Fukushima: Radiation As Great As 13,000 Hiroshima Bombs Threatens Japan, US, Europe

That's right. If the remaining spent-fuel rods in the pool at Reactor #4 in Fukushima, currently suspended 100' in the air, are not lowered and cooled, or if there's an accident during the lowering and cooling, the zirconium cladding on the rods could spontaneously combust (remember the flashcubes your old camera used 40-50 years ago? those burned zirconium to create the flash), the radioactive fuel rods themselves could ignite and send clouds of radioactive smoke drifting across the entire Northern Hemisphere, carrying the radiation equivalent of 13,000 Hiroshima bombs and killing millions of people on three continents. Please read this post at FDL, and view the video by Harvey Wasserman above, for more information.

TEPCO, the Japanese power company which ran Fukushima when it was in use, as well as the Japanese government, has every reason to downplay the danger, and has shown no sign of having the technological capacity to perform the needed lowering and cooling of the rods, nor does Japan have the money it will cost. In light of the danger to the lives and/or health of literally more than half of humankind, an organization called nukefree.com is advocating that the US assume the technological challenge and the UN assume the financial burden. This org has floated a petition to that effect. It is hosted at MoveOn, but if you visit nukefree.com, you will see a direct link to the petition. Frankly, it's about all you can do. I've done it, and I hope you will too.

UPDATE a few minutes later: Here is a Guardian article about evidence of possible radiation poisoning symptoms— migraines, breathing problems, cancer— in Malibu High School. Californians, keep your eyes on the news.

Fukushima: How Bad Is It, And How Bad Will It Become?

The typography alone
should have been a clue

This bad... and not getting any better. In fact, according to this interview with Christina Consolo, "founder and host of Nuked Radio," 1300 spent fuel rods must be extracted in an absolutely error-free manual process, or any one mistake in handling a rod could result in its going critical, triggering a cascading failure, an "above-ground meltdown, releasing radioactive fallout with no way to stop it." Given the danger, one might be inclined not to attempt the high-risk manual process... but doing nothing has consequences statistically just as risky over time.

Remember the 1957 Disney show "Our Friend the Atom," with its glowing (ahem) claims of "power too cheap to meter"? Right. How about "power no one will live to meter"?

The problem with nuclear power is that it requires only one catastrophic failure... ever... to wreak havoc in the very worst way, and all odds aside, we've had that catastrophe at Fukushima. Hold your breath... no, that won't do any good, either...

UPDATE: thanks to ellroon, who did a much better job excerpting the original ZNet interview than I did.

Going Nuclear, American Style

Gregg Levine at FDL points us to his own article posted 10/29 on another site with the unlikely name of Capitoilette, regarding the status of the Oyster Creek, NJ nuclear generating station after its encounter with former hurricane Sandy and its wind, tides and storm surge. I'll let Gregg set the frame:

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reporting that an “alert” has been declared at the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Ocean County, New Jersey. An alert is the second level on the four-point scale, a step above an “unusual event.”

The NRC declared the alert at 8:45 PM local time, as a combination of rising tides, wind and the storm surge from Hurricane Sandy caused water to rise above safe levels in the plant’s water intake structure. Sandy, which made landfall at around 8 PM in southern New Jersey with 90 mph winds, has caused power outages and widespread flooding along the Atlantic coast from Maryland to New York.

Oyster Creek is the oldest operating commercial reactor in the US. It is a GE boiling water reactor of similar design to the ones that failed in Fukushima, Japan during 2011′s Tohoku earthquake, though Oyster Creek is actually older. ...

Particular concerns were raised about Oyster Creek. The reactor is currently offline for maintenance, which means all the reactor fuel, along with generations of used fuel, is in the plant’s spent fuel pools. The plant itself is not generating any electricity, and so is dependent on external power. If the power were to fail, there would be no way to circulate cooling water through the pools.

Backup diesel generators typical to this design power the heat transfer from the reactor, but the so-called “defense in depth” backups for the spent fuel pools are the plant’s own electrical output and power from an external grid.

...

I think you have the picture. This could easily be Fukushima Two. In this case, the plant itself is momentarily out of service, but the spent fuel rods are vulnerable if the cooling water pumps don't get power from... somewhere, usually the plant itself, and as a backup, the grid. Grids are notorious in events involving hurricanes, exceptional tides and storm surges.

Defense in depth, indeed... I hope somebody remembered to put in a hand-crank. [/snark]

These half-century-old generators really need to be shut down permanently sometime other than during one or another storm-of-the-century. Even then, what to do with spent fuel is a good question.

Remember TV shows in the Fifties, titled things like Disney's "Our Friend the Atom," in which the catch-phrase about nuclear power plants (not sure it was used on that particular show) was "power too cheap to meter"?

Things have changed a bit. How about "power you can't afford at any price"?

AFTERTHOUGHT: it's not just Oyster Creek that is threatened. Sixteen (16) nuclear plants in all are or were in the projected path of Sandy. See the Democracy Now link above in the excerpt from Gregg's post. If I find more current info, I'll post it.

AFTER-AFTERTHOUGHT: none of this is a direct or indirect consequence of global climate change. Uh-uh. Noooo-way, no-how. Global climate change had absolutely nothing to do with Sandy. Sandy was a random event that will not be repeated. Global climate change isn't real. And besides, Al Gore is fat boring. [/snark]