Doubt about what happens to spent nuclear fuel rods within casks
Derek Abbott Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia, 13 Jan 19, Something that is never discussed about dry cask storage (before it is transferred into a repository canister) is that the fuel rods have been emitting alpha particles for 40 years in the dry cask. The nuke enthusiasts who don’t understand physics naively think those alpha particles are impotent. They say “a piece of paper can block an alpha particle.” True but misleading.What actually happens is that alpha particles do indeed get blocked and don’t go far within a fuel rod, but they get converted to back to helium. [Remember an alpha particle is a helium nucleus anyway].So you get helium bubbles building up inside the fuel rod. Over 40 years this can fracture the fuel rod into pieces. So transferring the rods into a repository canister may not be possible. Because no one has actually opened up a bunch of old dry casks to get the rods into a repository yet, there isn’t much experience on exactly how much alpha particle damage affects the rods. I’m not sure there has even been a proper study of this. I am searching and will post it here if I find a study. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021186047913052/
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1.This month
International Uranium Film Festival Berlin 2022 Friday, October 7th 2022 – Zeiss Large Planetarium
8.30 p.m TOTEM & ORE
Australia, 2019, Director & Producer: John Mandelberg, Executive Producer: Bozic Wongar,Actress and speaker: Ursula Yovich, documentary, with German subtitles, 97 min.
German premiereThe film begins in 1945 with the atomic annihilation of Hiroshima and ends with the Fukushima meltdown in 2011. It examines the aftermath of atomic bombs, nuclear weapons tests and the Fukushima reactor accident. Radioactive fallout from the British nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s at Emu Field and Maralinga in South Australia not only contaminated large parts of the Australian outback. Radioactive rain also reached cities like Adelaide. Above all, however, the Aborigines have suffered from this to this day.
“Totem & Ore” tells the historical tragedies and fears from the point of view of witnesses of the atomic bombing and atomic bomb tests. Indigenous people, activists, filmmakers, artists, actors, writers, composers, doctors and professors all have their say. Ursula Yovich, a Native American actress, appeals: “There must be no more place in the world for nuclear weapons!”
Totem & Ore received a special recognition from the 2022 International Uranium Film Festival
National anti-AUKUS Coalition website
https://antiaukuscoalition.org/ National day of action planned for September 16
FIFTY SHADES OF TRUTH – the Grayzone
Max Blumenthal & Aaron Mate slam corporate media disinfo at Collision Toronto
Antinuclear 
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