The Japan National Press Club hosts Arnie Gundersen. Over 80 journalists were present where questions were asked regarding the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi and the ongoing risks associated with the GE Mark 1 BWR nuclear reactors.
Fairewinds shows that the nuclear industry's plan to vent the containment at Fukushima Daiichi could not have prevented a containment failure and the ensuing explosions. Look at the graphics from the containment stress tests conducted more than 40 years ago at a US nuclear reactor identical to Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1. This video and its graphics provide important clues about why Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 exploded.
Fairewinds analyzes cancer rates for young children near Fukushima using the National Academy of Science's BEIR (Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation) VII Report. Based on BEIR VII, Fairewinds determines that at least one in every 100 young girls will develop cancer for every year they are exposed to 20 millisieverts [millisievert (1 mSv = 0.001 Sv)] of radiation. The 20-millisievert/ year figure is what the Japanese government is currently calculating as the legal limit of radiological exposure to allow habitation of contaminated areas near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. In this video, Fairewinds introduces additional analysis by Ian Goddard showing that the BEIR VII report underestimates the true cancer rates to young children living near Fukushima Daiichi. Looking at the scientific data presented by Mr. Goddard, Fairewinds has determined that at least one out of every 20 young girls (5%) living in an area where the radiological exposure is 20 millisieverts for five years will develop cancer in their lifetime.
Is the Japanese government and the IAEA protecting the nuclear industry and not the people of Japan by claiming that Fukushima is stable when it is not? Fairewinds’ chief engineer Arnie Gundersen outlines major inconsistencies and double-speak by the IAEA, Japanese Government, and TEPCO claiming that the Fukushima accident is over. Dynamic versus static equilibrium, escalated dose exposures to the Japanese children and nuclear workers, and the blending of radioactive materials with non-contaminated material and spreading this contaminated ash throughout Japan are only a small part of this ongoing nuclear tragedy.
Fairewinds' Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen discusses whether the accidents at Fukushima were a meltdown, a melt-through, or a China Syndrome. Whatever the accidents are named, thousands of tons of water contaminated with plutonium, uranium, and other very toxic radioactive isotopes are flooding the site, the surrounding water table, and the ocean.
A professional video of Marco Kaltofen's presentation to the American Public Health Association was recently made available to Fairewinds. Kaltofen states that hot particles are contaminating portions of northern Japan. He also states that auto air filters from Fukushima, that he tested in his Massachusetts laboratory, are so radioactive that they have to be disposed of in a buried radioactive waste disposal site in the US. Additionally, he expresses concerns for the mechanics who work on cars in Fukushima Prefecture.
TEPCO recently discovered hydrogen buildups within the containment buildings in Fukushima Units 1, 2 and 3. Could there be another explosion, and if so how? Fairewinds conducts a laboratory experiment to show that if oxygen is present with hydrogen in a nuclear power containment, a deflagration explosion might occur.
Fairewinds was retained by the AP1000 Oversight Group to evaluate the AP1000 design for flaws that are now evident as a result of the nuclear accidents at Fukushima. The NRC’s refusal to thoroughly examine these flaws is reminiscent of the Atomic Energy Commission’s refusal in 1972 to thoroughly examine the innate flaws in the GE Mark 1 containment systems that failed at Fukushima. The AP1000 Oversight Group is demanding that these design flaws be remedied prior to design certification, lest history repeat itself.
Washington, DC - October 31, 2011 – Today Scientist Marco Kaltofen of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) presented his analysis of radioactive isotopic releases from the Fukushima accidents at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA). Mr. Kaltofen’s analysis confirms the detection of hot particles in the US and the extensive airborne and ground contamination in northern Japan due to the four nuclear power plant accidents at TEPCO’s Fukushima reactors. Fairewinds believes that this is a personal health issue in Japan and a public health issue in the United States and Canada.
Fairewinds' Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen testifies to the NRC Petition Review Board detailing why the 23 BWR Mark 1 nuclear power plants should be shut down following the accidents at Fukushima. True wisdom means knowing when to modify something and knowing when to stop. Sometimes, all the King’s horses and all the King’s men should not try to put Humpty Dumpty together again.
Analysis of new Fukushima 3 photographs released last week by TEPCO substantiate Fairewinds’ claim that explosion of Unit 3 began over the spent fuel pool. Fairewinds believes that significant damage has also occurred to the containment system of Fukushima Unit 3, and that the two events (fuel pool explosion and containment breach) did not occur simultaneously. Video also includes brief discussion of tent system being constructed over Fukushima Unit 1.
Fairewinds Presentation to the San Clemente City Council
Fairewinds chief engineer Arnie Gundersen discusses three nuclear safety problems uncovered during the Fukushima accident that nuclear regulators and the nuclear industry wish they could ignore. Why isn't the industry designing nuclear plants to withstand the worst natural events? Why aren't nuclear regulators, governments, and citizens who live and work near a nuclear plant prepared for a nuclear accident? How much does the NRC value human life? Finally, Fairewinds' Gundersen concludes that the NRC is not implementing adequate safety changes because the NRC believes that a serious accident is impossible.
Fairewinds disagrees with a recent New York Times Opinion that claims that Fukushima was caused because Japanese regulators did not properly oversee Tokyo Electric. Fairewinds shows that in the United States, the same cozy relationship exists between the NRC and the nuclear industry. Proper regulation of nuclear power has been coopted worldwide by industry refusal to implement the cost to assure nuclear safety.
Gundersen expresses concerns that the nuclear industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are not addressing major safety issues that have become evident since Fukushima. These issues include serious design flaws in the BWR Mark 1 containment, fundamental flaws in the Boiling Water Reactor vessel design, and problems with detonation shockwaves. The NRC and the nuclear industry are using a flawed cost benefit computer code that underestimates the value of human life and minimize property damages after an accident, which has the effect of justifying continued operation of reactors without safety modifications.
Also, Fairewinds announces the launch of the Japanese language version of its site, Fairewinds.jp.
New TEPCO data measured on August 19 & 20 shows severe damage to the spent fuel in Fukushima Daiichi Units 1, 2, and 3. The adjacent TEPCO table posted on the front page shows incredibly high levels of Cesium 137 and Cesium 134 in all three spent fuel pools of Units 1, 2, & 3. This TEPCO data clearly contradicts and refutes the July assertion by the NRC the Fukushima Daiichi spent fuel pools were not damaged in this tragic accident. Crytome (cry to me) has a new high resolution photo, also uploaded, that shows the extensive damage of the Unit 3 spent fuel pool and the reactor building. Check it out.
New TEPCO data measured on August 19 & 20 shows severe damage to the spent fuel in Fukushima Daiichi Units 1, 2, and 3. The adjacent TEPCO table posted on the front page shows incredibly high levels of Cesium 137 and Cesium 134 in all three spent fuel pools of Units 1, 2, & 3. This TEPCO data clearly contradicts and refutes the July assertion by the NRC the Fukushima Daiichi spent fuel pools were not damaged in this tragic accident. Crytome (cry to me) has a new high resolution photo, also uploaded, that shows the extensive damage of the Unit 3 spent fuel pool and the reactor building. Check it out.
Newly released neutron data from three University of California San Diego scientists confirms Fairewinds' April analysis that the nuclear core at Fukushima Daiichi turned on and off after TEPCO claimed its reactors had been shutdown. This periodic nuclear chain reaction (inadvertent criticality) continued to contaminate the surrounding environment and upper atmosphere with large doses of radioactivity.
In a second area of concern, Fairewinds disagrees the NRC's latest report claiming that all Fukushima spent fuel pools had no problems following the earthquake. In a new revelation, the NRC claims that the plutonium found more than 1 mile offsite actually came from inside the nuclear reactors. If such a statement were true, it indicates that the nuclear power plant containments failed and were breached with debris landing far from the power plants themselves. Such a failure of the containment system certainly necessitates a complete review of all US reactor containment design and industry assurances that containments will hold in radioactivity in the event of a nuclear accident. The evidence Fairewinds reviewed to date continues to support its April analysis that the detonation in the Unit 3 Spent Fuel pool was the cause of plutonium found off site.
Third, the burning of radioactive materials (building materials, trees, lawn grass, rice straw) by the Japanese government will cause radioactive Cesium to spread even further into areas within Japan that have been previously clean, and across the Pacific Ocean to North America.
And finally, the Japanese government has yet to grasp the severity of the contamination within Japan, and therefore has not developed a coherent plan mitigate the accident and remediate the environment. Without a cohesive plan to deal with this ongoing problem of large scale radioactive contamination, the radioactivity will continue to spread throughout Japan and around the globe further exacerbating the problem and raising costs astronomically.
Today the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and Fairewinds Associates issued a report to the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority regarding numerous concerns with the Bellefonte Unit 1 nuclear project. First designed with slide rules back in 1968, Bellefonte Unit 1 is America's oldest nuclear power plant that has yet to generate any electricity. TVA began construction in 1974, mothballed the plant in 1988, and cannibalized the plant for scrap metal between 2006 and 2008. Alarmingly, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently allowed construction of Bellefonte Unit 1 by TVA to start again with its 1968 design and its 40-year old weakened foundation and containment. In the video and in its report, Fairewinds identifies seven areas of substantial risk for TVA if it continues to construct this aged facility.
TEPCO has discovered locations on the Fukushima plant site with lethal levels of external gamma radiation. Fairewinds takes a close look at how this radiation might have been deposited and how similar radioactive material would have been released offsite.
Included in this presentation and PowerPoint is a discussion of how nuclear power plants work, how to cool a reactor during an accident, the effect of hot particles when inhaled, and concerns involving the long-term storage of nuclear waste. This presentation took place at the Nuclear Power Conference held at the University of Vermont July 23, 2011.
While many radioactive cattle have been discovered large distances from Fukushima, what is more important is where their feed is coming from. "It's not only about the radioactive cattle in Fukushima Prefecture; its also about the radioactive straw the cattle eat that was grown elsewhere". Straw found 45 miles from Fukushima is highly contaminated with radioactive cesium, which is an indication that radiation has contaminated large portions of Northern Japan. More than half a million disintegrations per second in a kilogram of straw are comparable to Chernobyl levels. This proves that the American Nuclear Regulatory Commission was correct when it told Americans to evacuate beyond 50 miles and that the Japanese should have done the same. An Ex-Secretariat of Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission blames this contamination on "Black Rain". Rather than minimize the information the Japanese people receive, Gundersen suggests minimizing their radiation exposure."
The well-known safety flaws of Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors have gained significant attention in the wake of the four reactor accidents at Fukushima, but a more insidious danger lurks. In this video nuclear engineers Arnie Gundersen and David Lochbaum discuss how the US regulators and regulatory process have left Americans unprotected. They walk, step-by-step, through the events of the Japanese meltdowns and consider how the knowledge gained from Fukushima applies to the nuclear industry worldwide. They discuss "points of vulnerability" in American plants, some of which have been unaddressed by the NRC for three decades. Finally, they concluded that an accident with the consequences of Fukushima could happen in the US.
With more radioactive Cesium in the Pilgrim Nuclear Plant's spent fuel pool than was released by Fukushima, Chernobyl, and all nuclear bomb testing combined. Gundersen and Lockbaum ask why there is not a single procedure in place to deal with a crisis in the fuel pool? These and more safety questions are discussed in this forum presented by the C-10 Foundation at the Boston Public Library. Special thanks to Herb Moyer for the excellent video and Geoff Sutton for the frame-by-frame graphics of the Unit 3 explosion.
A video first released by TEPCO in April has been re-analyzed by Ian Goddard and appears to reveal a handle found atop a single nuclear fuel bundle. This raises more questions about the condition of any fuel still remaining in the Unit 3 fuel pool.
Original estimates of xenon and krypton releases remain the same, but a TEPCO recalculation shows dramatic increases in the release of hot particles. This confirms the results of air filter monitoring by independent scientists. Fairewinds' Arnie Gundersen explains how hot particles may react in mammals while escaping traditional detection. Reports of a metallic taste in the mouth, such as those now being reported in Japan and on the west coast, are a telltale sign of radiation exposure.
Fairewinds' chief engineer Arnie Gundersen emphasizes the need to enlarge evacuation zones around US nuclear plants to 50 miles. Reducing US evacuation zones to only 10 miles during a nuclear power accident compromises public safety.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) held a special ACRS meeting Thursday May 26, 2011 on the current status of Fukushima. Arnie Gundersen was invited to speak for 5 minutes concerning the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident as it pertains to the 23 Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors (BWR's) in the US and containment integrity. Mr. Gundersen was the first engineer to brief the NRC on the implication of Main Steam Isolation Valve (MSIV) Leakage in 1974, and he has been studying containment integrity since 1972. The NRC has constantly maintained in all of its calculations and reviews that there is zero probability of a containment leaking. For more than six years, in testimony and in correspondence with the NRC, Mr. Gundersen has disputed the NRC's stand that containment systems simply do not and cannot leak. The events at Fukushima have proven that Gundersen was correct. The explosions at Fukushima show that Mark 1 containments will lose their integrity and release huge amounts of radiation, as Mr. Gundersen has been telling the NRC for many years.
Arnie Gundersen explains how containment vents were added to the GE Mark 1 BWR as a "band aid" 20 years after the plants built in order to prevent an explosion of the notoriously weak Mark 1 containment system. Obviously the containment vent band aid fix did not work since all three units have lost containment integrity and are leaking radioactivity. Gundersen also discusses seismic design flaws, inadequate evacuation planning, and the taxpayer supported nuclear industry liability fund.
Gundersen says Fukushima's gaseous and liquid releases continue unabated. With a meltdown at Unit 1, Unit 4 leaning and facing possible collapse, several units contaminating ground water, and area school children outside the exclusion zone receiving adult occupational radiation doses, the situation continues to worsen. TEPCO needs a cohesive plan and international support to protect against world-wide contamination.
A report from the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission Ex-Secretariat, Dr. Saji, credits the current status of the accident to "luck". Gundersen discusses what could have happened if the wind had been blowing inland.
Fairewinds' founder Maggie Gundersen interviews environmental scientist and professional engineer Marco Kaltofen about his ongoing analysis of radioactive fallout from Fukushima.
When building 3 of the Fukushima Daiichi plant exploded last month, those who saw the video footage were left to wonder why it was more severe than the other explosions. Adding to the mystery were reports that the containment and reactor in building 3 were still intact. Gundersen discusses several known facts about Fukushima 3 and theorizes on a possible scenario leading to the explosion.
Gundersen implores Congress and NRC to think outside the box. Pause licensing of new nukes and 20-year-life extensions until the lessons learned from Fukushima are applied. Fairewinds Associates recommends that regulators look at the feasibility of emergency evacuation plans, containment leakage, and aging management plans for 40-year-old Fukushima model reactors.
Epidemiologist, Dr. Steven Wing and nuclear engineer, Arnie Gundersen, discuss the consequences of the Fukushima radioactive fallout on Japan, the USA, and the world. What are the long-term health effects? What should the government(s) do to protect citizens?
Gundersen analyzes new pressure and temperature data from the Fukushima reactors and containments. TEPCO recently denied that the fuel pool in Unit 4 was experiencing a partial inadvertent criticality, despite the finding of radioactive iodine-131 (an isotope with an eight-day half-life). The utility blamed the iodine on deposition resulting from the explosion of the other buildings. Gundersen takes an in-depth look at TEPCO's Theory. Lastly, he discusses the FDA decision not to monitor fish for radioactivity.
Nuclear Engineer, Arnie Gundersen, discusses why TEPCO's announcement of an increased accident severity level should not be a surprise. He also discusses similarities among the Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima nuclear accidents and how Governments are once again limiting public access to accurate radiation dose information. Lastly, Gundersen responds to the overwhelming number of email inquires regarding the Fukushima accident.
Fairewinds' Chief Nuclear Engineer, Arnie Gundersen, conducts a field demonstration simulating the impact of Fukushima's intense heat upon Zircaloy [zirconium alloy] fuel rods. Gundersen's demonstration shows that intense heat weakens and embrittles Zircaloy changing it from a sturdy metal to a brittle oxide that is easily shattered. Images from the post accident Three Mile Island nuclear core show embrittled and broken Zircaloy fuel rods in the nuclear reactor.
Arnie Gundersen discusses inconstancies between what the NRC, TEPCo, and the Nuclear Industry are saying privately and publicly. Documents from the french nuclear firm, Areva, and the NRC reveal what the industry knows about the Fukushima disaster.
Fairewinds Chief Engineer, Arnie Gundersen, analyzes new video from the Fukushima Daiichi Plant. Gundersen determines that the fuel rack in reactor building 4 is exposed to air. Original Ustream Video: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13684184
Arnie Gundersen discusses the failure of the Daiichi ventilation stacks and the resulting high radiation ground level release. IAEA data shows background radiation at 1,600 times normal levels in areas as far as 40km from Daiichi and surface radiation at 0.9 MBq/m2 (900,000 disintegrations per second).
Arnie Gundersen analyzes a satellite image of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. Gundersen notes that the service water pumps are gone and therefore the safety system would have failed anyway.