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From Rocky Flats to Fukushima: This Nuclear Folly
There's no such thing as safe and accidents are always covered up. So why let Obama build a whole new generation of reactors?
In March 2011, novelist Kristen Iversen's memoir, Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, was waiting sedately among piles of other manuscripts at various publishing houses. Then, Japan was hit by a tsunami, and the cooling systems of the Fukushima nuclear reactor were overwhelmed, giving the world apocalyptic images of toxic floods and floating cars, of whole provinces made uninhabitable.
Rocky Flats nuclear facility workers in a plutonium storage area, 1988. Photograph: US Dept of Energy
Immediately, Iversen's book was auctioned, and the timing of its publication, in June, could not be better – since, incredibly, in the shadow of the Fukushima disaster, and even as Japan and other nations see movements against the use of nuclear power ever again – President Obama is planning more investment in nuclear energy. The US is soon to start construction on several new reactors for the first time in three decades.
Iversen, a softspoken woman with a laid-back western vibe, wearing jeans and lavender scarf, seems an unlikely prophet of nuclear catastrophe. But her message is searing. She grew up in a small town near Rocky Flats, Colorado, where a secret nuclear weapons plant built over 70,000 plutonium "triggers" for nuclear bombs.
Iversen spoke with me this week about her research in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where we were at a writer's conference. She explained that "triggers" was a euphemism: the plant, which, throughout her childhood, was so secret that her mother believed they made cleaning supplies, was actually producing plutonium "buttons". In other words, these were the nuclear bombs themselves; they needed only a casing of explosives to be activated.
"They made Nagasaki bombs in my backyard," she explains.
Unknown to the families living in the shadow of the classified facility, deadly plutonium particles were seeded among the stunning beauty of the mountain landscape. As Iversen grew up, she became aware of the growing incidence of bizarre cancers being diagnosed in local children. Iversen's reporting, extensive interviews, and review of FBI and EPA documents, shows how classifying a toxic nuclear site led to the ruin of hundreds of lives – and continues to pose ever-escalating threats as the legacy of what we know about such nuclear contamination is being swept under the rug by developers, energy lobbyists and government agencies colluding with them, at the risk of exposing more of us, more severely.
The nature of the cover-up is incredible: in 1989, the FBI joined forces with the EPA to raid on the plant. The plant, in turn, was owned by the Department of Energy.
"It's the only time in the history of our country that, to my knowledge, two government agencies have raided another," notes Iversen. A grand jury investigation followed the raid, and jurors called for indictments against Rockwell, the manufacturer, and Department of Energy officials. In spite of this, not one indictment was ever issued. The jurors, furious, actually wrote their own report on the contamination and the suppression of the facts – which, astoundingly, still remains under seal.
But cancer rates are telling the tale: they remain elevated in neighborhoods around Rocky Flats 30 years on (plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years). Recent tests confirm earlier findings: there is still contamination in the soil.
Although there is a scientific consensus that no exposure is safe, no matter how brief, Iversen reports:
"There's a big push in Denver right now to build a highway, the Jefferson Parkway, on the contaminated area. This is all prime real estate and many developers and city politicians are pushing to develop the area and pretend that Rocky Flats never existed."
So, profit motives are driving the push to develop lands that, according to scientists, can never be inhabited safely again. And profit motives are driving an even more demented plan on a state-by-state level, astoundingly, to ship American schoolchildren into these no-go areas.
Clean-up of nuclear contamination is expensive, and laws allow an area to remain as is, with high levels of contaminants in the soil, so long as they are designated "wildlife refuges". To save money and effort, the US government, as well as individual state governments around the country, are now pushing to turn former nuclear weapons sites around the nation into wildlife refuges, which schoolchildren would be taken to visit on class trips.
Nuclear scientists Iversen interviewed are horrified by these plans, arguing that these areas should be permanently closed off to the public and declared "National Sacrifice Zones". And as if enough damage had not been done, a new nuclear pit production facility is planned for Los Alamos, Texas, with the capability of producing up to 450 plutonium triggers per year.
Although the accident at Fukushima raised global awareness about the lasting, overwhelming dangers to human beings of radioactive contamination, the money that the energy lobby sees in building more nuclear facilities is just too good to rein in, catastrophe or no catastrophe. US energy policy, driven by industry lobbyists, remains committed to developing nuclear power, even as nations around the world are canceling their own nuclear plans: last month alone, Germany spent $2.15tn to abandon nuclear power, a decision taken after witnessing Japan's 2011 nuclear disaster.
"At a time when the world is supposed to be decreasing the nuclear arsenal, our government is talking about producing nuclear triggers again. We need to pay attention," warns Iversen.
While the rest of the world, especially countries whose legislatures are less dominated by special interests, do the sane thing regarding nuclear power and the threat of catastrophe, the US scampers merrily in the direction of madness. President Obama recently announced – as if this were a good thing – that the Department of Energy has given the green light to an $8bn loan guarantee program to build two, brand new nuclear power plants in Georgia. This, in spite of scientific warnings about dangers posed by those plants' risk to local residents by nuclear waste disposal issues.
There have been numerous nuclear disasters or near-disasters, besides Fukushima, in recent decades: they include the Mayak facility in Russia, as well as spills and contamination at other former nuclear weapons sites around the United States such as Hanford and Fernald.
Iversen, who has family members who've experienced tumors and other cancer scares, worries about her own health. For her, the time to sound the alarm about America's plans for a new generation of nuclear facilities is now.
"One fact is for sure: there is no safe level of exposure to plutonium. One millionth of a gram, particularly if it is inhaled into the lungs, can cause cancer.
"Rocky Flats happened in my backyard. [This will be] happening in everyone's backyard."
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70 Comments so far
Show AllWe're "letting" Obama expand the nuclear weapons/power industry because we have failed to organize alternative political parties and organizations to stop this fascist/capitalist insanity.
In any case, he's just a tool for capitalists and corporatists who run just about everything. So "we should" is pretty much an irrelevant phrase in these times -- unless/until we become willing and able to organize and exercise power.
Imagine....All the radioactive nuclear crap buried in the 5-mile deep Mariannes Trench....a subduction zone plunging back below the Earth's crust into the semi-molten mantel....where it was before the 1% stupidly mined the ore....then they enriched it to present toxic levels.......for ever out of our lives...gone....fixed.....no more...until the next nut-case, science-challenged fools.....fool us again....
RIGHT NOW.......We must be building Large-scale Solar Thermal Power plants that boil water with molten salt to produce electricity.......Instead We see more crap fission reactors planned in Georgia, China, you name it ..... to boil the same water!!!!!....A Solar Thermal plant.....about 350 Megawatts...(60,000 homes) is about ready to come on line near Ajo, AZ...(and another starting west of Phoenix)....
Imagine ..... Scaled-up individual Solar Thermal plants that will rival the Gigawatt(1,000 megawatts) doomsday reactors(right NOW 100 here 400+ worldwide).....see more at ..... http://besolar.info/Sustainable_Portal_1.htm .... Imagine a poison-free future for all Earth's children.....for even those nay-sayers ......
The gall of Wall Street high-rollers ..... their invested, entrenched dirty energy corporations using the weaselly word "traditional" in the public square of discourse.......when actually using obfuscating language ...... co-mingling nuclear-waste-energy with carbon dioxide-producing-energy....calling them "traditional" ..... what an insult to our bliss......a waste of our time and money, to boot!....i.e.......
Why does Lockheed-Martin ..... a defense contractor, want to own the Solar Thermal Power plant going up near Phoenix?.....YES....To make money by selling power back to Arizona Power Service.....for us.....how sweet....Now why not just go crazier and build another doomsday radio-active crap pile?.....Let's think...oh yeah....they can imagine, too.....Through the "Looking Glass"...here we come Alice....wait.......up!
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/05/22/20090522biz-apssolar0522.html ...... Can it be? .....
So-called Energy experts continue to take riskier and more foolish chances to store the mountainous ..... thousands of tons of deadly radioactive waste....scattered everywhere imaginable .......produced each and every year by the 400+ plants in world-wide operation?....(France buries theirs in subduction zones ....it's reported)
Imagine ..... Hundreds of Centralized Solar Thermal Power Plants .... Steam-powered Electricity for Heavy Industry and high-demand urban areas....Add Localized- urban Roof-top Photovoltaics..... Add ....... Regional Wind Farms....along with wave/tidal power and Geo-thermal Deep-well Steam Generators ....... All inter-connected by a National and Regional Smart Grid .... as well as World-wide .... All backed-up and stored with Very Large Industrial Super-sized Capacitors (envision aircraft-carrier-sized) and Electric Vehicle and home-storage battery devices .....Tear down the damn dams! .... Let the salmon free! ....
Imagine ...... protected wildlife corridors in the US and elsewhere ..... unimpeded flyways and migration routes north-to-south.....east-to-west.....fenced-off, protected and guarded by government-paid citizens living in the bordering communities ...... by Constitutional decrees to preserve our wild genetics ....
Imagine light rail connecting inner-urbanites to their work or to play with their American Family in the [recently restored] scenic Wildlands ....... protected ..... public spaces ....... with real wild genetics returned from near extinction ...... Ever see a real wild Bison?..... Wolves? ....... Return of the Salmon?..... Imagine that WE can do it?....
Imagine your plug-in hybrid or free public Hydrogen-powered buses or trolleys bringing you to the light-rail depots ..... batteries recharged at night by the Smart Grid ...... people-funded (government of and by the people - no corrupt monies.... guess who?) ..... with the trillions of re-repatriated monies hoarded off-shore by so-called American companies and deluded (insane?) individuals ....
Imagine a vacation to the protected wildlife corridors.....transported by elevated high speed mag-rail connecting the light rail systems ...... Imagine a real discourse about these important issues ..... outside the purview of the special, entrenched special interests demanding the current status quo .... Ignore the mis-direction ..... Demand Transparency .... Truth to Power...A return to Democracy...... Our Sustainability as a life form will take ingenuity, skill and enthusiasm ........Imagination is stiffled in many schools, the private-for -profit and the under-assault public systems .....
Imagine ........ No more political half-truths that the .01% of America's owners promulgate about Universal Public Education ...... Privatization of which, I see, as the wet dream of those who don't work ....... while shunning those who work to live .... in our inherently shared Commonwealth .... Dismantling Public Education is patently a fraud .... a disrespectful scam to enrich the few some more! ..... And .... more disgracefully ........ Who controls the curricula content? ...... What are the substantive avenues of objection other than personal cash? .... hardly a path that We 99%ers will agree to ........ As a resident of the Commons-held-in-Trust by the 99% ...... I object and will resist .......
Imagine ........ OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS as extensions of We-the-People ...... decisions made outside the purview of the entrenched status quo ....... Schools built by the students' teachers ...... schooled in Solar efficiencies and the Arts and Music ..... Outdoor organic gardens ........ Indoor greenhouses ..... Art Studios and Concert Venues ....... Ethnic Studies and Civics experiences ...... learning objectively to think critically ...... and to question when in doubt ...... International Student Exchanges ...... Language Studies abroad [using new green non-polluting travel] ...... supplanted with virtual social networking communication ......Imagine this and it will come to pass ......
Occupy With Love ...... Bob Zavoda
Bob,
First, you always have to specify that the nuke waste would be glassified to be made unsoluable in water before it was dumped into the deep ocean -otherwise people go crazy with fright.
Second, Solar Thermal and Smart Grid FTW.
Third, REAL wild preserves? New Green Party is the first step.
Last, hydrogen buses. All smoke no fire, hydrogen is a a loser fuel.
Good stuff, thanks. :)
"hydrogen is a a loser fuel".
Because there's not much money in it?
Seriously, can you clarify? I'm intrigued.
If it's too big to insure, it shouldn't be built.
The free market voted on nuclear power. It's was weighed, measured, and found wanting.
Just a comment on the subtitle before I even read the piece:
Nuke reactors as safe as any common industrial plant CAN be made, and CAN produce plenty of electricity to compliment the intermittency of renewables.
Such designs are still drawing board ideas, but they only await building, not technical breakthroughs to be built.
The key is not involving a high-pressure chamber.
So the subtitle is a bit misleading.
There COULD be safe reactors, there just aren't any (maybe) right now.
Rhetorical flourishes that ignore technical reality have been holding back the movement to regain control ovr nukes for decades, so we need to watch it.
You defeat your own argument.
A safe nuke has never been built, period. If the technology exists, as you claim, it would have been done. Money for nukes has been proven to be as easy to get as money for Wall Street financiers.
Also, you fail to mention the issue of nuclear and transuranic wastes. It's good that you did because there is no technoligical solution. That is the original sin of the nuclear industry and why it can never be safe.
matti sez: "Nuke reactors as safe as any common industrial plant CAN be made.."
Okay. That's a good argument against them. Because the consequences of a nuclear accident are a lot greater than the consequence of an accident at a LEGO factory.
Matti- your unmitigated support of nuclear boilers and the wealth transfer scheme they are is disgusting. You are a liar, there are no safe nuclear boilers or nuclear weapons. There will never be such a thing, the technology is flawed it DOES NOT WORK. The nuclear boilers DO NOT compliment or support other gen assets, the nuclear boilers force the other gen assets to pivot to the nuclear boilers schedule. Also, they do not supply "plenty" of electricity, this is a lie- "too cheap too meter" and "provide a baseline to support other gen assets" and "safe-just start em up,no maintenance they are automatic" are the lies you push here every time there is info on the nuclear boiler scheme. These statements apply correctly to Hydro Electric generation, not to nuclear boilers. Why don't you eat that poison apple your self, no one here or any where else needs it.
The new pit facility (pit or trigger: fission device that provides the energy for a fusion or 'thermonuclear' bomb, several thousand times stronger than a hiroshima or nagasaki bomb) is at Los Alamos, New Mexico. The Pantex plant in Amarillo, TX assembles the final bombs. The only pit facility in the U.S. was at Rocky Flats - The need for a new pit facility is highly debatable, since the U.S. has over 10,000 nuclear weapons, and the reliability of the pits is very high. The legacy of the environmental damage throughout the West is huge. See "Making a Real Killing" by Len Ackland and photographs of Rocky Flats by A.W. Thompson. Nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors are not the same issue - but neither are "green" technologies. The pre and post processing of nuclear fuel remain very significant, carbon intensive, environmental hazards, and nuclear plants themselves threaten worker health and regional safety. Recent actions in Europe demonstrate that the difference between our societies is that they value long-term social welfare over short-term corporate profits.
"Nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors are not the same issue..."
They may not be the same issue, but they are inseperable. Both produce similar nuclear and chemical wastes of various toxicities that must be managed because they can never actually be disposed of.
In the meantime, managing these wastes spreads them around. They can now be found in golf clubs, "conventional" weapons like DU armaments, pots and pans and in many local sanitation fills.
While all waste issues are environmental issues, nuclear wastes and their related production wastes, are unique in that there are no technologies that can neutralize them. There is no "recycling" solution (other than to shoot them back into the sun somehow).
The sole interim "solution" is to store them while they burn off, creating further pollution.
This article isn't an argument against nuke power generation.
It is an argument against nuclear WEAPONS.
We DON'T NEED plutonium for power generation.
And we may (should) be able to get rid of it using nuclear reactors that are also generating electricity.
But good stuff as usual from Wolf on her actual subject.
Nuke weapons should have been banned 66+ years ago.
They need to be banned TOMORROW.
There are reactor types that are useless for making plutonium or other bomb material. That should be the standard. These proposed plants here in the U.S. need to be stopped before they've really begun building.
It's a perfectly good argument against nuclear power generation.
Nuclear power, like the nuclear weapons plant, can create a multi-town cancer zone. The main difference between the Fukushima cancer zone and the Rocky Flats cancer zone is the number of centuries. The cesium in Fukushima will be largely gone in about 2 centuries because it has a half life of 30 years, while Rocky Flats may be bad news for 200,000 years, because plutonium has a half-life of 28,000 years or so. They're both beyond my life span.
The idea of some foreign company moving in a mile away and then possibly turning your whole county into a cancer zone, quickly draining all real estate value out of your home in the process because nobody moves into a death zone, is not far from an act of war. If the deaths and losses of houses are done quickly, as in the shelling of Homs, Syria, the world notices. If the city of Pripiyat, Ukraine is evacuated and the houses slowly decay over the decades while the kids slowly get thyroid cancer a year after the Chernobyl plutonium fire, it's a bit harder to see the problem.
Hello to the nuclear industry's low-paid boiler room bloggers.
Good post Paul, as always,
I Don't have my physics book at this house, so I can't relay the exect formula from memory, but when FukU Enriched Uranium splits, I believe it explodes Nutrons which are absorbed by Plutonium 238. This transmutates the Pu-238 into Pu-239 which is the most common radioactive byproduct accidentally emmited and the most dangerous during a breach and meltdown. It is present in all the spent fuel rods, which is what made this accident so disasterous. It's deadly alpha particles can be lethal if inhaled. Cesium is bad but Plutonium is the most dangerous substance known to man. We can be assured that if cesium is present then so is a whole Zoo of known and unknown isotopes. It's said that most isotopes are still not known.
ThomasJefferson... wrote (about Pu-239)
'...It is present in all the spent fuel rods, which is what made this accident so disasterous. It's deadly alpha particles can be lethal if inhaled. Cesium is bad but Plutonium is the most dangerous substance known to man....'
No, inhaled Americium-241 produces about 47 times the absorbed dose per gram that Pu-239 does. Am-241 is the isotope in most smoke detectors; it's produced in U-235 power reactors. Of course, the alphas from airborne uranium can also be lethal if inhaled. And that's with or without a nuclear plant accident.
John
No, No, John,
I'm afraid you are confused (or else you are trying to confuse everyone else here.) As you no doubt know, Americium is made from Plutonium. So when you inhale fallout from Fukushima everywhere in the world, you most likely will be inhaling Plutonium 239 from the spent fuel rod cooling pools of Unit 3 which exploded into the Troposphere on 3/11 (The Japanese call this their "911".)
So Americium, of course is what's in your lungs after the Plutonium disinigrates down.
Initial experiments yielded four americium isotopes: 241Am, 242Am, 239Am and 238Am. Americium-241 was directly obtained from plutonium upon absorption of one neutron. It decays by emission of a α-particle to 237Np; the half-life of this decay was first determined as 510 ± 20 years but then corrected to 432.2 years.[12]
Pu-239 to Pu-240 to Pu-241 to Np-237
The second isotope 242Am was produced upon neutron bombardment of the already-created 241Am. Upon rapid β-decay, 242Am converts into the isotope of curium 242Cm (which had been discovered previously). The half-life of this decay was initially determined at 17 hours, which was close to the presently accepted value of 16.02 h.[12]
Am 241 to Am 242 to Cm 242
The discovery of americium and curium in 1944 was closely related to the Manhattan Project; the results were confidential and declassified only in 1945. Seaborg leaked the synthesis of the elements 95 and 96 on the U.S. radio show for children, the Quiz Kids, five days before the official presentation at an American Chemical Society meeting on November 11, 1945, when one of the listeners asked whether any new transuranium element beside plutonium and neptunium had been discovered during the war.[8] After the discovery of americium isotopes 241Am and 242Am, their production and compounds were patented listing only Seaborg as the inventor.[13] The initial americium samples weighed a few micrograms; they were barely visible and were identified by their radioactivity. The first substantial amounts of metallic americium weighing 40–200 micrograms were not prepared until 1951 by reduction of americium(III) fluoride with barium metal in high vacuum at 1100 °C.[14]
[edit]Occurrence
So your correction to my post is about like correcting a person who says "car crashes are dangerous" with the silly argument that the crash is not dangerous, it's the bleeding to death and trama afterward.
Thank you ~Thomas Jefferson~,,, a terrific, educatioal reply,, love it. Nothing quite likel kicking a nuke shills butt all over the screen.. .Funeeee too!
My Pleasure, Wayne.
WOW. Excellent.
ThomasJefferson... wrote:
'No, No, John,
'I'm afraid you are confused (or else you are trying to confuse everyone else here.) As you no doubt know, Americium is made from Plutonium. So when you inhale fallout from Fukushima everywhere in the world, you most likely will be inhaling Plutonium 239 from the spent fuel rod cooling pools of Unit 3 which exploded into the Troposphere on 3/11 (The Japanese call this their "911".)
'So Americium, of course is what's in your lungs after the Plutonium disinigrates down.'
No, no, no. Pu-239 disintegrates into U-235. A Pu-239 atom requires 2 neutrons to become Pu-241, which beta-decays to Am-241. That occurs in a nuclear power plant (NPP), but not in the body. But fallout from an NPP accident contains Am-241.
And according to EPA, the "Inhalation Risk Coefficient" per picogram for Am-241 is about 47 times that for Pu-239.
'Initial experiments yielded four americium isotopes: 241Am, 242Am, 239Am and 238Am. Americium-241 was directly obtained from plutonium upon absorption of one neutron. It decays by emission of a α-particle to 237Np; the half-life of this decay was first determined as 510 ± 20 years but then corrected to 432.2 years.[12]-
'Pu-239 to Pu-240 to Pu-241 to Np-237'
No, that's Pu-239 to Pu-240 to Pu-241 to Am-241 to Np-237
John
Oh, oh - I know this one. It's the endless arguing about minutia to junk up the thread. I know that's on webwalker's list of shill tactics. I forgot the number though.
John, you ought to know that list like the back of your hand. What number is it on the list?
That one is so key it's not numbered; "minor technical point" is at the top of the list, rolled with "complete non sequitur" and "utterly stupid thing" into:
Primary Tactic
A shill will post a complete non-sequitur, minor technical point or utterly stupid thing *on purpose* to provoke your reaction and *work with you* to dilute the thread and make it unlikely that others will read or learn anything. They do not care if they "win" the driveling argument / pointless rebuttal / boring droning about the complete non-sequitur, minor technical point or utterly stupid thing. If you play your part in the distraction: they win!
No number? I guess I need to study the list some more. ;-)
You nailed it ctrl-z. He forgott to distract us with several other of the daughter products from Plutonium disinigration besides Americium, but I suppose he'll get around to it later.
There's just no way to decribe all his distractions without drawing him a diagram which we both already have in our phyics books. It's a stupid troll game, which he's been playing for about eleven months now. The subject of this thread is Plutonium contamination in both Rocky Flats and Fukushima, and he's inferring that Plutonium is not so bad since we sit under much worse Am-241 in our smoke detectors. I'm glad he brought this up. Google "the Nuclear Boy Scout" and see what popps up, or click here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
This untrustworthy Nuclear Industry has a real nuke waste disposal problem. So they are hard at work trying to sell their waste to us inside consumer products. If a smoke detector gets crushed or is burned nuclear waste goes winds up in our water and air. There's nothing the Nuclear Mafia won't do to make a buck at the expense of the public.
TJ
ThomasJefferson... wrote:
'You nailed it ctrl-z. He forgott to distract us with several other of the daughter products from Plutonium disinigration besides Americium, but I suppose he'll get around to it later.'
No, again, Americium is NOT a daughter of Pu-239. That's why Americium will NOT be produced in the body by inhaling Pu-239. But inhaled Am-241 has 47 times the radiotoxicity of inhaled Pu-239 per milligram. And in a smoke detector that uses Am-241, the only barrier between the room air and the Americium oxide is palladium foil 2 micrometers thick.
John
driveling argument / pointless rebuttal / boring droning about the complete non-sequitur, minor technical point or utterly stupid thing...
Yep ~Web~, his normal act of arguing over nothing, except ~TJ~ stated Pu is the most dangerous poison,, and it is the most dangerous of the human created poisons in a nuclear reactor.
Americium-241 Was found when a H bomb ruptured in 1968 at Thule AFB, Greenland when a Chrome Dome B-52 aricraft crashed with 4 H bombs aboard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americium
"Americium-241 was (*directly obtained*) from "plutonium" upon absorption of one neutron.” ... As ~TJ~ explained and obtuse ~John Iannetta~ had to start his usual detracting crap.
The plastic casing of a smoke detector easiy prevents any radiation hazards from the tiny amount of Americium-241 in the unit as does it's foil wrapping.
It might be dangerous if someone shoved a broke open smoke detector up their nose.
What Iannetta is trying to do is say our smoke detectors are more hazardous than a nuclear power plant accident or inhaling Pu isotopes.
He's worse now with RF absent.
.
A certain poster here keeps picking nits and chasing atomic particles in the apparent hope that the public will conclude that Plutonium that exploded from three Fukushima reactors is safer than the nuke waste in their smoke detectors. What I'd like to know is: Why weren't we warned as consumers about this radioactive hazard? I am outraged and you should be too. Government mandates a smoke detector via building codes, then allows the Nuke Industry to dump their nuke waste into it and hang it over my bed.
Insane-O-World! Where's that dour Indian "Shadowdancer" with his sarcastic "Brave New World" humour? I could use a laugh right about now. His contrarian "We told you so; The ancient Tribes lived much better lives" postings were at first anoying and now inescapable in their relavance. We have made a mess of the world with our reckless Nuclear and War Industries.
99 Percent of all Plutonium is man made from inside a reactor. It is not something we evolved around and it is something we should not be in contact with. Wiki says:
"Decay to americium
241Pu has a half-life of 14 years, corresponding to a decay of about 5% of Pu-241 nuclei over a one-year period. The longer spent nuclear fuel waits before reprocessing, the more 241Pu decays to americium-241, which is nonfissile (although fissionable by fast neutrons) and an alpha emitter with a halflife of 432 years which is a major contributor to the radioactivity of nuclear waste on a scale of hundreds or thousands of years."
So, it would seem that an isotope of Plutonium, 241Pu, does indeed decay into his favorite Franken-Element: Ameriicium 241. It would also seem that the Pro-Nuke Troll's contention that Americium is something seperate and that it can not come from Plutonium is just wrong. I'll accept that Pu239 eventually decays primarily into Uranium 235; But Pu241 which comes from the same reactor decays into Am241.
But the whole point is not whether there is one neutron or two absorbed by a nucleus, or which flavor of Plutonium Isotope by-products will kill you the deadest. The point the author and I are making is that the decay of any Plutonium in your lungs starts a cascade of dangerous disinigrations releasing dangerous alpha and beta particles and gama rays that your DNA is unlikely to escape bombardment of. One millionth of a gram can cause cancer and One Thousandth of a gram is fatal.
Nuclear power is unsafe under any circumstances as long as accident-prone humans and greedy capitalists are involved in it's operation.
TJ
ThomasJefferson... wrote:
'So, it would seem that an isotope of Plutonium, 241Pu, does indeed decay into his favorite Franken-Element: Ameriicium 241. It would also seem that the Pro-Nuke Troll's contention that Americium is something seperate and that it can not come from Plutonium is just wrong. I'll accept that Pu239 eventually decays primarily into Uranium 235; But Pu241 which comes from the same reactor decays into Am241.'
No, Pu-239 decays ONLY to U-235. I contended that Am-241 is not a daughter of Pu-239, as opposed to plutonium. In a U-235 nuclear reactor, Pu-239 is produced by neutron-activation of U-238. That's the principal plutonium isotope in the fuel rods.
There will be a smaller quantity of Pu-240, produced by neutrons bombarding Pu-239. And an even smaller quantity of Pu-241, produced by neutron bombardment of Pu-240. So there's very little Pu-241 in spent fuel. And while Am-241 is much more radiotoxic than Pu-239, Pu-241 does not emit alphas, only very very weak betas.
'But the whole point is not whether there is one neutron or two absorbed by a nucleus, or which flavor of Plutonium Isotope by-products will kill you the deadest. The point the author and I are making is that the decay of any Plutonium in your lungs starts a cascade of dangerous disinigrations releasing dangerous alpha and beta particles and gama rays that your DNA is unlikely to escape bombardment of. One millionth of a gram can cause cancer and One Thousandth of a gram is fatal.'
It doesn't work that way. One trillionth of a gram CAN induce cancer, as can the same amount of the radium and lead in one's body. And to say that 1 milligram of Pu-239 IS fatal is to say that anyone who crosses a street against a red light will be killed.
John
Dear John,
No, No, No, you're all wrong. 239Pu is a fission product of the fission process as I described in Unit Three between a mix of fuels and also serves as the fissionable fuel itself since it is fissile bomb material. At refueling 52 percent of the fuel is 239Pu. Fission occurs, then it experiences neutron capture as I previously described into the heavier isotopes of plutonium. Americium, 241 comes from man made plutonium isotopes. pu239 does not only disinigrate into U235; It keeps killing people even after it turns to lead. Your incorrect assertion that unit three was fueled with just strictly 235U IS WRONG. Unit Three was fueled with MOX fuel which should be called POX fuel, since it is Plutonium Oxide, an extremely dangerous affair which has been illegal in the United States for some time and should remain so. I can see I'm going to have to draw you a picture. So your whole post is moot since you don't seem to understand what kind of fuel was in the Fukushima reactor Number Three that I was discussing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sasahara.svg
By the way, where is your other persona Funny Finston who you repeatedly solicited respect for? Is he still using the anonymous "Spunky Monkey" as his "Credible Source" for nuke medical information? I know you would never do such a dishonorable thing (BIg Grin).
Best Regards,
TJ
"There are reactor types that are useless for making plutonium or other bomb material. That should be the standard."
Au contraire. There is no safe standard. Every nuclear reactor is a slow-burning nuclear weapon, and I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean it literally and scientifically.
Here's one small example. The first nuclear reaction took place in a pile of graphite laced with rods filled with enriched unranium pellets modified with other rods that modified radiation so the damned thing would not blow up.
It was named Chicago Pile 1 (CP-1) and was located on a former squash court at the University of Chicago. Shortly after the first pile became critical, it was dismantled and rebuilt in a forest preserve southwest of Chicago called Red Gate Woods and renamed CP-2. The first successful heavy water reactor (CP-3) was built there as well.
Eventually both CP-2 and CP-3 were dismantled and their guts were used in later reactors for experiements -- part of the Manhattan Progject to build the first bomb. Their shells and other detritus, including the carcasses of animals that had been experimented upon, were buried onsite.
The early CPs were not designed to produce plutonium. They were experimental projects, infinitesimal in size and power compared to the current behomeths.
But nearly 70 years later, Red Gate Woods and every other site on Earth where nuclear power was produced and nuclear waste is stored -- at whatever size and level -- remains polluted with nuclear and toxic wastes. Get yourself out to Red Gate Woods with a Geiger counter. The shit still registers readable levels after numerous "clean-ups." Forest preserve wells have been sealed off in the area.
Not to mention Daichi/Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, etc. etc. etc. Sort of obvious, those.
It is absolutely a scientific, economic and historical error to attempt to separate "peaceful" nukes from weapons. They are part-and-parcel of the same life-destroying process.
Ridiculous. Matti the Contradictive-good work.
~~matti~, I didn't realize until today that you suffer from a reading comprehension disability. I alwas though that you were just very ignorant about the issue of nuclear power.
You wrote,, > ("This article isn't an argument against nuke power generation...
It is an argument against nuclear WEAPONS.").
Why does the headline of the article mention "Fukushima" matti? Why does the author of the article talk about new nuclear power plants?
As for nuclear weapons, H bombs, plutonium bombs? ~matti~, plutonium, (Pu), is a man made radioactive poison which is maufactured in nuclear reactors when uranium is used for the fuel... Pu is about the most deadly poison known to exist in the entire universe and one of the longest living poisons.
Ad speaking of radioactive WEAPONS ~matti~, , DU ammunition is made from depleted uranium, a waste product from nuclear power plants...Microscopic isotopes of DU are just as hazardous to health as Pu and DU is now polluting the entire planet and with a half life of 4.5 billion years, DU makes the long life of Pu seem to be a spit in a bucket.
Howz that~matti~,,, pretty neat reply huh? Ya gotta love it. __ ~Kem~.
Even an article like this starts with the big lie; "Then, Japan was hit by a tsunami, and the cooling systems of the Fukushima nuclear reactor were overwhelmed..."
No. The earthquake damaged the cooling pipes to the extent that the meltdowns would have occurred without the tsunami. If the cooling system pumps had remained operational they would have been pumping water through broken pipes, flooding the area but doing nothing to cool the reactor.
The nuclear industry is pushing the tsunami as the cause so they won't have to fix all the reactors in earthquake prone areas with the same design.
Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons plant was located in the windiest locale in Colorado and 16 miles upwind from the center of Denver and its 2 million residents. On May 11, 1969 (a Mothers Day Sunday) the largest industrial fire in US history to that point burned in the plutonium milling building for over 18 hours. Had it breached the roof of the building, deadly plutonium oxide would have been blown over Denver making the city uninhabitable. It was a near miss, or in the words of one Pentagon official at a post-fire Congressional hearing, "We would have had a significant public health emergency in the Denver area" had the fire not finally been brought under control. Those are weasel words for evacuation and abandonment like the area, years later, around Chernobyl.
The nuclear weapons and atomic scientists of the world have been conducting a non-consensual experiment on all life for near 70 years, spreading DNA altering radioactive elements into the land, air and water and hence living beings of all kinds. Their utter arrogance is matched only by their stolid stupidity and ignorance of how interdependent all life forms ultimately are. They seem to know or care zilch about the environment or living systems.
That last paragraph is one of the best summaries I have seen concerning this particulary insanity. Thanks for the details on Rocky Flats and your conclusions.
I guess you have to learn to be a jester to face up to these horrors.
Nukes are fine , its just we have the wrong type. The ones we have a really just poisonous waste dumps. We need to spend the BIG $$ to get to FUSION reactors that produce water and hydrogen gas as waste and a tiny bit of other radioactive crap. FUSION however requires fuel we don't have on much of on earth tritium 3. Unfortunately, its all on the moon and nobody is going to spend the really big money to go and mine it and bring it back to earth. Without it though, we'll probably never reach a stable energy efficient FUSION reactor worth crap. Obama and everyone else will keep building the ones now have because they're corrupt EVIL mfers everyone of them and they don't give a flying fuck about the planet.
You're a genius.
There's a fusion reactor 150M Km away, it's called the Sun, it powers the living Earth. It's pretty stable, been going for billions of years, poised to go for billions more. We should get in sync with it and stop all this hubristic power-mad idiocy.
Due to so many serious problems, the Japanese just cut funding on the Monju fast-breeder reactor, Fusion reactor they had set their hope on.
There are now only two nuclear reactors in operation in Japan, the other 52 have been shut down. They have not experienced any blackouts or serious power outages in Japan since they stopped using their nuclear power.
Last week a bus load of reporters were once agan allowed to tour the Fukushima power plant... Wide spread damage was still evident with no work being done... The radiation reading inside the bus was1,500 microsieverts per hour as it approached reactor #3.
TEPCO officials say "they hope" to have the plant under control by the year 2051... Isn't that just special?
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction/fukushima-nuclear-crisis-update-for-february-/blog/39163/
Seen this one? Tepco is going to pave the ocean floor with cement to stop the meltdown from irradiating the sea...
www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/tepco-to-cement-73000-sq-meters-of-seabed-off-fukushima-to-stem-radiation
It's hilarious except it's not.
OMG ~Web~ I thought it was just our 536 DC elected who were insane.
They have three melted down reactor cores still out of control and the only place they should consider pouring concrete is on the entire plant. First they would have to control the spent fuel rod pond rods and how to do that is probably not even possible.
When another earthquake hits that area, and the experts on geology say it is more than just likely at any time now, the nuker game will be far more than just a disaster... We'll see.
webwalk wrote:
'Seen this one? Tepco is going to pave the ocean floor with cement to stop the meltdown from irradiating the sea...
'www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/tepco-to-cement-73000-sq-meters-of-seabed-off-fukushima-to-stem-radiation
I't's hilarious except it's not.'
It seems to me to be an excellent way to contain the radioactivity on the seabed. If the radioactivity spreads, it winds up in the food chain.
John
What kept you, John?
I think the point was that getting into a situation where the best answer is to pour concrete over an area "equivalent to around 10 soccer pitches" was probably a situation it would be good to avoid in future.
It seems to you ~~John Iannetta~~ to be an excellent way to contain the radioactivity.
Amazing comment from you John Iannetta... During the past 11 months, you have been telling everyone the radioactive poisons being emitted from the 3 melted down reactor cores was relatively harmles... You have claimed that we receive more radiation from cosmic rays, from natural radiation in our bodies, from the food and water we consume every day than any radiaton being released from the Fukushima disaster.
How will cementing the ocean floor do anything to contain radiation being emitted every second from the three melted down reactor cores, when no one knows exactly where those three cores of molten, highly radioactive piles of lava are by now actually located?
It is clearly obvious that Tepco officials are now admitting the three melted down cores are still emitting radioactive isotopes of deadly poisons into the atmosphere and ocean from the plant they declared in mid December to be in a "cold shutdown".status.
Just keep talking ~John Iannetta~ and show all how truly messed up you actually are... Thank you Johnny.
P/s,,, Is your sidekick RFinston still on vacation? How about the other two pro nuclear crackpots who replaced RF last week, are they off duty?
WayneWR wrote:
'...During the past 11 months, you have been telling everyone the radioactive poisons being emitted from the 3 melted down reactor cores was relatively harmles......'
Nope, I never stated that.
'...You have claimed that we receive more radiation from cosmic rays, from natural radiation in our bodies, from the food and water we consume every day than any radiaton being released from the Fukushima disaster....
I've repeatedly said that it's all in the numbers. I'm quite sure that at present, any one living in mainland US receives a greater internal dose of ionizing radiation from the radium, potassium, lead, rubidium, and carbon in his body than from the Fukushima power plants. And any increase in external radiation above background would not be meaurable.
'How will cementing the ocean floor do anything to contain radiation being emitted every second from the three melted down reactor cores, when no one knows exactly where those three cores of molten, highly radioactive piles of lava are by now actually located?'
That's not the purpose of cementing the seabed.
' It is clearly obvious that Tepco officials are now admitting the three melted down cores are still emitting radioactive isotopes of deadly poisons into the atmosphere and ocean from the plant they declared in mid December to be in a "cold shutdown".status.'
Yes, that is consistent with the definition of "cold shutdown".
John
~John Iannetta wrote,,, > ("During the past 11 months, you have been telling everyone the radioactive poisons being emitted from the 3 melted down reactor cores was relatively harmles.'
Nope, I never stated that.
'...You have claimed that we receive more radiation from cosmic rays, from natural radiation in our bodies, from the food and water we consume every day than any radiaton being released from the Fukushima disaster...
I've repeatedly said that it's all in the numbers. I'm quite sure that at present, any one living in mainland US receives a greater internal dose of ionizing radiation from the radium, potassium, lead, rubidium, and carbon in his body than from the Fukushima power plants. And any increase in external radiation above background would not be meaurable.
'How will cementing the ocean floor do anything to contain radiation being emitted every second from the three melted down reactor cores, when no one knows exactly where those three cores of molten, highly radioactive piles of lava are by now actually located?'
That's not the purpose of cementing the seabed.
' It is clearly obvious that Tepco officials are now admitting the three melted down cores are still emitting radioactive isotopes of deadly poisons into the atmosphere and ocean from the plant they declared in mid December to be in a "cold shutdown".status.'
Yes, that is consistent with the definition of "cold shutdown".
John
Could you repeat that John?
Gosh John, what a surprise that you say "excellent!" Let's see, have you posted here before about "excellent" things regarding the nuclear power industry? Why yes, how interesting, you regularly post with positive spin about nukes!
Excellent mess at Fukushima, wouldn't you say? Can you say monstrous disaster? Sure you can! Say the words John: "monstrous disaster." There! i knew you could!
Now that you've neuro-linguistically focused on the truth, you can catch yourself next time you knee-jerk with positive spin on the monstrous disaster.
No John, it's not "excellent." Paving the ocean floor is a doomed and idiotic act of desperation. Can you say "doomed and idiotic act of desperation?" i know you can!
webwalk wrote:
'No John, it's not "excellent." Paving the ocean floor is a doomed and idiotic act of desperation. Can you say "doomed and idiotic act of desperation?" i know you can!'
You don't agree that preventing the spread of radioactivity is a good idea? Whether it was done in desperation is quite irrelevant. At this stage of the game, the key word is containment.. Do you have a better idea?
John
"You don't agree that preventing the spread of radioactivity is a good idea?"
Ouch. 'When did you stop beating your wife?' Combining a strawman argument with a loaded question? Quite a talent, there.
The point is not that this is a bad idea under the circumstances. The point is that those circumstances occurred. The point is making sure they don't occur again. I'm sure you, me and webwalk all agree that preventing the spread of radioactivity is a good idea. Just not as good an idea as making sure you don't have to do so.
Hindsight? Nope. Nuclear power plants are being built around the world. Making the best of a bad job is often an attempt to disguise that it was always a bad job.
The comments on the linked "Japan Today" page are worth a look. I particularly liked "Could this just be another cover up by Tepco?"