Archive for the 'Environment' Category
Arnie Gundersen: “This is about a thousand times worse than ever anticipated by the nuclear planners.”
April 14th, 2011Fukushima Accident Severity Level Raised to ‘7’: Gundersen Discusses Lack of US Radiation Monitoring Data from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
Fukushima: Temperatures Rise in Spent Fuel Storage Pool
April 13th, 2011Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen demonstrates how Fukushima’s fuel rods melted and shattered from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo. Via: NHK: The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, says the water temperature in the spent fuel storage pool at the No. 4 reactor in the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has risen to about 90 degrees Celsius. It […]
Chinese Mining Operations in Australia
April 12th, 2011So it goes… Via: Guardian: China is leasing huge areas of land in Australia to secure a vital source of mineral resources, the latest sign of its acquisitive approach to the commodities trade. No longer satisfied with buying iron ore and coal from Australian mining companies, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, China is developing its […]
Japan Raises Nuke Accident Severity Level to 7; Highest
April 11th, 2011Update: Officially Level 7 Via: Kyodo: Japan raised the severity level of the ongoing emergency at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Tuesday from level 5 to the maximum 7 on an international scale, recognizing that the tsunami-caused accident matches the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe in 1986 at Chernobyl. The government’s Nuclear and Industrial […]
Japan: 7.1 Magnitude Earthquake in Fukushima
April 11th, 2011Via: BBC: A powerful earthquake has hit north-east Japan, exactly one month after the devastating earthquake and tsunami. The 7.1-magnitude tremor triggered a brief tsunami warning, and forced workers to evacuate the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant. The epicentre of the quake was in Fukushima prefecture, and struck at a depth of just 10km (six miles). […]
Arnie Gundersen: How Fukushima’s Fuel Rods Melted and Shattered
April 11th, 2011Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen demonstrates how Fukushima’s fuel rods melted and shattered from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.
EPA: New Radiation Highs in Little Rock Milk, Philadelphia Drinking Water
April 10th, 2011Via: Forbes: Milk from Little Rock and drinking water from Philadelphia contained the highest levels of Iodine-131 from Japan yet detected by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to data released by EPA Saturday. The Philadelphia sample is below the EPA’s maximum contaminant level (MCL) for iodine-131, but the Little Rock sample is almost three times […]
Fukushima: Dealing with Highly Radioactive Water Could Take Decades, Cost Tens of Billions of Dollars
April 7th, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times: For nearly four weeks, Japanese emergency crews have been spraying water on the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, a desperate attempt to avert the calamity of a full meltdown. Now, that improvised solution to one nuclear nightmare is spawning another: what to do with the millions of gallons of water that […]
Fukushima: TEPCO Claims to Have Stopped Leak of Highly Radioactive Water, For Now
April 6th, 2011Your mileage may vary. Via: Bloomberg: Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it stopped highly radioactive water leaking into the sea from a pit near one of the reactors at its stricken nuclear station north of Tokyo, after five days of trying to stem the flow. Related: Fishing Halted in Japan’s Ibaraki After Radioactive Water Contaminates […]
‘U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant’; But It Might Be Worse Than That
April 6th, 2011The New York Times piece below states: …the engineers who prepared the document do not believe that a resumption of criticality is an immediate likelihood, Neil Wilmshurst, vice president of the nuclear sector at the Electric Power Research Institute, said when contacted about the document. “I have seen no data to suggest that there is […]
