Published: September 28th, 2011 at 5:36 pm ET
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SOURCE: Dwp49423
Feds inspecting Palisades nuke plant after shutdown caused by breaker fault during maintenance, AP, September 28, 2011 at 9:37 am EDT:
Federal regulators are looking into the circumstances behind a reactor shutdown at the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in southwestern Michigan. [...]
NRC Regional Administrator Mark Satorius said the plant was in a safe condition but the agency has more questions about what happened and the plant staff’s response. [...] The NRC says steam containing very low levels of the radioactive isotope tritium was released but posed no safety threat.
Low-level radioactive steam vented from Palisades plant, Holland Sentinel by JIM HAYDEN, September 28, 2011 at 12:17 pm EDT:
[...] Steam containing “very low levels” of the radioactive isotope tritium was released after the shutdown, but pose no safety risks to the public, said a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman earlier today. [...]
The concentrations of tritium in the steam were “far below regulatory releases,” [Prema Chandrathil, public affairs officer for the NRC in Region III] said. The tritium dissipates in the atmosphere. “As soon as it goes out, it gets diluted further,” Chandrathil said.
Published: September 28th, 2011 at 5:36 pm ET
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sending...
“Palisades also shut down Sept. 16 because of loss of water in the cooling system.”
livin’ la vida L.O.C.A.
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While tritium has several different experimentally determined values of its half-life, the National Institute of Standards and Technology lists 4,500±8 days (approximately 12.32 years).[1] It decays into helium-3 by beta decay as in this nuclear equation:
and it releases 18.6 keV of energy in the process. The electron’s kinetic energy varies, with an average of 5.7 keV, while the remaining energy is carried off by the nearly undetectable electron antineutrino. Beta particles from tritium can penetrate only about 6.0 mm of air, and they are incapable of passing through the dead outermost layer of human skin.[2]
Tritium is potentially dangerous if inhaled or ingested. It can combine with oxygen to form tritiated water molecules, and those can be absorbed through pores in the skin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium
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“and they are incapable of passing through the dead outermost layer of human skin”
My insides are alive. I drink water.
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I’M SORRY ABOUT THE CAPS BUT THIS IS PISSING ME OFF!!!
THEIR POLICY ON NUCLEAR WASTE IS DILUTE IT INTO THE ENVIRONMENT
You can only dilute for so long… this is getting ridiculous. If a private citizen did this it would be called a terrorist attack with a dirty bomb.
Perhaps we can terminate the operation of all nuclear power plants by passing a law again terrorism stating that these releases are considered dirty bombs.
Of course they would just stop reporting them if that were the case.
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“If a private citizen did this it would be called a terrorist attack with a dirty bomb.”
Well said, bmurr.
We are witnesses to that kind of injustice and discrimination every day. Corporations should be treated the same way private citizens would, they should not be given special protection from the law.
Corporate terrorism is basically what the whole nuclear crisis is about. We see the same thing in Japan and Europe. The willingness to protect the industry and allow it to get away with almost anything is the true betrayal of our elected governments.
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I believe that the Supreme Court “never” ruled that corporations have the same responsibilities of people under the law, just the same rights. Isn’t that strange, talk about protecting the corporations.
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Haven’t I heard this before?
Dilution
…..The ultimate Radiation
……….Solution !
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This is a great idea Bmurr
define a nuclear accident as equivalent in criminal law as a dirty bomb attack.
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Sadly, The US will have it’s day too! turn the nukes plants off now before it’s to late it’s just a matter of time. The cost of life could be 10 fold of Japan, when it happens. Dang!
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Ak you’re right. Fukushima Dai ichi, and Kashiwazaki Kariwa directly on the other side of Honshu (partial meltdown or worse from a 6.8 quake in 2007–news blacked out due to no exploding containment building), and others so far more effectively blacked out, are plenty of decrepitating nuke plants to deal with for the world. The same process will exponentially proceed, logically and disastrously, in the U.S. with it’s 104 extant nuke plants, plus all the poorly contained wastes “stored” (read dumped in many cases) in many locations all over the country. All extant nuke plants, no matter their age, must be immediately shut down and jobs creation programs to population decomissioning, dismantling and proper nuclear waste management will be paid for with monies repatriated from the billionaires thieving from the rest of us worldwide. We will have to FORCE them, there are no half measures here that will function,to pay (their debt) for these living wage and FOREVER benefits jobs to abate and dismantle nuclear plants and properly deal with their wastes.
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the WASTES always unnecessarily produced by the lying scumbag parasite billionaires who profit off not implementing social justice or ecologically functional solutions, which in reality, DO tend to always undermine the greedy and amoral power status quos. Too bad for THEM!
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We are so lucky the radiated steam is diluted before it dissipates into the atmosphere.
…America, the land of the free and the home of the brave.
…Where the men are men and the sheep are nervous.
…Where time flies when you are in a coma.
red red wine
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The NRC (No Reason for Concern) has done it again.
Stating the obvious: Concentrated substances released into nature are diluted as they spread out.
Chanting their mantra: It is below regulatory levels, no immediate health risk, no reason for concern.
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Re: No reason for concern
That’s good.
Re: dilution–It spreads out so there’s enough for all of us to inhale some.
I always think these nuke spokespeople sound like guilty little children when they try to stress how “tiny” and “miniscule” their releases are. “Mommy, I spilled a tiny little bit of grape juice on the carpet.” My little reactor belched a minuscule puff of tritium into your air; but don’t worry . . . once it has been filtered through people’s lungs and then some plants, the air will seem as good as new.
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The only difference–little kids have enough of a moral sense to feel guilty when their negligence causes damage to other people and property. They haven’t rationalized it away through statistical “risk” analyses and the belief that science hasn’t absolutely proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that their tiny little radionuclides could possibly have an adverse effect on health.
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Hi Iam335
I agree. Good analogy.
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Diluting it just means that more people are exposed to the substance at a lower level.
According to the LNT (linear no-threshold hypothesis, endorsed by BEIR VII) this causes EXACTLY the same number of deaths and disease as not diluting it.
It is just spread over a wider population so it’s harder to recognize that the poisoners did it.
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Dear Bobby: Correct, “diluted” when we’re talking about billions to quadrillions of Bequerels/Kg total, per hour, or per year of aerosolized, atomized and larger particulate radionuclides from any and all now burgeoning sources just means more ingested fuel fleas harming babies of all animals and species first, then the youngest get wiped out eventually taking down the oldsters that remain. The joylessness of a childless world castrated by radiation is impossible for me to conceive. However, ever increasing worldwide background radiation without any revolutionary response (enforced, by the public, as PUBLIC oversight and final control over all things currently covert, toxic, polluting and cataclysmic in the case of Fukushima Dai ichi) will ensure this and other ugly outcomes.
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It’s like what economists call “moral hazard”–”a situation in which a party insulated from risk behaves differently from how it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk.”
Because they know that any damage done to a particular person by their little radionuclides probably can’t be “proven,” they therefore feel free to spew more of their radioactive pollution into the air. If people get sick many years later, they know causation (and hence legal liability) will be nearly impossible to prove.
And as Arnie Gundersen has pointed out several times, even in the event of a hugely catastrophic accident like Fukushima, plant operators in the US would only be liable for a tiny fraction of the total costs of the disaster (and the American taxpayers would have to pay for the rest).
Thus, on both the micro and macro levels (i.e., individuals and community), nuke operators are insulated from the full consequences/penalties of their irresponsible actions.
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source of quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
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Nuclear Muthers are claiming I”m Off Topic.
Since when does a Thread about the IAEA=Nuclear should be devoid of ALTERNATIVE ENERGY?!?!?
(been off a few hours to return to this shit)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/22/iaea-nuclear-plan_n_976358.html
Ohhhh please Go Get ‘Em Enenewsers!
Bedtime here.
Happy camper! I love SLEEP!
Hushmail if you need an ACCT:
http://www.hushmail.com/
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I came to your defense, Woopie.
(tg on HP.)
They’re coming down hard on me with their hormesis bs and refuting the harmful effects of low dose ionizing radiation.
maslin may report me. She always threatens to report me, but I’m still afloat, somehow.
Have a good rest.
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“Whoopie.” Sorry.
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Dear Whoopie: It’s on-topic. You keep teaching.
Alternative energy generation is necessary to envision for those who don’t understand how CHEAP and nearly overnight accessible it is in nearly every case in nearly every geographic and cultural register. If people understand this, they are going to overthrow TEPCO and U.S., European and world national government hegemony NOW. Good job for your posts, Whoopie. I saw something, not original, along these lines that I thought very good. Unfortunately, I lost the link and it might have been from you, now that I think about it (at school all day, burnt). The alternative was floating oceanic heat pumps. They run on the same principal of heating a fluid to turn a combine to generate power, as the nuke plants do, but use differences in temperature between surface waters and waters deeper down to create this cycle (forget the name of the power cycle), without environmental consequences and nearly without ecological footprint to manufacture, maintain or dismantle compared to and absolutely unlike our ridiculous Fred Flinstone-esque idiocy of fossil fuels, nuclear power with their forever costs, forever–relatively construction times, short reactor lives and forever waste storage problems. Relatively speaking compared to the idea that I’m mentioning, which generates effectively nominal or NO WASTE. Japan’s, VERY RELEVANT AND ON TOPIC PEOPLE, is a PERFECT candidate for this alternative power strategy and for many easily accessible others. Japan has great diversity of oceans with nearly hot currents to quite cold currents, seasonally and perennially. For example on other easily accessible alternatives for Japan that would cost a lot less than maintaining nuclear reactors that still do function in Japan for even one more year there is oceanic ionic exchange power generation, tidal power, wave power, and micro-hydro, as well as mega municipal and micro (house-by house) CYLINDRICAL wind power. The blade (either propeller or egg-beater) type wind power is bad for avian (bird) biodiversity and yes, THAT is relevant, too. Conceive the reality and REVOLT against your government Japan, Europeans and North Americans! Take the money away from the evil, and they are evil even when unintentionally so, nuke enthusiasts and stretch it indefinitely into REAL, the tech already exists in spades, DIVERSE alternative power generation solutions! What the hell are we waiting for? It is the future, whether or not the current billionaire world economy controls bitch and moan about their inability to profiteer personally as hyper-parasites off the rest of us without negotiating the proper patents first. For the billionaires, common sense solutions that benefit BABIES, CHILDREN and civilian parents of same, working people, must ALWAYS be delayed. Are we all, all 7B humans on the planet, so stupid that we’re going to let a few thousand billionaires destroy all of us? How stupid!
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Tritium leaks are the normal condition for NPP’s it is a small gas molecule similar to hydrogen it diffuses through the pipe walls continuously. All NPP’s leak tritium. So there is also natural occurring wild tritium so you just need to prove you have been impacted by the non-wild stuff.
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The next nuclear catastrophe is a matter of “WHEN” and not a matter of “IF”.
It can happen any time and history has proven that the probability is relatively high.
* TMI
* Sellafield
* Chernobyl
* Fukushima
* Countless time bombs ticking
* absolutely no plan how and where to get rid of nuclear waste
* countless other accidents we never were told that they happened
* …
It is time to stand up.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer#Causes
“It is almost always impossible to prove exactly what caused a cancer in any individual, because most cancers have multiple possible causes.”
Its easy to say radiation from plant is harmless because in a court of law it is impossible to specifically prove radiation from plant caused a cancer. However it is well known that radiation causes cancer. Why not be prudent and ere on the side of caution?
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Lessons of Fukushima come to Indian Point
Monday, 26 September 2011 17:19
Page 1 of 2
Killing the chickens was the worst.
For a 53-year-old organic farmer like Sachiko Sato, killing a chicken was not a novel event. “We kill chickens for food. We sell chickens. We raise chickens to eat,” she said. “But this was different. This was too much.”
She was sitting in the sparse conference room in the Ossining, NY headquarters of the environmental group Riverkeeper, having lunch and recalling the life-changing events of the past year in her hometown, Fukushima, Japan, as her 13-year-old daughter, Mina, slept in a chair nearby. She is part of a small delegation of Japanese farmers and the country’s best known anti-nuclear activist, Aileen Mioko Smith, who came to the US to talk to anti-nuclear groups and government officials and present a petition to the United Nations High commission on Human Rights to recognize the danger posed by radiation to children.
http://www.newjerseynewsroom.com/science-updates/lessons-of-fukushima-come-to-indian-point
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