People's Alliance For Clean Energy

Harvey Wasserman

We may yet lose Tokyo….not to mention Alaska…and now Georgia, too
February 10, 2012

As the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves a construction/operating
license for two new reactors in Georgia, alarming reports from Japan
indicate the Fukushima catastrophe is far from over.

Thousands of tons of intensely radioactive spent fuel are still in
serious jeopardy. Radioactive trash and water are spewing into the
environment. And nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen reports that during
the string of disasters following March 11, 2011′s earthquake and
tsunami, Fukushima 1′s containment cap may actually have lifted off
its base, releasing dangerously radioactive gasses and opening a gap
for an ensuing hydrogen explosion.

There are some two dozen of these Mark I-style containments currently
in place in the US.

Newly released secret email from the NRC also shows its Commissioners
were in the dark about much of what was happening during the early
hours of the Fukushima disaster. They worried that Tokyo might have to
be evacuated, and that airborne radiation spewing across the Pacific
could seriously contaminate Alaska.

Reactor pushers have welcomed the NRC’s approval of the new
Westinghouse AP-1000 design for Georgia’s Vogtle. Two reactors operate
there now, and the two newly approved ones are being funded with $8.3
billion in federally guaranteed loans and state-based rate hikes
levied in advance of the reactors’ being completed.

NRC Chair Gregory Jazcko made the sole no vote on the Vogtle license,
warning that the proposed time frame would not allow lessons from
Fukushima to be incorporated into the reactors’ design.

The four Commissioners voting to approve have attacked Jaszco in front
of Congress for his “management style,” but this vote indicates the
problem is certainly more rooted in attitudes toward reactor safety.

The approval is the first for a new construction project since 1978.
The debate leading up to it stretched out for years. Among other
things, the Commission raised questions about whether the AP1000 can
withstand earthquakes and other natural disasters. Even now the final
plans are not entirely complete. Only two other US reactors—in
neighboring South Carolina—are even in the pre-construction phase.
As in Georgia, South Carolina consumers are being forced to pay for
the reactors as they are being built. Should they not be completed, or
suffer disaster once they are, the state’s ratepayers will be on the
hook.

The industry is heralding the Vogtle approval as a major boon to the
“Nuclear Renaissance.” But it comes alongside the announcement that
all 17 reactors owned by the Tokyo Electric Company are shut, as are
all but two of Japan’s 50-plus nukes.

Germany has decided to shut all its nukes by 2022. New reactor
financing in Great Britain is under legal attack, as it is in Florida.
India has announced that in 2011 it led the world in new green energy
projects. China has yet to make its future nuclear commitments clear
in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. And no American utility is
readily available to follow in Vogtle’s path, with operating reactors
in Vermont and New York’s Indian Point under fierce governmental
attack. Florida’s Crystal River is beset by huge bills for faulty
repair work, and may be headed for permanent shutdown. Both currently
licensed reactors at California’s San Onofre are closed following
radioactive leaks, and a disturbing pattern of tube holes in newly
installed steam generators has surfaced at a number of reactors across
the US.

But the biggest shock waves this week were caused by Tama University
Professor Hiroshi Tasaka, a key advisor to Prime Minister Naoto Kan
during the Fukushima disaster.

Warning that Fukushima is “far from over,” Tasaka said official
assurances of the complex’s alleged safety were based on “groundless
optimism.” Tasaka cited more than 1500 fuel rods dangerously exposed
to the open atmosphere at Unit Four alone. The waste problem has gone
nationwide, he said in a newly published book, as “the storage
capacities of the spent fuel pools at the nation’s nuclear power
plants are reaching their limits,”

Tasaka’s statements came as a new temperature spike unexpectedly stuck
Fukushina Unit Two. For reasons not yet clear, heat releases in excess
of 158 degrees Farenheit spewed from the core, prompting Tokyo
Electric to pump in more water and boric acid meant to damp down an
apparently on-going chain reaction. Prof. Tasaka and others warn that
this in turn will contribute to spreading still more radiation into
the water table and oceans.

With bitter debate raging in Japan, the US and elsewhere over the
killing power of Fukushima’s emissions, the certification of a new US
reactor design may someday be remembered as a bizarre epitaph for the
20th century’s most expensive failed technology.

Without state ratepayers and federal taxpayers being forced to foot
the bill, new reactor construction in the US is going nowhere.

And without a final resolution to the on-going horrors at Fukushima,
the entire planet, from Tokyo to Alaska to Georgia and beyond, remains
at serious radioactive risk.

–
Harvey Wasserman edits www.nukefree.org. His SOLARTOPIA! OUR
GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.solartopia.org. The Solartopia Green
Power & Wellness Show airs at www.progressiveradionetwork.com.