A “hot” rain hit Ontario, Canada, July 1, over 35 times higher (3500%)than “normal”[1] background radiation levels.
“Normal” background at his location (since Fukushima) = 0.13 microsieverts per hour
Geiger counter reading in rain = 4.6 – 4.9 microsieverts per hour
That is 35 X the normal background level.
Notice that the rapidly clicking Geiger counter displays “Dangerous radiation background”.
[1] the new “normal” since Fukushima
UPDATE: See below
From ENE News, June 1, 2015
FOIA Document — Excerpts from email by Per Peterson, Chair of Dept. of Nuclear Engineering at Univ.of California Berkeley & scientific adviser to Energy Secretary Steven Chu , Mar 23, 2011 at 1:35p (emphasis added) [FOIA document also here]:
Reply from Dick Garwin, IBM Fellow (who Enrico Fermi called the only true genius he’d met): Right on, Per! But it seems to me that one could promptly validate the use of a single counter… since the thyroid is so efficient in concentrating iodine…
Per Peterson, Mar 23 @ 2:27p: Dick, Good idea… An important point for doing this in the U.S… is that the protocols must receive approval by a Human Subjects Committee. If one were to initiate an effort to perform whole body counting at LLNL and PNNL, the human subjects review can likely be done faster if it is initially for lab employees who would volunteer to be counted… Again, collecting statistically useful data on uptake of 1-131 and other radionuclides on the U.S. west coast and in Japan could be very valuable in the longer term, when many people may begin to believe that the Fukushima accident is the cause of a variety of health problems.
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s internal correspondence concerning the emails above:
Per Peterson, Mar 25 @ 2:13p: … we have detected small concentrations of… radioactive materials in rainwater in Berkeley… I am now working with faculty in our school of public health to see how we can… verify what exposures have occurred. I do believe that these measurements will be very important in the longer term in assessing the consequences of the Fukushima accident.
See also: Former DOE official rips UC Berkeley for comparing ingestion of fallout to air travel
The Big Picture, Jun 24, 2015 — Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear (emphasis added): “A recent revelation of Nuclear Regulatory Commission internal emails… reveal that there was concern at the highest levels of the U.S. government, and rightly so, about the radioactive iodine-131 escaping from Fukushima Dai-ichi… and reaching the United States… Rainwater at 242 times safe drinking water act permissible levels — so you better believe we got radioactive iodine-131 in the United States. Likely people ingested it — either breathed it in, or drank it in milk, or various other ingestion pathways. It attacks the thyroid gland… it does a tremendous amount of damage. And these emails… show that US government officials were worried about that, were calling for studies to be done to try to track the health damage. And what do you know, those studies did not happen… The monitoring and testing and the epidemiology were woefully inadequate to non-existent… The nuclear industry will try to bury the truth, and that sure happened after Fukushima… I think there’s been a huge dereliction of duty at the federal and the state levels.”
Kamps appears to be referencing an ENENews report from earlier this month, Censored US gov’t emails reveal proposed plan to test West Coast residents for Fukushima fallout — “Many cases of cancer may end up being attributed to exposures” — Doses could exceed emergency levels
The report quoted internal emails from March 2011 by the head of UC Berkeley’s nuclear engineering department, who wrote: “UCB faculty [is in] general agreement that prompt action should be taken… Many cases of thyroid cancer, and other health problems, may end up being attributed to exposures from the Fukushima accident… on the U.S. west coast… It is possible that we will find that some people have received doses of I-131 and other radionuclides that could exceed the levels [which] Protective Action Guidelines are designed to prevent. It could identify individuals who have had significant exposure… alert them and their medical care professionals to monitor for potential health effects.”
On the Friday before UC Berkeley’s nuclear chair sent this proposal to a small group of government officials and experts, ABC’s San Francisco affiliate reported on public comments made by UC Berkeley’s nuclear department:
ABC (San Francisco KGO-TV), Mar 18, 2011: Nuclear engineers here at UC Berkeley say… don’t be alarmed. The tiny particles are just so small, they pose no threat at all… not harmful at all. One scientist here says you can get more radiation exposure on a flight… One model forecasts that the radiation plume… will reach California today… experts say this map is very misleading. First of all, there is no ‘plume’. Second of all, you cannot predict how the weather is going to carry radiation particles over here to the West Coast, if any at all.
The map above is a model developed by Japanese and European experts showing the strength and location of the Fukushima plume while over the West Coast on Mar. 18, 2011 — the same day as the broadcast of UC Berkeley’s claim that “there is no plume”. According to the map’s scale, dark red areas along the West Coast indicate the Fukushima fission product xenon-133 had a concentration in the air column of 1,000,000 becquerels per square meter.
Excellent video with interviews of two Hanford downwinders Tom Bailie and Jay Mullen. The video is set at the 2nd interview with Jay Mullen, former CIA agent. Go back to the first interview with Tom Bailie, a farmer. Lots of important information.
Posted on ENE News, June 13, 2015
The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine (pdf), Direct Estimates of Low-Level Radiation Risks of Lung Cancer at Two NRC-Compliant Nuclear Installations: Why Are the New Risk Estimates 20 to 200 Times the Old Official Estimates?, Dr. Irwin Bross, Director of Biostatistics at Roswell Park Memorial Institute, 1981 (emphasis added):
Jay Mullen, former CIA agent and professor at Southern Oregon Univ., Oct 2013 (15:30 in):
[https://youtu.be/Sp_FVqKjZQQ — video from the beginning]
From A Green Road Project, August 31, 2013
The video offers a reflection on the effect of radiation on children by Kay Sutherland, a Hanford downwinder from Walla Walla, Washington. Listen to her talking about the loss of her children and many other children in the graveyard, due to multiple, secret Green Run radioactive releases from the Hanford nuclear facility.
Nuclear Power Plant Studies Show Child Leukemia, Breast, Thyroid Cancer Rates Increase RADICALLY Closer To Plants; via @AGreenRoad
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/10/child-leukemia-breast-thyroid-cancer.html
Part IV http://youtu.be/Ynhb0ZCUoic
Part V http://youtu.be/EWe3Mvq3pMw
Hanford Downwinders: Manhattan Project 1943-2013
Dr. John S. Sanford; Mutagenesis And Entropy; Dangers Of Low Dose Ionizing Radiation Leading To Human Extinction; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/12/mutagenesis-dangers-of-low-dose.html
Chernobyl Heart Movie; How Children Are Affected By Low Level Radiation; via @AGreenRoad
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/chernobyl-heart-movie-how-children-are.html
43% of Fukushima Children Have Thyroid Problems, Could Be Much Worse Than That; via @AGreenRoad
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/09/43-of-fukushima-children-have-thyroid.html
Diabetes Caused By Low Level Radiation – 6 In 10 Fukushima Children With Diabetes; via @AGreenRoad
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2013/09/diabetes-caused-by-low-level-radiation.html
Hanford Nuclear Waste Storage Site Workers Expose
Hanford – Multiple Secret Green Runs Released 685K Curies Radioactive Iodine On Washington And Oregon; via @AGreenRoad
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2013/08/hanford-and-multiple-secret-green-runs.html
Downwinders And Nuclear Bomb Testing; via A Green Road
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/2012/04/downwinders-and-nuclear-bomb-testing.html
Uranium Mining and Enrichment – Nuclear Bomb -Nuclear Fuel Manufacturing
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/p/uranium-mining-and-enrichment.html
Long Term Storage Of Nuclear Fuel, Nuclear Waste
http://agreenroad.blogspot.com/p/recycling-or-long-term-storage-of.html
The solstice comes twice a year – in June and December. The period leading up to it and the day and time itself are sacred and powerful times.
One of the functions of the astronomical calendars in ancient times was to chart special days appropriate for certain activities, and to engage in alignment and healing activities for self, community, and the earth. These activities could involve ceremony, singing, prayers, toning, chanting, dance, burning sage and other sacred medicinals, resolutions, reconciliation, physical and spiritual healing, making offerings, and having celebrations and feasts.
This is an important resource to bring powerful transformation, healing, and restoration to Japan, to the ocean, to the air, to the entire Earth, and to all the people and creatures of the Earth from this horrible worsening disaster.
The solstice occurs on June 21-22, depending on time zone. It is Sunday, June 21, 4:39 PM UTC/GMT.
To find your time zone, http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/june-solstice.html
Look under “Local times for June Solstice 2015 worldwide”
Verify the times listed below.
Sunday, 6:39 AM
Honolulu
Sunday, 8:39 AM
Anchorage
Sunday, 9:39 AM
San Francisco
Seattle
Portland
Los Angeles
Vancouver
Sunday, 11:39 AM
Lima
Mexico City
Sunday 12:39 PM
La Paz
Sunday 1:39 PM
Sao Paulo
Sunday, 5:39 PM
London
Sunday, 6:39 PM
Berlin
Brussels
Zurich
Cape Town
Sunday, 7:39 PM
Kyiv
Minsk
Moscow
Helsinki
Baghdad
Istanbul
Athens
Sunday, 9:09 PM
Kabul
Sunday, 10:09 PM
New Delhi
Monday, 12:39 AM
Beijing
Perth
Monday, 1:39 AM
Tokyo
Seoul
Some of these times are summer hours, depending on the location.
This is addition to all the sea life deaths, illnesses, and anomalies, from sea stars and sea jellies, to starving seal, sea lion pups, pelicans, and sea birds, to crashing sardine and oyster populations.
Very few marine biologists will mention Fukushima.
From KSBW, May 27, 2015
POINT REYES STATION, Calif. —Another dead whale washed ashore in Northern California, the 12th carcass that has appeared in the past few months and marks a higher-than-normal number of deaths.
The dozen whales have been found along nearly 300 miles of coastline and are of different species and various ages. In a typical year, one or two gray whales wash ashore, said Frances Gulland, the senior scientist for the Marine Mammal Center.
The most recent animal appeared Tuesday on a beach along the Point Reyes National Seashore, officials said. It’s badly decomposed and headless, making identifying the species and its age difficult, said Mary Jane Schramm, spokeswoman for the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary.
“(The condition) suggests it could be a killer whale attack,” she said. Scientists are trying to determine if there is a connection between the beached whales, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. They are considering factors such as environmental changes, food distribution, shipping and predator behavior.
“We are seeing them coming from so many different species and various causes of death,” Schramm said. “One of the reasons we are seeing such a cluster at one time is we have very strong winds that have been blowing consistently that are washing things onto shore.”
Scientists say the deaths could be part of the annual gray whale migration from Mexico to Alaska, the newspaper reported. At least one of the whales showed evidence of being hit by a ship. Two others were missing limbs, which indicates they got tangled in fishing gear or attacked by killer whales.
The latest beached whale appeared a few days after a 28-foot juvenile gray whale washed up on the Sonoma County coast. Last week, a gray whale carcass appeared in Half Moon Bay as officials buried a sperm whale and a humpback whale.
In April, two gray whales got beached in Santa Cruz County, a killer whale was found near Fort Bragg and a gray whale washed up in Monterey County.
Many of the dead were gray whales, but they were so badly decomposed that researchers have not been able to determine how they died, Gulland said.
The last large increase in whale deaths was in 1999 and 2000, when 40 dead gray whales were found on beaches in the Bay Area, she said.
http://www.ksbw.com/news/whale-washes-ashore-in-12th-recent-death-in-california/33245646
By John LaForge
Posted on CounterPunch, May 20, 2015
Groups Reject Canadian Panel’s Recommendation Favoring the “Big Nuclear Waste Hole” on the Shores of Lake Huron
Hundreds of environmental and public interest groups, dozens of governmental bodies and thousands of concerned residents across the Great Lakes Basin have joined in rejecting a proposal by the giant utility company Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to bury 200,000 cubic meters of its radioactive waste on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, near its Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, in Kincardine, Ontario. The proposed dump is for so-called low- and intermediate-level radioactive wastes from the company’s 20 nuclear reactors. The site is 1.2 kilometers from Lake Huron on Bruce Peninsula.
On May 6, Canada’s Joint Review Panel submitted to Canada’s Ministry of Environment — the Honorable Leona Aglukkaq — its formal recommendation to approve the plan. Intervening parties have 120 days to submit comments on the JRP’s “environmental assessment” once its “conditions” have been made public. Aglukkaq will then make a recommendation to Ontario’s Premier, Kathleen Wynne, who will make the final decision about whether the dump should be constructed.
Most of the groups, legislators and cities opposing the so-called Deep Geologic Repository (regular folks call it a hole in the ground) have decided to ignore or to just parody the forthcoming “conditions” regulating the plan. A nit-picking analysis of them, they say, only gives the impression that permanent contamination of the Great Lakes somehow an acceptable risk under certain theoretical, computer-model-derived conditions. As Dr. Gordon Edwards, founder of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, said May 19 over the phone, “We reject any permanent abandonment of radioactive waste deep underground near the Great Lakes. And this project, at this time, under any conditions is absurd.”
The Great Lakes is the drinking water supply for 40 million people in eight US states, two Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American Reservations and First Nations. Great Lakes water is the lifeblood of millions, 20% of the world’s surface fresh water, and close to 90% of North America’s fresh water. As the Chernobyl and Fukushima radiation catastrophes have demonstrated, OPG’s proposed dump would put the Great Lakes and its residents at risk of radioactive ruination.
During the course of extensive public hearings, dozens of show-stopping facts were revealed that should have seen the proposal nixed. (The Joint Review Panel’s lengthy report noted each one and then dismissed them all.) Among them:
* OPG confessed to a lack of seriousness about containing the radioactive wastes, saying in a public brochure that even if all 200,000 cubic meters of it were to spread into Lake Huron, the public would not be endangered. The claim sent shock waves through the environmental community in view of the need to permanently containerize radioactive materials for hundreds of generations.
* The company grossly underestimated the level of radioactivity in much of the waste intended for the dump. Intermediate-level nuclear wastes include highly-radioactive components from reactor cores which can remain carcinogenic and mutagenic for 100,000 years or more, the Toronto Sun reported April 18, 2014. The same article noted that an “expert panel” had concluded that the “immense” waters of the Great Lakes would “greatly dilute” any radiation-bearing water that might leak from the proposed nuclear waste site.
* The company’s secretive plans to double the dump’s already gigantic capacity, once the initial plan’s been approved, and to bury highly-radioactive “decommissioning wastes” left from pending reactor shutdowns across Ontario.
* Although OPG claims that the DGR should cost $1 billion to construct and operate, the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) most recent cost estimate for the (cancelled) Yucca Mountain, Nevada DGR was almost $100 billion. Further, the February 2014 underground explosion and fire at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico (after which Canada’s DGR plan is modeled) — and the resulting radioactive release to the environment — will cost hundreds of millions and perhaps even $1 billion to address.
The company has repeatedly insisted that getting approval from the indigenous Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON) would be necessary for the project to proceed. On May 8, Saugeen First Nation Chief Vernon Roote said, “Of course we are opposed to it. In our community that I represent … there are no members that are agreeable to the burial at the site at this time.” OPG spokesperson Neal Kelly responded to the Chief, telling the Toronto Sun, “We will not build this project without SON support.”
So the Joint Review Panel’s May 6 acceptance of the plan is something of a declaration of war against the First Nations, against the Precautionary Principle, and against the Great Lakes Basin itself. If the Ministry of Environment and Ontario’s Premier decide to approve the incredibly risky scheme, the bi-national grassroots coalition will have to intensify its opposition and resistance.
At least 154 cities and municipalities across eight US states and Ontario — including Toronto, Chicago and Duluth — have passed resolutions opposing the ill-advised dump. US Senators and Representatives need to hear that voters want them to support bipartisan bills in Congress demanding rejection of the DGR, and calling on President Obama to take action against it.
John LaForge works for Nukewatch and lives on the Plowshares Land Trust near Luck, Wisc.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/20/stopping-the-great-lakes-radioactive-dump/
A 2012 article which is particularly timely given the deteriorating conditions at the Boone Dam in the Tennessee Valley Authority.
http://enenews.com/top-official-sinkhole-sunk-further-water-coming-dam-upstream-multiple-nuclear-plants-agencys-top-priority-section-caved-base-govt-refuses-disclose-inundation-maps-reporter-security-concerns/comment-page-1#comments
From AlterNet
By William Boardman / AlterNet
November 28, 2012
Key federal official warns that the public has been kept in the dark about safety risks.
This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org.
The likelihood was very low that an earthquake followed by a tsunami would destroy all four nuclear reactors at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, but in March 2011, that’s what happened, and the accident has yet to be contained.
Similarly, the likelihood may be low that an upstream dam will fail, unleashing a flood that will turn any of 34 vulnerable nuclear plants into an American Fukushima. But knowing that unlikely events sometimes happen nevertheless, the nuclear industry continues to answer the question of how much safety is enough by seeking to suppress or minimize what the public knows about the danger.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has known at least since 1996 that flooding danger from upstream dam failure was a more serious threat than the agency would publicly admit. The NRC failed from 1996 until 2011 to assess the threat even internally. In July 2011, the NRC staff completed a report finding “that external flooding due to upstream dam failure poses a larger than expected risk to plants and public safety” [emphasis added] but the NRC did not make the 41-page report public.
Instead, the agency made much of another report, issued July 12, 2011 – “Recommendations for Enhancing Reactor Safety in the 21st Century,” sub-titled “The Near-Term Task Force Review of Insights from the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Accident.” Hardly four months since the continuing accident began in Japan, the premature report had little to say about reactor flooding as a result of upstream dam failure, although an NRC news release in March 2012 would try to suggest otherwise.
Censored Report May Be Crime by NRC
That 2012 news release accompanied a highly redacted version of the July 2011 report that had recommended a more formal investigation of the unexpectedly higher risks of upstream dam failure to nuclear plants and the public. In its release, the NRC said it had “started a formal evaluation of potential generic safety implications for dam failures upstream” including “the effects of upstream dam failure on independent spent fuel storage installations.”
Six months later, in September 2012, The NRC’s effort at bland public relations went controversial, when the report’s lead author made a criminal complaint to the NRC’s Inspector General, alleging “Concealment of Significant Nuclear Safety Information by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.” In a letter dated September 14 and made public the same day, Richard Perkins, an engineer in the NRC’s Division of Risk Analysis, wrote Inspector General Hubert Bell, describing it as “a violation of law” that the Commission:
has intentionally mischaracterized relevant and noteworthy safety information as sensitive, security information in an effort to conceal the information from the public. This action occurred in anticipation of, in preparation for, and as part of the NRC’s response to a Freedom of Information Act request for information concerning the generic issue investigation on Flooding of U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Following Upstream Dam Failure….
Portions of the publically released version of this report are redacted citing security sensitivities, however, the redacted information is of a general descriptive nature or is strictly relevant to the safety of U.S. nuclear power plants, plant personnel, and members of the public. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has engaged in an effort to mischaracterize the information as security sensitive in order to justify withholding it from public release using certain exemptions specified in the Freedom of Information Act. …
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff may be motivated to prevent the disclosure of this safety information to the public because it will embarrass the agency. The redacted information includes discussion of, and excerpts from, NRC official agency records that show the NRC has been in possession of relevant, notable, and derogatory safety information for an extended period but failed to properly act on it.
Concurrently, the NRC concealed the information from the public.
The Inspector General has not yet acted on the complaint.
Most Media Ignore Nuclear Safety Risks
Huffington Post picked up the story immediately as did the Union of Concerned Scientists and a number of online news sites. The mainstream media showed little or no interest in a story about yet another example of the NRC lying to the public about the safety of nuclear power plants.
An NRC spokesman suggested to HuffPo that the report’s redactions were at least partly at the behest of Homeland Security. A second NRC risk engineer, who requested anonymity, said that Homeland Security had signed off on the report with no redactions. As HuffPo noted:
If this were truly such a security concern, however, it would be incumbent on the agency to act swiftly to eliminate that threat, the engineer stated. As it is, the engineer suggested, no increased security actions have been undertaken.
This same engineer expressed serious misgivings, shared by others in and out of the NRC, that a nuclear power plant in Greenville, South Carolina, has been at risk from upstream dam failure for years, that the NRC has been aware of the risk, and that the NRC has done nothing to mitigate the risk. In the redacted report, the NRC blacked out passages about this plant.
Event Unlikely, Would Be Sure Disaster
South Carolina’s Oconee plant on Lake Keowee has three reactors, located 11 miles downstream from the Jocassee Reservoir, an 8,000 acre lake. As HuffPo put it:
…the Oconee facility, which is operated by Duke Energy, would suffer almost certain core damage if the Jocassee dam were to fail. And the odds of it failing sometime over the next 20 years, the engineer said, are far greater than the odds of a freak tsunami taking out the defenses of a nuclear plant in Japan….
“Although it is not a given that Jocassee Dam will fail in the next 20 years,” the engineer added, “it is a given that if it does fail, the three reactor plants will melt down and release their radionuclides into the environment.”
When the NRC granted an operating license to the Oconee plant in 1973, danger from upstream dam failure was not even considered, never mind considered a threat against which some protection was needed. The NRC and the plant’s owner both say the Jocassee Dam is not an immediate safety issue. Oconee’s initial license was for 40 years. It is now the second plant in the U.S. that the NRC has granted an extended license for another 20 years.
Union of Concerned Scientists Are Concerned
The Union of Concerned Scientists, which says it is neither pro-nuke nor anti-nuke, but committed to making nuclear power as safe as possible, has considered the risk factors for Oconee. The NRC wrote in 2009 that “a Jocassee Dam failure is a credible event and in 2011 wrote that “dam failures are common” – and that since 1975 there have been more than 700 dam failures, 148 of them large dams 40 feet or more high. The Jocassee Dam is 385 feet high.
For a dam like Jocassee, the NRC calculates the chance of failure at 1 in 3,600 per year – or 1 in 180 each year for the extended license. NRC policy, when enforced, requires nuclear plant owners to mitigate any risk that has a 1 in 250 per years chance of occurring.
Oconee has three nuclear reactors, each of which is larger than the reactors at Fukushima, and so has more lethal radioactive potential. Duke Energy reported its own upstream dam failure calculations to the NRC no later than 1996 and the NRC has responded by requiring no safety enhancements to address the threat.
Noting that the upstream dam failure risk does not take into account possible earthquakes or terrorist attacks, the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote:
The 34 reactors of concern are downstream from a total of more than 50 dams, more than half of which are roughly the size of the Jocassee dam. Assuming the NRC’s failure rate applies to all of those dams, the probability that one will fail in the next 40 years is roughly 25 percent—a 1 in 4 chance.
List of Reactors Potentially at High Risk of Flooding due to Dam Failure
Alabama: Browns Ferry, Units 1, 2, 3
Arkansas: Arkansas Nuclear, Units 1, 2
Louisiana: Waterford, Unit 3
Minnesota: Prairie Island, Units 1, 2
Nebraska: Cooper; Fort Calhoun
New Jersey: Hope Creek, Unit 1; Salem, Units 1, 2
New York: Indian Point, Units 2, 3
North Carolina: McGuire, Units 1, 2
Pennsylvania: Beaver Valley, Units 1, 2; Peach Bottom, Units 2, 3; Three Mile Island, Unit 1
Tennessee: Sequoyah, Unit 1; Watts Bar, Unit 1
Texas: South Texas, Units 1, 2
South Carolina: H.B. Robinson, Unit 2; Oconee, Units 1, 2, 3
Vermont: Vermont Yankee
Virginia: Surrey, Units 1, 2
Washington: Columbia
(Source: Perkins, et al., “Screening Analysis,” July 2011)
Reposted under Fair Use rules.
This is occurring almost exactly on the anniversary of the original disaster.
From RT April 28, 2015
Video 2:52: http://img.rt.com/files/news/3d/fc/90/00/kosarev2300.mp4?event=download
The Ukrainian National Guard has been put on high alert due to worsening forest fires around the crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant, according to Ukraine Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
“The forest fire situation around the Chernobyl power plant has worsened,” a statement on Avakov’s Facebook page says.
“The forest fire is heading in the direction of Chernobyl’s installations. Treetop flames and strong gusts of wind have created a real danger of the fire spreading to an area within 20 kilometers of the power plant. There are about 400 hectares [988 acres] of forests in the endangered area.”
Police and National Guard units are on high alert. Ukraine’s Prime Minister personally went to the affected area to oversee the firefighting. He says the situation is under control, “but this is the biggest fire since 1992.”
However, in comments to Russia’s Moscow Speaks radio, a representative of Greenpeace Russia said that the situation is much worse: “A very large, catastrophic forest fire is taking place in a 30-km zone around the Chernobyl power plant. We estimate the real area of the fire to be 10,000 hectares; this is based on satellite images. This hasn’t been officially acknowledged yet.”
The potential danger in this fire comes from the radioactive contaminants the burning plants have absorbed, ecologist Christopher Busby told RT. “Some of the materials that were contaminating that area would have been incorporated into the woods. In other words, they land on the ground in 1986 and they get absorbed into the trees and all the biosphere. And when it burns, they just become re-suspended. It’s like Chernobyl all over again. All of that material that fell on the ground will now be burned up into the air and will become available for people to breathe.” Christopher Busby is the scientific secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risks.
Ecologist Dmitry Shevchenko from the Environmental Watch on North Caucasus says it is difficult to predict where exactly the contaminants will go: “We don’t have a real-time monitoring system for the Chernobyl area. We can hypothesize whether the radionuclides will go here or there, but there is no-one who can reliably predict the situation.”
Ukrainian emergency services say 182 people and 34 vehicles have been dispatched to fight the fire. A Mi-8 helicopter and three An-32 water dropping airplanes are also working at the scene. The efforts are being coordinated from a mobile emergency headquarters.
According to the head of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone management department, radiation levels in the area remain normal. “The area on fire is relatively clean,” Vasily Zolotoverkh told the newspaper kp.ua. He said the fire started at lunchtime, when emergency workers had finished putting out an earlier blaze which started during the night. The emergency services have stated that it could have been caused by a lit cigarette.
Ukraine’s acting head of emergency services said earlier the forest fires were not a threat to the sarcophagus sealing off Chernobyl’s crippled Reactor 4.
Chernobyl and the surrounding area have been abandoned and remain off-limits following the April 1986 disaster, when an explosion and fire released massive amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere. Increased radiation levels were detected throughout Europe.
Chernobyl became the worst nuclear disaster in world history in terms of casualties and clean-up costs. Reactor 4, where the blast took place, was sealed off in a giant reinforced concrete sarcophagus to prevent further leaks. http://rt.com/news/253897-chernobyl-fires-rage-ukraine/
From Sputnik News, April 26, 2015
On the 29th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in what was then the Ukrainian SSR, Vladimir Bronnikov, who headed the original containment operation at the plant, told RIA Novosti Ukraine why the accident became such an enormous disaster.
1. The Plant Lacked a Safety Culture
There is still no single theory to why the Chernobyl disaster happened which nuclear experts agree upon. According to Bronnikov, the accident was due to an error by the plant’s control room to turn off the power unit when the accident occurred.
“The idea of the experiments was to see what happens when there is a blackout and the energy system collapses. But then there were several other accidents and the control room demanded that the power unit is kept turned on, as they tried to take it out of the iodine pit at any cost,” Bronnikov said.
According to Bronnikov, the plant’s construction also contributed to the accident in that the developers did not provide information of what to do during an accident to the operators.
“When we realized what happened and, so to say, cornered the designer, he said, ‘Yes we generally guessed and understood, we were getting ready but didn’t have time to analyze and calculate it to the end.'”
2. Rescue Workers and Experts Did Not Know How Bad It Really Was
The first people to arrive at the accident site were firemen. They tried to extinguish the fire with no protection other than their helmets and tarpaulin uniforms.
“I only realized the scale of what happened the following night, when some of the personnel got home from the plant and told me what happened. I didn’t believe them and thought they were lying. The next morning I began my job as the station’s chief engineer. It took my group about five days to realize the scale of what happened,” Bronnikov said.
Within hours it turned out that accident was no ordinary fire. By the morning, the firemen began to faint from radiation sickness. 136 plant employees and rescue workers got an enormous dose of radiation and 28 of them died within months of the accident.
3. No One Was Prepared for Evacuation…
The Soviet government kept silent on the accident. The first mention of the disaster in the media was on a local radio station in Pripyat 36 hours after the accident. The station’s announcer told residents to pack up for a temporary evacuation.
The city was evacuated quietly the following day. People were told that they would be leaving for one or two days, and to not take personal belongings with them so as not to overburden the buses evacuating them.
On April 28, two days after the disaster, a message went out on the TASS newswire: “An accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. One of the reactors is damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate consequences. Necessary aid has been administered to victims. A government commission to investigate the event has been created.”
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev only admitted that a disaster had occurred when it was impossible to hide. A nuclear power plant in Sweden detected elevated radiation levels, which they traced to Ukraine. Swedish and American experts initially thought that a nuclear war had begun, but measuring the radioactive spectrum showed that the radiation was from a power plant.
4….Or How to Deal With the Disaster
For the first few days, the liquidation efforts at the plant were intended to reduce radioactive emissions and cool down the reactor. There were fears that the heat from the nuclear fuel would cause a meltdown of the reactor and another massive radioactive emission.
“As a result of the accident, the remains of the active zone melted, a mix of melted metal, sand, concrete and fuel fragments flowed into facilities under the reactor, but it did not come out of the reactor. It just settled on the bottom and stayed there. We were afraid it would go through the foundation, as calculations showed,” Bronnikov said.
Helicopters were used to extinguish the flame. They dumped sand and clay on the reactor, as well as fire retardant chemicals that would also prevent a chain reaction. At the time, no one knew that this only made the reactor hotter, and the fire was not extinguished until May 9.
Despite mistakes that were made, Bronnikov says that the people who took part in the liquidation were very professional and had to make momentous decisions.
“If it wasn’t for the personnel understanding their responsibility and the problems before them, the consequences would be unknown. The personnel acted very fittingly. The professional workers did not panic.”
5. And No One Knows What to Do About it Even Now
The 30-kilometer exclusion zone around the accident site was eventually expanded to include neighboring Belarus where 20 percent of the country’s land area was contaminated. In Ukraine, contamination affected 50,000 square kilometers of land across 12 regions. Hundreds of villages were relocated and around 5 million hectares of agricultural land was deemed contaminated.
As many 4,000 people were killed by the disaster or are continuing to die, mostly due to cancers, according to the World Health Organization. Greenpeace says that as many as 10 million people were affected by the radiation.
Today, a second sarcophagus is being built to contain the radiation still being emitted by the reactor. The original casing built in 1986 is crumbling due to age.
Funding shortfalls due to overshooting costs threaten the project and funding is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. The Ukrainian government’s dire economic situation is adding to the problem and the project may be frozen if it does not obtain adequate funding.
Heal Fukushima 