j****y
发帖数: 1714 | 1 The following article says,
" there was no government plan adequate to respond to a disaster at the
Indian Point nuclear reactor, just 80 km from New York City. "
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20040523x2.html
Sunday, May 23, 2004
Japan's deadly game of nuclear roulette
By LEUREN MORET
Special to The Japan Times
Of all the places in all the world where no one in their right mind
would build scores of nuclear power plants, Japan would be pretty near
the top of the list.
An aerial view of the Hamaoka plant in Shizuoka Prefecture, "the most
dangerous nuclear power plant in Japan"
The Japanese archipelago is located on the so-called Pacific Rim of
Fire, a large active volcanic and tectonic zone ringing North and South
America, Asia and island arcs in Southeast Asia. The major earthquakes
and active volcanoes occurring there are caused by the westward movement
of the Pacific tectonic plate and other plates leading to subduction
under Asia.
Japan sits on top of four tectonic plates, at the edge of the subduction
zone, and is in one of the most tectonically active regions of the
world. It was extreme pressures and temperatures, resulting from the
violent plate movements beneath the seafloor, that created the beautiful
islands and volcanoes of Japan.
Nonetheless, like many countries around the world -- where General
Electric and Westinghouse designs are used in 85 percent of all
commercial reactors -- Japan has turned to nuclear power as a major
energy source. In fact the three top nuclear-energy countries are the
United States, where the existence of 118 reactors was acknowledged by
the Department of Energy in 2000, France with 72 and Japan, where 52
active reactors were cited in a December 2003 Cabinet White Paper.
The 52 reactors in Japan -- which generate a little over 30 percent of
its electricity -- are located in an area the size of California, many
within 150 km of each other and almost all built along the coast where
seawater is available to cool them.
However, many of those reactors have been negligently sited on active
faults, particularly in the subduction zone along the Pacific coast,
where major earthquakes of magnitude 7-8 or more on the Richter scale
occur frequently. The periodicity of major earthquakes in Japan is less
than 10 years. There is almost no geologic setting in the world more
dangerous for nuclear power than Japan -- the third-ranked country in
the world for nuclear reactors.
"I think the situation right now is very scary," says Katsuhiko
Ishibashi, a seismologist and professor at Kobe University. "It's like a
kamikaze terrorist wrapped in bombs just waiting to explode."
Last summer, I visited Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka
Prefecture, at the request of citizens concerned about the danger of a
major earthquake. I spoke about my findings at press conferences
afterward.
A map of Japan annotated by the author, showing the tectonic plates,
areas of high ("observed region") and very high ("specially observed")
quake risk, and the sites of nuclear reactors
Because Hamaoka sits directly over the subduction zone near the junction
of two plates, and is overdue for a major earthquake, it is considered
to be the most dangerous nuclear power plant in Japan.
Together with local citizens, I spent the day walking around the
facility, collecting rocks, studying the soft sediments it sits on and
tracing the nearly vertical faults through the area -- evidence of
violent tectonic movements.
The next day I was surprised to see so many reporters attending the two
press conferences held at Kakegawa City Hall and Shizuoka Prefecture
Hall. When I asked the reporters why they had come so far from Tokyo to
hear an American geoscientist, I was told it was because no foreigner
had ever come to tell them how dangerous Japan's nuclear power plants
are.
I told them that this is the power of gaiatsu (foreign pressure), and
because citizens in the United States with similar concerns attract
little media attention, we invite a Japanese to speak for us when we
want media coverage -- someone like the famous seismologist Professor
Ishibashi!
When the geologic evidence was presented confirming the extreme danger
at Hamaoka, the attending media were obviously shocked. The aerial map,
filed by Chubu Electric Company along with its government application to
build and operate the plant, showed major faults going through Hamaoka,
and revealed that the company recognized the danger of an earthquake.
They had carefully placed each reactor between major fault lines.
"The structures of the nuclear plant are directly rooted in the rock bed
and can tolerate a quake of magnitude 8.5 on the Richter scale," the
utility claimed on its Web site.
From my research and the investigation I conducted of the rocks in the
area, I found that that the sedimentary beds underlying the plant were
badly faulted. Some tiny faults I located were less than 1 cm apart.
When I held up samples of the rocks the plant was sitting on, they
crumbled like sugar in my fingers. "But the power company told us these
were really solid rocks!" the reporters said. I asked, "Do you think
these are really solid?' and they started laughing.
On July 7 last year, the same day of my visit to Hamaoka, Ishibashi
warned of the danger of an earthquake-induced nuclear disaster, not only
to Japan but globally, at an International Union of Geodesy and
Geophysics conference held in Sapporo. He said: "The seismic designs of
nuclear facilities are based on standards that are too old from the
viewpoint of modern seismology and are insufficient. The authorities
must admit the possibility that an earthquake-nuclear disaster could
happen and weigh the risks objectively."
After the greatest nuclear power plant disaster in Japan's history at
Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture, in September 1999, large, expensive Emergency
Response Centers were built near nuclear power plants to calm nearby
residents.
After visiting the center a few kilometers from Hamaoka, I realized that
Japan has no real nuclear-disaster plan in the event that an earthquake
damaged a reactor's water-cooling system and triggered a reactor
meltdown.
Additionally, but not even mentioned by ERC officials, there is an
extreme danger of an earthquake causing a loss of water coolant in the
pools where spent fuel rods are kept. As reported last year in the
journal Science and Global Security, based on a 2001 study by the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, if the heat-removing function of those
pools is seriously compromised -- by, for example, the water in them
draining out -- and the fuel rods heat up enough to combust, the
radiation inside them will then be released into the atmosphere. This
may create a nuclear disaster even greater than Chernobyl.
If a nuclear disaster occurred, power-plant workers as well as
emergency-response personnel in the Hamaoka ERC would immediately be
exposed to lethal radiation. During my visit, ERC engineers showed us a
tiny shower at the center, which they said would be used for
"decontamination' of personnel. However, it would be useless for
internally exposed emergency-response workers who inhaled radiation.
When I asked ERC officials how they planned to evacuate millions of
people from Shizuoka Prefecture and beyond after a Kobe-magnitude
earthquake (Kobe is on the same subduction zone as Hamaoka) destroyed
communication lines, roads, railroads, drinking-water supplies and
sewage lines, they had no answer.
Last year, James Lee Witt, former director of the U.S. Federal Emergency
Management Agency, was hired by New York citizens to assess the U.S.
government's emergency-response plan for a nuclear power plant disaster.
Citizens were shocked to learn that there was no government plan
adequate to respond to a disaster at the Indian Point nuclear reactor,
just 80 km from New York City.
The Japanese government is no better prepared, because there is no
adequate response possible to contain or deal with such a disaster.
Prevention is really the only effective measure to consider.
In 1998, Kei Sugaoka, 51, a Japanese-American senior field engineer who
worked for General Electric in the United States from 1980 until being
dismissed in 1998 for whistle-blowing there, alerted Japanese nuclear
regulators to a 1989 reactor inspection problem he claimed had been
withheld by GE from their customer, Tokyo Electric Power Company. This
led to nuclear-plant shutdowns and reforms of Japan's power industry.
Later it was revealed from GE documents that they had in fact informed
TEPCO -- but that company did not notify government regulators of the
hazards.
Yoichi Kikuchi, a Japanese nuclear engineer who also became a whistle-
blower, has told me personally of many safety problems at Japan's
nuclear power plants, such as cracks in pipes in the cooling system from
vibrations in the reactor. He said the electric companies are "gambling
in a dangerous game to increase profits and decrease government
oversight."
Sugaoka agreed, saying, "The scariest thing, on top of all the other
problems, is that all nuclear power plants are aging, causing a
deterioration of piping and joints which are always exposed to strong
radiation and heat."
Like most whistle-blowers, Sugaoka and Kikuchi are citizen heroes, but
are now unemployed.
The Radiation and Public Health Project, a group of independent U.S.
scientists, has collected 4,000 baby teeth from children living around
nuclear power plants. These teeth were then tested to determine their
level of Strontium-90, a radioactive fission product that escapes in
nuclear power plant emissions.
Unborn children may be exposed to Strontium-90 through drinking water
and the diet of the mother. Anyone living near nuclear power plants is
internally exposed to chronically low levels of radiation contaminating
food and drinking water. Increased rates of cancer, infant mortality and
low birth weights leading to cognitive impairment have been linked to
radiation exposure for decades.
However, a recent independent report on low-level radiation by the
European Committee on Radiation Risk, released for the European
Parliament in January 2003, established that the ongoing U.S. Atomic and
Hydrogen Bomb Studies conducted in Japan by the U.S. government since
1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors underestimated the risk of
radiation exposure as much as 1,000 times.
Additionally, on March 26 this year -- the eve of the 25th anniversary
of the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history, at the Three Mile Island
plant in Pennsylvania -- the Radiation and Public Health Project
released new data on the effects of that event. This showed rises in
infant deaths up to 53 percent, and in thyroid cancer of more than 70
percent in downwind counties -- data which, like all that concerning
both the short- and long-term health effects, has never been forthcoming
from the U.S. government.
It is not a question of whether or not a nuclear disaster will occur in
Japan; it is a question of when it will occur.
Like the former Soviet Union after Chernobyl, Japan will become a
country suffering from radiation sickness destroying future generations,
and widespread contamination of agricultural areas will ensure a public-
health disaster. Its economy may never recover.
Considering the extreme danger of major earthquakes, the many serious
safety and waste-disposal issues, it is timely and urgent -- with about
half its reactors currently shut down -- for Japan to convert nuclear
power plants to fossil fuels such as natural gas. This process is less
expensive than building new power plants and, with political and other
hurdles overcome, natural gas from the huge Siberian reserves could be
piped in at relatively low cost. Several U.S. nuclear plants have been
converted to natural gas after citizen pressure forced energy companies
to make changeovers.
Commenting on this way out of the nuclear trap, Ernest Sternglass, a
renowned U.S. scientist who helped to stop atmospheric testing in
America, notes that, 'Most recently the Fort St. Vrain reactor in
Colorado was converted to fossil fuel, actually natural gas, after
repeated problems with the reactor. An earlier reactor was the Zimmer
Power Plant in Cincinnati, which was originally designed as a nuclear
plant but it was converted to natural gas before it began operating.
This conversion can be done on any plant at a small fraction [20-30
percent] of the cost of building a new plant. Existing turbines,
transmission facilities and land can be used."
After converting to natural gas, the Fort St. Vrain plant produced twice
as much electricity much more efficiently and cheaply than from nuclear
energy -- with no nuclear hazard at all, of course.
It is time to make the changeover from nuclear fuel to fossil fuels in
order to save future generations and the economy of Japan.
Leuren Moret is a geoscientist who worked at the Lawrence Livermore
Nuclear Weapons Laboratory on the Yucca Mountain Project, and became a
whistle-blower in 1991 by reporting science fraud on the project and at
Livermore. She is an independent and international radiation specialist,
and the Environmental Commissioner in the city of Berkeley, Calif. She
has visited Japan four times to work with Japanese citizens, scientists
and elected officials on radiation and peace issues. She can be
contacted at l*********[email protected] | Y*****2
发帖数: 38613 | | l*****1
发帖数: 109 | 3 do not wet your pants because of that.
many things are more scary than that, like driving your car... |
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