By Ken Maguire
Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON – US nuclear experts warned Saturday that pumping sea water to cool a quake-hit Japanese nuclear reactor was an "act of desperation" that may foreshadow a Chernobyl-like disaster.
Several experts, in a conference call with reporters, also predicted that regardless of the outcome at the Fukushima No. 1 atomic plant crisis, the accident will seriously damage the nuclear power renaissance.
"The situation has become desperate enough that they apparently don't have the capability to deliver fresh water or plain water to cool the reactor and stabilize it, and now, in an act of desperation, are having to resort to diverting and using sea water," said Robert Alvarez, who works on nuclear disarmament at the Institute for Policy Studies.
"I would describe this measure as a 'Hail Mary' pass," added Alvarez, using American football slang for a final effort to win the game as time expires.
An 8.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Japan on Friday set off the emergency at the plant, which was then hit by an explosion Saturday that prompted an evacuation of the surrounding area.
Workers doused the stricken reactor with sea water to try to avert catastrophe, after the quake knocked out power to the cooling system.
What occurred at the plant was a "station blackout," which is the loss of offsite air-conditioning power combined with the failure of onsite power, in this case diesel generators.
"It is considered to be extremely unlikely but the station blackout has been one of the great concerns for decades," said Ken Bergeron, a physicist who has worked on nuclear reactor accident simulation.
"We're in uncharted territory," he said.
The reactor has been shut down but the concern is the heat in the core, which can melt if it's not cooled.
If the core melts through the reactor vessel, Bergeron explained, it could flow onto the floor of thecontainment building. If that happens, the structure likely will fail, the experts said.
"The containment building at this plant is certainly stronger than that at Chernobyl but a lot less strong than at Three Mile Island, so time will tell," he said.
Peter Bradford, former head of the US NuclearRegulatory Commission, said that if the cooling attempts fail, "at that point it's a Chernobyl-like situation where you start dumping in sand and cement."
The two worst nuclear accidents on record are the1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine and the partialcore meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor in the US state of Pennsylvania in 1979.
Another expert said the Japanese accident will rank as one of the three worst in history.
"If it continues, if they don't get control of this and... we go from a partial meltdown of the core to a full meltdown, this will be a complete disaster," Joseph Cirincione, the head of the Ploughshares Fund, said in an interview on CNN.
Cirincione faulted Japanese authorities for providing partial and conflicting information about what was happening at the plant.
Cirincione said the presence of radioactive cesium in the atmosphere after the plant was vented indicated that a partial meltdown was underway.
"That told the operators that the fuel rods had been exposed, that the water level had dropped below the fuel rods and the fuel rods were starting to burn, releasing cesium," he said.
Japan's nuclear safety agency rated the Fukushima accident at four on the International Nuclear Event Scale from 0 to 7, meaning an accident "with local consequences," an official said Sunday.
The Three Mile Island accident was rated five while Chernobyl was a seven.
The government declared an atomic emergency and said tens of thousands of people living within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the plant should leave after an explosion at the nuclear plant Saturday.
"This is obviously a significant setback for the so-called nuclear renaissance," said Bradford, the former NRCcommissioner.
"The image of a nuclear power plant blowing up before your eyes on the television screen is a first."
But a spokesman for the World Nuclear Association said in an interview with CBS News that the threat of a full meltdown is minimal.
"I think that possibility is remote at the best of times and is diminishing by the hour as the fuel gets cooler and generates less heat," said Ian Hore-Lacy, spokesman for the industry organization.
Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer:
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Saturday, March 12, 2011
The world's worst nuclear accidents
Agence France-Presse
TOKYO—Japan said on Saturday that an ageing nuclear plant may be in meltdown after a huge quake and monster tsunami ravaged a large area of the northeast, leaving more than 1,000 people feared dead.
Japan, which has experienced the only two deadly nuclear accidents since Chernobyl, faces atomic crisis after the cooling systems failed in reactors at two plants, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of homes.
Following is a list of the world's worst nuclear accidents in the past quarter of a century:
• March 28, 1979: 140,000 people are evacuated after an accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, United States. The reactor's core suffers partial meltdown, causing contamination within the plant but none outside. There are no casualties. The accident registers five on the International Atomic Energy Agency's seven-point scale of nuclear accidents.
• August 1979: A leak of uranium at a secret nuclear site near Erwin in Tennessee, United States, contaminates some 1,000 people.
• January-March 1981: Four radioactive leaks occur in succession at the Tsuruga nuclear plant in Japan. According to official figures, 278 people are contaminated.
• April 26, 1986: The world's worst nuclear incident occurs when Reactor Number Four at Ukraine's Chernobyl plant blows up after an experiment goes wrong and the top of the reactor blows off. Some 200 people are seriously contaminated, of whom 32 die within three months. The accident is only revealed after a giant radioactive cloud is registered moving across northern Europe.
The fall-out is recorded as being equivalent to that from more than 200 atomic bombs of the type dropped by the US on Hiroshima in 1945. Hundreds of thousands of residents are evacuated from the area and a similar number are estimated to have been contaminated by radiation. The incident registers the maximum seven on the international scale.
• April 1993: An explosion at a secret reprocessing plant in Tomsk-7 in western Siberia releases a cloud of radioactive gas, including Uranium-235, Plutonium-237 and various other fissile materials. The number of casualties is unclear.
• November 1995: Serious contamination is reported at Chernobyl during the removal of fuel from one of the plant's reactors. The incident is reported only after an apparent attempt to cover it up.
• March 11, 1997: Work at the experimental treatment plant in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, is partially halted after a fire and an explosion expose 37 people to radiation.
• September 30, 1999: Two workers die in an accident at the uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, Japan -- the world's worst since Chernobyl, rating four on the seven-point scale. Workers at the plant pour too much uranium into a precipitation tank as they cut corners to save time and can only watch helplessly as a blue flash signals the start of
Japan's most serious nuclear accident.
It exposes more than 600 people to radiation and forces around 320,000 to shelter indoors for more than a day. Two of the workers who triggered the disaster die from their injuries in hospital, three and six months after the incident. The first had been exposed to 17,000 times the average annual dose of radiation.
• August 9, 2004: Four workers are killed and seven others severely burned by a leak of non-radioactive steam at a nuclear plant in Mihama, 350 kilometres (220 miles) west of Tokyo.
One of the three nuclear reactors at the plant shuts down automatically when an alarm sounds just before super-heated steam leaks from a turbine and scalds workers. It is Japan's worst accident at a nuclear facility in terms of the number of deaths.
Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer
TOKYO—Japan said on Saturday that an ageing nuclear plant may be in meltdown after a huge quake and monster tsunami ravaged a large area of the northeast, leaving more than 1,000 people feared dead.
Japan, which has experienced the only two deadly nuclear accidents since Chernobyl, faces atomic crisis after the cooling systems failed in reactors at two plants, forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of homes.
Following is a list of the world's worst nuclear accidents in the past quarter of a century:
• March 28, 1979: 140,000 people are evacuated after an accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, United States. The reactor's core suffers partial meltdown, causing contamination within the plant but none outside. There are no casualties. The accident registers five on the International Atomic Energy Agency's seven-point scale of nuclear accidents.
• August 1979: A leak of uranium at a secret nuclear site near Erwin in Tennessee, United States, contaminates some 1,000 people.
• January-March 1981: Four radioactive leaks occur in succession at the Tsuruga nuclear plant in Japan. According to official figures, 278 people are contaminated.
• April 26, 1986: The world's worst nuclear incident occurs when Reactor Number Four at Ukraine's Chernobyl plant blows up after an experiment goes wrong and the top of the reactor blows off. Some 200 people are seriously contaminated, of whom 32 die within three months. The accident is only revealed after a giant radioactive cloud is registered moving across northern Europe.
The fall-out is recorded as being equivalent to that from more than 200 atomic bombs of the type dropped by the US on Hiroshima in 1945. Hundreds of thousands of residents are evacuated from the area and a similar number are estimated to have been contaminated by radiation. The incident registers the maximum seven on the international scale.
• April 1993: An explosion at a secret reprocessing plant in Tomsk-7 in western Siberia releases a cloud of radioactive gas, including Uranium-235, Plutonium-237 and various other fissile materials. The number of casualties is unclear.
• November 1995: Serious contamination is reported at Chernobyl during the removal of fuel from one of the plant's reactors. The incident is reported only after an apparent attempt to cover it up.
• March 11, 1997: Work at the experimental treatment plant in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo, is partially halted after a fire and an explosion expose 37 people to radiation.
• September 30, 1999: Two workers die in an accident at the uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, Japan -- the world's worst since Chernobyl, rating four on the seven-point scale. Workers at the plant pour too much uranium into a precipitation tank as they cut corners to save time and can only watch helplessly as a blue flash signals the start of
Japan's most serious nuclear accident.
It exposes more than 600 people to radiation and forces around 320,000 to shelter indoors for more than a day. Two of the workers who triggered the disaster die from their injuries in hospital, three and six months after the incident. The first had been exposed to 17,000 times the average annual dose of radiation.
• August 9, 2004: Four workers are killed and seven others severely burned by a leak of non-radioactive steam at a nuclear plant in Mihama, 350 kilometres (220 miles) west of Tokyo.
One of the three nuclear reactors at the plant shuts down automatically when an alarm sounds just before super-heated steam leaks from a turbine and scalds workers. It is Japan's worst accident at a nuclear facility in terms of the number of deaths.
Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Anti-plastic ordinance up for 2nd reading
PROVINCIAL Board Member Roque Tiu said that they are now ready for the second reading of the anti-plastic ordinance after the conduct of a public hearing.
Tiu, the proponent and the main author of the ordinance, said the second reading will involve deliberation of every provisions of the ordinance by members of the board.
“We will study each provision if there are provisions that are objectionable and if there are provisions that need to be improved,” Tiu explained.
Once said proposed ordinance is passed on the second reading, Tiu said that it will immediately be referred for the third and final reading.
Tiu added that with long provisions of said proposed ordinance they are expecting for it to be approved by the members of the Provincial Board by the second quarter of this year.
“This is a sensitive ordinance that is why we need to carefully study this especially that it is to be implemented in the municipal level,” he explained, adding that the penalties included in the ordinance will go directly to the coffers of each municipality and not the Provincial Government.
Tiu added that during the public hearing the ordinance has received support from various sectors, especially from the business and national line agencies.
“They were happy that the Provincial Government through the Sangguniang Panlalawigan (Provincial Board) has this kind of move that will regulate the usage of plastic bags and of banning it in the near future,” he added.
During the public hearing, the owner of a big business establishment in Tacloban City that provides materials for home furnishing was also present and showed their alternative packaging materials to the members of the Provincial Board and to those who were at the plenary hall.
Said alternative packaging uses old newspapers as substitute to plastic bags and were made by the families of their employees that become an additional income for their employees.
Aside from the presentation made by the home furnishing establishment, there were also suggestion made by their resource speaker that are considered by the author to be included in the ordinance.
Although there are apprehension from the market sector particularly in the implementation phase of the proposed ordinance, Tiu said that the vendors also expressed support to it as it is also advantageous to them.
Tiu added that the representatives of the Environmental Management Bureau also lauded the proposed measure as it supports their program to reduce and stop the usage of non-biodegradable materials as it will help to minimize the effect on climate change.
The representative from the Department of Trade and Industry-Eastern Visayas also expressed support to the measure as it will complement the agency’s program in promoting the production of native baskets, bags and “bayong” that will provide additional income to its producers. (Leyte Samar Daily Express)
Tiu, the proponent and the main author of the ordinance, said the second reading will involve deliberation of every provisions of the ordinance by members of the board.
“We will study each provision if there are provisions that are objectionable and if there are provisions that need to be improved,” Tiu explained.
Once said proposed ordinance is passed on the second reading, Tiu said that it will immediately be referred for the third and final reading.
Tiu added that with long provisions of said proposed ordinance they are expecting for it to be approved by the members of the Provincial Board by the second quarter of this year.
“This is a sensitive ordinance that is why we need to carefully study this especially that it is to be implemented in the municipal level,” he explained, adding that the penalties included in the ordinance will go directly to the coffers of each municipality and not the Provincial Government.
Tiu added that during the public hearing the ordinance has received support from various sectors, especially from the business and national line agencies.
“They were happy that the Provincial Government through the Sangguniang Panlalawigan (Provincial Board) has this kind of move that will regulate the usage of plastic bags and of banning it in the near future,” he added.
During the public hearing, the owner of a big business establishment in Tacloban City that provides materials for home furnishing was also present and showed their alternative packaging materials to the members of the Provincial Board and to those who were at the plenary hall.
Said alternative packaging uses old newspapers as substitute to plastic bags and were made by the families of their employees that become an additional income for their employees.
Aside from the presentation made by the home furnishing establishment, there were also suggestion made by their resource speaker that are considered by the author to be included in the ordinance.
Although there are apprehension from the market sector particularly in the implementation phase of the proposed ordinance, Tiu said that the vendors also expressed support to it as it is also advantageous to them.
Tiu added that the representatives of the Environmental Management Bureau also lauded the proposed measure as it supports their program to reduce and stop the usage of non-biodegradable materials as it will help to minimize the effect on climate change.
The representative from the Department of Trade and Industry-Eastern Visayas also expressed support to the measure as it will complement the agency’s program in promoting the production of native baskets, bags and “bayong” that will provide additional income to its producers. (Leyte Samar Daily Express)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)