The Real Nuclear Threats, CounterPunch 12 Apr 15 by MIRIAM GERMAN “……….These are just some of the facts about Davis-Besse.
● Because it was built in a flood plain, a 1972 Lake Erie storm caused massive flooding of the entire construction site including the pre-operational reactor.
● In October 1977, a relief valve stuck.
● Uranium fuel must be submerged in water (coolant) at all times to prevent a meltdown. In June 1985, Davis Besse had a loss-of-feedwater accident. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission closed the plant for a year.
● A June 1998 tornado caused loss of external electric power.
● In March 2002, neglected, leaking boric acid in the coolant water had eaten through more than seven inches of the steel reactor lid, leaving only a 3/16″ liner to prevent radiation release. The plant closed for two years, costing ratepayers $600 million. Davis-Besse was fined $33.5 million, the largest in NRC history.
● The corroded lid was replaced before restart in 2004, but in 2010, cracks were found in this new lid, forcing its replacement in 2011.
● To replace aging, deteriorating, damaged parts, an unprecedented four large cuts have been made through the Davis-Besse concrete shield building which prevents release of radiation. Starting in 2011, cracks and voids were discovered in the building’s concrete.
Moniz must look over here, below his feet on US ground, to recognize and acknowledge the bomb fields laying in wait that you still believe are safe, inexpensive and necessary, but which I call ancient relics of poor technology based on the idiocy of a few terrible ideas by self-important arrogant fools who believed nukes would save the world but would instead, kill the very Earth we inhabit. What side of the gambling table are you on? Remember, the cards have already been shown. Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island. Hanford.
There is no peaceful nuke and there is no peace with nukes. There is only a mirage.
Columbia Generating Station. Richland, WA. Located on the Columbia River. CGS was built on twelve fault lines. It was not known at the time but now we have facts. It is not built to withstand an earthquake of the 9.0 magnitude the NW is expecting any day. Not even close. With facts, we are armed with the ability to make changes for the sake of humanity. But we only care about being armed for war. There is no containment around the CGS fuel pool. The fuel pool is five stories high. Think Fukushima. Really. Think Fukushima. CGS is the same kind of nuclear reactor as Fukushima. CGS sits ten miles from 56 million gallons of highly radioactive nuclear waste at Hanford. If a meltdown or explosion happens at CGS, it will take Hanford with it. There will be no way to get in to the area to clean it up due to the massively high levels of radiation. The Columbia River flows directly into the Pacific. CGS has problems with the monitoring stacks just about every two to three weeks. They cannot monitor levels of radiation going into the environment from the plant properly without these stacks. On top of all of this, we have records of drug abuse from managers and workers at the plant caught stoned or drunk during surprise drug testing, so many records that we have a spreadsheet that we add to periodically. Would you like to live near CGS?
Where is the IAEA? They are waiting to be flown to Iran.
Diablo Canyon. Corruption. PG&E. Water Bureau. Illegal dumping of hot water into the Pacific. Fault lines. To see a photo of the fault lines at the base of Diablo Canyon and on out just a bit into the ocean off the coast of California is to understand a vision of insanity……..
New York City. Home to well over eight million people and the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, just twentyfive miles from the Bronx. Here we have a known leaking nuke plant but the IAEA and all of their grave concerns about safety in Iran can be found no where close to home. Indian Point leaks Tritium. Do you know how bad it is to have that in the ground water, drinking water or rivers and lakes? The Big Apple can turn to molten corium as far as the IAEA, the DOE and the NRC are concerned.
Let’s mention MOX fuel since Kerry and Moniz talk so much lately about oversight and care and safety and transparency from the IAEA to Iran. Plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons can get used as fuel in nuke plants creating more heat and radioactivity than uranium if it explodes while causing twice as many civilian cancers as the same explosion using uranium. Fact: MOX fuel is the easiest type of fuel to explode; it is the Viagra for nuclear weapons. Yet knowing that it’s the easiest to explode, nuclear engineers still decided to put MOX fuel into nuclear power plants. Pure insanity…….
Miriam German is the director of RadCast.org. She founded No Nukes NW in 2012. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/10/the-real-nuclear-threats/
