— PG&E Humboldt Nuclear Power Plant accident & the cover-up

From WorkWeek Radio

Scott Rainsford, a former US Coast Guard member, discovered a serious nuclear incident at the PG&E owned nuclear power plant in Humboldt California. This was the first commercial power plant in California and according to Rainsford this incident and release of radioactive material was covered up by PG&E and the US government.

Additional references following transcript.

UNOFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT (based on auto-transcript)

Dec 12, 2020

Steve: This is Steve Zeltzer with Work Week and I’m speaking with Scott Rainsford. And Scott is formerly in the coast guard and safety expert. And he has some information he wanted to talk to us about this morning in relationship to Humboldt nuclear power plant. And that was PG&E’s first nuclear power plant, the first one as a matter of fact in California, and it had some issues which we’ve gone into in the past with Bob Rowan who was a PG&E health and safety inspector at the plant. And he had some issues and he was retaliated against.

And Scott has done some videos and documentaries about what was going on at that plant. So, welcome to Work Week, Scott.

Scott: Well thank you

Steve: So Scott, you were in the Coast Guard in 1978. Why don’t you talk about how you came to become involved with the Humboldt nuclear power plant?

Scott: Prior to coming up to Humboldt County, I was a marine science technician in active duty Coast Guard. And I operated several laboratories on board a high endurance cutter in the coast guard for a number of years. So there was a fair amount of scientific background. So when I came up here to go to Humboldt State University majoring in oceanography and geology — the Coast Guard Reserve up here is mostly a search and rescue port security facility with small boats and helicopter station – they didn’t exactly know what to do with my expertise. So my commanding officer in the Coast Guard Reserve which I transferred from active duty into the reserve, earned a little extra money for my college studies, decided that, “Hey you understand wind and weather tides and currents. Why don’t you visit the major facilities in the area and see if you can update their contingency plan?”

So a meeting was arranged where I went to the reactor, PG&E’s nuclear reactor unit 3, and reviewed what their contingency plan was.

So in late 1977, winter of ’77 – ’78, I went to the reactor. I sat down, I read their contingency plan, and then I asked if they ever had a chance to use it, because I wanted to see how well it had worked.

They brought me out a report marked “confidential” which was written by a man named Shiffer. Now this report was a nuclear operator’s log.

When a reactor is operating, there’s someone in charge called a nuclear operator and he keeps a log with a time annotation and then what happens in every major occurrence during his watch.

Now the operator’s log that I was presented with described an accident that occurred on July 17 1970. And this log was that I was provided was only, say, three pages long or so, typewritten double-spaced, almost triple-spaced, and it describes the following:

There was a loss of outside power. And the reactor at the time was operating at full power which was about 65 megawatts of power. The reactor pressure was 1104 psi. The coolant temperature was 560 degrees Fahrenheit.

And all of a sudden when they lost power, the feed water pumps shut down, which means that there is a loss of coolant and the safety systems started failing one after another after another – a cavalcade of failures and he didn’t, he did not understand why this was happening.

Now July 17, 1970, was a Friday. It also happened to be a training day at the reactor. So there were an excess of trained qualified people there. Listed as the operating, nuclear operator was a man named Leach and while he was operating the reactor, Mr. Shiffer, who was not only a senior nuclear operator, licensed but he was also a licensed nuclear engineer, he was one of PG&E’s best and brightest, Stanford University, chemically-trained, also trained at Vallacito’s research reactor down in the San Francisco East Bay area. So he was highly qualified.

So when this accident started, he took command of the reactor from Mr. Leach, and he started directing people to try and figure out why everything was failing. And things were progressing so fast that he had a hard time keeping up

So a number of electrical monitoring systems had failed, and probably the two most important were a device that keeps a log of the coolant level in the reactor, and another piece of important equipment would be the main pressure sensor which also failed.

So this is what is supposed to happen: when you lose outside power, as I mentioned, the feed water pump shut down. What happens when that occurs is the reactor is producing a large amount of heat, and without the heat being able to be discharged through the normal power- producing process through a heat exchanger, the heat builds up very fast in the reactor and boils the liquid coolant in the reactor, which causes the pressure to jump very fast.

So what was supposed to happen was in that occurrence, there is a vital piece of equipment called an isolation condenser. Some people call it an emergency condenser, because that’s the primary function of this device. And what it does is it takes this high pressure steam coming from the reactor that’s out of specification, and runs this radioactive steam through this condenser. It’s a large vat partially filled with water with baffles that the steam goes through. The steam is cooled down, condensed back into water, cooling quality water, and that put back into the reactor to keep the core covered. It failed because a condensate return valve failed open. Later the investigation revealed that a gate in that valve had been installed backwards. So without that device in operation, they could not control the pressure in the reactor vessel without losing coolant water that was not being replaced.

One of the backups is pressure relief valves. There were several of them. Each valve that opened releases steam from the reactor at the rate of 400,000 pounds per hour, which equates to 800 gallons per minute. And that steam, the radioactive steam, is piped into a device called a taurus, or pressure suppression pool. It’s a donut-shaped device that’s shown in my video, and it deposits that steam, that radioactive steam, into that container.

So without the emergency condensor functioning, the reactor is losing coolant water in the form of steam at a remarkable rate.

So Mr. Shiffer, who had taken command, figured that he better shut this down, otherwise he’s going to uncover the core, which did happen. And we know that there’s several ways to determine that the core was uncovered. But when he shut these pressure relief valves down, several pipes in the reactor started bursting. For example, a inch-and-a-half in diameter high-strength stainless steel pipe going from the reactor for the purposes of instrumentation came out, that goes out from the reactor into the dry well, there was a four -and-a-half inch rupture in that pipe.

There was a baffle, stainless steel baffle, also in that system, that was affected by the pressure, which also ruptured.

So the plant is starting to come apart. There was, according to witness reports, abstract (abject) panic in the control room.

The control room when they lost power, every emergency indicator alarm sounded. The control room was on battery power, but the batteries did not provide power to much else in the facility. They were mostly to power the control room indicators.

So what’s supposed to happen is whenever the reactor is operating, the one of the other two petroleum-based units, generators, must be working for the sole reason that in case of an emergency, they could supply emergency outside power to the reactor. That unit number two was in operation. The circuit that goes, the emergency circuit that goes from unit two to the reactor unit three failed, because a maintenance crew several months before had left an electrical cable disconnected in the switch yard, and they didn’t know it.

So that backup system failed.

So eventually it came down to a propane generator which worked, did work according to specification, but it only supplied enough power for some of the emergency instruments and enough power to scram the reactor, which means the control rods were inserted all the way into the reactor.

But there’s still a large amount of heat being produced. It’s not a light switch shut off.

So Mr. Shiffer, faced with this loss of outside power, which by the way was caused by another maintenance crew going to a substation called Mitchell Heights, which is oh perhaps four or five miles away, as the crow flies. And at 9:21, this maintenance person was going to do some maintenance on a high tension line, high voltage line at that substation. The maintenance worker failed to verify that this 60,000 volt line was dead, when in actuality, it was live. He tried to open an oil circuit breaker, which is the most competent circuit breaker, before working on that line. He couldn’t operate it, because in the mechanism on the previous day, another maintenance crew had left a block of wood in that mechanism, preventing this next day the maintenance worker from using the oil circuit breaker. So this maintenance person opened an air circuit breaker which is not competent to handle the transient of an operating hot 60,000 volt line. It melted. There was a fireball. That’s what caused the power outage at the reactor. That’s what was delivering the voltage to the nuclear unit.

Faced with all these failing systems, with the situation where you had the the reactor coming apart, ruptured pipes, ruptured stainless steel baffles, rapid loss of coolant to the reactor in the form of steam, Mr Shiffer started calling for help

And I’m reading this at the reactor during this visit.

And his first call was to Vallecitos research reactor where he was trained. And he said, “We’ve got this situation. What do we do?” And I’m condensing this, of course.

And they didn’t know. They referred him to research facilities and in the midwest near Chicago also near, the Dresden facility, a nuclear complex 30 miles outside of Chicago

He asked them, “We’ve got this situation. What do I do?” They did not have an answer.

They recommended that he call the military.

So being in the military, I knew that the experts in the field of nuclear power at that time were the Navy. And indeed many of the nuclear operators at reactors throughout the country were prior Navy nuclear operators. And the experts in the Navy are in Idaho at Bettis Naval Research Center, 30 miles west of Idaho Falls.

So he contacted them. He got a plan, and the report that I was reading, that I held in my hand, did not spell out what this plan was, but it just said that they delivered a plan.

So Mr. Shiffer called Vallecito’s research reactor again and said, “This is what the Navy has recommended I do. “

And Vallecitos said, “You better get permission from the home office at 245 Market Street in San Francisco to proceed with that plan,” because they were very concerned about what this plan entailed.

So Shiffer did that. He called the home office, told them what the plan was, and asked if he had permission to proceed. And in this report, the response from home office said, and I’ve got almost the exact wording, it said, “Do what the military says.”

So after that, in this report, there were a number of readings in the form of numbers, and the first one to my memory was 1220.

It was not labeled, but it could only be one of two things, both with the same result.

One was the pressure.

Now as I said before, the main pressure sensor in the reactor was down because it was on outside power which failed, and it was not supplied emergency power from the propane generator. But they did have a pressure sensor by the turbine board which measures pressure at the turbine in an area away from the reactor. So they were taking pressure readings from this turbine board, and it showed the pressures substantially out of specifications — too high — and which means, it indicated that the emergency condenser had failed.

Also, the other use or potential reading that the 1220 indicates, that’s what the setting was for the pressure relief valves to open. And if the pressure relief valves opened at 1220 psi, that means that the emergency condenser, the isolation condenser, had failed.

So it both indicated the same thing.

So following that was approximately a dozen other readings. Most of them were labeled, and I cannot remember all of them, but immediately after those readings on this report that I held in my hand, Mr. Shiffer called the Humboldt County sheriff’s department activating the contingency plan, which obviously is the reason that they presented this paperwork to me for that day.

So when the contingency plan is activated, it’s only done in an extreme emergency.

There is a legally mandated amount of monitoring must happen to establish the level of radiation released and where it went.

So I asked to see the result of that monitoring, and my request was denied.

So at that point I was probably white as a ghost, and I was not able to take a copy of that nuclear operator’s log because it was marked “confidential”.

So I went back to my Coast Guard unit to report what I had seen to my commanding officer, and as I showed in my video, there were a line of people at the reserve unit that said, “We know. We know. The Coast Guard District will handle it.”

And I protested. I said, “No. This is serious.”

And they said, “We know. The Coast Guard 12th District will handle this. Drop it.”

So I did. So as years went by, I befriended a number of people in the community, and a lot of people that that I knew were coming down with cancer and dying.

And I asked them you know, “Where did you grow up? Where do you live? Where did you go to school?” And a lot of them said, “I grew up by the nuclear power plant.””I went to South Bay Elementary School.”

Now for those that do not know, South Bay Elementary School is just a few hundred yards downwind from the reactor. I say downwind, because it was the prevailing wind pattern during most of the year. So whatever comes out of that reactor goes towards the South Bay Elementary School.

PG&E operated 36 monitoring stations throughout the region. The furthest north is by Humboldt State University about 10 miles away to the north. The furthest south is towards a town called Fortuna. And seven of those 36 monitoring stations have constant air monitors that also revealed the amount of particulates in the air.

And that was one of Bob Rowen’s primary duties was to collect the results of those monitoring stations.

One of the things that got him in trouble was he noticed that one of the seven air monitors was at South Bay Elementary School, and it had been taken down. And he said that he thought it was crazy to reduce the amount of monitoring at that elementary school. And he protested that, and that got him in trouble. And he did not understand why the single most important monitoring station of all the 36 would be reduced.

So I went to that school in later years and looked at what was there and briefed the superintendent — I believe his name was Paul Meyer; I might be an error, this was years ago. And briefed them that there had been an accident and if he had been informed of this accident.

He said, “No, but I’m on the citizens advisory board or community advisory board – CAB — and I’ll ask PG&E.” So I never did hear another response from him.

So there was an investigation by the Atomic Energy Commission.

What eventually happened, according to records, was they were able to deliver outside power to the reactor from unit two. They found the disconnected cable and delivered power. The feed water pumps came back on. The reactor had returned to normal. Supposedly at the end of what this report said was “no big deal”. However, I found that there was some major inconsistencies and deceptions in this report.

Years later I tried through the process of FOIA’s Freedom of Information Act, to get more information on this incident, and I was thwarted every time.

I went through the university, Humboldt State University journalism department to help compose a FOIA, and they assigned a journalism student to help deliver this FOIA. It was good practice for him as well. And we received about a hundred pages of description of this accident in which you could only read a handful of pages. They were not redacted; they were just so out of focus, there was no possibility of reading what had been delivered.

So I called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and asked for a redo, and they said, Well, you can file another FOIA, but you need to be aware that there are six or seven reasons that we can deny you this information. And they sent me a letter confirming what they had said.

So that’s just one example of several FOIAs that I later attempted.

So I’m going to take a break here, okay, Steve?

Steve: Okay, we’ve been speaking with Scott Rainsford, and he was with the coast guard and he discovered a nuclear accident at the Humboldt nuclear plant run by PG&E.

Now, Scott, you’ve been talking about the accident that took place and the fact that it was covered up, it was kept secret by PG&E and by the government. And you’ve come forward with this information about it, and you’re concerned that people were actually contaminated as a result of the release during that incident, that accident.

Why has this been kept covered up? And don’t you think that the people of Humboldt, the people of California deserve to know what happened at the Humboldt plant during this accident and shut down

Scott: Very much so. I discovered that through my own research and investigation that the nuclear core, the fuel core, had been uncovered. During this event, a greater reason why Shiffer shut off the pressure relief valves is he discovered that, through all these readings that the military required him to get, that they had uncovered the core.

Now when the core gets uncovered, the fuel cladding that PG&E had installed after the original failed stainless steel cladding fuel rods from before, that Bob Rowen was so concerned with because they immediately started cracking and failing and caused the plant to be recognized as the dirtiest plant in the country at the time, and you’ll see that in a report in Science magazine, June 18, 1971, an article written by Gillette.

So PG&E replaced the stainless steel fuel cladding fuel rods with a much more competent zircaloy-clad fuel rod. That is a much more expensive fuel rod and that’s what the military uses, because under normal operation, those fuel rods are much more competent.

However, they have a flaw, and that’s flaw is in the loss of coolant accident, in other words uncovering the core, the core is, as the liquid water falls below the level of the fuel rods, the fuel rods are now bathed in high temperature steam. Steam cannot cool a fissioning fuel rod. They overheat, and at a certain temperature, a chemical reaction occurs. It’s an exothermic redux reaction, for you chemists out there. And so they create their own heat, adding to the problem. The chemical reaction produces ZrO2. In other words, the zirconium is oxidized, and it produces hydrogen gas at an extremely fast rate. Empirically, under empirical conditions, hydrogen gas is explosive at 18 per cent by volume in an oxygenated environment. Under reactor conditions, it has been found that it’s explosive at roughly 14 per cent by volume. So it happens fast.

So when they uncovered the core, and the pressure relief valves were opened, hydrogen gas and this steam and the breakdown of the zircaloy- clad fuel rods which crack and blister under those conditions, all that volume of gas was going into the pressure suppression pool, otherwise known as a taurus. If that concentration goes up to 14 per cent, it’s gonna explode. That’s what caused Fukushima reactors to explode. The same thing. The fuel at Fukushima was uncovered. It was a high temperature steam environment. The chemical reaction occurred. It produced a large amount of hydrogen gas. It built up to 14 to 18 percent, and exploded. You can see it on the internet.

So that’s another reason why Shiffer shut off those pressure relief valves.

So what do you do with this pressure, that’s building up that’s causing the reactor to come apart?

They had to get rid of the pressure and this hydrogen gas.

So, they could release it to the environment, but they didn’t want to do that because it was extremely contaminated because of the breakdown of the fuel rods. When the fuel rods break down with the cracks and blisters, it gives direct access of the environment to those fuel pellets inside the fuel rod. So it’s heavily contaminated.

So what they decided to do, and what’s in this report of the accident, is they created a pathway from the reactor into the refueling building.

Now before they did this, they sent an emergency evacuation alarm to the refueling building to get everyone out, because people worked there. And so they sent the alarm electronically originally, but they weren’t sure in electrical chaos that it had worked. So they sent a man named Leroy Marsh who was trained to be and get a license for an assistant control operator. They sent him into the reactor with a half respirator and a device called a cutie pie which is a radiation monitoring device.

He enters the building. There’s no alarm, emergency evacuation alarm, on the outside of the building but there is on the inside. So he goes inside, and he observes a number of things.

One, and this is all in his testimony by the way in the investigative report, he goes in the building and he verifies that everyone was out, but the emergency evacuation alarm was not sounding.

Also he verified that the constant air monitor that monitors radiation levels inside the refueling building was not working.

He also verified that the fans that were used to create a negative pressure system in the refueling building were not working because they were on outside power which had failed.

So to explain to the listeners what this negative pressure system is for: under normal operation, powerful fans take the air inside the refueling building and send it through the gaseous waste stack. Some people would say it’s a smoke stack, but that’s where radioactive gases at a normal level under normal operation, that’s how it escapes. It’s like their smokestack to the factory. And that’s regulated. And in the process of going up that gaseous waste stack, there is charcoal filtration system. The fans push the air from the refueling building through these charcoal filtration systems, and this is an attempt to reduce any radioactive particles that are emitted from the plant.

So with that system down, the pressure inside the refueling building would rapidly equalize with the pressure outside the building.

So when they decided to dump the reactor pressure and the building-up of the hydrogen gas from the reactor during this accident into the refueling building, it increases the pressure inside the refueling building, so it’s gonna tend to leak.

Now normally when you go into the refueling building, there’s a double set of doors. There’s a room where people can change into protective clothing after they go through a door, a usual metal door similar to a naval ship, and then they go, after they’ve changed, they go through another door to get into the refueling building. So there’s a layer of protection there.

But there’s also a large set of doors big enough to allow a railroad train car to come in, because usually once a year, a railroad, a special railroad car comes to the reactor to pick up spent fuel pool that needs to be reprocessed. So a powerful crane picks up this large container from the railroad car and lifts it, and this container is submerged where the spent fuel rods are, the rods are transferred, and then the transfer cask is re-attached to the railroad car, and off it goes to reprocessing. And so there’s very, very large doors to do that. So this hydrogen gas can leak there also.

Steve: And we’re again speaking with Scott Rainsford. Now Scott, one of the issues that you’ve addressed is that there are rising sea levels which may threaten the radioactive material that’s still on the Humboldt site and also these canisters of radioactive material. Do you have any concerns about these decommissioned nuclear plants now, today, and not only in Humboldt but also San Luis Obispo and Diablo Canyon, San Onofre and Diablo Canyon when it becomes decommissioned .

Scott: On August 26th of last year, 2019, there was a Nuclear Regulatory Commission meeting in Eureka, California. I spoke at that meeting. A number of people spoke at the meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to get a collection of people who were citizens or community advisory board members to pass on to these other reactors who were being, that were being decommissioned, the best practices, to relay information to the community and give PG&E feedback from the community about what the community wanted.

One of the speakers, and it’s on videotape that you can get, was an expert in sea level rise of California. The name escaped me at the moment. But this PhD level person got up and said that sea level rise is happening twice as fast in northern California as elsewhere, and that is because this is a subduction zone, a geological subduction zone. So this area along the coast is sinking about the same rate the sea level rise is rising. So this expert said that in so many years where the six casks, where high-level special nuclear material is contained will be an island in so many years.

Hold on, I’m getting a dry throat here.

Steve: That’s okay.

Scott: So at that meeting, I said, we were only allowed so many minutes, I relayed what happened here: six casks, each one weighing 85 tons,and they’re created, the casks are made by a company called Holtec. Five of the six carry special nuclear material, meaning the spent fuel which are deadly poisonous. They’re very hot. They’re very radioactive. They have, they will be that way for generations. And the sixth cask holds the high-level remnants of the reactor, and since they were larger than the fuel rods — the five casks holding the fuel rods have two lids: a welded steel lid stainless steel and then a concrete lid. The sixth cask here in Humboldt County only has one lid. It has a concrete lid, but the steel welded cap is not there because of the size of the reactor remnants. So that is a big concern.

It’s in a tsunami zone. It’s being threatened by bluff erosion. There’s only, like, 115 feet of bluff remaining where those Holtec casks are placed. That bluff has receded 1480 feet from, I believe, it was 18, well, in 60 years it receded 1480 feet. So basically it was like being 20 and 30 feet per year.

So the point was that those casks cannot stay there. And a man named Steve Madrone who is Fifth District Supervisor of our county spoke about that in that presentation on August 26, 2019, saying that it’s ridiculous to have those casks stored there.

People bad-mouthed Fukushima because they did not build a protective wall high enough to fight off a tsunami that was expected to overrun their protective wall. You know, how could they be so negligent? Here we’ve got these Holtec casks, 500 times worth, in a tsunami zone, on an earthquake fault, with the receding bluff. And the situation is getting just nothing but worse.

It’s insanity. So one member of the audience called it, these casks, Chernobyl in a can.

So it’s ridiculous. When I was at that reactor reading the nuclear operators’ log in the winter of 1977-78 ,and I saw this accident had occurred, I asked to see the results of the monitoring, and that request was denied.

So I looked at the investigation that the AEC had conducted which I eventually was able to get through the Union of Concerned Scientists. It’s about a 160-page report, and in that report it says on page 38 that, and you’ll see in my video that the first yellow highlighted section was a statement by Edward Weeks, the plant engineer of the nuclear reactor Unit Number Three. And he said that radiation was being released subsequent to this accident at the rate of 24,500 micro curies per second, which was below the allowed level legally at the time. However, there were spikes in this gaseous waste stack monitoring systems. They said about a decade in size, which means by a factor of 10, which would place the readings of quarter of a million microcuries per second coming out of the gaseous waste stack to the public.

Ed Weeks said that he believed that was just due to electrical transients because of the electrical problems in the reactor during this accident. I reject that explanation because it’s the examination of the inspectors of AEC found that the devices which measure radiation escaping from that gaseous waste stack were on emergency power provided by the propane generator, but the fans necessary to pull the sample through those devices were on outside power and when they lost outside powers, the fans stopped.So the fan blades would create a barrier of the sample to go into these monitoring machines. So I believe that the transient readings of a quarter of a million microcuries per second going up that stack were real, and that level is many times the allowed limit.

Now what people need to understand is after this investigation was done, the results of the investigation were presented to United States Congress Congressional Committee called the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, a committee that was established in 1946 and existed until it was abolished in 1977 by the United States Supreme Court because this committee had powers that no committee in the history of this nation before, during, or after today

had ever had. They had veto power over any law that was provided or presented in the remainder of Congress, and the only check and balance they had was they were supposed to review any decision they made to the President of the United States. In 1970, that was

President Nixon, and you see in my video that the chairman of that committee was a man named Chester Hollyfield, nicknamed Chet Hollyfield, a Democrat federal representative from Southern California. The vice chair was John O. Pastore, a U.S. senator from Rhode Island. The committee had 18 members – nine senators and nine federal state representatives.

So they made a decision very clear to cover up what happened at this accident, and the documents clearly show that there was a cover-up. It was a very, very bad cover-up.

So all of it can be demonstrated. So the problem is, you lie for a reason. I believe that reason is the community was heavily contaminated.

Mike Manetas, a college professor at Humboldt State University, was asked to try and figure out why there was a big cancer outbreak in the town of Ferndale which is downwind of the plant. That was in 1985. And they found that there was a latency period between certain levels of ionized radiation exposure and the development of cancer, and it was determined to be 15 to 25 years. So if there was a big outbreak in Ferndale, California, in 1985 and 1990, if you add 15 to 25 years to this accident in 1970, you come up with 1985 to 1990.

So the powers that be in this industry withheld from me when I was at the reactor reading this nuclear operator’s log, they denied the monitoring results, the information providing the monitoring results. I’m convinced that they’re denying the level of the radiation exposure to the community.

Steve: I want to thank you for talking about this issue of health and safety, the unknown shutdown and dangerous accident at the Humboldt nuclear power plant run by PG&E and the coming dangers of rising tide and the possibility of further contamination and the lack of real protection of nuclear facilities on the coast of California, not just at Humboldt nuclear power plant which has been decommissioned, but San Onofre nuclear power plant and Diablo canyon nuclear power plant which will also be decommissioned.

So thanks for joining us on Work Week Radio.

Scott: Thanks, Steve.


Additional media:

Was there an accident at Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gow2O…
PG&E is storing six casks of nuclear waste near Humboldt Bay, raising concerns
https://www.northcoastjournal.com/hum…
Shut It Down Now! Former Humboldt PG&E IBEW 1245 Nuclear Plant Technician Bob Rowen On Nuclear Power https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d4Ti…
OSHA & The Cover-up At The PG&E Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Station
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08OY7…
Are NUKE Workers/Communities Safe? OSHA, NRC/AEC Captured Agencies Say Whistleblowers https://youtu.be/SgCTT0KvhXI
ww.myhumboldtdiary.com
http://www.northcoastjournal.com/humb…
http://santamariatimes.com/news/opini…
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Nu…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJjbN…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77vku…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrphD…
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio…
https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQiB7…
WorkWeek https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio

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— Huge crane collapses at Japan’s Takahama nuclear plant, damages spent fuel pool building; TV — “Workers checking building’s functions to prevent radioactive materials from leaking”

From ENE News

January 22, 2017

Kyodo News. Jan. 21, 2017 (emphasis added): Crane falls on building storing spent nuclear fuel at Takahama plant — A crane collapsed Friday night at the Takahama power station… damaging a building housing spent nuclear fuel, the plant operator said Saturday… An official apologized for the accident at a news conference at the plant, saying the utility would re-examine the risk of crane accidents amid strong winds and investigate the cause of the latest incident…

Asahi Shimbun, Jan 21, 2017: The mangled wreckage of the construction crane at the Takahama nuclear power plant… The 113-meter tall [nearly 400 foot] crane used for construction work collapsed around 9:50 p.m. … The plant’s operations have been suspended. The mangled wreckage lies on [a] building used to store spent nuclear fuel… Winds gusting at 50.4 to 54 kph [31 to 34 mph] were raging at the time, and a warning had been issued…

Jiji Press, Jan 21, 2017: Large Crane Falls Down at Takahama Nuclear Plant… A 113-meter crane toppled over two buildings… Friday night, the operator… [T]he 270-ton boom crane partially damaged steel frames of an auxiliary building and an adjoining spent fuel storage facility for the No. 2 reactor… The central control room for the reactor is located in the auxiliary building

Getty Images, Jan 21, 2017: Crane falls on Takahama plant building housing spent nuclear fuel… where a crane collapsed a day earlier, damaging a building housing spent nuclear fuel.

Manichi Daily News, Jan 21, 2017: After the incident, the framework of the collapsed crane was seen bent along the buildings on which it fell, and the metal rails on the edges of the roofs of the two affected buildings were damaged… [A] worker at the plant’s central control room heard a loud sound and checked to find one of the four cranes collapsed

NHK, Jan 20, 2017: A large crane has toppled onto a building storing nuclear fuel… Part of the building’s roof was damaged… Workers at the plant found… the crane had half-collapsed onto the building next to the containment vessel… They confirmed damage to a facility collecting rainwater on the roof, but say they have detected no change to radiation levels in the surrounding area… Nuclear Regulation Authority says its inspectors have confirmed the falling crane caused wall panels inside the building to move. Workers are checking the building’s functions to prevent radioactive materials from leaking… The Takahama plant’s operational chief… apologized for the accident…

Watch videos: Asahi | NHK

http://enenews.com/huge-crane-collapses-on-to-japan-nuclear-plant-damages-spent-fuel-pool-building-area-covered-in-mangled-wreckage-tv-workers-checking-buildings-functions-to-prevent-r

— MIT’s floating reactors — “outstanding safety performance” or dangerous fraud? (VIDEO)

Here is the transcript and MIT description for the Jacopo Buongiorno video. Again, this is a must-see video; archive it for future use.

In this video are many errors and assumptions. Obviously neither Buongiorno nor his team are sailors who have experienced weather and ocean conditions. The evacuation and contamination zone for Fukushima is not a few miles. The only thing infinite about the ocean is its goodness. Certainly the ocean is not an infinite heat sink. Heating the ocean is never, ever, a good idea, and discharging radioactivity into the water is insane. Radioactive gases will also burp out of the ocean as fast as they are pumped in, as anyone who has blown bubbles into water knows. So much for mitigation. So much for ‘higher’ education.

These universities seem to be publicly-funded industry profit enrichment systems. There is little critical thinking going on here, and degrees are being given to fools and yes-men who develop systems that endanger the Earth and everyone on it. 

Video and description from Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Published April 15, 2014

“When an earthquake and tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant complex in 2011, neither the quake nor the inundation caused most of the damage and contamination. Rather, it was the aftereffects — specifically, the lack of cooling for the reactor cores and spent fuel, due to a shutdown of outside power — that caused most of the harm.

A new design for nuclear plants built on floating platforms, modeled after those used for offshore oil drilling, could help avoid such consequences in the future. Such floating plants would be designed to be automatically flooded by the surrounding seawater in a worst-case scenario, providing sufficient cooling to indefinitely prevent any melting of fuel rods, or escape of radioactive material.

The concept is being presented this week at the Small Modular Reactors Symposium, hosted by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, by MIT associate professor of nuclear science and engineering (NSE) Jacopo Buongiorno along with others from MIT, the University of Wisconsin, and Chicago Bridge and Iron, a major nuclear plant and offshore platform construction company.

Video filmed by Christopher Sherrill, courtesy of MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering.”

Transcript:

Speaker: Jacopo Buongiorno,
Associate Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering, MIT

Today I want to tell you about a new nuclear reactor concept that we’re developing here at MIT, and that is the possibility of revolutionizing the nuclear industry both in terms of economics and safety.

This is a floating offshore nuclear power plant.

It’s a power plant that can be entirely constructed in a centralized shipyard and then towed to the site where it would be moored or anchored a few miles off the coast and link to the electric grid with a transmission line.

Now the idea of the floating plant is not entirely new. In fact, the Russian are building a floating plant themselves, but the key difference between our concept and theirs is that ours is not only floating but is sited a few miles off the coast, and this affords some absolutely crucial advantages.

First of all, tsunamis and earthquakes are no longer a source of risk for the nuclear plant because essentially the ocean shields the seismic waves. And the tsunami waves in relatively deep waters – say, 100 meter deep – are not big and so they don’t really pose a hazard for the plant.

Number two, of course, the ocean itself can be used as an infinite heat sink. And so, the decay heat which is generated by the nuclear fuel, even after the reactor is shut down, can be removed indefinitely, and this is a major advantage with respect to current terrestrial plants in which the ultimate heat sink is not assured necessarily for the very long term as demonstrated by the accident in Japan at Fukushima.

The other key safety advantage is that because of distance from shore, even if an accident should occur at the plant, it will not force people to evacuate, to move away from their homes and their jobs on shore. Because of distance, and also because of the possibility of essentially venting radioactive gases under water, therefore minimizing the impact onshore.

Now, a nice characteristic of this idea is that it combines essentially two established technologies. One is nuclear reactors – for example, light water reactors, PWI and PWR — and the other technology is offshore platforms which are currently used obviously for oil and gas exploration, exploitation, and extraction.

So we think that the combination of these two technologies give some solid ground on which we can build a plant that has good economic performance and, as I explained, an outstanding safety performance.

And we have a great team here at MIT of students, both graduates and undergraduates, as well as professors, and we’re also collaborating with other universities and with industry to develop these new concepts.

Expert: Ukrainian nuclear energy decision could lead to “Chernobyl disaster”

From Fort Russ

Translated by Ollie Richardson for Fort Russ
 23rd February, 2016
 
The refusal of Russian fuel cells and the use of American equivalents at the Ukrainian atomic power stations has already led to an accident at the South-Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plant (NPP).
An expert on atomic energy, Alexander Igonin, commented on this on the website “Ukraine.ru”. “The technological inconsistencies of American nuclear fuel and Soviet reactors has already led to accidents at nuclear power plants in Finland, Czech Republic and Ukraine. Despite the official statement that the South-Ukrainian NPP “is all within the normal range”, an unscheduled stop of the reactor is a serious incident, describing the technical state of the station” — he said.
Igonin also noted that the Kiev regime has significantly increased the risks of accidents at Ukrainian nuclear power plants. “The Zaporozhye and South-Ukrainian NPP are the first stations where the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers, before the end of the year, decided to start using exclusively American nuclear fuel. According to experts, such a move significantly increases the risk of incidents similar to Chernobyl“, — stated the expert.
He reminded us that in future the Ukrainian authorities intend to make a transition to American nuclear fuel across all operated nuclear power station, with more than a dozen working reactors.
Earlier it was reported that the South Ukrainian nuclear power plant (NPP) disconnected its third turbine due to technical problems.

Accident at Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant: radioactive steam release, panic, evacuation and reactor shutdown

From ENE News
December 22, 2015

Mass panic as radioactive cloud pours from nuclear plant — Radiation levels reportedly spike near reactor after emergency shutdown — Traffic jams as people evacuate area — “Everyone got very worried and rushed to get iodine” (PHOTOS)

Express, Dec 21, 2015 (emphasis added): Russians flee Chernobyl-style plant over fears of radioactive leak — Russians took iodine and caused traffic jams… amid fears officials were covering up a radioactive leak. The panic followed the emergence of pictures showing a cloud of vapour pouring from Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, some 50 miles from St Petersburg. The authorities insisted that the was no radioactive leakage… but people did not believe the “no danger” claim. Radio Svoboda reported that in the wake of the incident on Friday locals in Sosnovy Bor started withdrawing money from their credit cards. They said locals were in panic mode despite statements from officials that the radiation level was normal… One local said: “Everyone got very worried and rushed to get iodine.”… There were traffic jams as residents left the area and headed for St Petersburg… The plant manager (not pictured) insists there are no reasons for evacuation. [Oleg Bodrov, chairman of Green World ecological group] said: “They know well that the officials’ first task is to say all is normal but not to report about danger, even if there is one. All those who understand a bit about nuclear energy know that it was an attempt to mistake the wish for the reality… this vapour is surely radioactive… Bodrov called for medical checks for staff at the power plant. Interfax reported that a special commission was working at the nuclear station aiming to find out the reasons for the emission.

Daily Mail photo captions: A cloud of vapour pouring out of Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant in St Petersburg caused mass panic… Russian radio reported St Petersburg residents rushing out to buy iodine to protect against radiation poisoning after spotting the steam flowing out of the power station… The billowing vapour spreads across buildings

QHA, Dec 19, 2015: Accident occurred at Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant (PHOTO) — Eyewitnesses of the accident and the inhabitants of the Russia’s northern capital are scared. The second unit was stopped at the station… The accident occurred at the second power unit when a pipe with steam cracked in turbine hall yesterday. The steam filled the room, and leaked beyond the power plant. The employees of the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant (LNPP) had to go home… According to specialists, the release was radioactive, because the waste steam entered the so-called loop reactor coolant. However, the population was encouraged not to panic.

Baltic Newsletter of the Green World, Dec 20, 2015: An emergency stop of the second power unit of Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant took place… The reason for the stop and cooling of the reactor was a sudden leak of radioactive steam from a faulty pipe in one of the rooms of the turbine shop… During the cooling – down step, the reactor steam was ejected through the pipe into the environment. A south – southeast wind of 5 meters per second (not typical for this area) blew the radioactive steam toward the Gulf of Finland… Thus, the five millionth city of St. Petersburg, located 40 km east of the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant was fortunate this time. According to some sources , the radiation level rose a few times higher than the background radiation only in the NPP area.

Watch video from the Director of Leningrad NPP here

http://enenews.com/mass-panic-radioactive-steam-pours-nuclear-plant-radiation-levels-spiked-area-plant-traffic-jams-people-evacuate-area-everyone-very-worried-rushed-iodine-photos

 

• Jimmy Carter’s cancer risk history censored by news media

Jimmy Carter touring Three Mile Island,  April 1, 1979
Jimmy Carter touring Three Mile Island,
April 1, 1979

Courtesy of Wikipedia.org. Public domain.

Former President Jimmy Carter recently had cancer on his liver removed, and is now being treated for cancer on his brain.

Jimmy Carter helped cleanup a nuclear accident in Canada during the 1950s. As President, he toured Three Mile Island on the fourth day after the partial meltdown, while the accident was still ongoing. And he was part of then-Captain Hyman G. Rickover’s fledgling nuclear submarine program when he served in the Navy. These substantial radiation exposures are risk factors for cancer, but they aren’t mentioned in the (virtually identical) media reports dated August 20. One AP article stated his cancer is probably due to too much sun.

Experts say his lifelong activities may have increased his risk for skin cancer. He lives in the South, is fair-skinned and freckled, and through Habitat for Humanity and travel, has spent a lot of time outdoors, noted Anna Pavlick, co-director of the melanoma program at NYU’s Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center.”            http://www.baynews9.com/content/news/baynews9/news/article.html/content/news/articles/cfn/2015/8/20/jimmy_carter_to_disc.html

Many think Jimmy Carter was just a peanut farmer who became President for one term, and then got involved with Habitat for Humanity. His career is much more extensive.

Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, served on submarines as a Navy officer, did graduate work at Union College (NY) in reactor technology and nuclear physics, and was senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the second US nuclear submarine. He helped shut down and disassemble the Ontario Chalk River Experimental Reactor after it suffered a partial meltdown in 1952. This, plus his exposure at TMI in 1979, together with his exposures in Rickover’s program and in graduate school, are risk factors for his present cancers.

Carter himself seems unwilling to bring up this issue.

Cancers often have long latency periods and can take decades to develop.

Especially now that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wants to declare “low-level” radiation exposure as beneficial, the lack of information on Jimmy Carter’s background and exposure is suspicious. With no information, there is no bad press for the nuclear industry, no derailing an industry-friendly NRC decision, and no reminders about Fukushima.

———————————-

Remember: NRC comments due September 8.

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/06/23/2015-15441/linear-no-threshold-model-and-standards-for-protection-against-radiation

Sources:

http://www.cartercenter.org/news/experts/jimmy_carter.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Carter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents#1960s

Note: A 2007 New York Times article on the Carter family also sidestepped malathion and pesticide exposure as a reason for his family’s high death rate from pancreatic cancer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/health/07jimm.html?_r=1&