EU Nuclear Plants Plagued by Problems

DISASTER CALENDAR SYMBOLIC COUNTDOWN: 1,260 Days Left

[October 3, 2012] Mass die-offs resulting from human impact and the planetary response to the anthropogenic assault could occur by early 2016. 

• SYMBOLIC COUNTDOWN: 1,260 Days Left to the ‘Worst Day’ in Human History

• Symbolic countdown to the ‘worst day’ in human history began on May 15, 2011 ...

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Global Disasters/ Significant Events

“Hundreds of problems” found in EU’s nuclear plants

Hundreds of problems have been discovered in nearly all the EU’s 143 nuclear plants, with specific failings in all 58 of France’s nuclear reactors, according to a leaked report.

• More than 100,000 people live within a 30-km radius each of 47 nuclear power plants with a total of 111 reactors.

• “On the basis of the stress test results practically all [nuclear plants] need to undergo safety improvements,” says the leaked draft. “Hundreds of technical upgrade measures have already been identified.

• “Following the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, urgent measures to protect nuclear plants were agreed. The stress tests demonstrated that even today, decades later, their implementation is still pending in some member states.”

• Four reactors in two unnamed countries would have less than an hour to restore safety functions if electrical power was lost, the report adds.

• Chernobyl fallout covered the entire Northern Hemisphere
• Global: Places Most at Risk of Nuclear Disasters

Related Links

• Probability of a Nuclear Disaster – by Country
• Chernobyl: A Night to Remember!
• All is NOT Well at Chernobyl
• World’s Worst Polluted Places
• Chernobyl: The Day After

• Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment
• 1 Million Killed in Chernobyl Disaster

Global Disasters: Links, Forecasts and Background

• The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
• Back to the Primordial Future
• The Fate of Energy Dinosaurs
• Mass Die-offs

• 2010 Disasters [Links to 2010 Disaster Calendar]
• Mega Disasters
• 2011 Disaster Calendar
• 2012 Disaster Calendar

GLOBAL WARNING

• WARNING: Human impact 2.85 x Earth’s diminishing carrying capacity
• WARNING: RAPID DECLINE IN PROGRESS!

Japan Tsunami Floods Kitakami – Satellite Images

Deadly Tsunami Spawned by Japan Megaquake Floods Kitakami River Basin

Click image to enlarge. Download larger image (3 MB, JPEG) —  acquired March 14, 201

Click image to enlarge. Download larger image (4 MB, JPEG) acquired January 16, 2011

The magnitude 9.0 megaquake that struck northeastern Honshu, Japan on March 11, 2011, spawned a deadly tsunami which inundated vast coastal areas along the eastern seaboard of the country’s main island. Top image shows flooded croplands and settlements along the Kitakami River, which was taken by ASTER on NASA’s Terra satellite on March 14, 2011. The bottom image posted for comparison was taken two months earlier. Source: NASA-EO.

Megaquake and Tsunami, Nuclear Power Plant Crisis  -UPDATE (17 March 2011, at 05:00 UTC)

The confirmed death toll from Friday’s 9.0Mw megaquake and  tsunami has climbed to 5,178, police said. At least 8,606 people are still missing.

The US state department has advised the US citizens living within 80km of Fukushima Daiichi NPP to leave the area. Japanese government’s exclusion zone is 20km, with a 20-30km caution zone.

Intelligent People and Nuclear Power Plants

The governor of Fukushima prefecture, where the doomed  nuclear plant is located, has complained that the NPP evacuees lack basic necessities, including sufficient hot food, warm clothes  and water, reports say.

As of Sunday March 13, about 230,000 people had been evacuated from the vicinity of the badly damaged nuclear plants, according to a government report.

More Serious Than Reported

TheUS Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman, Greg Jaczko, has told a congressional energy and commerce subcommittee hearing in Washington that problems with attempts to cool the troubled reactors are more serious than reported.

“We believe that around the reactor site there are high levels of radiation.”

“[It’s] very difficult for emergency workers to get near the reactors. The doses they could experience would potentially be lethal doses in a very short period of time” he told the US lawmakers.

Three Mile Island

Meanwhile, the US Energy Secretary said the situation seemed to be more serious than the 1979 partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island NNP in Pennsylvania.

According to nuke scientists in France, the Three Mile Island partial meltdown was a 5 on a scale of 1 to 7, with the Chernobyl core meltdown scoring 7, and the Fukushima NPP crisis so far rating 6 in severity.

Related Links:

• Japan Earthquakes: FIRE-EARTH Forecasts and Recent History

Meltdown Confirmed at Fukushima Nuke Power Reactors

NUKE PLANTS IN QUAKE ZONES: EXPLOSIVE MIX!

BREAKING NEWS

Massive Explosion at Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant, Core Meltdown Occurring: Scientists

The explosion tore down the walls of a unit within the Fukushima power plant Saturday as a large plume of smoke poured out.  Several workers were reported injured, and Japanese officials said a reactor core meltdown was likely to occur.

Independent scientists have since confirmed that, based on the available evidence, reactor core meltdown must be occurring.

The pressure in the reactor had built up to more than twice the normal level, after the shutdown of cooling systems caused by the Sendai Mega Quake and its ensuing Tsunami. The Plant is now venting “radioactive vapors,”  Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said in a statement. Radioactive iodine and caesium has been detected outside the No. 1 one reactor of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi No. 1 plant, the agency said, adding that the uranium fuel rods inside the reactor may have begun melting.

Radioactive steam has been allowed to escape from a number of the reactors at the two Fukushima plants  in order to relieve the huge pressure that has built up inside the cores.

Tens of thousands of people living within the 20-km radius of the No. 1 plant and 10-km radius of No.2 plant  have now been evacuated.

Meanwhile, Japan’s Prime Minister has declared a state of emergency at the two Fukushima nuclear power plants.

As many as 300 people have received varying degrees of radiation, including 60 students at high school in Fukushima located about 3.5km from Plant No. 1, who were waiting to be evacuated.

The reactor core meltdown is feared to be “much worse” than the Three-Mile Island incident.

Background

• Radiation Leak at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Posted by feww on March 12, 2011
• Threat of Nuclear Leak at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Posted by feww on March 11, 2011

Related Links

• JAPAN MEGA QUAKE UPDATE #2
• JAPAN M8.9 MEGA QUAKE UPDATE
• MEGA QUAKE STRIKES NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU

• Tectonics Update – March 10
• Japan 7.2 Quake Strikes Off the Coast of Honshu
• Honshu Earthquake Warning

Three Mile Island Cats Have 9 Lives, Too?

Or will it be third time unlucky for the TMI puss?

Radiation leak at TMI, home of the worst U.S. nuclear power disaster: No threat to public health and safety

Those of us who are old enough to remember the 1979 near complete core meltdown at Unit 2 of  TMI, or smart enough to have carefully studied the case of the nuclear industry’s Titanic, are probably also familiar with the routine cover-up the goes on within the nuclear power industry.

Nuclear energy is unsafe and UNNECESSARY. The answer to the US and world energy problems is in the new kind of economy and lifestyle.

Three Mile Island (TMI), on the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. On the right is mothballed Unit 2, which almost completely melted down in 1979, and is now is owned by FirstEnergy. Unit 1, to the left, is owned and operated by a subsidiary of Exelon Corp. Image and Caption [dated March 28, 2004]: Ohio Citizen Action

TORONTO, CANADA — “In May, 1983, my father-in-law, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, told me that at the time of the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident, a full report was commissioned by President Jimmy Carter. He [my father-in-law] said that the report, if published in its entirety, would have destroyed the civilian nuclear power industry because the accident at Three Mile Island was infinitely more dangerous than was ever made public. He told me that he had used his enormous personal influence with President Carter to persuade him to publish the report only in a highly ‘diluted’ form. The President himself had originally wished the full report to be made public. In November, 1985, my father-in-law told me that he had come to deeply regret his action in persuading President Carter to suppress the most alarming aspects of that report,” Jane Rickover, sworn statement, July 18, 1986. Source

The following News Release was issued by Exelon Corp the operators of TMI

Exelon Corp News Release: No threat to public health and safety (Nov. 21, 2009)

About 150 employees working inside the shutdown Three Mile Island Unit 1 containment building were sent home about 4:00 p.m. EST Saturday after an airborne radiological contamination alarm inside the reactor building sounded.

The unit has been shut down since Oct. 26 for refueling, maintenance and steam generator replacement.

No contamination was found outside of the containment building. Radiological surveys showed that the contamination was confined to surfaces inside the containment building.

The event posed no threat to public health and safety.

A monitor at the temporary opening cut into the containment building wall to allow the new steam generators to be moved inside showed a slight increase in a reading and then returned to normal. Two other monitors displayed normal readings.  Full Text

Related Links:

• Nation marks 25 years of non-stop cover-up of Three Mile Island nuclear accident

• French Nuke Waste Plagues Siberia
• Mafia Solves Nuclear Waste Problem
• All is NOT Well at Chernobyl
• Fish, Fish Eggs Holocaust
• Another fire at TEPCO nuclear plant

• This’s Got to Be the Year of Radioactive, Chemical and Oil Spills, Too!
• Another Hole in Areva’s Nuclear Cheese
• French Water!
• Radioactive Leak at TEPCO Unit Near Tokyo
• World’s Worst Polluted Places