Antinuclear

The sarcophagus, hastily set up to stop radioactive contamination from spreading, was never built to last. On April 26, 1986, nuclear reactor no. 4 exploded at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine during a botched safety test. The explosion — and the resulting fire that engulfed part of the plant — caused a massive amount of radioactive contamination to spread in the surrounding areas. Nearby communities, especially the city of Pripyat, had to be evacuated due to the contamination.

In an attempt to contain as much of the radioactive materials as possible, 600,000 workers from the USSR quickly began to build a large structure around the destroyed reactor, often without the necessary protective gear. Workers rushed to fill in open spaces with thousands of cubic metres of concrete, helicopters dropped debris directly into the reactor, and miners dug to prevent searing nuclear runoff from melting through the foundation of the base and into the ground below.

The entire section of the facility was covered by massive concrete walls — its ominous appearance gave it the nickname the “sarcophagus”.

In the end, the structure was able to prevent hundreds of tonnes of radioactive contaminants from getting out. Thirty-one people died of radiation poisoning during or after construction was completed.

The sarcophagus had to be set up as fast as possible — construction only took about five months — and was never built to last. LiveScience reports that the building lacks bolted joints, and openings in the roof have allowed water to seep in and corrode the structure. Now, more than 30 years after its construction, its collapse is imminent.

The Chernobyl disaster widely considered to be the worst nuclear disaster in history, and the nearby cities remain empty to this day. A 2012 UN report found there was widespread radioactive contamination in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus that could have affected millions of people, and thousands of cancer diagnoses has been attributed to the contaminants.

SSE Chernobyl NPP, the company which runs the power plant, said in a statement that the probability of sarcophagus collapse is “very high” and the entire structure needs to be dismantled.

“The structures of Shelter built more than 30 years ago are simply supported and are kept on the supporting blocks only due to the force of gravity,” the statement said.

Any sort of collapse might bring the risk that more radioactive materials are released, so as contractors are planning to dismantle the sarcophagus, parts of it will need to be reinforced before being removed completely.

But dismantling the entombed nuclear reactor won’t mean that the plant will once again be exposed to the open air — an even bigger containment shell has already been put in place directly above it.

A communique issued from the headquarters of General Spaatz announces that four and one-tenth square miles, or 60 per cent., of Hiroshima, which is as large as Brisbane, was wiped out by the bomb.

The announcement is based on reconnaissance photographs, which showed additional damage outside the completely destroyed area.

Answering a question why Hiroshima, rather than Tokio, was chosen as the first target, an army spokesman replied: “Maybe we did not want to risk hitting Government buildings and destroying people who may make the decision to surrender.”

Tokio Radio’s version of the raid said that the impact of the bomb was so terrific that practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death. All the dead and injured were burned beyond recognition.

The broadcast added that the effect of the bomb was widespread. Those out of doors were burned to death, and those indoors were killed by indiscriminate pressure and heat. Houses and buildings were smashed, including emergency medical facilities.

Another broadcast warned the Japanese homeland to brace itself for new atomic bomb attacks. Osaka Radio said since it was presumed that the enemy would continue to use the new bomb the authorities should point out measures to cope with it immediately if this was possible…..

Tokio Radio claims that Hiroshima was an open city, and says authorized bombing was a violation of international law, which forbids belligerents an unlimited choice in the means of destruction. https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/from-the-archives-1945-the-terrible-fate-of-hiroshima-20190802-p52dd2.html

This is where the United States tested atomic weapons in the 1940s and 1950s. Though it has been over sixty years since testing ended there, the islands are still more radioactive than Chernobyl and Fukushima, sites of two of the worst nuclear reactor disasters.

In a recent study, researchers tested the soil of these sites for plutonium-239 and plutonium-240. In some places, the islands had levels that were ten times higher than soil in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

While the study was limited, the results indicate that a more thorough test is warranted. The surprising thing to the researchers was that they could not find any guidance from governments or from international organizations which indicated what a permissible level of plutonium would be.

The US tested radioactive weapons in the Marshall Islands even after dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. At the time, the islands were a district of the Trus Territory of the Pacific Islands. The US ran this district on behalf of the United Nations.

The first tests were carried out on Bikini Atoll in 1946 and involved two bombs names Able and Baker. Over the next twelve years, the US tested 67 weapons on the Bikini and Enewetak atolls.

Those tests included one in 1951 code-named Ivy Mike – the first hydrogen bomb test. The largest hydrogen bomb test occurred in 1954 with the Castle Bravo test. Castle Bomb was over 1,000 times more powerful than Little Boy. Little Boy was the bomb that completely destroyed Hiroshima.

The radioactive damage from the tests was not contained to Bikini and Enewetak, though. Fallout from the test contaminated the Rongelap and Utirik atolls which are also part of the Marshall Islands. People on those islands became sick from the radiation levels.

In 2016, a study of background gamma radiation on the three northern atolls in the Marshall Islands, Bikini, Enewetak, and Rongelap, found elevated levels of the radiation. The study found that Bikini even had a higher level than had previously been reported.

That team returned to do more testing. They recently released the results of those studies in the PNAS journal. The studies focused on the Bikini, Enewetak, Rongelap, and Utirik Atolls in the northern part of the islands.

The studies found levels of gamma radiation that were significantly higher than the levels of a southern Marshall Island that the researchers used as a control.

Especially bad were the levels on Bikini and Naen islands. Those levels were found to be higher than the maximum exposure limit that the US and the Republic of the Marshall Islands had agreed to in the 1990s.

Along with Runi and Enjebi islands in the Enewetak Atoll, the islands were found to have radioactive plutonium levels in the soil that were higher than what has been found at Chernobyland Fukushima.

Ivana Nikolic-Hughes, director of the K1 Project at the Center for Nuclear Studies, stated that the researchers were surprised at the levels of external gamma radiation on Naen Island.

This island is on the outer edge of the Rongelap Atoll and was populated at the time of the Bravo test. The people were moved from the island, moved back and then moved away again, Nikolic-Hughes called it a “dreadful history” of treatment for the Rongelapese people.

A second study by the group used professional divers to collect 130 samples from the Castle Bravo Crater on the Bikini Atoll. Here, isotopes such as plutonium-239 and 240, americium-241 and bismuth-207 were much higher than they were on other Marshall Islands.

The researchers were interested in testing the crater because they feel it is a first step in determining how the testing of nuclear weapons has affected the ocean.

The third study tested over 200 fruits from the islands. They found many of the fruits contained higher levels of cesium-137 which would be deemed unsafe by several countries and international organizations.

The researchers hope the data gathered can be used to educate the residents of the Marshall Islands about the dangers there and inform them of whether it is safe to live on these islands or gather food from them.

Fukushima: Despite health threats, the Japanese government urges residents to return https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1161500/fukushima-japanese-government-encourages-residents-returnFAMILIES who fled nuclear meltdown in Fukushima are being urged to return to their homes ahead of the Tokyo Olympics., By DAVID PILDITCH, Aug 4, 2019  Alarming levels of radiation up to 20 times higher than official safety targets have been recorded in areas where locals are being encouraged to go back. We found ghost towns eight years after three reactors went into meltdown at Daiichi power plant 140 miles north east of Tokyo in March 2011. Tokyo 2020 is being hailed as the “Reconstruction Olympics” signalling new hope following the earthquake and tsunami that triggered the disaster and left more than 18,000 people dead.

STEVE SEBELIUS: Nuclear power will ‘lumber into extinction,’ ex-regulator says,    By Steve Sebelius Las Vegas Review-Journal, August 3, 2019  For Gregory Jaczko, the nuclear power question comes down to a basic quandary: For a nuclear reactor to be designed, built and operated safely, it has to be small, too small to make it useful as a commercial source of electricity.And given that other, less complicated and risky sources of renewable energy are available, spending time and money on solving the large-scale nuclear issue isn’t necessary, he argues.

Jaczko’s conclusions are controversial, especially in the energy industry, where he ruffled feathers as a former member and chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But Jaczko, who holds a doctoral degree in theoretical particle physics from the University of Madison-Wisconsin, is convinced the equation is relatively simple.

“The longer you operate nuclear power plants, the more accidents are going to happen,” he said. “The more power plants you upgrade, the more accidents you’re going to have.”……

Jaczko, whose rocky tenure atop the NRC is discussed in his book, “Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator,” documents his opinions carefully, and suggests that even if nuclear plants could be designed more safely to avoid catastrophic accidents, the expense wouldn’t be worth it because of the availability of cheaper, renewable alternatives such as solar power, wind farms, geothermal plants and the like.

“Today, there’s not a debate anymore because you can solve the climate problem without nuclear,” he said. “So you don’t have to deal with any of these other issues anymore. And you can solve them with things that are cheaper. They do not create the same kinds of challenges.”

“In hindsight, the Fukushima incident revealed what has long been the sad truth about nuclear safety: the nuclear power industry has developed too much control over the (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) and Congress,” Jaczko writes in his book. “In the aftermath of the accident, I found myself moving from my role as a scientist impressed by nuclear power to a fierce nuclear safety advocate. I now believe that nuclear power is more hazardous than it is worth.”

Other countries are moving away from nuclear power: Countries such as Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Italy have decided to phase out nuclear power, although it remains the largest source of power in France. After the Fukushima disaster, Japan shut down all of its nuclear power plants, although some have since been restarted.

Jaczko also makes the point that continued use of nuclear power puts pressure on regulators and the government to find a place to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. Currently, there’s only one target, the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, which has seen renewed interest from Republicans during the Trump administration.

But that site has long been opposed by most state officials out of concerns about safety, concerns that have been increased after recent California earthquakes. Not only that, but revelations that the government secretly shipped plutonium for temporary storage to the Nevada National Security Site, and may have mixed in reactive waste products with lower-level waste in other shipments, have stirred serious concerns among Nevada officials.

“As waste piles up, we leave behind dangerous materials that later generations will eventually have to confront,” Jaczko wrote in his book. “The short-term solution — leaving it where it is — can certainly be accomplished with minimal hazard to the public. But such solutions require active maintenance and monitoring by a less-than-willing industry.”

He adds: “There is only one logical answer: We must stop generating nuclear waste, and that means we must stop using nuclear power. I wish that as chairman (of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) I’d had the courage to say this, but my courage had its limits. I knew the backlash that would come if the chairman of the NRC were to admit our country should stop producing nuclear power.”

But now, like many former elected officials or political appointees, he’s freed from the shackles that responsibility imposed upon his candor. He predicts that nuclear power will “lumber into extinction” in favor of cheaper, safer, cleaner and more readily viable technologies and that “we will likely begin to think of electricity much as we do hot water; as something we make in our homes on demand.”

Contact Steve Sebelius at SSebelius@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0253. Follow @SteveSebelius on Twitter.   https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/steve-sebelius/steve-sebelius-nuclear-power-will-lumber-into-extinction-ex-regulator-says-1818297/