— 22 security guards at Palisades placed on leave for falsifying fire inspection records

admin ,

Posted on Enformable

July 19, 2016

Officials from the Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan operated by Entergy have confirmed that 22 workers have been placed on paid leave after it was found that fire inspection records had been falsified.

One of the duties of security officers at some nuclear power plants is to conduct routine checks to ensure that there are no indications of fires.  These fire inspections are part of a commitment made by licensees instead of upgrading or modifying nuclear power plants to remove the threat of fires affecting the performance of critical safety systems.

Val Gent, spokeswoman for the nuclear power plant said, “we cannot tolerate employees stating they completed a task when they didn’t, and we are obligated to fully investigate any such instances.”

Several of the security officers placed on leave have told reporters that they are being treated as scapegoats by plant management, and claim they were never trained to perform the fire inspections.

“Now the company [Entergy] lawyer is asking us questions, saying the NRC will be speaking with us…and that we could be criminally liable,” a suspended security officer told a reporter from WWMT News Channel 3.

The falsification of fire reports was discovered in June when physical documents indicating fire inspections had been performed were found to not match the digital records from security key cards tracking employee movements in the plant.   Entergy began an internal investigation after finding the discrepancy.

In 2013 and 2014, employees at the Entergy-owned Waterford nuclear power plant in Louisiana were also found to have falsified nearly a year’s worth of fire watch logs.w

Source: Detroit Free Press

Source: WWMT

22 security guards at Palisades placed on leave for falsifying fire inspection records

— Please don’t shoot our civilians, UK begged US during height of 1980s nuclear cruise missile protests

admin , , , , , ,

From Sputnik

Nikolai Gorshkov
July 20, 2016

Secret UK Cabinet files released by the National Archives in Kew, west London on Thursday reveal that at the height of protests against the deployment of US nuclear cruise missiles in 1983-1985 the government of Margaret Thatcher was horrified by a prospect of US military shooting British peace activists.

Throughout the 1980-s Britain was in a grip of mass peace protests against the deployment of American cruise missiles tipped with nuclear warheads.

While publicly dismissing the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and other peace groups as “unrepresentative” of the British people, privately Thatcher and her Ministers were agonizing over the ways of “combatting” them, as the declassified files show. The Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine established a pro-government “peace” group to challenge CND’s “unilateralism”, while the Secret Service was charged with “exposing” the CND’s foreign backers. They failed to find any. Apparently, they hadn’t yet mastered the art of creating “dodgy dossiers” at the time.

Top secret documents
Top secret documents

A handwritten note informed the Prime Minister of the failure: “you will remember asking me to find out whether Sir Robert Armstrong knew who was financing CND’s activities at Molesworth. The attached is his answer, though it does not answer the question where CND get their money from.”

A MAJOR ELECTION PROBLEM

The CND was considered by the government to be a fairly responsible organization, but the famous peace women of Greenham Common (the US cruise missile site to the west of London) were branded “extremist”.

Handwritten note to Thatcher regarding CND
Handwritten note to Thatcher regarding CND

The repeated attempts by peace activists to breach security at bases housing nuclear weapons, like RAF Upper Heyford, ran the risk of a confrontation with armed US guards, and the Ministers were horrified by a prospect of the US military shooting British civilians on their home turf.

“The Home Secretary believes that an incident involving US firearms could be a major election problem”, a handwritten note of 17 May 1983 advised Thatcher who was in the middle of her reelection bid.

Even warning the demonstrators of this mortal danger was deemed to be politically too sensitive.

“…it would be a mistake to make any public reference to the presence of armed guards in the next few weeks”, wrote Home Secretary William Whitelaw on 17 May 1983. “The arming of security personnel in any circumstances is a potentially controversial issue. In this case there is the added complication that they are US personnel outside our control.”

A flurry of minutes between the Home, Defense, Foreign Secretaries and the PM explored how to “tactfully” impress on the Americans that shooting a British civilian during the UK election campaign would be a very bad idea.

The Home Secretary cautioned: “I see the difficulty of signaling tactfully to the US authorities our expectation that firearms will not be used without good cause during the proposed blockade [of RAF Upper Heyford – NG] from 31 May to 3 June [1983]. But the timing, which could hardly be more sensitive [UK general election – NG], and the traditionally different approach to the use of firearms in law enforcement in the United States make me think that the possibility should, at least, be explored.”

It appears from these discussions that the British Government did not feel to be in a position to take up the issue directly with the US military commanders stationed in the UK!

The Home Secretary suggested “a high level approach to the US Embassy who might [NG] be persuaded to emphasize the risks to the military commanders responsible for the base… The Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary would, no doubt, advise on whether [NG] some message might be sent and how it could best be delivered.”

Reply from Secret Service
Reply from Secret Service

Not entirely sure that the Americans would heed the plea, the Ministers planned to insert a thousand or more UK personnel between the demonstrators and the US armed guards. On quite a few occasions there were two guards for every protester! The Ministers were also crunching numbers as to how many millions of pounds they would need to install electronic security systems around the bases. Security at UK military installations, even at those housing nuclear weapons, Ministers agreed, was inadequate.

TRAVELLERS, GYPSIES AND PEACE CAMPS

The best solution to the government’s worries would of course be the eviction of protesters from peace camps around the USAF/RAF bases. But there was a legal conundrum, as explained by the then Secretary of State for Transport Nicholas Ridley:

“First, there is our policy towards travellers [e.g. gypsies — NG]. The situation of these people and the Greenham Common protestors is, I believe, in law much the same. They both trespass on the highway. Yet in the case of travellers, we condone it.”

This advice was not something Margaret Thatcher and other Ministers apparently wanted to hear, just like Tony Blair after them didn’t like the legal warnings about the Iraq invasion. In both cases the voices of reason were eventually silenced. As the declassified files show, Nicholas Ridley was put under serious pressure, not least by the Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine, to reconsider his position.

“ONLY MAJOR TRAGEDY CAN COMPETE WITH CND PICTURES”

Heseltine also took the lead in the “presentational” aspect of “combatting” the peace activists.

Request to Secret Service
Request to Secret Service

To counter the publicity of a series of mass protests across the UK planned by the CND for Easter 1983 he volunteered to make a speech at the Berlin Wall accusing the CND of working for the “forces of oppression” on the other side.

Heseltine’s visit to West Berlin was welcomed by his West German counterpart Dr. Woerner but he warned that it could provoke demonstrations in Berlin itself!

Foreign Office ministers and Thatcher’s own chief press secretary Bernard Ingham were equally in two minds about the validity of Heseltine’s counter-offensive:

“What we have to avoid is the charge that the CND’s Easter activities have the government rattled.”

The CND’s Easter “peace offensive” will only “secure less airtime and have less impact if something more newsworthy in television terms occurs – e.g. (to be brutal) a North Sea blowout; an assassination attempt on the Pope, etc.”, Bernard Ingham wrote in confidence on 17 March 1983.

“… If we accept that only a major tragedy can compete with CND pictures, Mr. Heseltine’s visit to the Berlin Wall should be seen more as a preemptive strike than a competitive event. In any case, I have serious doubts about Ministers being seen to be competing with CND on Good Friday, the day of Christ’s crucifixion.”

“…It is also a day when there is not much sport,” Thatcher’s chief press secretary lamented.

LET THE ROYALS DO THE BIDDING

To win the “battle of ideas” against the CND Ingham suggested to “feed into the BBC and ITN at an appropriate level the idea of getting cameras to film the various pursuits” like “pigeon, or whippet or tortoise racing (or whatever respectable minority sport we can confidently prove attracts more participants than CND demonstrating).”

Upper Heyford US Armed Guards
Upper Heyford US Armed Guards

But what would really “do the trick would be press and TV pictures, for TV release on the evening of Good Friday and/or Saturday newspapers of Prince William in Australia.”

Eventually, the UK government succeeded in reclaiming parts of the land occupied by the peace camps under the pretext of road improvements, and the Soviet-American arms reductions deals made US cruise missiles in Europe redundant.

In his notes of March 1983 Bernard Ingham wrote that “CND, if successful, contains not the seeds but the certainty of its annihilation”. CND, in its own way, did contribute to the success of arms talks in late 1980-s, but this did not lead to its annihilation. To the contrary, with the relapses of Cold War mentality in the British Establishment the peace movement appears to go through a revival.

http://sputniknews.com/military/20160721/1043372433/please-dont-shoot-civilians-gorshkov.html

— UK Prime Minister Theresa May says “Yes,” she’s prepared to kill hundreds of thousands in nuke attack

admin , , ,
By Deirdre Fulton
Global Research, July 19, 2016
Common Dreams 18 July 2016

Newly installed U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is prepared to authorize a nuclear strike that could kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

So she said before Parliament on Monday, as the body debated whether to renew Trident, Britain’s aging nuclear weapons system.

According to the Independent, May was challenged on her support for the program by the SNP’s George Kerevan, who asked: “Are you prepared to authorize a nuclear strike that could kill hundreds of thousands of men, women and children?”

May replied with one word: “Yes.”

Later, when it was his turn to speak, Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn countered that he “would not take a decision that kills millions of innocent people,” saying: ”

I do not believe the threat of mass murder is a legitimate way to go about international relations.”

Corbyn’s stance puts him at odds with the official stance of his party, a fact that was not lost during the debate, which comes amid intense Labour infighting.

Meanwhile, the Telegraph reported on another tense exchange in the chamber, this one between May and Green MP Caroline Lucas:

Caroline Lucas, the Green MP:

“If keeping and renewing our nuclear weapons is so vital to our national security and our safety, then does she accept the logic of that position must be that every other single country must seek to acquire nuclear weapons?

“Does she really think the world would be a safer place if it did? Our nuclear weapons are driving proliferation, not the opposite.”

Theresa May, the Prime Minister

“No, I don’t accept that at all and I have say to the honorable lady that sadly she and some members of the Labour Party seem to be the first to defend the country’s enemies and the last to actually accept the capabilities that we need.”

Lucas hit back on Twitter:

According to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which favors scrapping Trident and was holding a #StopTrident rally outside the House of Commons on Monday evening, the weapons system serves ”no legitimate purpose” and is hugely wasteful.

Of the Trident vote, CND’s general secretary Kate Hudson said:

“This is a once in a generation opportunity to break with this massively expensive yet redundant old technology and instead spend Britain’s valuable resources on meeting the security challenges we face today, like terrorism and climate change.”

Meanwhile, wrote Andrew Smith of the Campaign Against Arms Trade on Monday, “even if we put the financial implications to one side, the potential impact of the weapons is far too deadly to contemplate. One Trident submarine has the power to kill 5.4 million people, and it would do so indiscriminately. The impact could be on an even greater scale than Hiroshima.”

Opposition to Trident is widespread in Scotland, where the issue was among several fueling2014′s independence campaign. Anti-Trident protests were held in more than 30 Scottish cities, towns, and villages on Saturday, according to The Herald.

On Monday, SNP’s Westminster leader Angus Robertson described Trident as an “immoral, obscene, and redundant weapons system” and said renewing the program would speed up Scottish independence.

“The people of Scotland have shown repeatedly, clearly and consistently that we are opposed to the renewal of nuclear weapons,” he said.

The original source of this article is Common Dreams
Copyright © Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams, 2016
http://www.globalresearch.ca/uk-prime-minister-theresa-may-says-yes-shes-prepared-to-kill-hundreds-of-thousands-in-nuke-attack/5536444

— “They told us it was safe”: 1966 US Air Force nuclear accident in Palomares, Spain — plutonium contamination

admin

From the New York Times

Decades Later, Sickness Among Airmen After a Hydrogen Bomb Accident

By DAVE PHILIPPS
JUNE 19, 2016

Second article in series:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/world/europe/spain-palomares-hydrogen-bombs.html
Even Without Blast, 4 Hydrogen Bombs From ’66 Scar Spanish Village, June 20, 2016

Alarms sounded on United States Air Force bases in Spain and officers began packing all the low-ranking troops they could grab onto buses for a secret mission. There were cooks, grocery clerks and even musicians from the Air Force band.

It was a late winter night in 1966 and a fully loaded B-52 bomber on a Cold War nuclear patrol had collided with a refueling jet high over the Spanish coast, freeing four hydrogen bombs that went tumbling toward a farming village called Palomares, a patchwork of small fields and tile-roofed white houses in an out-of-the-way corner of Spain’s rugged southern coast that had changed little since Roman times.

It was one of the biggest nuclear accidents in history, and the United States wanted it cleaned up quickly and quietly. But if the men getting onto buses were told anything about the Air Force’s plan for them to clean up spilled radioactive material, it was usually, “Don’t worry.”

“There was no talk about radiation or plutonium or anything else,” said Frank B. Thompson, a then 22-year-old trombone player who spent days searching contaminated fields without protective equipment or even a change of clothes. “They told us it was safe, and we were dumb enough, I guess, to believe them.”

Mr. Thompson, 72, now has cancer in his liver, a lung and a kidney. He pays $2,200 a month for treatment that would be free at a Veterans Affairs hospital if the Air Force recognized him as a victim of radiation. But for 50 years, the Air Force has maintained that there was no harmful radiation at the crash site. It says the danger of contamination was minimal and strict safety measures ensured that all of the 1,600 troops who cleaned it up were protected.

Interviews with dozens of men like Mr. Thompson and details from never before published declassified documents tell a different story. Radiation near the bombs was so high it sent the military’s monitoring equipment off the scales. Troops spent months shoveling toxic dust, wearing little more protection than cotton fatigues. And when tests taken during the cleanup suggested men had alarmingly high plutonium contamination, the Air Force threw out the results, calling them “clearly unrealistic.”

In the decades since, the Air Force has purposefully kept radiation test results out of the men’s medical files and resisted calls to retest them, even when the calls came from one of the Air Force’s own studies.

Many men say they are suffering with the crippling effects of plutonium poisoning. Of 40 veterans who helped with the cleanup who The New York Times identified, 21 had cancer. Nine had died from it. It is impossible to connect individual cancers to a single exposure to radiation. And no formal mortality study has ever been done to determine whether there is an elevated incidence of disease. The only evidence the men have to rely on are anecdotes of friends they watched wither away.

“John Young, dead of cancer … Dudley Easton, cancer … Furmanksi, cancer,” said Larry L. Slone, 76, in an interview, laboring through tremors caused by a neurological disorder.

At the crash site, Mr. Slone, a military police officer at the time, said he was given a plastic bag and told to pick up radioactive fragments with his bare hands.

“A couple times they checked me with a Geiger counter and it went clear off the scale,” he said. “But they never took my name, never followed up with me.”

Monitoring of the village in Spain has also been haphazard, declassified documents show. The United States promised to pay for a public health program to monitor the long-term effects of radiation there, but for decades provided little funding. Until the 1980s, Spanish scientists often relied on broken and outdated equipment, and lacked the resources to follow up on potential ramifications, including leukemia deaths in children. Today, several fenced-off areas are still contaminated, and the long-term health effect on villagers is poorly understood.

Continue reading →

— “Horror” – All along Canada’s West Coast, mussels are dying of cancer… Bodies are swollen with tumors… Unprecedented contagious cancer spreading from one species to another like a virus (VIDEO)

admin , , ,

From ENE News
July 7, 2016

Washington Post, Jun 22, 2016 (emphasis added): All along the western Canadian coast, mussels are dying. Their blobby bodies are swollen by tumors. The blood-like fluid that fills their interiors is clogged with malignant cells. They’re all sick with the same thing: cancer. And it seems to be spreading. For all its harrowing, terrifying damage, the saving grace of cancer has always been that it dies with its host. Its destructive power comes from turning victims’ own cells against them and making them run amok. But when molecular biologist Stephen Goff biopsied these mussels, he found something strange. The tumor cells didn’t have the same DNA as their host. Instead, every mussel was being killed by the same line of cancerous cells, which were jumping from one individual to the next like a virus…

National Geographic, Jun 23, 2016: It sounds like the plot of a summer horror flick: Malignant cells floating in the sea, ferrying infectious cancer everywhere they go. The story is all too true, say scientists who’ve made a discovery they call “beyond surprising.”… “The evidence indicates that the tumor cells themselves are contagious – that they can spread from one clam to another in the ocean,” says biochemist and immunologist Stephen Goff of Columbia University, co-author, along with Michael Metzger of Columbia, of a paper reporting the results in the journal Cell. These mussels are one of four species of mollusks affected. The mussels at Copper Beach in West Vancouver, Canada, are infected with the disease. This week the team reported new findings in the journal Nature. The transmissible cancer has been discovered in… mussels (Mytilus trossulus) in West Vancouver… Mytilus trossulus is the main native intertidal mussel in the northern Pacific. In North America, it’s found from California to Alaska… The cancer, it’s believed, originated in one unfortunate mollusk. It’s astounding, Goff says, that a leukemia that has killed countless clams traces to one incidence of the disease… What will happen in other mollusk species?  Ominously, says Goff, “It’s too soon to know.”

University of British Columbia, Jun 23, 2016: 1st contagious cancer that spreads between species — UBC scientists were involved in research that found the first contagious cancer that can spread between species, CBC News reported. The leukemia-like disease seems to be widespread among shellfish with hinged shells, or bivalves, like clams, mussels and cockles. Environment Canada scientists worked with UBC researchers to collect mussels in West Vancouver and Esquimalt, B.C. and test them for cancer.

CBC News, Jun 22, 2016: Contagious cancers are a scary idea to begin with, but scientists have made some startling new discoveries about them – they are likely more common in nature than originally thought, and some can even spread between species… Mussels living off the coast of British Columbia [are] prone to the contagious cancer… scientists reported Wednesday in Nature… Canadian scientists collected mussels in West Vancouver, above, and Esquimalt, B.C. They then took them back to the lab and screened them for cancer… Sherry worked with Reinisch and scientists at the University of British Columbia to collect mussels in West Vancouver and Esquimalt, B.C. Then they took them back to the lab and screened them for cancer… Samples that tested positive for leukemia were sent to Goff and his postdoctoral researcher Michael Metzger, lead author of the new paper, for genetic analysis. That analysis showed that not all the mussels with leukemia had a contagious cancer – in some cases, the cancer had developed from an individual’s own cells, as is typically the case. But contagious cancers were found in all three species, and were typically clones from a single individual… Stephen Goff, a professor of microbiology at Columbia University who also co-authored the new paper, is interested in finding out what mutations allowed the transmissible cancer to spread to other individuals.

Watch Columbia University’s video here

 

— Reminder: Attend remaining DOE meetings July 14, 21, for “consent-based siting”, parking lot dumps & Mobile Chernobyls — Public comments urgently needed by July 31 deadlines

admin , , , , , ,

From Beyond Nuclear

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has a few more public meetings scheduled regarding “Consent-Based Siting” of centralized interim storage sites for high-level radioactive waste, and the truck, train, and barge shipments it would take to deliver the irradiated nuclear fuel there:
Boise, Idaho, July 14;
Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 21.

Strong turnouts are needed, both in person and via Webinar. If you live close enough, please consider attending, and taking folks with you; otherwise, spread word to people you know who live nearby, and watch online.

Public comments are urgently needed by DOE’s July 31 deadline.

Beyond Nuclear has prepared “We Do Not Consent!” talking points you can use to prepare your own.

Comments can be submitted by email, mail, fax, or Web form, in addition to orally in person at the public meetings. More

Beyond Nuclear

Cindy at beyondnuclear.org

— EPA plans to vastly raise drinking water radioactivity limits; register for July 13 telebriefing “Dangerous Drinking Water”

admin , , , , , ,

From Nuclear Information and Resource Service

July 1, 2016

Dear Friends,

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has quietly proposed to raise the allowable levels of radioactivity in drinking water a nuclear incident to hundreds of times their current limits. If this guidance goes through, EPA’s action will allow people to drink water with concentrations of radioactivity at vastly higher levels.

Look no further than the current water crisis in Flint, Michigan to understand concern that the EPA will not act to protect public health in an emergency. In this case, the EPA is attempting to ensure that it would not have to act decisively to protect public health!

But there is still time to act.

Call in to the July 13 telebriefing to find out more.
http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/5502/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=81984

You are invited to join us on WEDNESDAY JULY 13 for a national telebriefing: Dangerous Drinking Water, with presentations by leading experts and activists:
•Diane D’Arrigo, Radioactive Waste Project Director, Nuclear Information and Resource Service
•Daniel Hirsch, Director, Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy, University of California Santa Cruz
•Emily Wurth, Water Program Director, Food and Water Watch

•Moderated by NIRS Executive Director, Tim Judson

The open and free event will be on the phone, starting at 8 pm eastern, 7 pm central, 6 pm mountain and 5 pm pacific. We will reserve the second half of the program for questions and discussion.

Register to attend the July 13 telebriefing.
http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/5502/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=81984

The program will focus on EPA Guidance that massively increases the permitted levels of radioactivity in drinking water for years after any nuclear incident that requires consideration of “protective action,” ranging from a spill, leak or transport accident to a dirty bomb or nuclear meltdown—a nuclear accident of any kind, big or small. Allowable concentrations of radioactive elements allowed to come out of your tap would rise hundreds or even thousands of times above the current Maximum Concentration Levels allowed under the Safe Drinking Water Act regulations. Click here to review EPA’s proposal.
https://www.epa.gov/radiation/protective-action-guides-pags

Nuclear Energy is Dirty in many dimensions, but first, and foremost because of its dangerous ionizing radiation. The EPA guidance, allowing us to drink highly radioactive water is a clever effort to bypass existing limits, which the law prevents from being weakened. It is yet another way to shift liability and cleanup costs to the public from industry and government in case of a “nuclear event.” For instance, for most radionuclides the Safe Drinking Water levels are based on no more than 4 millirems a year exposure from drinking water; the proposed water PAGs would allow 500 millirems a year with no notice, and no action to limit exposure to adults. This difference protects the government and industry from any liability from massively increased health consequences.

Although EPA for the first time ever admits that those under 15 years of age are at greater risk than adults the draft PAG only pays lip-service to considering a lower level which is still enormously higher than current water limits. This is in addition to rest of EPA PAGs, which allow even more exposure from air and food.

Call in to learn more about this federal guidance and how to help stop it.
http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/5502/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=81984

Thanks for all you do,

Mary Olson, Southeast Office Director

Stay Informed:

NIRS on the web: http://www.nirs.org

http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/5502/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=1367594

Massachusetts: Nuclear expert questions how long Entergy’s Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station operated without emergency generators

admin , , , , ,

From The Enterprise

Nuclear safety expert seeks data about Pilgrim incident

By Christine Legere
The Cape Cod Times
Posted Jul. 1, 2016

PLYMOUTH – A well-known nuclear safety expert is looking for more information from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regarding a report that both emergency diesel generators at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station had been out of commission at the same time for a short period in April while the reactor was operating at full power.

David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, questions how long the plant had been running with no emergency generators, which provide a default power source to safely shut down the reactor, maintain safe shutdown conditions and operate all essential systems if primary and secondary power sources have failed.

The Pilgrim plant can continue to operate for only 24 hours with both generators down, under conditions of its license. If one isn’t back online within that time frame, the reactor must go into cold shutdown, Lochbaum pointed out in his email.

Entergy, Pilgrim’s owner-operator, filed an event report on the April incident with federal regulators on June 9. The report is required because it was “a condition that could have prevented the fulfillment of the safety function of a system needed to shut down the reactor and maintain it in a safe shutdown condition, remove residual heat and mitigate the consequences of an accident,” according to the report.

The document said workers had removed one of the plant’s two diesel generators from service for planned maintenance at 7 p.m. April 11. More than 25 hours after shutting down the generator, a worker noticed water leaking across the floor “at 130 drops a minute” from a pipe coupling on the generator believed to be still operable.

Workers determined the leak was caused by stress corrosion and pronounced the generator inoperable, leaving the plant with no working generators.

Workers fixed the leak and put the diesel generator back in service shortly before noon April 12.

Meanwhile, Mary Lampert, a Duxbury resident and director of Pilgrim Watch, said she believed the situation occurred because of aging equipment and lack of vigilance.

“It’s the same old story: Entergy running the reactor on the cheap – generating not required backup power but trouble for us and themselves,” wrote Lampert in an email.

While Lampert noted Pilgrim workers used to operate on eight-hour shifts, which would have resulted in three checks of the diesel room daily rather than the current two, Patrick O’Brien, speaking for Entergy Corp., said the change to 12-hour shifts occurred in the 1990s, before Entergy bought the plant. O’Brien added that Pilgrim still maintains a full staff of 650 employees.

“The plant’s operations professionals maintain scheduled rounds of all protected equipment when another system is out of service, and the procedures in place ensure the plant maintains safe operations,” O’Brien wrote.

‘‘Proper procedure was followed, and there was no impact on public health or worker safety. At the time, the plant had access to its other back-up power source – the station’s blackout generator – as well as the preferred source, off-site power.”

Follow Christine Legere on Twitter: @chrislegereCCT.

http://www.enterprisenews.com/news/20160701/nuclear-safety-expert-seeks-data-about-pilgrim-incident

Posted under Fair Use Rules.

— Dead humpback whale washes ashore near Los Angeles

admin , , ,

A strange lighthearted title and article in the LA Times attempting to distract the public from yet another dead humpback whale. The Monterey Herald has additional information on the whale.

From Monterey Herald

Dead whale towed off Los Angeles beach ahead of holiday
By John Antczak, Associated Press
July 1, 2016

…Tail markings were compared with a photo database and found that the same whale had been spotted three times previously off Southern California between June and August of last year by whale watchers who gave it the nickname Wally, said Alisa Schulman-Janiger, a whale research associate with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

At the time of the prior sightings the humpback was covered with whale lice, which usually means a whale is in poor physical condition, but it was also actively feeding and breaching, she said.

Schulman-Janiger said she noticed healed entanglement scars on its tail indicating that in the past it been snarled in some sort of fishing line. The carcass was in relatively good condition which meant the whale could have died as recently as Thursday morning, she said.

The whale was about 46 feet long and at least 15 years old, meaning it had reached maturity, said Justin Greenman, stranding coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Skin and blubber samples were taken for DNA testing along with fecal matter to be tested for biotoxins.

The experts had hoped to more extensively open up the whale but due to the holiday weekend authorities decided to get it off the beach as soon as possible, Greenman said.

North Pacific humpbacks feed along the West Coast from California to Alaska during summer, according to the Marine Mammal Center, a Sausalito-based ocean conservation organization. Although the species’ numbers are extensively depleted, humpbacks have been seen with increasing frequency off California in recent years, the center’s website said.

Humpbacks, familiar to whale watchers for their habits of breaching and slapping the water, are filter feeders that consume up to 3,000 pounds of krill, plankton and tiny fish per day, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The whale that washed up is not the same one spotted earlier in the week off Southern California tangled in crab pot lines. That animal was identified as a blue whale. Efforts by a rescue crew in a small boat to cut away the line failed, and it disappeared.

From Los Angeles Times

Wally the whale is towed out to sea a day after washing ashore
by Joseph Serna and Alexia Fernandez
July 1, 2016

Video on website

ally the whale was towed into the sea by two Los Angeles County lifeguard boats Friday evening at Dockweiler State Beach, just a day after he washed ashore.

Carol Baker, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors, said the carcass was taken into the water about 6:30 p.m.

”It took a while, but the high tide during the evening helped us into getting it back into the water,” she said.

Thousands of beachgoers were expected to arrive for the long Fourth of July weekend, making it a priority for workers to tow the carcass back into the water were it could properly decompose.

“It’s starting to smell … and decompose pretty rapidly,” said Los Angeles County Lifeguard Capt. Ken Haskett.

The 45-foot-long, 22-ton whale carcass washed ashore about 8 p.m. Thursday,  Haskett said. The male cetacean was between 10 and 20 years old when he died, the county lifeguard department tweeted.

Biologists with the National Marine Fisheries Service visited the carcass before noon Friday and identified the creature as a humpback that was tagged in August. The whale’s name, they said, was Wally.

Already, Wally’s arrival on the beach has created a blubbery spectacle, and county crews say they are eager to have him removed.

Officials asked the public to stay 200 feet away from the carcass Friday, and onlookers crowded along the the edge of the taped perimeter to watch researchers and county work crews deal with the whale.

Lifeguards, working with the county’s Department of Beaches and Harbors, decided to tow the carcass far out to sea, where it will be clear of shipping lanes and where currents will keep it away from the beach. Natural decomposition and marine life will do the rest, Haskett said.

Crews used a tractor to build a sand berm on the land side of the whale, then slowly pushed the berm — and the carcass – into the ocean. From there, a line was tied around the whale’s tail (the strongest part of its body) and boats would pull it at least six miles off the coast, Haskett said.

Towing the carcass avoids the more grisly and gross option of chopping it up and shipping it to a landfill or burying it, officials said. (In April, a 50,000-pound gray whale washed up at San Onofre State Beach, drawing scores of onlookers. The whale ultimately was cut up by excavators and hauled away in dump trucks.)

As workers made preparations to remove Wally on Friday afternoon, 10-month-old Selena De La Cruz sat with her parents and thumped her small fists into the dark, wet sand. She grinned happily, oblivious to the wonder on her parents’ faces as they looked at the dead humpback whale 15 feet away from where they sat.

“It’s already getting a fishy, fishy smell,” said her father, Michael De La Cruz, 25. The girl’s mother, Reina Saucedo, 25, snapped away with her iPhone camera.

“Should we go?” De La Cruz asked.

“No, I want to take one of you two with the whale in the background,” Saucedo said.

The family had driven from Carson to Dockweiler at 7 a.m., and never intended to meet the carcass of a whale.

“We just wanted to get out of the house today,” Saucedo said. “Our daughter loves the beach, and when we saw the whale, we tried showing her, but obviously she doesn’t understand.”

joseph.serna@latimes.com

alexia.fernandez@latimes.com

Twitter: @JosephSerna and @alexiafedz

http://www.montereyherald.com/article/zz/20160701/NEWS/160709776

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-dead-humpback-whale-playa-del-rey-beach-20160701-snap-story.html

Posted under Fair Use Rules.

 

— More whales found dead along the Alaskan Coast — 3 in one week

admin , , ,

From Alaska Public Media

Whale deaths near Anchorage, Glacier Bay prompt investigation
By Graelyn Brashear
July 1, 2016

Researchers are trying to determine what caused the deaths of three large whales found along Alaska’s coastline within a single week in late June, and whether the fatal strandings might be related to a big spike in whale deaths in the region last year.

A fin whale died in Knik Arm near Anchorage on June 22. Four days later, a humpback was found dead off Point Carolus in Glacier Bay National Park. Two days after that, another humpback was found in Turnagain Arm near Hope.

Investigators with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and partner groups have taken tissue samples from all three whales. The Glacier Bay humpback, which had been observed by scientists since the late 1960s and was nicknamed “Festus,” may provide the most clues, because researchers were able to conduct a full necropsy.

British Columbia veterinary pathologist Steven Raverty led the postmortem, and said there was no evidence of skull or other bone fractures, but there were indications the whale wasn’t healthy.

Whales usually have copepod parasites known as whale lice, Raverty said, “and this animal had probably the most abundant numbers that we’ve seen in animals that have stranded throughout the area. And it would tend to suggest that the animal may have been debilitated or there was some degree of immunosuppression.”

In addition, he said, the whale had diminished fat reserves, which may mean it wasn’t consuming enough food.

NOAA officials don’t know if these recent deaths are related to the dozens of whale deaths in the Gulf of Alaska last year. Those 2015 strandings were labeled an “unusual mortality event,” and the cause is still under investigation. It could be a difficult mystery to solve, because so many of the carcasses were too decomposed or too remote to study.

Raverty said the recent whale deaths could help researchers to better understand last year’s die-off.

“We look at these individuals that are now stranding in 2016 as a really unique opportunity to try and establish baseline health and understanding, whether there may be evidence of ship strike, infectious disease, exposure to harmful algal blooms, and these will all be put in the context of what had occurred historically, but also during the unusual mortality event,” he said.

Tissue samples from all three whales have been sent to labs for analysis, but it’s not clear when researchers will know more about how and why they died.

Whale deaths near Anchorage, Glacier Bay prompt investigation