Gary Null and Jeremy Stillman - How Safe are America’s Nuclear Reactors from Severe Solar Storms? A Real Armageddon Meltdown is Possible

More than ever, we are facing unprecedented environmental disasters ranging from harsh, snowy winters pounding the Northeast, desiccating drought across Texas and New Mexico, powerful tornadoes demolishing towns in the Midwest and record rainfalls and flooding in different states. Over the course of a week this past summer, the East Coast experienced an earthquake and hurricane.

This trend of environmental events has become the new norm and it has coincided with our country coming down with a bad case of” Waiting for Katrina Syndrome” – a condition in which people refuse to examine the power of nature to disrupt their lives. Symptoms include ignorance and apathy over measures that could be taken to prevent calamity and unconditional acceptance of the outright lies and propaganda doled out by government and private industry leaders.

To make matters worse, our decrepit water and gas systems has been around for 60 to 80 years. Our roads, bridges and tunnels and levees are in a state of abject disrepair. We have not taken the crucial step of constructing emergency facilities in our cities and towns. Besides putting many people to work, building these facilities would provide some semblance of civility during a time of crisis. People would be able to take refuge and have access to medical clinics and food banks. The current response network that relies on the Red Cross, FEMA and the National Guard during times of crisis is dangerously inadequate.

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San Onofre nuclear plant may have been sabotaged

Officials at the San Onofre nuclear power plant in California are investigating why they found coolant mixed with oil in their safety equipment. Investigators are now trying to determine if the incident was an act of sabotage by an employee.The Southern California Edison’s San Onofre nuclear power plant has often fallen under scrutiny for creating dangerous conditions that some have worried could result in California’s Fukushima. The plant was shut down over radioactive leaks in January, but has since drafted a reopening plan without undergoing a safety hearing. While the coolant was found on Oct. 30 before it caused any damage, the incident comes at a critical time for the company: Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) officials are set to meet with Southern California Edison representatives Friday night to discuss the limited restarting of the plant. In order to restart, inspectors would have to deem the plant safe enough to operate. But the presence of the coolant may give some NRC officials second thoughts.

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Superstorm Sandy: Powerful Case For Revisiting Fukushima and the Dangers of Nuclear Energy From Natural Disasters

Conditions at 3 US Reactors Were Similar to What Caused the Fukushima Disaster

We barely dodged a nuclear crisis from Hurricane Sandy at the Oyster Creek, Nine Mile and Salemplants.

For example, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission confirmed loss of power to the fuel pools at Oyster Creek:

On October 29, 2012, Oyster Creek declared a Notice of Unusual Event followed by an Alert due to high water levels in the intake structure. Elevated intake structure water levels are of concern as excessive levels can flood certain plant components and render normal cooling systems inoperable. No safety systems were adversely affected by the high intake level. The site also experienced a loss of offsite power. Both emergency diesel generators started as designed and supplied power to the emergency electrical busses. Shutdown cooling and spent fuel pool cooling were temporarily lost but subsequently restored, after the busses were reenergized. At 9:59 a.m. EDT on October 30, the licensee restored one line of off-site power via a start-up transformer. Oyster Creek terminated the Alert at 3:52 a.m. EDT on October 31 when water level dropped below 4.5 ft and off-site power was fully restored.

Time Magazine notes:

Superstorm Sandy’s unexpected wrath makes a powerful case for revisiting Fukushima and the dangers to nuclear energy from natural disasters. As Sandy made landfall on Atlantic City, Oyster Creek nuclear power plant nearby was fortunately on a scheduled outage. But Indian Point 3 in Buchanan, N.Y., Nine Mile Point 1 in Scriba, N.Y., and Salem Unit 1 in Hancocks Bridge, N.J., all experienced shutdowns because of high water levels or electrical disruption. Last year, the dangerous Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown was caused by similar conditions after tsunami waves flooded the plant and short-circuited both the regular and back-up electrical systems.

Equally dangerous are drought and record heat conditions the U.S. experienced last summer. In August, one of two reactors at the Millstone nuclear power plant near New London, Conn., not far from where I grew up, was shut down because water in Long Island Sound needed to cool the reactors got too warm. Cool water is necessary to produce electricity.

Fukushima has been a worldwide wakeup call, particularly for the United States, the country with the largest number of reactors — 104. The lesson is glaringly obvious:when nature and nuclear energy collide the consequences can be lethal.

Indeed, the gravest natural threats are not being addressed.  See this and this.

Time continues:

Unfortunately, Japan is not offering an inspiring example of how to handle this threat. While all but two of the country’s 50 reactors remain offline, government and nuclear industry are proposing plant restarts and construction projects. This muddled move stands against the majority of Japanese citizens who have turned against nuclear power.

The American government is largely responsible for the Japanese government’s stubborn support for nuclear power.

Time concludes:

It’s time to face the facts: Mother Nature rules. The best we can do is try to lessen the damage from her wrath. Phasing out nuclear power is the safe answer.

Indeed … nuclear power – other than perhaps alternative types – is expensive and bad for the environment.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/superstorm-sandy-powerful-case-for-revisiting-fukushima-and-the-dangers-of-nuclear-energy-from-natural-disasters/5310988

Fukushima Operators Struggle to Contain 'Outrageous Amount' of Radioactive Water

Operators of Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi plant are having trouble storing a perpetual accumulation of radioactive cooling water from the plant's broken reactors, the plant's water-treatment manager, Yuichi Okamura, told the Associated Press in an interview this week.

The plant currently holds 200,000 tonnes of highly contaminated waste water, used to cool the broken reactors, but operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, continues to struggle to find ways to store the toxic substance. TEPCO has said they are running out of room to build more storage tanks and the volume of water will more than triple within three years.

"It's a time-pressing issue because the storage of contaminated water has its limits, there is only limited storage space," Okamura said.

After the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe of 2011, the plant's broken reactors have needed constant cooling and maintenance, including the dumping of massive amounts of water into the melting reactors -- the only way to avoid another complete meltdown.

Adding to the excessive amounts of cooling water is ground water, which continues to leak into the reactor facilities because of structural damage.

"There are pools of some 10,000 or 20,000 tonnes of contaminated water in each plant, and there are many of these, and to bring all these to one place would mean you would have to treat hundreds of thousands of tons of contaminated water which is mind-blowing in itself," Masashi Goto, nuclear engineer and college lecturer, stated, adding the problem is a massive public health concern.

"It's an outrageous amount, truly outrageous" Goto added.

Space Weather Anomalies, Power Grid Collapse And Nuclear Safety

“More than half the gross national product of the earth, representing the accumulated wealth of our planet, depends in some way on the electromagnetic force.” -Michio Kaku

Summary

Severe space weather that involves transfer of massive amount of energy and matter from the Sun to the Earth is a one in hundred years event, that can cause collapse of power grid on a global scale. Recovery may take months and years. As the last event happened in 1921, there is high probability of a recurrance during the next few decades. Prolonged non-availability of electricity will cause meltdowns and explosions in nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools. Regulators in USA are considering to harden their nuclear assets against this. India and other nuclear nations have yet to spell out their action plan to prevent a radiological catastrophe.

Introduction

The largest power outage in history happened in India on 30th and 31st Jul 2012, affecting 320 million people. An estimated 32,000 MW(e) was taken offline and the restoration was rather quick. There are a hundred reasons for the grids to fail and a hundred plus one reasons to celeberate it. However, a prolonged outage is a serious affair with catastrophic consequences like meltdown and explosions of nuclear reactors . The possibility of global scale grid failures lasting for months and years due to space weather events has been under scrutiny by scientists and governments for over a decade.

Space Weather

The Sun's role as the donor of abandunt energy in the form of visible light and ultraviolet radiations is well known. Besides these, the Sun and other stars continuously bombard the Earth with other forms of energy and matter most of which are blocked or deflected by the Earth’s magnetosphere. Still, an estimated one million tons of particles arrive the Earth in a normal year. Known as cosmic radiation, this particle shower causes cloud formation and also generates geomagnetically induced current (GIC) of about one ampere on the Earth surface. This cosmic shower also causes ionization that accounts for about a third of the natural background radiation experienced on Earth's surface, ensuring one hit to one-third of all cells in our body every year. Occassionally there will be violent transfers of matter and energy known as 'space weather' and its main drivers are (a) solar flares, (b) solar proton events (SPE) and (c) coronal mass ejections (CME).

1. Solar Flares are magnetically driven explosions on the surface of the sun. These are powerful burst of electromagnetic radiation in the form of X-ray, extreme ultraviolet (UV) rays, gamma rays and radio burst that travel at the speed of light. These heat up the upper atmosphere and strip electrons from the atoms in the ionosphere.

2. Solar Proton Events (SPEs) are high-energy protons and ions, whch take around an hour to reach Earth, though an event of Jan 2005 had an arrival time of 15 minutes. SPEs produce auroras visible to the human eye, when they collide with Earth’s atmosphere. They also cause oxidization of atmospheric nitrogen. The nitrates from large SPEs during the past have been detected and measured in the ice cores drilled from the Antarctica and Greenland.

3. Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) are vast clouds of gas, charged plasma with imbedded magnetic field. CMEs may contain as much as 10 billion tons or or more of coronal material travelling at speeds as high as 3000 km/second. A CME strike can cause disturbance of Earth’s magnetic field called a geomagnetic storm and induce GIC of upto 100 amperes on the Earth surface.

While the above events normally happen in isolation a major eruption will involve all the three components. In September 1859, there was a big solar eruption, known as the Carrington event after Richard Carrington, a British astronomer who recorded it. It is estimated that this event transferred 10 billion tons of matter to the Earth in a few days. That is equivalent to about 200 grams per each square meter area of the planet. Telegraph lines were disrupted for days on in all continents. The only instrumental record of this event available today is from the the Geomagnetic Observatory at Alibag, Colaba, Mumbai. The next big event happened in 1921 and a smaller one with lower energy struck the Earth in March 1989, known as the Quebec event.

The Known Impacts of Space Weather

Severe space weather events have occurred at regular intervals in the past. Yet there is no mention of it in our history books or folklores because such events do not have any visible impacts on the human beings and other life forms. However, space weather is not neutral to our technological infra-structure. The main known impacts are listed below:

1. Grid failure due to geomagnetically induced electricity

A big CME causes a geomagnetic storm as it punctures the planet’s magnetosphere, leading to a surge in the earth’s current up-to 100 amperes. When this is communicated to the power grid (as a semi DC current), the transformers get burnt. The Quebec event of March 1989 destroyed several transformers in North America rendering more than five million people 'power-less' for nine hours in Ontario, Canada. In US, a transformer at the Salem nuclear plant in New Jersey was also burnt out and had to be replaced. The damage of two of National Grid’s transformers in the UK was considered the worst incident of its kind. Smaller, localized damages have been reported from several other places during the past three decades.

2. Damage to satellites

There are about 1000 human-made satellites above the earth, which are central to our communication , entertainment, business, military and science research. The satellites may lose their orientation or get destroyed and fall down. The outage in January 1994 of two Canadian telecommunications satellites was the first reported event.

3 Damage to Electronics

All the electronic gadgets we use will also suffer damage in a space weather event. There are suggestions to keep them in Faraday cages, but since they are part of almost all the machines we use, this is not practical.

4. Radiofrequency anomalies and the effects of Global Positiong System (GPS)

In Jan 2005, 26 flights involving polar routes had to be diverted to non-polar routes during several days due high frequency radio black- outs in USA alone. Disabling of the Federal Aviation Administration’s GPS-based Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) for 30 hours during October-November 2003 was another major event.

Scientific Studies and deliberations

1. US National Academy of Sciences, 2008

Space science places like NASA, European Space Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been tracking the Sun with the aid of more than two dozen satellites for over two decades. The ACE satellite located at L1 point, 1.5 million km above the Earth is the one that is the closest to the Sun. In 2008 the United States National Academy of Sciences (US NAS) published the deliberations of an expert committee consisting of scientists from NASA, NOAA, the military and the utilities (National Research Council, 2008) One of the conclusions is that a 1921 or 1859 type event can cause widespread, serious damage to the electricity grid throughout the Earth. (National Research Council, 2008)

Solar eruptions occur more frequently and most of them may not be earth-directed as this alert on 31st August 2012 shows: “a magnetic filament on the sun erupted in spectacular fashion, producing a long-duration solar flare, a coronal mass ejection (CME) and one of the most beautiful movies of an explosion ever recorded by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.  The CME propelled by the blast might deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field in the days ahead.”  http://spaceweather.com, 2012). Advanced Composition Exoeiment (ACE) satellite stationed at L1 point, 1.5 million km from earth alone can tell us in advance if a particular burst is earth-directed. The lead time may be an hour so. Not enough time to take any preventive step at a naional or global level.

2. US Department of Energy (DOE)

US DOE and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) jointly sponsored a workshop in November, 2009. The attendees at the closed session included representatives from the Congressional Staff, Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), EMP Commission, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and representatives from the electric industry’s major sectors. The report of the meeting concedes that the North American power grids have significant reliability issues in regard events such as severe space weather. “The design of transformers also acts to further compound the impacts of GIC flows in the high voltage portion of the power grid...These transformers generally cannot be repaired in the field, and if damaged in this manner, need to be replaced with new units, which have manufacture lead times of 12–24 months or more in the world market.” (NERC-US DOE, 2010) The government in USA or for that matter any goverment has probably never been so nervous and helpless as the report underlines that “in the affected area, the supply of food, water, and fuel would degrade within days. The facile communication of information to the general population would be greatly complicated by the loss of cell phones, internet access, and television. The economy would virtually shut down as electronic transactions could no longer be processed. After several days, widespread social unrest and confusion would ensue.”

3. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)

In October 2010, in a series of technical reports sponsored by DOE and DHS, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) estimated that “major geomagnetic storms, such as those that occurred in 1859 and 1921 occur approximately once every one hundred years. Storms of this type are global events that can last for days and will likely have an effect on electrical networks world wide. Should a storm of this magnitude strike today, it could interrupt power to as many as 130 million people in the United States alone, requiring several years to recover.”(ORNL, 2010) Many space weather experts believe that this one-in-hundred-years event can happen during the 24th solar cycle which began in 2009 and will end in 2021/22, with peak activities in 2012/13. The storm can happen any time during the cycle, but there is higher risk during the solar peak.

The Nuclear Risk

Even though almost all of our modern ventures need electricty. Loss of electricity will not cause any major accident in any of them. Hoowever, nuclear reactors and their spent fuel pools (SFP) require electicity for their safety related pumps. The reactor cores and SFPs need to be cooled even when the plants are offline. For nuclear campuses offsite electric power is the designed default power source and it is required to be supplied in a high-reliability, dual-circuit configuration to run the safety related coolant pumps. They do have diesel generators and batteries as backup just in case offsite power is not available. The reserve of diesel is generally for less than a week. When there is no offsite power and the generators are unavailable- a condition known as station blackout- the reactors and SFPs will experience meltdowns and explosions. All major nuclear events happened because of loss of coolant.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Grid failure

Seventy-one out of 104 nuclear reactors in US are within the areas of probable power system collapse listed in the ORNL study. Few days before the Fukushim nuclear disaster of March 2011, Thomas Popik of the Resilient Societies petitioned the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to provide nuclear campuses with permanent backup power for running the safety related pumps. (Popik Thomas, 2011) The petitioner assumes that as the supply chain breaks down the campuses will be deserted. Pumps using renewable sources of energy, about 10 to 20 KWe, that does not required regular input of fuel or human presence can prevent the disasters. Each reactor may require of electricity to run its safety related pumps and equipments. Popik substantiates that setting up of alternative power sources are economically and ecologically viable. Rarely does US NRC accept a petition for rule-making from private sources. However, this petition is under its consideration and a fierce debate on this issue is happening at an NRC blog. From a recent post from this blog: “if the NRC grossly ignores its duty, as it has been doing in this case for years, and does nothing to harden plants against long term grid disruption the US will be destroyed FOREVER, any people who survive will not be able to live on the land or drink the water!”(Levi Thomas, 2011)

The Indian situation

The situation in India is slightly better off as the number of power plants, total electricity generated and the volume of spent fuel in the pools is far less than that in North America or Europe. Almost all of India's aged spent fuel, except that of Tarapur, has been reprocessed and hence the volume of wastes in the pool is much smaller. We are also blessed with an abundant supply of solar and wind energy sources. Above all, there is a National Disaster Management Authority in Delhi and its affiiates at State Capitals. We still have problems as four of our reactor campuses are dangerously close to the cities, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi and Thiruvananthapuram. The last one houses the nation's strategic command. Kudamkulam and also the proposed plant at Jaitapur will have an additional risk as their freshwater sources are desalination plants that also require electricity from the grid. The water crisis at Kudankulam has been reported earlier.(Padmanabhan V T et al, 2012) When this generic safety issue of space weather caused grid failure on nuclear campuses in India was raised, a Government of India Expert Group brushed it aside by a saying that “this situation is totally imaginary and technically/ scientifically not correct.” (Muthunagam AE et al, 2011) The science behind the space weather and its impacts has evolved in the same laboratories and institutuions that developed our modern technological infrastructure including nuclear power plants.

Solutions

Availability of fresh water in the campus and an energy source to pump water are the only requirements for safety of the campus in a shut down mode. Most of the nuclear campuses in India are dependent on offsite water. In the offline mode, the water requirement will be between 10 to 20% of the online mode. This can be harnessed with rain water harvesting. A combintion of wind and solar generators can take care o the enegy needs of pumping. This will not be a dead investment and will only increase the self-reliance of the campus. SFP of Tarapur 1 and 2 reactors are as over-crowded as those in USA. Steps should be taken to reprocess the aged fuel, so as to reduce the water requirement and risks of contamination in case of SFP fire.

Radiological contamination from nuclear disasters is a global problem. Governments of US, Canada and UK are acting on the issue. India and other nuclear nations appear to be in a denial mode. Besides hardening her nuclear assets against the grid failure, India must also bring this issue in the United Nations and other global forums.

Conclusion

The return period for a severe space weather event is 100 years and if a CME strikes the planet during this decade there is nothing that the humanity can do to prevent the conseqences listed above. There will be problems during the initial days of the disaster, but the societies will be able to overcome them. Thomas Levi wrote on the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) blog “in the event of a power outage lasting more than a month, possibly years, there will be massive causalities, this is unavoidable should this situation come to pass. But just like with any other natural disaster the people will eventually come back and they may be a little smarter than before.” We have survived several such disasters in the past and similarly we will overcome the impending one as well. However, life will be more painful and difficult in a radiocontaminated land. Surely, this is not a partisan issue concerning a certain class, political party or interest group. In a way, we are all in it. Timely action on the vulnerable sites can greatly reduce the impacst. As the saying goes disaster happens when hazrads meet vulnerability.

Based on a paper presented at a National Seminar in Kuvempu University on 10 Nov 2011.

We fondly remember the advisory support from Dr Rosalie Bertel, who left for her heavenly abode on 16 June, 2012.

Dr. V. Pugazhenthi is acclaimed for his rigorous and credible studies on health impact of radiation around Kalpakkam nuclear site. He is an activist belonging to the Doctors for Safer Environment

Dr. R. Ramesh a medical practitioner, who has written books on the geology of Kudankulam

VT Padmanabhan is a researcher in health effects of radiation. He has led epidemiological investigations among people exposed to high radiation in Kerala. He has also studied the occupational radiation hazards among workers of Indian Rare Earths, genetic effects of children exposed to MIC gases in Bhopal, health hazards to workers in a viscose rayon unit in Madhyapradesh and reduction of birth weight of babies near a beverage bottling plant in Kerala. He has visited several contaminated sites in Belarus and Japan and had extensive interactions with the survivors.His papers have been published in International Journal of Health Services, Journal of American Medical Association, International Perspectives in Public Health, the Lancet and Economic and Political Weekly. He is a member of the European Commission on Radiation Risk, an independent body of experts appointed by the Green MEPs in Europe. He can be reached at vtpadman@gmail.com

References

Levi Thomas, 2011 The NRC: We’re Ready to Respond, 
http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2011/04/22/the-nrc-were-ready-to-respond/

Muthunayagam AE et al , 2011, Safety of Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant and Impact of its Operation on the Surroundings -Report by Expert Group Constituted by Govt. of India, December 2011, www.barc.ernet.in/egreport.pdf

National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences, 2008, Severe Space Weather Events—Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts, Committee on the Societal and Economic Impacts of Severe Space Weather Events.http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12507.html

NERC-US DOE (North American Electric Reliability Corporation and the U.S. Department of Energy) 2010 "High- Impact, Low-Frequency Event Risk to the North American Bulk Power System," www.nerc.com/files/HILF.pdf

ORNL, 2010 (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), “Electromagnetic Pulse: Effects on the U.S. Power Grid”www.ornl.gov/sci/ees/etsd/pes/pubs/ferc_Executive_Summary.pdf

Padmanabhan, V T, R Ramesh and V Pugazhendi, 2012, , Koodankulam's Reserve Water RequirementsEconomic and Political Weekly, Vol - XLVII No. 18, May 05, 2012, http://www.epw.in/commentary/koodankulams-reserve- water-requirements.html

Popik Thomas , 2011, Petition To Nuclear Regulatory Commission To Require Installation Of New Back-Up Safety Systems,www.resilientsocieties.org

Further Readings

Severe Space Weather--Social and Economic Impacts- NASA ScienceSpace Weather Anomalies, Power Grid Collapse And Nuclear Safety

Greenpeace: 'Unreliable' Monitoring of Fukushima Radiation

Environmental activist group Greenpeace reported Tuesday that government monitoring of radiation near the disabled Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan is unreliable, and  that some heavily populated areas are exposed to 13 times the legal limit of radiation.

Three Greenpeace radiation-monitoring teams traveled last week to Fukushima City to record and assess contamination threats, the organization reports.

A check of 40 monitoring posts between Oct. 16 and 19 showed that 75 percent of the radiation readings close to the posts were lower than readings for their immediate surroundings.

Contamination levels within 25 meters of the posts were up to six times higher than at the posts.

"Greenpeace found that in some parks and school facilities in Fukushima city, home to 285,000 people, radiation levels were above three microsieverts per hour," Agence France-Press reported. "Japan's recommended radiation limit is 0.23 microsieverts per hour."

Clean-up efforts have been "misguided," Greenpeace's Japan nuclear campaigner Kazue Suzuki said, according to AFP.

"One home or office may be cleaned up, but it is very unlikely that the whole area will be freed of radiation risks within the next few years," given the mountainous and heavily forested nature of the region, she said. "The government continues to downplay radiation risks and give false hope (of returning home) to victims of this nuclear disaster."

Concerns about the radiation are not new, and in March, Greenpeace found a newly installed radiation monitoring post that showed a "relatively low level of contamination," the organization reports. But the station was "placed smack in the middle of a small area that had been clearly decontaminated." Stepping asway from that immediate area, contamination levels "rose sharply."

Earlier this month, The Association for Citizens and Scientists Concerned About Internal Radiation Exposures expressed concernthat Japan's science ministry "manipulated its measurement of radiation levels in Fukushima Prefecture to show figures lower than they really were."

Greenpeace reports that during last week's trip, residents of the area spoke of a "distinct distrust" of information coming from the government, and little confidence in the government's ability to clean up the radiation.

Governent officials also told Greenpeace that they were "hamstrung" by a lack of workers, funding and "a lack of direction and engagement from the national government."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/10/23-10

NRC Whistleblowers: Risk of Nuclear Melt-Down In U.S. Is Even HIGHER Than It Was at Fukushima

Massive Cover-Up of Risks from Flooding to Numerous U.S. Nuclear Facilities

Numerous American nuclear reactors are built within flood zones:

As one example, on the following map (showing U.S. nuclear power plants built within earthquake zones), the red lines indicate the Mississippi and Missouri rivers:

Numerous dam failures have occurred within the U.S.:

Reactors in Nebraska and elsewhere were flooded by swollen rivers and almost melted down.  See this,this, this and this.

The Huntsville Times wrote in an editorial last year:

A tornado or a ravaging flood could just as easily be like the tsunami that unleashed the final blow [at Fukushima as an earthquake].

An engineer with the NRC says that a reactor meltdown is an “absolute certainty” if a dam upstream of a nuclear plant fails … and that such a scenario is hundreds of times more likely than the tsunami that hit Fukushima :

An engineer with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) … Richard Perkins, an NRC reliability and risk engineer, was the lead author on a July 2011 NRC report detailing flood preparedness. He said the NRC blocked information from the public regarding the potential for upstream dam failures to damage nuclear sites.

Perkins, in a letter submitted Friday with the NRC Office of Inspector General, said that the NRC “intentionally mischaracterized relevant and noteworthy safety information as sensitive, security information in an effort to conceal the information from the public.”The Huffington Post first obtained the letter.

***

The report in question was completed four months after … Fukushima.

The report concluded that, “Failure of one or more dams upstream from a nuclear power plant may result in flood levels at a site that render essential safety systems inoperable.”

Huffington Post reported last month:

These charges were echoed in separate conversations with another risk engineer inside the agencywho suggested that the vulnerability at one plant in particular — the three-reactor Oconee Nuclear Station near Seneca, S.C. — put it at risk of a flood and subsequent systems failure, should an upstream dam completely fail, that would be similar to the tsunami that hobbled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility in Japan last year.***

The engineer is among several nuclear experts who remain particularly concerned about the Oconee plant in South Carolina, which sits on Lake Keowee, 11 miles downstream from the Jocassee Reservoir. Among the redacted findings in the July 2011 report — and what has been known at the NRC for years, the engineer said — is that the Oconee facility, which is operated by Duke Energy, would suffer almost certain core damage if the Jocassee dam were to fail. And the odds of it failing sometime over the next 20 years, the engineer said, are far greater than the odds of a freak tsunami taking out the defenses of a nuclear plant in Japan.

“The probability of Jocassee Dam catastrophically failing is hundreds of timesgreater than a 51 foot wall of water hitting Fukushima Daiichi,” the engineer said. “And, like the tsunami in Japan, the man‐made ‘tsunami’ resulting from the failure of the Jocassee Dam will –- with absolute certainty –- result in the failure of three reactor plants along with their containment structures.

“Although it is not a given that Jocassee Dam will fail in the next 20 years,” the engineer added, “it is a given that if it does fail, the three reactor plants will melt down and release their radionuclides into the environment.”

***

In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Huffington Post, Richard H. Perkins, a reliability and risk engineer with the agency’s division of risk analysis, alleged that NRC officials falsely invoked security concerns in redacting large portions of a report detailing the agency’s preliminary investigation into the potential for dangerous and damaging flooding at U.S. nuclear power plants due to upstream dam failure.

Perkins, along with at least one other employee inside NRC, also an engineer, suggested that the real motive for redacting certain information was to prevent the public from learning the full extent of these vulnerabilities, and to obscure just how much the NRC has known about the problem, and for how long.

Huffington Post notes today:

An un-redacted version of a recently released Nuclear Regulatory Commission report highlights the threat that flooding poses to nuclear power plants located near large dams — and suggests that the NRC has misled the public for years about the severity of the threat, according to engineers and nuclear safety advocates.

“The redacted information shows that the NRC is lying to the American public about the safety of U.S. reactors,” said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer and safety advocate with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

***

According to the NRC’s own calculations, which were also withheld in the version of the report released in March, the odds of the dam near the Oconee plant failing at some point over the next 22 years are far higher than were the odds of an earthquake-induced tsunami causing a meltdown at the Fukushima plant.

The NRC report identifies flood threats from upstream dams at nearly three dozen other nuclear facilities in the United States, including the Fort Calhoun Station in Nebraska, the Prairie Island facility in Minnesota and the Watts Bar plant in Tennessee, among others.

***

Larry Criscione, a risk engineer at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who is one of two NRC employees who have now publicly raised questions about both the flood risk at Oconee and the agency’s withholding of related information, said assertions that the plant is “currently able to mitigate flooding events,” amounted to double-speak.

Criscione said this is because current regulations don’t include the failure of the Jocassee Dam — 11 miles upriver from Oconee — in the universe of potential flooding events that might threaten the plant. “I think they’re being dishonest,” Criscione said in a telephone interview. “I think that we currently intend to have Duke Energy improve their flooding protection and to say that the current standard is adequate is incorrect.”

According to the leaked report, NRC stated unequivocally in a 2009 letter to Duke that it believed that “a Jocassee Dam failure is a credible event” and that Duke had “not demonstrated that the Oconee Nuclear Station units will be adequately protected.” These statements — along with Duke’s own flood timeline associated with a Jocassee Dam failure and NRC’s calculated odds of such a failure — were among many details that were blacked out of the earlier, publicly released report.

***

Richard H. Perkins, a risk engineer with the NRC and the lead author of the leaked report, pointed to the analysis by the Association of Dam Safety Officials in an email message to The Huffington Post. “I felt it made a significant point that large, fatal, dam failures occur from time to time,” he said. “They are generally unexpected and they can kill lots of people. It’s not credible to say ‘dam failures are not credible.’”

Dave Lochbaum, the Union of Concerned Scientists engineer who reviewed a copy of the un-redacted report, says these revelations directly contradict the NRC’s assertions that Oconee is currently safe. “Fukushima operated just under 40 years before their luck ran out,” Lochbaum, who worked briefly for the NRC himself between 2009 and 2010, and who now heads the Nuclear Safety Project at UCS, said in a phone call. “If it ever does occur here, the consequences would be very, very high.

“Japan is now building higher sea walls at other plants along its coasts. That’s great for those plants, but it’s too late for Fukushima. If in hindsight you think you should have put the wall in,” Lochbaum said, “then in foresight you should do it now.”

Other Comparisons Between Dangers In U.S. and Fukushima

There are,  in fact, numerous parallels between Fukushima and vulnerable U.S. plants.

A Japanese government commission found that the Fukushima accident occurred because Tepco and the Japanese government were negligent, corrupt and in collusion. See this, this and this.  The U.S. NRC is similarly corrupt.

The operator of the Fukushima complex admitted earlier this month that it knew of the extreme vulnerability of its plants, but:

If the company were to implement a severe-accident response plan, it would spur anxiety throughout the country and in the community where the plant is sited, and lend momentum to the antinuclear movement ….

The U.S. has 23 reactors which are virtually identical to Fukushima.

Most American nuclear reactors are old.  They are aging poorly, and are in very real danger of melting down.

And yet the NRC is relaxing safety standards at the old plants. Indeed, while many of the plants are already past the service life that the engineers built them for, the NRC is considering extending licenses another 80 years, which former chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority and now senior adviser with Friends of the Earth’s nuclear campaign David Freeman calls “committing suicide”:

You’re not just rolling the dice, you’re practically committing suicide … everyone living within a 50 mile radius is a guinea pig.

Indeed, the Fukushima reactors were damaged by earthquake even before the tsunami hit (confirmedhere). And the American reactors may be even more vulnerable to earthquakes than Fukushima.

Moreover, the top threat from Fukushima are the spent fuel pools. And American nuclear plants have fuel pool problems which could dwarf the problems at Fukushima.

And neither government is spending the small amounts it would take to harden their reactors against a power outage.

The parallels run even deeper.   Specifically, the American government has largely been responsible for Japan’s nuclear policy for decades. And U.S. officials are apparently a primary reason behind Japan’s cover-up of the severity of the Fukushima accident … to prevent Americans from questioningour similarly-vulnerable reactors.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/10/nrc-whistleblowers-higher-risk-of-nuclear-melt-down-in-u-s-than-fukushima.html

Fukushima panel chief hopes for change in Japan

The head of a hard-hitting panel that blamed cultural factors for the Fukushima nuclear disaster voiced hope Tuesday that the tragedy would help open up Japan’s system of government.

The independent commission issued a damning report in July that blamed the world’s worst nuclear accident in a generation in part on Japan’s “reflexive obedience” and ingrained collusion among industry, government and regulators.

Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a professor who headed the panel, visited Washington to present an English-language translation of the report, saying that he wanted to be transparent and to encourage change inside his country.

“Japan has been doing reasonably okay, but I think not really adapting to the changing, uncertain times of this global world,” Kurokawa said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank.

“I think we need all of the pressure for the Japanese establishment to change and adapt,” he said.

“I think it will be very difficult for Japan to change,” he said, while adding that he hoped “in retrospect, maybe 10 years from now” that the panel would be seen as a sign of change in how Japan is governed.

Read More:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/16/fukushima-panel-chief-hopes-for-change-in-japan/

Samuel Epstein -- Japan Proceeding Without Nuclear Reactors

It has been almost 18 months since the disastrous meltdowns struck four nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant in northern Japan. While daily news footage of exploding reactor buildings, emergency workers dressed like spacemen, and officials sweeping radiation detectors over children's bodies have disappeared, the impact of Fukushima continues.

While the Fukushima story is no longer a page-one news story, people must still be aware of how incredibly devastating the meltdowns were. This was no minor leak, but one of the two worst atomic meltdowns in history (Chernobyl was the other). Earlier meltdowns involved damage to just one reactor core; Fukushima destroyed three. Previous meltdowns never affected nuclear waste pools, but the Fukushima unit 4 pool sustained extensive damage and huge leaks. Other meltdowns contaminated the reactor's water source, usually a river; Fukushima poured its toxic chemicals into the Pacific, the world's largest ocean.

The question of how much radioactivity escaped into the air and water is an elusive question; estimates range between 20% and 300% of the Chernobyl amount. Likewise, we're still finding out how much of the radioactive gases and particles entered the air, water, and food. Measurements documenting extremely high levels have been taken near the Fukushima plant, an area evacuated by residents. But elevated radiation levels have been found in other parts of Japan. Because it took about six days for the radioactive plume to reach the West Coast and 18 days to circle the Northern Hemisphere, above-normal levels were also found in the U.S. and other nations, months after the meltdowns.

Of course, the most critical Fukushima questions involve harm to humans. How many workers at the plant became sick? How many local residents? How many living further away in Japan? Did infants and young children suffer more than adults? What types of diseases did they suffer from? But the biggest questions have generated the biggest silence. Thus far, there have been no official reports or publicly-announced data from Japanese health authorities on changes in disease and death rates after the meltdowns.

Buried in the many documents the Japanese health ministry places on its website is the monthly estimate of deaths. During the 12 months following Fukushima, the number of deaths for all of Japan jumped 57,900 above than the prior year. About 19,200 were additional deaths from accidents, almost all from the immediate impact of the earthquake and tsunami, but that left 38,700 excess deaths from other causes -- with no immediate explanation. While all of these cannot automatically be attributed to radiation exposure, they should be taken seriously and become the subject of extensive health studies.

Aside from the changes in health, Fukushima has also had a major impact on public policy. Within days of the meltdowns, Germany shut some reactors, four of them permanently; the Merkel government then announced a plan to phase out all remaining reactors by 2022. Belgium and Switzerland soon followed with similar phase-out plans. Italy, which has no operating reactors, placed a moratorium on plans to build new ones. Newly-elected French president Hollande campaigned on a pledge to drop the percent of French electricity from nuclear power from 75% to 50% by 2030.

Read more.. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samuel-s-epstein/fukushima-nuclear-_b_1790423.html

Government Has Been Covering up Radiation Danger for 67 Years

The U.S. and other governments have been covering up nuclear meltdowns for fifty years to protect the nuclear power industry.

It turns out that the U.S. tried to cover up the destructive nature of radiation produced by nuclear weapons 67 years ago. As Democracy Now reports:

The army was well aware in 1943 of the enormous potential for radiation dangers to civilians and military personnel as a result of the use of radioactive weapons ….

[The New York Times] was essentially putting out the official government narrative [regarding the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki], which is that atomic radiation is not harmful, is not a major byproduct of the nuclear weapons program. You know, it’s only the blast that has essentially a very short impact. The reason that this has importance is that for really a half century, this narrative became the government’s response to all protests against nuclear power, the nuclear weapons programs of the 1950s and 1960s and the Cold War. So, [The New York Times] essentially set the table that the government was to occupy for the next half century as they disputed any attempt to rein in, you know, the rapid acceleration of nuclear weapons and power programs.

Nothing has changed. Governments worldwide continue to this day to cover up the amount – and health effects – of radiation released by military and energy facilities.

And the same considerations which drove the cover up in 1945 are still driving it. The archaic uranium reactor designs developed more than 40 years ago are good for making bombs.

 Read more.. http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=32390