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| Fukushima Reactor #3 |
{Update} The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia also ruled on Tuesday that the NRC was violating the law by
stalling the Department of Energy's application for a permanent waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain originally filled in 2008. NRC permitted the defunding of the facility to stand despite a federal law that designates the location as the nation's permanent nuclear waste dump. Nevada officials object to facility on the grounds that it is geologically unsuitable and that it would negatively impact the Las Vegas tourism industry just 90 miles away. The Circuit ruled previously that the designation was constitutional under the Takings Clause of the Constitution. Work on the underground storage facility has never been completed. The current administration wants to close the facility permanently. DOE, which was not a party to the suit, views Yucca Mountain to be "a complete stalemate" since it has no funding to complete the project.
{14.08.13}US Person has been posting regularly on the nuclear disaster at Fukushima
{09.07.13} but the source was unknown. The contamination is described by TEPCo as "highly concentrated tritium". Japanese Prime Minister Abe has belatedly decided to get his government involved in stopping the emissions since the corporate owner has proved to be unable to cope with the ramifications of the world's largest industrial accident. Abe described the problem as "urgent". He got that right but apparently little else. Fukushima Prefecture is getting help from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Agency experts visited the prefecture in July to implementation of a three year plan to handle low-level nuclear wastes, decontamination and environmental remediation. Commercial fishing has not restarted despite acceptable levels of radioactivity in fish due to consumer doubts about the safety of the catch.
that has entered a slow-leak-out-of-mind phase after that the danger of an outright explosion releasing fallout into the atmosphere is well past. Corporate mass media has already forgotten about the disaster. But the damage the crippled power station is doing to the biosphere continues almost unabated, making one wonder just exactly the "so sorry" Japanese authorities are doing about stoping the radioactive emissions. Radioactive groundwater is escaping from the station in huge amounts. An official estimate is 300 tons of radioactive groundwater may be flowing into the Pacific Ocean each day. Earlier this year high levels of radioactivity were detected in the ocean near the plant indicating a leak or leaks,
While Abe promised funding for halting the radioactive leaks, Green Action, the Japanese environmental group, said the funding was too little, too late since it will not be budgeted until next fiscal year, and more importantly the source of the leaks has not been tracked down to their source. The group said if leaking is caused by pipes or other equipment damaged by the earthquake and not the following tsunami as the government believes, the determination would have profound implications for all of Japan's nuclear facilities currently shut down during a reassessment of the industry. Perhaps the Japanese government is loath to avoid discovering such earthquake damage until after nuclear facilities are restarted. All of Japan nuclear facilities are near active faults. Fukushima Daiichi was once one of the largest 15 nuclear power stations in the world with six BWRs producing 4.7GW of power. Nature, like
Gojira rising from the sea
[photo], destroyed it. The expensive process of decommissioning it is now underway.
Nuclear power development in the United States has been brought to a temporary halt by judicial mandate after a
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| attempting to cool overheating fuel at Fukushima |
ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In response to the ruling the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has
put on hold at least 19 licensing decisions. The Appeals Court invalidated the 2010 amendments to the Waste Confidence Rule and the Temporary Storage Rule. It noted that the agency has no viable plans for a permanent geologic repository after abandoning the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada. The funding for that project has been repeatedly cut by Senate Majority leader, Henry Reid, since the repository is opposed by the Nevada state government. The Court wants the agency to address the issue of long term storage on nuclear power plant sites where it is now under "temporary" storage in dry casks or pools. The agency said it would address the courts's remand before it moves forward on licenses dependent upon the rules in question. Environmental groups hailed the decision as a victory for the millions of Americans living near nuclear facilities including Indian Point, New York, the facility involved in the original lawsuit. Twenty-four groups across the United States also filed petitions with the agency asking it to complete a rulemaking on the environmental impacts of spent nuclear fuel. The Fukushima reactors destroyed by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 experienced
partial meltdowns when their cooling systems failed
[photo].
