Slow motion planetary suicide

Call me crazy, but this non-stop radiation leak at Fukushima seems like a bigger threat to our national security than any terrorist could hope to be. I mean, let's check the map.

Radiation levels around Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant are 18 times higher than previously thought, Japanese authorities have warned. Last week the plant's operator reported radioactive water had leaked from a storage tank into the ground. It now says readings taken near the leaking tank on Saturday showed radiation was high enough to prove lethal within four hours of exposure.

And then there's the pure incompetency of the utility company.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) had originally said the radiation emitted by the leaking water was around 100 millisieverts an hour. However, the company said the equipment used to make that recording could only read measurements of up to 100 millisieverts. The new recording, using a more sensitive device, showed a level of 1,800 millisieverts an hour.

This can't end well.

America's Nuclear Nightmare

The most terrifying thing I've read yet about our nuclear waste disposal problem.

There's a fire burning in Bridgeton, Missouri. It's invisible to area residents, buried deep beneath the ground in a North St. Louis County landfill. But the smoldering waste is an unavoidable presence in town, giving off a putrid odor that clouds the air miles away – an overwhelming stench described by one area woman as "rotten eggs mixed with skunk and fertilizer." Residents report smelling it at K-12 school buses, a TGI Fridays and even the operating room of a local hospital. "It smells like dead bodies," observes another local. ...

West Lake Landfill is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site that's home to some of the oldest radioactive wastes in the world. A six-foot chain-link fence surrounds the perimeter, plastered with bright yellow hazard signs that warn of the dangers within. On one corner stands a rusty gas pump. About 1,200 feet south of the radioactive EPA site, the fire at Bridgeton Landfill spreads out like hot barbeque coals. No one knows for sure what happens when an underground inferno meets a pool of atomic waste, but residents aren't eager to find out. ...

Today, West Lake's radioactive waste – all 143,000 cubic yards of it – sits on the outskirts of a former quarry with practically none of the standard safety features found in most municipal landfills. No clay liner blocks toxic leachate – or "garbage juice" – from seeping into area groundwater. No cap keeps toxic gas from dispersing into the air. This unprotected waste sits on a floodplain 1.5 miles away from the Missouri River. Eight miles downstream is a drinking water reservoir that serves 300,000 St. Louisans. Worst of all: The materials dumped in this populous metropolitan area will continue to pose a hazard for hundreds of thousands of years.

Meanwhile, "Republic Services also denies that it is dealing with a 'fire' – the company prefers the euphemism 'subsurface smoldering event.'"

This stuff is ticking time bomb. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when it explodes into an insoluble problem. Mankind will all be wanting to book that flight to Mars after that. [graphic via]

Nuclear time bombs

The problems at Fukushima keep getting worse:

Two years after a triple meltdown that grew into the world’s second worst nuclear disaster, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is faced with a new crisis: a flood of highly radioactive wastewater that workers are struggling to contain.

Groundwater is pouring into the plant’s ravaged reactor buildings at a rate of almost 75 gallons a minute. It becomes highly contaminated there, before being pumped out to keep from swamping a critical cooling system. A small army of workers has struggled to contain the continuous flow of radioactive wastewater, relying on hulking gray and silver storage tanks sprawling over 42 acres of parking lots and lawns. The tanks hold the equivalent of 112 Olympic-size pools.

... In a sign of the sheer size of the problem, the operator of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company, or Tepco, plans to chop down a small forest on its southern edge to make room for hundreds more tanks, a task that became more urgent when underground pits built to handle the overflow sprang leaks in recent weeks.

Don't think it couldn't happen here. Dr. Jaczko, now retired regulator says we should shut down every reactor in the US.

All 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the United States have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology, the former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Monday. Shutting them all down at once is not practical, he said, but he supports phasing them out rather than trying to extend their lives.

Meanwhile the current regulatory commission is talking about extending their operating licenses for another 20-40 years beyond what was supposed to be the life of the plants.

Once you poison the earth with radioactive waste, it can't be unpoisoned. We've already saddled further generations well beyond our lifetimes with enough spent fuel rods to destroy every living thing. We should be shutting them down as fast as we can.

Nuclear power poisons the planet

Cleanest energy source in the world -- until it isn't. Almost two years since the big tsunami in Japan. Few now think about the major nuclear plant meltdown but the toxic waste in Fukushima is still growing. The hazmat suits alone add to the "too dangerous to handle" pile daily and that's the tiniest part of the continuing contamination.

Contaminated clothing represents just a fraction of the waste facing Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) in a cleanup that may take four decades.

The utility estimates it may be eight years before radiation levels fall enough to let workers start the main task of removing 260 tons of melted nuclear fuel. That process took more than a decade at the U.S. accident on Three Mile Island, a partial meltdown at a single reactor containing about one fifth the amount of fuel at Fukushima.

While clearing debris helps reduce radiation levels, it’s also filling the plant with toxic waste for which the utility has no ultimate disposal plan. More than 73,000 cubic meters of contaminated concrete, 58,000 cubic meters of irradiated trees and bushes, and 157,710 gallons of toxic sludge has built up, according to the utility.

Then there’s the contaminated water, already being stored in acres of giant tanks, yet still grows as ground water seeps into the damaged facility. Meanwhile, the original toxic debris is still washing onto US coastlines.

This is just from an accident. Let's not forget about the spent rods from the functioning plants, which remain radioactive for a century, and are being stored on site all over the world because there's no safe way to dispose of them. They should have listened to the hippies when we begged them not to build these time bombs in the first place. [photo via]