever. 

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‘Ticking Atomic Bomb’: 50+ Uranium Mills Still Dumping Cancer-Causing Toxic Waste Into U.S. Rivers via the Defender (ProPublica)

Posted on 2022/12/13 by nfield

U.S. taxpayers bankrolled more than 50 uranium mills in the lead-up to the Cold War, but despite promises, the government has failed to address the widespread water pollution from the mills, according to a ProPublica investigation.

By Mark Olalde, Mollie Simon and Alex Mierjeski, video by Gerardo del Valle, Liz Moughon and Mauricio Rodríguez Pons

In America’s rush to build the nuclear arsenal that won the Cold War, safety was sacrificed for speed.

Uranium mills that helped fuel the weapons also dumped radioactive and toxic waste into rivers like the Cheyenne in South Dakota and the Animas in Colorado. Thousands of sheep turned blue and died after foraging on land tainted by processing sites in North Dakota. And cancer wards across the West swelled with sick uranium workers.

The U.S. government bankrolled the industry, and mining companies rushed to profit, building more than 50 mills and processing sites to refine uranium ore.

But the government didn’t have a plan for the toxic byproducts of this nuclear assembly line. Some of the more than 250 million tons of toxic and radioactive detritus, known as tailings, scattered into nearby communities, some spilled into streams and some leaked into aquifers.

Congress finally created the agency that now oversees uranium mill waste cleanup in 1974 and enacted the law governing that process in 1978, but the industry would soon collapse due to falling uranium prices and rising safety concerns. Most mills closed by the mid-1980s.

When cleanup began, federal regulators first focused on the most immediate public health threat, radiation exposure. Agencies or companies completely covered waste at most mills to halt leaks of the carcinogenic gas radon and moved some waste by truck and train to impoundments specially designed to encapsulate it.

But the government has fallen down in addressing another lingering threat from the industry’s byproducts: widespread water pollution.

Regulators haven’t made a full accounting of whether they properly addressed groundwater contamination. So, for the first time, ProPublica cataloged cleanup efforts at the country’s 48 uranium mills, seven related processing sites and numerous tailings piles.

[…]

At least 84% of the sites have polluted groundwater. And nearly 75% still have either no liner or only a partial liner between mill waste and the ground, leaving them susceptible to leaking pollution into groundwater.

In the arid West, where most of the sites are located, climate change is drying up surface water, making underground reserves increasingly important.

ProPublica’s review of thousands of pages of government and corporate documents, accompanied by interviews with 100 people, also found that cleanup has been hampered by infighting among regulatory agencies and the frequency with which regulators grant exemptions to their own water quality standards.

[…]

Reports by government agencies found high concentrations of cancer near a mill in Utah and elevated cancer risks from mill waste in New Mexico that can persist until cleanup is complete.

Residents near those sites and others have seen so many cases of cancer and thyroid disease that they believe the mills and waste piles are to blame, although epidemiological studies to prove such a link have rarely been done.

“The government didn’t pay attention up front and make sure it was done right. They just said, ‘Go get uranium,’” said Bill Dixon, who spent decades cleaning up uranium and nuclear sites with the state of Oregon and in the private sector.

[…]

“Somebody knew that this was a ticking atomic bomb,” Hanrahan said. “But, in military terms, this was the cost of fighting a war.”

A flawed system

When a uranium mill shuts down, here is what’s supposed to happen: The company demolishes the buildings, decontaminates the surrounding soil and water and encases the waste to stop it from leaking cancer-causing pollution.

The company then asks the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the lead agency monitoring America’s radioactive infrastructure, to approve the handoff of the property and its associated liability to the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Legacy Management for monitoring and maintenance.

ProPublica’s analysis found that half of the country’s former mills haven’t made it through this process and even many that did have never fully addressed pollution concerns.

Often, companies or agencies tasked with cleanup are unable to meet water quality standards, so they request exemptions to bypass them.

The NRC or state agencies almost always approve these requests, allowing contaminants like uranium and selenium to be left in the groundwater. When ingested in high quantities, those elements can cause cancer and damage the nervous system, respectively.

[…]

Six of the mills were built on reservations, and another eight mills are within 5 miles of one, some polluting aquifers used by tribes. And the country’s last conventional uranium mill still in operation — the White Mesa Mill in Utah — sits adjacent to a Ute Mountain Ute community.

So many uranium mines, mills and waste piles pockmark the Navajo Nation that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) created a comic book superhero, Gamma Goat, to warn Diné children away from the sites.

[…]

For all the government’s success in demolishing mills and isolating waste aboveground, regulators failed to protect groundwater.

[…]

The DOE moved the waste and connected residents to clean water. But pollution lingered in the aquifer beneath the growing town where some residents still get their water from private wells.

The DOE finally devised a plan in 2000, which the NRC later approved, settling on a strategy called “natural flushing,” essentially waiting for groundwater to dilute the contamination until it reached safe levels.

In 2015, the agency acknowledged that the plan had failed. Sediments absorb and release uranium, so waiting for contamination to be diluted doesn’t solve the problem, said Dam, the former NRC and DOE regulator.

[…]

ProPublica identified mills in six states — including eight former mill sites in Colorado — where regulators greenlit the strategy as part of a cleanup plan.

When neither water treatment nor nature solves the problem, federal and state regulators can simply relax their water quality standards, allowing harmful levels of pollutants to be left in aquifers.

[…]

County officials made a small area near the Gunnison mill off-limits to new wells, and the DOE suggested changing water quality standards to allow uranium concentrations as much as 475 times what naturally occurred in the area. It wouldn’t endanger human health, the agency said, because people wouldn’t come into contact with the water.

ProPublica found that regulators granted groundwater cleanup exemptions at 18 of the 28 sites where cleanup has been deemed complete and liability has been handed over to the DOE’s Office of Legacy Management.

Across all former uranium mills, the NRC or state agencies granted at least 34 requests for water quality exemptions while denying as few as three.

“They’re cutting standards, so we’re getting weak cleanup that future generations may not find acceptable,” said Paul Robinson, who spent four decades researching the cleanup of the uranium industry with the Southwest Research and Information Center, an Albuquerque-based nonprofit.

“These great mining companies of the world, they got away cheap.”

[…]

Still, the data and groundwater modeling that underpin these requests for water cleanup exemptions are often wrong.

One reason: When mining companies built the mills, they rarely sampled groundwater to determine how much contamination occurred naturally, leaving it open to debate how clean groundwater should be when the companies leave, according to Roberta Hoy, a former uranium program specialist with the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality.

She said federal regulators also haven’t done enough to understand certain contaminants at uranium mills.

In one recent case, the NRC fined a mining company $14,500 for incomplete and inaccurate groundwater modeling data. Companies use such data to prove that pollution won’t spread in the future. Freeport-McMoRan, the corporation that owns the fined mining company, did not respond to a request for comment.

[…]

But ProPublica found that the NRC granted exemptions in at least five states that were so vague they didn’t even include numbers and were instead labeled as “narrative.” The agency justified this by saying the groundwater was not near towns or was naturally unfit for human consumption.

[…]

Layers of regulation

It typically takes 35 years from the day a mill shuts down until the NRC approves or estimates it will approve cleanup as being complete, ProPublica found. Two former mills aren’t expected to finish this process until 2047.

Chad Smith, a DOE spokesperson, said mills that were previously transferred to the government have polluted groundwater more than expected, so regulators are more cautious now.

The involvement of so many regulators can also slow cleanup.

Five sites were so contaminated that the EPA stepped in via its Superfund program, which aims to clean up the most polluted places in the country.

[…]

The federal government and the Navajo Nation have long argued over the source of some groundwater contamination at the former Navajo Mill built by Kerr-McGee Corp. in Shiprock, New Mexico, with the tribe pointing to the mill as the key source.

Smith of the DOE said the department is guided by water monitoring results “to minimize opportunities for disagreement.”

Tronox, which acquired parts of Kerr-McGee, did not respond to requests for comment.

All the while, 2.5 million tons of waste sit adjacent to the San Juan River in the town of 8,000 people. Monitoring wells situated between the unlined waste pile and the river have shown nitrate levels as high as 80 times the limit set by regulators to protect human health, uranium levels 30 times the limit and selenium levels 20 times the limit.

“I can’t seem to get the federal agencies to acknowledge the positions of the Navajo Nation,” said Dariel Yazzie, who formerly managed the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund Program.

[…]

Such was the case near Griffin, North Dakota, where six cows and 2,500 sheep died in 1973; their bodies emitted a blue glow in the morning light. The animals lay near kilns that once served as rudimentary uranium mills operated by Kerr-McGee.

To isolate the element, piles of uranium-laden coal at the kilns were “covered with old tires, doused in diesel fuel, ignited, and left to smolder for a couple of months,” according to the North Dakota Geological Survey.

The flock is believed to have been poisoned by land contaminated with high levels of molybdenum. The danger extended beyond livestock.

In a 1989 draft environmental assessment, the DOE found that “fatal cancer from exposure to residual radioactive materials” from the Griffin kilns and another site less than a mile from a town of 1,000 people called Belfield was eight times as high as it would have been if the sites had been decontaminated.

But after agreeing to work with the federal government, North Dakota did an about-face. State officials balked at a requirement to pay 10% of the cleanup cost — the federal government would cover the rest — and in 1995 asked that the sites no longer be regulated under the federal law.

The DOE had already issued a report that said doing nothing “would not be consistent” with the law, but the department approved the state’s request and walked away, saying it could only clean a site if the state paid its share.

“North Dakota determined there was minimal risk to public health at that time and disturbing the grounds further would create a potential for increased public health risk,” said David Stradinger, manager of the Radiation Control Program in the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality.

[…]

‘A problem for the better part of 50 years’

While the process for cleaning up former mills is lengthy and laid out in regulations, regulators and corporations have made questionable and contradictory decisions in their handling of toxic waste and tainted water.

More than 40 million people rely on drinking water from the Colorado River, but the NRC and DOE allowed companies to leak contamination from mill waste directly into the river, arguing that the waterway quickly dilutes it.

Federal regulators relocated tailings at two former mills that processed uranium and vanadium, another heavy metal, on the banks of the Colorado River in Rifle, Colorado, because radiation levels there were deemed too high.

Yet they left some waste at one former processing site in a shallow aquifer connected to the river and granted an exemption that allowed cleanup to end and uranium to continue leaking into the waterway.

[…]

Mining companies can’t remove every atom of uranium from groundwater, experts said, but they can do a better job of decommissioning uranium mills. With the federal government yet to take control of half the country’s former mills, regulators still have time to compel some companies to do more cleanup.

Between 1958 and 1961, the Lakeview Mining Company generated 736,000 tons of tailings at a uranium mill in southern Oregon. Like at most sites, uranium and other pollution leaked into an aquifer.

“There’s no way in hell we’re going to leave this stuff here,” Dixon, the nuclear cleanup specialist, remembered thinking. He represented the state of Oregon at the former mill, which was one of the first sites to relocate its waste to a specially engineered disposal cell.

[…]

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Ukraine still fears another Chernobyl-size disaster at Europe’s largest nuclear plant via Reader Supported News (NPR)

Posted on 2022/12/13 by nfield

Julian Hayda

13 december 22

Sophia Arkadiyivna remembers when the Soviet Union built the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1977, just 20 miles from the village where she served as mayor.

After years of atomic energy powering big Russian cities like Moscow, Leningrad and Voronezh, the USSR was finally ready to expand the technology to other Soviet republics like Ukraine. Soviet propaganda promised easier jobs and cleaner air.

“We didn’t have a reason to distrust the government. They showed us how good things could be,” she says.

Or so she thought at the time. It didn’t take long for Arkadiyivna to turn skeptical.

She heard from friends and relatives who worked at the Chernobyl plant that authorities would cut corners and pump up power production for the USSR to export to other Eastern bloc countries.

“The Russians always wanted more — faster, more!” she recalls. “It was greed.”

[…]

How Russia’s nuclear energy helped lead to an independent Ukraine

The Soviet Union put nuclear science at the center of its Cold War strategy — both economic and military.

“Moscow developed nuclear energy above all to control everything — to keep it close and protected from possible conflict,” says Oleksandr Sukhodolia, a Ukrainian energy policy expert.

Like many aspects of Soviet life, the nuclear industry was defined by ethnic segregation.

“Ukraine was looked at like a kind of outback. … As far as nuclear power was concerned, Ukrainians were not trusted to run it themselves,” says David Marples, a historian at Canada’s University of Alberta and author of multiple books about the Chernobyl disaster.

After the disaster, Soviet Ukrainian bureaucrats raised difficult questions about why they weren’t involved in oversight.

Yuriy Samoilenko was the chief environmental inspector at Kyiv’s city hall at the time of the Chernobyl meltdown. He says he knew there were some risks associated with nuclear energy, but felt misled by the government in Moscow about the scope of the blasts. After all, the power plant is just 60 miles north of Ukraine’s biggest population center.

“Why did they say it was safe to go outdoors? Why did they build it so close to Kyiv?” Samoilenko says. “Why was it all such a secret?”

He linked up with Ukraine’s nascent independence movement to find some answers.

“Before Chernobyl, I didn’t understand why we needed to be independent. But I did understand that we’re no less deserving of dignity than Russians,” Samoilenko says.

Soon other environmental scientists joined with the dissidents, and established an organization called Green World. The Soviet government tolerated youth environmental movements, but behind closed doors, the group pushed for Ukrainian independence.

“The only way to protect the environment is through democratic action — because everybody has to be involved in protecting the things that affect everybody,” says Samoilenko.

By 1991, they had their wish. Ukraine declared independence and the Soviet Union fell apart.

“All anybody needed to do to vote for independence was say one word: ‘Chernobyl,'” Samoilenko says.

Ukrainians were finally in charge of their own nuclear industry, responsible for 12 large nuclear reactors, with several more planned.

The Chernobyl cleanup took a substantial chunk of newly independent Ukraine’s national budget. Meanwhile, dependence on nuclear energy crept up to 55% of the country’s production, according to the IAEA. That rate of production is second only to France.

“Nuclear power has never really gone away, it’s even gone up despite Chernobyl,” says Marples, the historian in Alberta.

Nuclear fears and the Russian invasion

Sophia Arkadiyivna is now retired as mayor of her hometown of Kupovate. Ukraine’s government erased the village from the map in 1999. That’s because it’s in the 60-mile-wide “exclusion zone,” which was deemed too dangerous for the public after the Chernobyl disaster.

[…]

She speaks Ukrainian, with a few Belarusian words peppered in. This village is closer to the border with Belarus — just 10 miles to the east — than to the former Chernobyl plant. She says she used to believe there wasn’t much difference between Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians.

“Us old folks raised our kids to believe in God: Don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t bother anyone, live virtuously, have a soul, help people,” she says while angrily chopping vegetables to pickle for the winter.

“But the Russians beat us, raped us. And today they don’t want there to be a free Ukraine.”

Hundreds of other retirees like her lived through the Russian occupation of the exclusion zone in March, as did thousands of Ukrainian officials and workers who continue to maintain the vital power infrastructure that passes through the zone.

Oleksandr Havrylenko, the safety chief in the exclusion zone, says the Russians stole radios, tires, batteries or alternators from his entire fleet of vehicles. Many had smashed windows or bullet holes in the doors.

“I give it a 50-50 chance they’ll be back,” Havrylenko says of the Russian forces.

Instead of working on necessary tasks around the zone, Havrylenko and his team are still cleaning up after the Russian occupation. Having survived the month-long occupation, though, they can hardly imagine the stress that people working at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant are under.

“I’m very, very scared,” says Serhiy Biruk, a top official with the Ukrainian agency that manages the exclusion zone. He’s been involved in the Chernobyl cleanup for 37 years.

After Russia forcibly annexed the territory in September, Ukraine’s power utility says occupation officials forced Ukrainian nuclear workers to sign new contracts acknowledging Russia’s control over the power plant.

“I don’t think the Russians know what the real danger is,” Biruk says.

But a potential meltdown is only half the dilemma, according to Anna Ackermann, co-founder of a Ukrainian environmental group called Ecoaction.

“Ukraine’s energy system was meant to function with Russia and Belarus,” she says. While Ukraine did separate its grid from those countries after 2014, Anna Ackermann says that nuclear energy is centralized by its very nature.

With the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant now disconnected from the Ukrainian grid, Ukraine loses a substantial proportion of its power generation. That’s been exacerbated by Russia’s attacks on energy delivery infrastructure across the country over the past couple of months.

Ackermann says people want their energy production to be even more local. They’re looking to the lifestyles of people like Arkadiyivna, relying on off-grid utilities like batteries and solar panels to survive.

“We’re entering a new area where Ukrainians want autonomy,” says Ackermann. Autonomy, like energy sources and homesteads they know how to sustain.

“It’s a striking difference with nuclear power plants,” Ackermann says.

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「被爆2世」の援護策、国の責任認めず　長崎地裁が原告の請求を棄却 via 朝日新聞

Posted on 2022/12/12 by yukimiyamotodepaul

　原爆被爆者の子である「被爆2世」らが、援護策を講じない国の責任を問い、1人あたり10万円の国家賠償を求めた訴訟の判決が12日、長崎地裁（天川博義裁判長）であった。天川裁判長は原告の請求を棄却した。

　原告は長崎で被爆した親を持つ、長崎、福岡、大阪、広島の4府県に住む55～75歳の2世25人と、亡くなった1人の承継人3人の計28人。

（略）

原告側はこれを、不平等で憲法違反だと主張。対策を怠ってきた国に「立法の不作為がある」と訴え、1人あたり10万円の慰謝料を求めた。

　原告側は、放射線の遺伝的影響について、動物実験などから発がんリスクの増加を含む影響が証明されていると指摘。人類も例外であるとは考えられず、被爆2世が遺伝的影響を受けることは否定できないと主張。被爆2世も同法の適用対象と定めるよう求めていた。

　国側は、動物実験で得られた結果を人に当てはめることはできないと反論。これまでの研究で原爆放射線が次世代の人に影響を与えたデータはなく、遺伝的影響を示す科学的根拠がないなどとして、国に立法義務はないと棄却を求めていた。

　被爆2世による訴訟は広島地裁（原告計28人）でも争われており、今回が初の司法判断だった。（寺島笑花）

全文は「被爆2世」の救護作、国の責任認めず　長崎地裁が原告の請求を棄却

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Ministry plans tests on reusing Fukushima soil in Tokyo area via Asahi Shimbun

Posted on 2022/12/10 by nfield

The Environment Ministry is eyeing the Tokyo metropolitan area for its first trial runs outside Fukushima Prefecture on reusing soil decontaminated after the 2011 nuclear disaster, The Asahi Shimbun learned on Dec. 6.

The ministry said the tests will take place at three government-related facilities in Tokyo, Saitama and Ibaraki prefectures.

But authorities said they have yet to gain the understanding of residents at all three candidate sites on the reuse of the soil, which still contains low-level radioactive substances.

[…]

The decontaminated soil has been kept at an interim storage facility in Fukushima Prefecture, but a law requires final disposal of the soil outside the prefecture by 2045.

The volume of decontaminated soil in Fukushima Prefecture, excluding the difficult-to-return zones where radiation levels remain high, is about 14 million cubic meters, enough to fill 11 Tokyo Domes.

Reusing the soil is part of the government’s efforts to reduce that volume before disposal.

The ministry is considering conducting the tests at the Shinjuku Imperial Garden in Tokyo, the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, and the National Environmental Research and Training Institute in Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture.

Tokorozawa city will hold a briefing on the plan for about 50 residents on Dec. 16.

Under the experiment in Tokorozawa, decontaminated soil will be reused for lawns, and tests will be conducted to verify changes in radiation doses in the air.

For the trial runs in Tokyo and Ibaraki Prefecture, the soil will be used for parking lots and flower beds.

“We would like to use the experiments to gain public understanding regarding the reuse of the soil,” Environmental Minister Akihiro Nishimura said at a news conference on Dec. 6.

Only soil that measures below 8,000 becquerels per kilogram, the threshold set by the government, will be used in the trial runs.

The ministry has been conducting experiments on reusing the decontaminated soil for farmland in Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture.

But plans for similar tests in Minami-Soma and Nihonmatsu cities, also in the prefecture, fell through after residents opposed.

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RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island New Film by Heidi Hutner has World Premiere via Nuclear Hotseat

Posted on 2022/12/07 by nfield

NH #598

This Week’s Feature:

It’s hard to get the full picture of what nuclear is and what it does across to the general public. Isolated news stories, nuclear industry full-press spin, ADHD news cycles, and the public’s general lack of memory obscures the horrible truth about what happens when a nuclear reactor goes off the rails.

Thus it is cause for celebration when a full length documentary appears that tells the nuclear story clearly, completely, with human focus and all the compelling arguments in place. RADIOACTIVE: The Women of Three Mile Island was produced and directed by ecofeminism professor-turned-visual journalist Heidi Hutner.  The film received its world premiere on Sunday, December 4 as part of the Dances with Films Festival in New York.  For Nuclear Hotseat, Joe DeMare conducted on-site “You Are There” interviews with participants in the film and audience members, and Priscilla Star, founder of the Coalition Against Nukes, gave us a report afterwards.  

Nuclear Hotseat Hot Story with Linda Pentz Gunter:

Macron and nukes?  Sacre Bleu!  
 

Numnutz of the Week:

How does the head of the country that experienced Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Fukushima justify all this planned/intended nuclear expansion?

[…]

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原告「被曝が原因」９割以上と主張〜甲状腺がん裁判  via OurPlanet-TV

Posted on 2022/12/04 by nfield

東京電力福島原子力発電所事故以降、甲状腺がんと診断され、手術を受けた男女７人が東京電力を訴えている裁判で９日、がんの原因が放射線被曝による確率（原因確率）が、多くの公害事件などで因果関係が認められてきた水準に比べてはるかに高く、９０％以上であるとする意見書を裁判所に提出した。

原告側が今回、裁判所に提出したのは、岡山大学の津田敏秀教授の意見書。津田教授は「福島県内で過酷事故に遭わなければ、甲状腺がんがなかったであろう」確率を「原因確率」と呼ぶとした上で、原告７人の原因確率は、最も低い人で約９５％、最も高い人では９９・５％に達するとしている。

原告側の西念京佑弁護士は法廷で、これら原因確率は、過去の裁判で因果関係を認められてきたヒ素中毒や環境アスベスト（５０％）や大気汚染訴訟やじん肺（７０〜８０％）に比べても、はるかに高い水準にあると主張。過去の判例では、原因確率が７〜８割を超えると、その事実だけで因果関係があると認めてきたとして、裁判所に対し、原告のがんは放射線被曝に起因するものだと考えるべきだと強調した。

[…]

意見書を書いた津田教授は、これまでに水俣病、じん肺、淀川大気汚染などの裁判に関与してきた環境疫学の専門家で、福島原発事故については、福島で多数、見つかっている小児甲状腺がんは、放射線影響以外には考えにくいとする論文を２０１５年に、国際的な科学雑誌「エピデミオロジー」で公表している。

口頭弁論で、当時中学１年生だった原告は、「病気になったのが身内や友達じゃなく自分でよかった」「母に申し訳ない」「友達のことが心配」「看護師さんに申し訳ない」など複雑な胸中を語った。これに対し、期日後の会見で、北村賢二郎弁護士は「１０代２０代でがんになった若者がそんなことを言うということがどういうことなのか、実状を捉えて、この問題について取り扱ってほしい」と強く訴えた。

原文とビデオ

◆アーカイブ「311子ども甲状腺がん裁判」第3回口頭弁論期日集会

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小児甲状腺がん３２８人に〜福島県民健康調査 via OurPlanet-TV

Posted on 2022/12/04 by nfield

東京電力福島第一原発事故後に福島県で行われている「県民健康調査」の検討委員会が３日、福島市内で開かれ、新たに１２人が甲状腺がんと診断された。これまでに、県の検査によってがんと診断された子どもは２９６人となり、がん登録で把握された集計外の患者４３人をあわせると、事故当時、福島県内に居住していた１８歳以下の子どもの甲状腺がんは３３８人となった。

[…]

アンケートをめぐり県外と県内の委員が対立

事故から１１年が経過し、「甲状腺検査」以外の検査は事実上、終了した県民健康調査。検討委員会の議題も初めて、甲状腺検査のみとなった。この日は、検査対象者と保護者向けのアンケート調査の質問項目をめぐり、議論が白熱した。

口火をきったのは、環境省の神ノ田昌博環境保健部長。アンケート項目に、「放射線被曝による健康影響は将来的にも見られそうにない」としているUNSCEAR（国連科学委員会）2020報告書の結論について、理解しているかを追加すべきだと強く主張した。また、検査の見直しなどを主張してきた宮城県立こども病院の室月淳産科科長や国立がん研究センター社会と健康研究センター検診研究部の中山富雄部長も、神ノ田氏の意見に賛同した。

これに対し、双葉郡医師会の重富秀一会長や福島県病院協会の佐藤勝彦会長は、県民にはさまざまな意見があると反論。一方的な意見を押し付けかねないと反対した。また、福島大学の富田哲特任教授は、甲状腺がんとなった当事者がどうおもうのかと強く反発。さらに、甲状腺がんが被曝によるものではないという意見が、検討委員会の結論となっているが、2巡目解析の際には意見が対立したと指摘。両論併記を求めたにもかかわらず、自分の意見は報告書に盛り込まれなかったと怒りをあらわにした。

アンケート調査は、甲状腺評価部会から要望が出ていたもの。甲状腺がんが、通常よる数十倍の割合で見つかっていることについて、精密な検査の結果、治療の必要のないがんを見つけているとする「過剰診断」論を主張する委員らが、検査の「デメリット」が県民に伝わっていないなどとして、調査を求めていた。来年度以降、無作為抽出した6,000人に対して、アンケートの質問票を送付するとしている。

[…]

ビデオ

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Concrete melted off ‘pedestal’ for damaged reactor in Fukushima via the Asahi Shimbun

Posted on 2022/11/30 by nfield

The concrete support foundation for a reactor whose core melted down at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant has deteriorated so much that reinforcing bars (rebars) are now exposed.

Masao Uchibori, governor of Fukushima Prefecture, has expressed concerns about the earthquake resistance of the “pedestal” for the No. 1 reactor at the crippled plant operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO).

Strong quakes struck off the coast of the prefecture in 2021 and 2022.

[…]

The cylindrical pedestal, whose wall is 1.2 meters thick, is 6 meters in diameter. It supports the reactor’s 440-ton pressure vessel.

The interior of the No. 1 reactor’s containment vessel was inspected in May for TEPCO’s eventual plans to retrieve the melted nuclear fuel that dropped to the bottom of the vessel during the 2011 nuclear disaster.

The study found that the normally concrete-encased rebars were bare and the upper parts were covered in sediment that could be nuclear fuel debris.

The concrete likely melted off under the high temperature of the debris.

The International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID), an entity set up by power utilities and nuclear reactor manufacturers, conducted a simulation in fiscal 2016.

IRID said seismic resistance would remain uncompromised even if about one-quarter of the pedestal was damaged.

However, only a part of the pedestal was inspected during the May study, and only from the outside.

The pedestal’s inside remains a mystery.

“The pedestal’s soundness is of foremost concern,” said Kiyoshi Takasaka, a former engineer with Toshiba Corp. who is now an adviser to the Fukushima prefectural government on nuclear safety issues. “It is important to first inspect the pedestal from the inside.”

TEPCO has prepared six types of robots to detect the fuel debris and perform other tasks in a series of inspections at the No. 1 reactor.

An internal study of the pedestal is planned toward the March end of the fiscal year as the final mission during the inspections. The task carries the risk of the robot hitting the sediment or other obstacles and being unable to return.

“We understand people’s concerns very well,” Akira Ono, president of TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Decontamination & Decommissioning Engineering Co., told a news conference in October. “We hope to finish studies inside the pedestal by the end of this fiscal year.”

He said his company will scrutinize whether the previous assessment of seismic resistance is still applicable.

Haruo Morishige, who has been studying the Fukushima nuclear disaster, called for immediate emergency safety measures, such infusing concrete to reinforce the pedestal.

“There is a critical defect in terms of quake resistance,” said Morishige, based on a photo showing the interior of the No. 1 reactor. 

Morishige studied aseismic structural design for nuclear reactors when he worked for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.

He also served as an on-site manager for the No. 3 reactor at the Ikata nuclear plant operated by Shikoku Electric Power Co., including when the reactor was being built.

The photo, released following the May inspection, shows how concrete covering the cylindrical “inner skirt” of the pedestal had melted off, laying bare part of the steel frame and rebars from the bottom to the top.

The inner skirt’s functions connect the reactor pressure vessel with the containment vessel. But the melting of the concrete has separated the pressure vessel from the containment vessel, and weakened the structure’s quake resistance, Morishige said.

The loss of concrete has also decoupled the pedetal’s walls from the floor, making it more prone to sway during seismic events, he added.

Morishige said that all concrete around the rebars inside the pedestal has likely melted away.

He also said fuel debris that flowed out from an aperture likely melted concrete around rebars over about a quarter of the outside circumference of the pedestal.

His simulation has shown that the support capability of the pedestal is now about three-eighths of the original level.

“In such a state, the reactor could topple over in an earthquake of upper 6 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale (of 7),” Morishige said.

He added that repeated exposure to seismic shocks could cause cracks in the remaining concrete, further undermining quake resistance.

“The very fact there are chances of the reactor toppling is unacceptable,” he said. “Officials should proceed with safety measures and inspections at the same time.”

(This article was written by Keitaro Fukuchi and Tetsuya Kasai.)

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