The Chernobyl Prelude

Wreck of the K-431 Soviet nuclear submarine
that exploded on August 10, 1985

There is something sad but instructive in looking back to the early years of this century to learn which nuclear safety issues were of concern to researchers and policy makers in Japan. Instead of proper planning for earthquakes and tsunamis, or an overhaul of the corrupt Japanese nuclear regulatory system, there were worries over the hazards to Japan of Russia’s operating and decommissioning of Soviet era nuclear submarines in the Russian Far East. There were also studies on how much cesium from Chinese weapons tests was landing on Japanese soil.

Compared to what has befallen the country since 2011, these concerns seem quaint, even enviable. The cesium from Chinese weapons tests was miniscule compared to the levels we have to deal with now. It would be nice if the trace deposits from China were our biggest worry.

The concern over the Soviet submarines was more substantial. The Chazhma Bay (alternatively spelled Chasma) explosion of 1985, near Vladivostok, raised some alarming questions about the hazards posed by the Soviet fleet to Russia and countries nearby – North and South Korea, China, and Japan. Or, actually, it would have raised alarming questions if anyone had known about it.

Japan was so concerned about the danger by the late 1990s that it donated money and technical assistance after the fall of the Soviet Union, yet the 1985 accident remained largely unreported, even after 1993 when the Russian government released previously classified information about it.

In a scientific paper about the accident (Takano et al., 2001) authored by Japanese and Russian researchers, the authors concluded that the impact was mostly local. The paper was concerned with possible future accidents, similar to the actual accident that occurred in 1985, with emphasis on the possible effects on Japan if winds had blown in the opposite direction. It concluded, “… the radioactive material might be transported through the atmosphere to Japan in one to several days and might contaminate a wide area of Japan. However, the radiological dose to the area might not be significant.”

The severity of an accident would depend on whether fuel rods were new or old, and whether the Russian government would know or release information about the nuclear inventory involved in the accident. In the case of the 1985 accident, precise data was hard to determine because of Soviet secrecy. A 2003 paper about the accident (Sivintsev, 2003) asked in its title, “Was the Chazhma Accident a Chernobyl of the Far East?” and responded in the negative:

“It is shown that the emission of long-lived radioecologically significant radionuclides in Chazhma was approximately 0.79 Ci, while in the Chernobyl accident this emission was 90 MCi… These quantitative estimates are used to show that the Chazhma accident is not analogous to the 1986 accident in Chernobyl.”

Nonetheless, the accident was still horrific for those involved. Ten people died instantly in the explosive criticality incident and ensuing steam explosion, and 10 others had acute radiation exposure. In total, 290 cleanup workers had to live with the consequences of their exposure. Chernobyl was too big to be kept a secret, but the Chazhma accident was successfully covered up until 1993. In 1998, 205 responders were finally recognized as atomic veterans - equal to Chernobyl liquidators in rights to compensation. Ironically, their accident was overshadowed by Chernobyl happening only eight months later. The local environment was contaminated, both the surrounding hills and the bay. The remains of the submarine itself are still too hot to handle.

The accident illustrates in typical fashion the most unsettling thing about nuclear accidents. In spite of the utmost attempts to foresee problems and control complex systems, it is impossible to know all the complex ways complex systems can break down. In this case, the refueling operation was being done between the submarine and a ship parked alongside it. There had been some problems with the refueling, and these were tragically compounded by the fact that someone had forgotten to make sure that marine traffic in the area was stopped. A navy boat passed by, causing a large wake that disrupted the fuel transfer at a critical moment.

Chazhma Bay Accident Summary: ·           deaths: 10 ·           total radiation released: 259 PBq (Fukushima: 840 PBq)* ·           iodine 131 released: 29 GBq ·           workers exposed to radiation: 290 ·           workers who suffered acute radiation sickness: 10 ·           sediments of Chazhma Bay are 2,000 times more radioactive than before the accident ·           the K-431 submarine wreck continues to be a source of radiation ·           other submarine wrecks in the bay still emit radiation ·           the Dunai Peninsula is still heavily contaminated ·           runoff from the accident’s disposal site still leaks into the bay ·           saving grace: the fuel rods were new and contained almost no strontium or cesium isotopes source: IPPNW Poster Exhibition: Hibakusha Worldwide - Chazhma Bay, Russia International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War *This figure for Fukushima may not be accurate. No definitive methodology or tally for the catastrophe has been agreed upon by the scientific community. One reliable estimate was as study by the Norwegian Institute for Air Research that estimated two of the radionuclide releases as 16,700 PBq of short-lived xenon 133, and 36 PBq of long-lived cesium 137 – 42% of the cesium 137 released from Chernobyl. The total release would include data for many more radionuclides.

Unanswered questions:

The few studies on this accident that exist have nothing to tell about how widely the short-lived radionuclides were dispersed. The world learned about the Chernobyl accident from the staff at a Swedish nuclear reactor. They had picked up radiation outside their workplace and set off alarms when they entered it. The Chazma Bay accident begs the question of whether something similar happened at Japanese nuclear power plants. The paper by Takano et al. lists in the references a person by the name of Y. Murakami, and the reference is described as “Radiation monitoring at three TEPCO nuclear reactors facing the Sea of Japan in August 1985, Private Communication, July (2000).” Takano et al. claim that the wind direction, as usual in summer months, was away from Japan toward Russia, and this private communication confirmed that no spike in radiation levels was observed in August 1985. However, it is odd that an unidentified private communication is the best recorded evidence that these researchers could find. If TEPCO had the records, why could they not be made public?

Reading the paper by Takano et al. after the Fukushima catastrophe, it is easy to smile sardonically. In retrospect, we see that the scientific establishment was worried about Russian submarines when it faced the largest threat from its own nuclear power plants – an infrastructure for which everyone had far too much confidence and complacency. But the lesson for everyone in the world is that the next accident is never like the last accident. We need to expect what we least expect. Even if Japan restarts some of its nuclear power plants, the next major nuclear accident will probably happen somewhere else. I’m starting to wonder if it will be in China, Taiwan or South Korea and the winds will blow the fallout over Japan anyway. Japan seems to be destined in history to play a central role as nuclear victim. The only nuclear bombs used in war were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Castle Bravo tests in the Pacific contaminated the Japanese tuna fleet (and tuna catch), the Chazhma Bay accident may or may not have released a radioactive plume that drifted over Japan, and with Fukushima Daiichi Japan victimized itself.

Sources:

The Bellona Foundation. “What is the Committee for Veterans at Special Risk hiding?” October 29, 2007.

Commander Gregory D. Young, U.S. Navy (Retired) Russian Sub Casualties. Proceedings, April 2005.

IPPNW Poster Exhibition: Hibakusha Worldwide - Chazhma Bay, Russia. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.

Hideshi Fujiwara. “Atmospheric Deposition of Radioactive Cesium (137Cs) Associated with Dust Events in East Asia.” Bulletin of the National Institute of  Agro-Environmental Sciences. pp. 85 – 115. 2010.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan. Japan-Russian Federation Joint Efforts for Disarmament and Environmental Protection, Plan for Dismantling of Decommissioned Nuclear Submarines in the Far East Region. May 29, 1999.

Soviet Submarine K-431 Accident-August 10, 1985.

Soviet Submarine K-431 on Wikipedia.

Takano, Makoto, Vanya Romanova, Hiromi Yamazawa, Yuri Sivinitsev, Keith Compton, Vladimir Novikov, and Frank Parker. “Reactivity Accident of Nuclear Submarine Near Vladivostok.” Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology 38, no. 2. pp. 143-157. 2001.

Time magazine, worst nuclear accidents.

Yu. V. Sivintsev. “Was the Chazhma Accident a Chernobyl of the Far East?” Atomic Energy. June 2003, Volume 94, Issue 6, pp 421-427.

In Praise of Amateur Hour

Cocos Island, Guam.
A tourist resort now exists where US Navy sailors once
washed down their ships after taking part in nuclear weapons tests.

In 1905, the man who showed the world the theoretical possibility of the energy in matter (E=mc²) was a Swiss patent clerk who did physics as a hobby. Ninety years later, Mark Purdey was another science “amateur” who revealed some very interesting, additional features of atomic energy.

Purdey was a British cattle farmer who passed up a chance to attend university and instead chose to stay on the farm. Nonetheless, he had to become a self-educated scientist in order to question the logic behind the conventional views of what was causing brain wasting diseases in British cattle. His investigations led him to a sound theory that these conditions were not contagious or spread by feed, but were caused by imbalances of manganese and copper, which were ultimately caused by government imposed applications of drugs and pesticides.

One might, at this point, be tempted to dismiss him as an amateur obsessed with wild, speculative theories, but his ideas were taken seriously by many specialists in the field. Prince Charles lent him support, government officials listened, and reports in the mainstream media took him seriously. Even though he did not dislodge the reigning approach to managing brain wasting diseases, his theories still hold up and seem more plausible as we gain some un-panicked perspective on the 1990’s outbreak of Mad Cow Disease. 

Purdey's obituary in The Telegraph stated, “… his theory failed to withstand scientific scrutiny, a fact that Purdey himself could never bring himself to admit,” but the report also noted, contradicting itself, that it was not a failure to withstand scrutiny but a failure to gain funding for research. Support for proper testing of his hypothesis was abandoned while he suffered mysterious threats to his life and damages to his property. This suggests that the official line is again like the drunk who has lost his keys. The keys were lost in the dark somewhere, but he insists on looking only under the lamppost.

In 2003, Mark Purdey’s curiosity took him to Guam where he investigated another outbreak of neurological diseases. He was interested in anomalies that happened in unique times and places for unclear reasons. Since the 1950s, in one corner of Guam, the native people had been afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s and cancer at alarmingly high rates. Government studies had concluded that the problem was related to mineral deficiencies and a naturally toxic diet that consisted of too much fruit from the cycad tree. But this explanation didn’t make sense because the natives had been eating this food for centuries without knowing these diseases.

The scientists who did the official studies were unable to look up from their trenches toward disciplines that could have provided more plausible explanations. A simple regard for the recent history of the area was enough to point to a cause that a good investigator should have been aware of. After the nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands, over 100 navy ships came to Cocos Island, a small island just offshore from the south tip of Guam, to be scrubbed down and decontaminated.

Purdey examined the dead coral around the island and found it was highly contaminated with strontium 90, and other products of nuclear fission. Unfortunately, the native Chamorro people had a custom of grinding up coral and adding it to a chewable mixture of betel nut and papula leaves. He asked whether “… the Chamorros’ unwitting use of the radioactive coral with the betel could represent the most concentrated source of strontium 90 contamination that has ever been endured by the human race.” (In addition to the radiation, there is the officially acknowledged contamination of this small island with PCBs, but this was not the focus of Purdey’s research.)

The most interesting aspect of Purdey’s research is that he applied his knowledge of neurochemistry to raise questions about the effects of radiation that go beyond official research that admits only cancer as a health effect of radiation. Purdey presented an explanation of how the ingestion of radionuclides could affect not only DNA but also protein structures, and the disruption of protein structures are known to be the cause of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s – diseases which have clearly been on the rise since the dawn of the chemical and nuclear age.

The sad irony of Mark Purdey’s life is that in 2006 he died at age 52 from brain cancer, leaving the obvious question of whether he was exposed to carcinogens during his investigations of contaminated environments.

Cocos Island Resort

Mark Purdey’s report on Guam also contains an interesting observation about the Japanese tourists who come to the island. Throughout nuclear history, there are numerous examples of Japanese society running obliviously into the arms of the beast that struck them first in Hiroshima. After the Castle Bravo tests of 1954 irradiated fishermen and the tuna catch, Japan still went with nuclear power and the American light water reactor design that failed and poisoned northern Japan in 2011. In 2003, Purdey ironically observed, “I felt a chilly shiver down my spine as I watched the arrival of yet another boatload of ‘uninformed’ Japanese tourist girls onto the newly developed ‘Cocos Island Resort.’”

This brief summary can’t do justice to Purdey’s work. The links below lead to more information and his accounts of the scientific investigations he conducted during his career.

Read on…

Cocos Island Resort.

Recent evidence supporting Purdey's theory: 

Deloncle R, Guillard O, Bind JL, Delaval J, Fleury N, Mauco G, Lesage G. "Free radical generation of protease-resistant prion after substitution of manganese for copper in bovine brain homogenate." Neurotoxicology. May 2006; 27(3): 437-44.

Mark Purdey. Becquerels on the Brain.

Mark Purdey and Nigel Purdey. Animal Pharm: One Man's Struggle to Discover the Truth about Mad Cow Disease and Variant CJD. 2008.

Obituary in The Telegraph.

Recent research linking Parkinson's to pesticides applied to golf courses.

Charles Q. Choi. "Radiation May Accelerate Alzheimer's in Astronauts." Space.com. December 31, 2012.

Lifetime Dose

Depiction of a scene from
Voltaire's Candide (1759)

After the reactors in Fukushima exploded in March 2011, residents of the affected areas were advised to keep a journal recording, as best as they could remember, their movements and diet over the weeks just after the disaster. This would help them in the future if they developed health problems or wanted to make claims for compensation. This was an onerous task, but it was no doubt a necessary and excellent idea. In fact, it turns out that it might be a good idea for everyone to maintain such a journal over their lifetime.

Everyone alive today is getting exposed to radiation above what was once natural background – a term which may not mean what it used to because “natural” radon levels are confounded with the radon put into the air because of industrial activities. We live in the fallout from weapons testing and nuclear accidents, live near weapons factories and nuclear fuel processing sites, we spend long hours in airplanes, we get x-rays and other radiological medical procedures, and we face higher exposures to all of these if we are one of thousands of people classified as “radiation workers.”

Dr. Kristen Shrader-Frechette has made the case in a scientific journal for a national radiation dose registry (RDR) for American radiation workers. The number of workers classified as such would surprise most people:

“In Canada, whose population is one tenth that of the United States, there are more than 550,000 radiation workers in more than 80 occupations. These include not only nuclear workers (those employed in commercial nuclear-power generation or by those who build and test nuclear weapons) but also radiation workers who are employed in academic research, food processing, industrial imaging, weld-defect inspection, leak tracing, automobile-steel testing, mineral-deposits discovery, and so on. In Switzerland, radiation workers number 60,000; in South Korea, 65,000. In the United States, 1.5 million radiation workers are occupationally exposed to ionizing radiation each year. Of this number, 300,000 nuclear workers are employed in the commercial nuclear industry.” She adds further in her paper, “… no nation routinely measures cumulative radiation dose and risk from all sources and all exposure classes, even for high-exposure workers.”

Shrader-Frechette’s paper points out the deficiencies of present practices meant to control and track exposures only on the job, and only in limited time frames. A nuclear plant worker who is close to his annual limit for workplace exposure faces a dilemma if his doctor tells him he needs to have a whole-body computed tomography (CT) scan, with an exposure that might add 10 mSv to his workplace exposure. His health might be endangered, and this will put him over the limit, but as far as his employer is concerned, he can still work because the medical exposure is not counted. Incidental and unknown exposures will also not be counted. Not counted is time spent in airplanes at 30,000 feet, time spent in basements with high radon levels, time spent sitting beside people who have recently had radiation therapy, or the cumulative lifetime exposure from x-rays and medical scans.

This concern may sound alarmist and exaggerated, but considering the millions of people affected on and off the job, it would seem wise to apply the precautionary principle. No one can prove that radiation has not contributed to the increasing rates of cancer and endocrine and neurological disorders; whereas there are plenty of research findings that suggest it has been a factor. On both sides of this controversy there is no debate that radiation damages DNA, proteins and cell structures.

It is strange that Shrader-Frechette’s paper includes so many occupations as radiation workers but excludes medical personnel. In recent years, there have been numerous reports of radiological negligence by medical equipment manufacturers and technicians. Medical experts are also sounding the alarm about complacency and sloppiness in radiological treatments within medical institutions. It is common for insufficiently trained staff to be exposed without being aware of the hazards around them. (Supporting sources, with cited text have been placed at the end of this article).

   Someone who begins a nursing career today might want to keep one of those Fukushima journals, or even a dosimeter badge, in order to know twenty years later what her long-term exposure was.

This is not far-fetched because Shrader-Frechette concludes that the Radiation Dose Registry should be extended to “… include medical and occupational radiation exposures for the entire US population. At a fourth stage, all fallout, accident, consumer-product, and other exposures for the US population might be added.” 

Such is the state of radiation risk management in developed nations. In other parts of the world, radiation risks are often higher, but public awareness is non-existent and controls are utterly lacking. The French NGO CRIIAD (Commission de Recherche et d'Information Indépendantes sur la Radioactivité) reports this month on the appalling situation in Niger where French uranium mines have failed to stop radioactive scrap metals from being sold throughout the country or shipped overseas. The report states:

“The scrap metal is contaminated with heavy metal isotopes associated with uranium, such as uranium 238, thorium 230, radium 226, lead 210, and polonium 210. This results in an external irradiation of the population and a risk of internal contamination, depending on how the recycled scrap is used (domestic use is a possibility). Certain of these substances are particularly radiotoxic when ingested or inhaled. The contamination is long-term, considering the long half-life of uranium 238 (4.5 billion years) and radium 226 (1,600 years). The bad practices of Areva’s affiliated companies thus leads to an increased health risk to the population, and beyond to other groups in the event of sales to foreign countries.”

These uranium mines in Niger have had a long, difficult relationship with the locals. When Tom Zoellner was writing his book Uranium, his first attempt to visit the mines was stopped by an attempted attack on the bus he was on. It was then that he learned about the local rebel groups and their resentment about the pollution from the mines and their failure to bring economic development. Yet the French are utterly dependent on the mines for their energy supplies, just as they have other vital interests in Algeria and Mali that that they are being forced to protect quite robustly this year. If Voltaire were alive today he would say, “C’est à ce prix que vous vous chauffez de l’électricité en Europe.”

This scrap metal being resold overseas is a fitting illustration of reaping the whirlwind. The people in Niger handling this scrap may be much more deserving of a proper Radiation Dose Registry, but their dilemma also means that the scrap will go, for example, from Niger to China to your tissue containers or your child’s bicycle basket. 

And it’s worse than just a couple isolated cases Reported in GreenBiz.com: A Scripps Howard News Service investigation looked at NRC records and the current state of reporting on radioactive materials, turning up numerous flaws in the U.S.'s current system, and finding a wide range of cases in which radioactive materials and products were brought to the U.S. NRC records show 18,740 documented cases involving radioactive materials in consumer products, in metal intended for consumer products or other public exposure to radioactive material. The U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates there are some 500,000 unaccounted for radioactively contaminated metal objects in the U.S., and the NRC estimates that figure is around is 20 million pounds of contaminated waste. [emphasis added]

   All the more reason for everyone to start wondering about their lifetime cumulative dose of radiation.

Radiological Hazards for Patients and Medical Professionals Bryant Furlow. “How to Keep Radiation Therapy Safe for Patients.” Oncology Nurse Advisor. December 19, 2011: “For patients, unnecessary procedures (usually imaging procedures) and radiation dosing errors represent the bulk of risk from medical radiation, whereas incidental, unintended radiation exposure is the primary concern for nurses and other health care workers… Radiotherapeutic advances like intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), for example, allow escalated radiation dose delivery to tumors while minimizing irradiation of a patient’s healthy, nontarget tissue. However, these advances have come with increased risks when targeting errors occur, such as those caused by patient movement or improper patient setup. IMRT also requires complex three-dimensional (3-D) computed tomography (CT) planning examinations that may frequently involve unnecessarily high radiation doses. Combined with an upward trend in patient radiation doses over recent decades, and improved cancer patient survival times, such considerations raise troubling questions about medically unjustified radiation doses and secondary tumor risks…. Medically unnecessary CT scans are prescribed for up to 20 million American adults and 1 million children each year. A 2007 analysis concluded that up to 2% of cancers diagnosed in the United States may be attributable to CT examinations. The justification of any radiological imaging must always be scrutinized, particularly in pediatric cancer patients, for whom any radiation poses a larger lifetime risk for secondary cancer than for older cancer patients. The availability and sufficiency of alternative imaging modalities that do not involve ionizing radiation, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), should always be considered. Despite numerous calls for electronic medical records (EMRs) to include cumulative radiation dose information, only a handful of US hospitals and medical groups have adopted such systems to date.” Jane Kiah. “The Importance of Radiation Safety for Healthcare Workers as Well as Patients.” Cathlab Digest Volume 20, Issue 1. January 2012  About the author: RN, Director of Invasive Services, Baptist Cardiac & Vascular Institute, Miami, Florida; Program Director, Innovations in Cardiac and Vascular Care: Advanced Interventions for Nurses and Technologists, The International Symposium on Endovascular Therapy (ISET): “One of the root causes of excessive radiation exposure arises from the fact that many in the healthcare field who work with radiation have received only rudimentary radiation training. Whereas interventional radiologists are trained in the safe use of radiation, interventional cardiologists and vascular surgeons, for instance, typically receive minimal radiation training. Because they typically are unfamiliar with all of the sources of radiation exposure, they may know little about risk-reduction and safety strategies. Compounding the problem is that, while a radiologist’s key team member is a radiologic technologist (who also has received radiation safety training), an interventional cardiologist or vascular surgeon’s key team member may be a nurse, who likely has received little to no radiation safety training. That’s not to say that all radiologists employ best radiation safety practices, either. Despite their training, many of them have become complacent. Additionally, we often use far more radiation than necessary. In the United States, there is an increased emphasis on ensuring the highest quality images, which means more radiation. That’s not the case in Europe and Japan, where safety is more highly valued. The ideal dose is the least amount of radiation possible to produce an acceptable image. A good operator knows how to produce good images without excess radiation.”

Sources:

Bruno Chareyron (nuclear physics engineer) (editor). Almoustapha Alhacen, Anne Hollard. 1,600 Tons of Scrap Metals Missing from AREVA Facilities in Niger. Published by CRIIRAD, AGHIR IN MAN and AAM (Les Amis d’Aghirin’Man). January 17, 2013.

Kristin Shrader-Frechette. “Trimming Exposure Data, Putting Radiation Workers at Risk: Improving Disclosure and Consent Through a National Radiation Dose-Registry.” American Journal of Public Health 97, no. 10, 1782-1786. October 2007.

Jonathan Tirone and Andrew MacAskill. “Nuclear Risks at Bed, Bath & Beyond Show Dangers of Scrap.” Bloomberg News. March 20, 2012.

Hiroko Nakata. “Bridgestone to recall nearly 10,000 Jobno bicycles with radioactive baskets.” The Japan Times. April 20, 2012.

Tom Zoellner. Uranium: War, Energy and the Rock that Shaped the World. 2010.

Walt Bogdanich and Kristina Rebelo. “A Pinpoint Beam Strays Invisibly, Harming Instead of Healing.” The New York Times. December 28, 2010. 

C'est à ce prix que vous mangez du sucre en Europe.

It is at this price that you eat sugar in Europe.

Words of the black slave of Suriname in Voltaire’s Candide, chapter 19. 1759.

French nuclear regulator finds serious problems at La Hague

La Hague, France. Nuclear Waste Reprocessing Facility.
Would you be depressed if you worked in a plutonium factory?

Le Monde reports this week that the nuclear waste reprocessing center (plutonium factory) in La Hague has been ordered by the Autorité de sûreté nucléaire to cease some operations until several “serious gaps” in security are addressed. Several pieces of equipment, containing high levels of radioactivity, have not been handled properly. Pressurized containers of radioactive gas have not been properly secured, and fire safety violations were noted. In addition, the workforce has much higher rates of depression and suicide than the outside population – a problem that the regulator also identifies as a threat to the safety of operations.

The English language media doesn’t seem very interested in covering the French nuclear industry, so in case translations of the report don’t get picked up by British and American media, my translation is available below.

__________________________

Nuclear: The ASN (Autorité de sûreté nucléaire) again finds “serious gaps” at the facility in La Hague.

Le Monde. Agence France Presse.

January 29, 2013

It is the third time in less than a year: On January 28th, Areva’s nuclear waste reprocessing facility at La Hague was again ordered to halt operations. The ASN is demanding compliance with regulations regarding tens of pieces of equipment, of which some, it was stressed, contain very high levels of radioactivity.

The “gendarme du nucléaire” has discovered, from an inspection that began in early December, sixty pieces of equipment that are “nuclear pressurized,” meaning gases containing radionuclides stored above atmospheric pressure. These “could present a significant security risk,” noted the ASN. Among these pieces, some consist of confinement of radioactive substances and are susceptible, in case of failure, to lead to the release of radioactivity.

The ASN also found “serious gaps,” notably in documentation, which is the way to record the required verifications for this type of nuclear pressurized equipment. Areva has been given six months to conform with the demands made for six pieces of equipment that help to evaporate solutions, and twelve months for the others, according to AFP.

FIRES AND SUICIDES

Areva management explained this stoppage was due to “a delay in transmitting documents,” and it assured that it was in the process of rectifying the error by gathering the documents into a common source.

But this is not the first time that warnings have been given to the facility in La Hague – the site which concentrates the highest level of radioactivity in Europe. Already in April 2012, following a surprise inspection, the ASN halted operations and ordered the reinforcement of fire security. The “gendarme du nucléaire” (ASN) reported then “serious gaps in the measures taken to protect against the risk of fire” and a “lack of rigor in the application of provisions for limiting this risk and, in particular, a poor management of fire permits required by regulations” (fire permits notably being required for certain types of operations for maintenance or dismantling of facilities).

Five months later, in September, there was another stoppage ordered at La Hague. This time, the concern was the “rate of suicides” among workers at the facility – “three times higher than the average in the region (La Manche), which is itself higher than the national average.” The health officer at the site, where, according to AFP, 5,000 people work, was alarmed in 2011 over “the state of the mental health of the workforce” which “had degraded at an accelerated pace in two years.” This was estimated to be a risk factor “for the safety of the installation.”

WARNINGS

Another warning from the ASN to La Hague: In 2011, it indicated that the facility under-estimated the gravity of numerous incidents that had occurred on the site in the previous year. Further, in June 2012, following the nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima, the ASN cited the reprocessing facility, as it gave out hundreds of directives to all French nuclear installations. In the case of La Hague, it demanded the implementation of robust backup systems for spent fuel storage pools.

One month later, in July 2012, the ASN came back with another concern: it reminded Areva to take heed of predictable failures and reinforce the security of radioactive waste at La Hague. This applied to the storage of waste products accumulated during the operation of the first treatment facility, of which the most part “was left in an unfinalized state” representing “an insufficient level of security.”

DECOMMISSIONING

At the site in La Hague, two facilities have taken over from the old nuclear waste treatment facility, baptized UP2 400, which functioned from 1966 to 1998 and must now be decommissioned. This task is to employ 500 people at the height of operations and should achieve the treatment of 50,000 cubic meters of wastes. It is a long-term operation, much more important than the decommissioning of one reactor.

Areva recently estimated the cost at 4 billion euros over twenty-five years, according to the director of La Hague, Jean-Jacques Dreher. In 2010, Areva nonetheless announced a figure much lower: 2.5 billion euros. This estimation “didn’t include the cost of packaging the wastes, which means the most finalized storage of wastes,” explained Areva. In January 2012, the Court of Auditors announced, citing EDF (Electricité de France, the French electricity utility), an estimated cost of decommissioning for the 58 French reactors of about 18 billion euros. In this report, it included a figure, dated as of 2010, of 3.2 billion euros for the UP2 400.

The Perpetual Problem

According to Wired magazine this week, Renault-Nissan, Ford and Daimler are teaming up to bring cars to market within five years that will use standardized hydrogen fuel cell engineering. In the article, a spokesman for Daimler says, “We are convinced that fuel cell vehicles will play a central role for zero-emission mobility in the future.”

Zero emissions? An inquiring mind, and especially a good journalist, would want to stop there and raise some questions about this claim. Anyone who claims he has a zero-emissions energy technology might as well be claiming that he has invented a perpetual motion machine. The Associated Press and Huffington Post also ran this story with no serious questions asked about the "zero emissions" claim.

A simple internet search turns up the disappointing facts about hydrogen fuel cells. Hydrogen fuel is not a naturally occurring source of energy, so it can only be called a carrier of energy. Hydrogen fuel is made with inputs from various energy sources. Like a battery, it can store energy until it is needed, but the disadvantage is that it has a low energy value relative to storage size. Mass marketing of fuel cell cars is hindered by the lack of infrastructure and standards, not to mention that it does what batteries already do.

This trio of car makers believes that hydrogen fuel will be made from emissions-free energy sources like wind, solar and nuclear. However, the label doesn’t apply to any of these energy sources, especially nuclear.

Wind and solar require the use of fossil fuels in their manufacture, and they are made with materials mined from the earth, some of which are associated with serious environmental effects. Furthermore, there could never be enough of wind and solar energy to meet transport needs. The earth has limited surface area available to catch the wind and sun. The biggest criticism of them now is that they cannot replace the present need for electricity, especially base load electricity that needs to be constant, so it is inconceivable that they could generate enough hydrogen to make a difference in transportation. Even if the plan is to create the hydrogen fuel during off-peak hours when generators have to run at high output (because they can't just be turned off for eight hours), there is no reason to think that this stored energy wouldn't be better used to equalize the present difference between peak and off-peak demand for electricity. The hydrogen fuel, converted from wind and solar, could first be used to replace electricity that used to be generated with coal, oil, gas and nuclear, but it is doubtful there would be much left over to shift transportation from carbon fuels to "emissions-free" fuel.    

Some in the nuclear industry dream of creating hydrogen fuel with nuclear power plants, but nuclear has huge inputs of fossil fuel energy throughout the cycle from mining, processing, enrichment (very energy and, by some methods, CFC gas intensive), delivery, power plant construction and decommissioning, and finally storage and transport of spent fuel. This expensive and energy intensive energy source could never expand enough to seriously offset the carbon fuels consumed in transportation.

If auto companies are really going to spend billions developing fuel cell cars, it might be purely for public relations purposes. Fuel cells could be only the next gimmick to make consumers feel good about maintaining energy-intensive lifestyles. They will be the next hoola hoop - a fashionable token of environmental consciousness.

Which brings me to my point: to recommend the excellent essay called The Hoola Hoop Theory of History by Morris Berman. He articulated an insight I’ve been coming around to as I’ve watched Japanese society react to its nuclear crisis, and the entire world react to the undeniable reality of climate change. Humanity does not stop disasters. Disasters stop humanity. We won’t stop until we’ve steam-cleaned every drop of oil out of the Alberta Tar sands, fracked all the gas from under our aquifers, and distilled every atom of uranium out of our gardens. If Florida and Bangladesh are underwater, and Paris is radioactive, the rest of us will just adjust and carry on in other places as long as we can. One can hold onto a sliver of hope - because a different path can be imagined - but there is scant evidence that we are ready to take it.

An excerpt from The Hoola Hoop Theory of History:

“I recall attending a conference on postmodernism in the 1990s and being struck by how similar the lectures were, in form, to those of Communist Party members of the 1930s. The ‘holy names’ were different – one cited de Man and Derrida instead of Marx and Lenin – but the glazed eyes and the mantra-like repetition of politically approved phrases were very much the same. Truth be told, I have observed the same hypnotic behavior at all types of academic conferences, from feminism to computer science. You watch, you listen, and you wonder: When will we finally wake up? And you know the horrible truth: never. In effect, we shall continue to erect statues to Napoleon, but never, or rarely, to Montaigne. This much is clear… We will not escape the ravages of climate change; we shall not avoid the economic and ecological disasters that are integral to global capitalism; not be able to avert an oil crisis, an energy crisis, or a food and water crisis that will become extreme when the world population finally arrives at 10 or 11 billion, by mid-century. These things are not going to be resolved by reason, by the neocortex, no matter how many articles are published on these subjects in learned journals or popular magazines. And they certainly can’t be resolved by the limbic brain, whose function is indulgence, not restraint. Hence, it is a fair guess that we shall start doing things differently only when there is no other choice; and even then, we shall undoubtedly cast our efforts in the form of a shiny new and improved hula hoop, the belief system that will finally be the true one, after all of those false starts; the one we should have been following all along. What to call it? Catastrophism, perhaps. You can consider this the founding document.”

The Hula Hoop Theory of History

by MORRIS BERMAN

Counterpunch

January 13, 2013

Nuclear Security

Recent analyses of the nuclear standoff with Iran illustrate why nuclear powers are so desperate to prevent other states from gaining nuclear weapons, and why some countries are so desperate to develop a nuclear weapons program. Once the facilities are operational, they are the best deterrent from attack. Nuclear capability deters not only by the threat of retaliation, but perhaps more effectively by the threat of a radiological catastrophe that would cause attackers to be accused of humanitarian and environmental crimes. The same reasoning applies to spent fuel storage at the “peaceful” nuclear sites called power plants, but for some reason this risk produces no scaremongering headlines. As tensions between China and Japan heat up, these would-be aggressors need to step back and remember that a future war would be of a very different nature than the last one.

In the case of Iran, even if a nuclear capability could be removed by brief aerial bombardment (as if such pre-emption could be rationalized by existing nuclear states), as some in Israel like to believe, no nation should want to be responsible for the radiological calamity it would unleash. This may be the reason that there has not been and, hopefully, will not be an attack on Iran.

Khosrow B. Semnani, a physicist, industrialist and philanthropist based in the US, and no apologist for the regime in Iran, writes at Nucleargamble.org:

·      A military attack against nuclear facilities of any state necessarily poses grave radiological risks to tens of thousands of innocent civilians and soldiers, especially citizens who lack the necessary preparation or information to protect themselves.

·      In evaluating the consequences of military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities it is worth remembering the results of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that lead to the evacuation of 100,000 people, and loss of 10,000 square kilometers (3,861 square miles) of agricultural land.

·      Our assessment of the Iranian situation takes into account the poor record of Iranian government in cases of emergencies and natural disasters. Lack of planning, preparation, prevention and intervention due to significant underfunding can mean that the death toll from a strike against an Iranian nuclear site might be 100 to 1,000 times greater than necessary

·      The study examined the Gilan accident and the inability of the Iranian regime to cope with radiation-related sickness. The government was not able to treat its scientists and workers in timely fashion, and was forced to send many of them abroad for medical treatment.

Some of the commentary around this issue has gone on to say that Iran has cynically placed nuclear labs and factories close to cities as a way of taking its own citizens hostage. This is an interesting assertion that would amuse the residents of Denver, and of other such cities within the big five nuclear powers, who lived for decades in proximity to nuclear weapons facilities.

This would be a good time sit back and to listen to Randy Newman singing his Cold War satire Political Science. Let’s hope that certain actors on the scene today don’t give into a infantile, paranoid and fatalistic attitude of “they-all-hate-us-anyhow.”

Political Science

by Randy Newman

album: Sail Away, 1972

No one likes us-I don't know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let's drop the big one and see what happens

We give them money-but are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful and they're hateful
They don't respect us-so let's surprise them
We'll drop the big one and pulverize them

Asia's crowded and Europe's too old
Africa is far too hot
And Canada's too cold
And South America stole our name
Let's drop the big one
There'll be no one left to blame us

We'll save Australia
Don't wanna hurt no kangaroo
We'll build an All American amusement park there
They got surfin', too

Boom goes London and boom Paree
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it will be
We'll set everybody free
You'll wear a Japanese kimono
And there'll be Italian shoes for me

They all hate us anyhow
So let's drop the big one now
Let's drop the big one now

The Yin and Yang of Nuclear Energy

A recent letter in The Japan Times complained that opponents of nuclear power always conflate good nuclear power (electricity) with bad nuclear power (bombs). This blog is guilty as charged, and it’s a valid question to ask, but unfortunately, there are some very good reasons why you can’t have your yin without your yang. Seriously, viewing the photo above of the Fukushim Dai-ichi Unit 3 detonation, who wouldn’t be terrified by both the civilian and military uses of nuclear energy?

To understand why the two co-exist requires a look at the origins of nuclear energy. The history shows that during the days of discovery, no one had the faintest thought of using nuclear fission to boil water, even though it wasn’t too hard to imagine how the chain reaction could be moderated. The history also shows that a vast, expensive infrastructure for building weapons had to exist before nuclear power plants were built – mostly as an afterthought justification for having made the weapons complex.

Consider how hard it has been to get modern civilization off its addiction to fossil fuels. There has been no transformative, massive investment in renewable energy, and the likely reason is that it has no potential for massively destructive weapons that would change the balance of power in the world.

Imagine that the discovery of fission had happened during peacetime. Instead of Einstein writing a letter to President Roosevelt warning that the Germans might build a terrible new weapon, he would have been asking for government subsidies for a new kind of energy that some friends were trying to launch in a start-up company. He would have explained that a multibillion-dollar infrastructure was needed to set up the mining, processing and power stations. Massive fossil fuel-burning generating stations would be needed to run the enrichment facilities. The outcome would be uncertain, and the details worked out along the way. Oh, and by the way, devastating military applications would be possible, but a system of global surveillance could ensure that no nation ever submitted to the temptation to make such a weapon. Furthermore, the used fuel would be the most toxic thing ever known, and potentially a weapon of mass destruction. A way to dispose of it would have to be worked out. Devastating accidents could happen that would have catastrophic effects on populations and food supplies. We don’t yet understand what this stuff does to living tissue, but it’s just a matter of control. What do you think? This could be the way of the future.

The opinion you have about to this speculation depends on your theory of human nature. No one can say what would happen in this alternate reality, but my conclusion is that there is no leader now or ever who would have supported this start-up. The likely response would have been, “Spare me the science fiction nonsense, but tell me more about the weapons.” As it was, the most Einstein ever said about making electricity from nuclear energy was that it was “one hell of a way to boil water.”

Another interesting speculative question is whether any nation would have built nuclear infrastructure if the implications had been thoroughly discussed and put to a vote. The Manhattan Project was carried out in secrecy under the leadership of General Leslie Groves, without the knowledge of Congress, and $2 billion was spent on a massive system of laboratories, mines, factories and enrichment facilities. The political leaders didn’t understand the science or the health dangers, and the scientists naively believed the bomb would be used to deter a Nazi nuclear attack. They were shocked, shocked to realize that the $2-billion bomb would have to be used to justify its cost and to make a show of strength to the Soviets.

The American public has always excused this Manhattan Project secrecy as a necessity of the war, but nonetheless it was one massive blank check that wasn’t really essential. The Americans quickly realized that enormous generating stations and industrial plants were required, not to mention access to lots of uranium ore, and the USSR, Germany and Japan all lacked the prerequisites, under the conditions that existed from 1943-45. America was the only country that had the capacity. By the spring of 1945, Germany had surrendered and General Groves was worried that Japan would be done too before “the gadget” was ready. The outcome of the war would not have been much different without the bomb.

Few historians believe anymore that the atomic bombs were essential to end the war. There was no CNN in those days, so most of Japan barely knew anything had happened. The generals in Tokyo had heard only vague reports of a terrifying new kind of weapon, but they didn’t know enough about it to be scared of it, and they certainly didn’t care about the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was just two more bombed out cities after all the others that had been bombed by conventional methods.

After the Nagasaki bomb the generals still wanted to fight on, and if they had had a chance to call a bluff and see if the Americans would drop another one, they would have found out that there weren’t any more. (The Bikini Islanders still had 11 months to enjoy their homeland before the next bomb was ready for them.) The surrender happened only because some cabinet members were able to get around the military leadership, sneak the recording of the Emperor’s speech out of the palace, and get it on the radio. According to historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, what really got the political leadership to surrender was the entry of the USSR into the war in August 1945. They concluded, predictably, that going with the capitalists would be the lesser of two evils.

As late as 1995 (and still now for a large segment of the population), this was still a wild, revisionist theory in America. A proposed exhibit at the Smithsonian, commemorating the 50th. anniversary of the atomic bombings, was to present a contextualized, multifaceted approach to the interpretation of the history, but political opposition shut it down. It was offensive to veterans to suggest that factors beside the bombs had an influence in ending the war.

The standard defense is that the bombings were justified because they eliminated the necessity of a land invasion in which hundreds of thousands would die. Some even suggested there would have been a million American casualties. The trouble with this reasoning is that it ignores an obvious possibility: pack up and go home if you don’t want to invade. The war was already over. Japan could no longer wage war outside its territories, it could not have held on to Korea and Taiwan, and it was under blockade. The threat of Soviet invasion would have made Japan come begging for an American occupation, which is basically what really motivated the actual surrender. 

   Thus the atomic bombings were a sideshow, but a nice demonstration of American power to usher in the post-war world. The entire Manhattan Project seems like a series of events that spun out of control and went beyond any outcome that anyone imagined at the outset. It expanded like as a headless monster, and the mission creep has continued all the way to Fukushima and the present nuclear standoff with Iran.

Colonel: What’s that you’ve got written on your helmet? Private Joker: ‘Born to Kill’, Sir. Colonel: You write ‘Born to Kill’ on your helmet and you wear a peace button. What’s that supposed to be, some sick joke?... Private Joker: I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir. Colonel: The what? Private Joker: The duality of man. You know – the Jungian thing, sir. Stanley Kubrick (dir.) Full Metal Jacket. 1987

There are problems with speculating about how things might have happened under different circumstances, but it is worthwhile to run such thought experiments. I find it hard to believe that humanity would have first tried to harness nuclear energy for anything other than weapons. The struggle to establish renewable energy has shown that the fossil fuel paradigm would not allow itself to be threatened by such a novel, risky and expensive undertaking as nuclear power, which requires energy inputs from fossil fuels in any case. Using nuclear energy to produce electricity was a side-benefit promoted to soften the criticism of the nuclear arms race and ease the conscience of the scientists who had contributed to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and it was made affordable only by the pre-existing infrastructure for weapons. Once nuclear power plants exist, they are all plutonium factories that add to the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation and fill the world with nuclear waste for which there is still no disposal solution. We could imagine a world with nuclear weapons and no nuclear power plants, but not vice versa.

______________

The secret revealed in August 1945 shouldn't be considered to have been a total a surprise at the time. News headlines from 1939-43 (below) told the world about the coming nuclear age, and a Scientific American issue from 1939 (excerpted below the table) recounted the discovery of uranium fission by Otto Hahn in December, 1938. The article explicitly describes the possibility of developing a new kind of weaponry.

Articles about Uranium Fission Reported in The New York Times before Manhattan Project Censorship took hold completely:

·      Vast Energy Freed by Uranium Atom; Split, It Produces 2 'Cannonballs,' Each of 100,000,000 Electron Volts Hailed as Epoch Making, New Process, Announced at Columbia, Uses Only 1-30 Volt to Liberate Big Force. Jan. 31, 1939. ·      The Week in Science; When Uranium Splits Doubtful Source of Power Cancer and X-Rays Neutron Possibilities News Notes. March 5, 1939. ·      Vision Earth Rocked by Isotope Blast; Scientists Say Bit of Uranium Could Wreck New York. April 30, 1939. ·      Release Largest Store Known on Earth A ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ When Separated in Pure Form It Can Yield 235 Billion Volts Per Atom of Its Own. May 5, 1939. ·      New Key is Found to Atomic Energy; Actino-Uranium Is Credited With Power to A Mixture of Physics and Fantasy. March 17, 1940. ·   Vast Power Source in Atomic Energy Opened by Science; Report on New Source of Power. May 5, 1940. ·      Third Way to Split Atom Is Found By Halving Uranium and Thorium; Scientists at University of California Say Cleavage Creates Much Energy -- Tokyo Men Also Report Uranium Fission. March 3, 1941. ·      Scientist Reaches London; Dr. N.H.D. Bohr, Dane, Has a New Atomic Blast Invention. October 9, 1943. ·      Research Institute is Seized in Denmark; Germans Are Expected to Work on New Secret Weapon. December 12, 1943. (List of references made by Korean Minjok Leadership Academy)

Jean Harrington. "Splitting the Atom." Scientific American. October 1939:

 

“These secondary neutrons constitute a fresh supply of ‘bullets’ to produce new fissions. Thus we are faced with a vicious circle, with one explosion setting off another, and energy being continuously and cumulatively released. It is probable that a sufficiently large mass of uranium would be explosive if its atoms once got well started dividing. As a matter of fact, the scientists are pretty nervous over the dangerous forces they are unleashing, and are hurriedly devising means to control them.

It may or may not be significant that, since early spring, no accounts of research on nuclear fission have been heard from Germany — not even from discoverer Hahn. It is not unlikely that the German government, spotting a potentially powerful weapon of war, has imposed military secrecy on all recent German investigations. A large concentration of isotope 235, subjected to neutron bombardment, might conceivably blow up all London or Paris.”

Other sources:

“First Atomic Bomb Dropped on Japan; Missile Is Equal to 20,000 Tons of TNT; Truman Warns Foe of a ‘Rain of Ruin.’” The New York Times. August 6, 1945.

Philip Nobile (ed.). Judgment at the Smithsonian: The Uncensored Script of the Smithsonian’s 50th Anniversary Exhibit of the Enola Gay. Marlowe and Co.1995.
The Pacific War Research Society. Japan’s Longest Day. Kodansha. 1968.
Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2006.
Ward Wilson. “The Myth of Nuclear Necessity.” The New York Times. January 13, 2013.

from sources posted on Wikipedia: Debate over the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

After the war, Admiral Soemu Toyoda said, "I believe the Russian participation in the war against Japan rather than the atom bombs did more to hasten the surrender." (John Toland, The Rising Sun, Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2003, p.807) Prime Minister Suzuki also declared that the entry of the USSR into the war made "the continuance of the war impossible." (Edward Bunting, World War II Day by Day. Dorling Kindersley Limited, 2001, p.652) Upon hearing news of the event from Foreign Minister Togo, Suzuki immediately said, "Let us end the war", and agreed to finally convene an emergency meeting of the Supreme Council with that aim. The official British history, The War Against Japan, also writes the Soviet declaration of war "brought home to all members of the Supreme Council the realization that the last hope of a negotiated peace had gone and there was no alternative but to accept the Allied terms sooner or later."