Dr. Arjun Makhijani speaks at First Unitarian of Dallas

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:00:06 -0500

Scaled back nuke program eyed in Amarillo

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:41:29 -0500

By Kevin Welch
The goal of a transformation of the nation's nuclear weapon program is a smaller, safer, more secure and cheaper program.

About 40 people, including Pantex and National Nuclear Security Administration staff attended a Thursday night public hearing on the proposal at the Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts.

One part of the plan calling for increased manufacture of new nuclear pits, the core of nuclear warheads, drew the most criticism.

"The transformation reflects outdated thinking," said Susan Gordon, director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. "The U.S. can lead the world in reducing the nuclear threat."

Arjun Makhijani: Nuclear is not the right alternative energy source

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:43:40 -0500

New plants are risky, costly and unnecessary, says ARJUN MAKHIJANI

from the Dallas Morning News Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Luminant Energy, formerly TXU, is proposing to build two Mitsubishi nuclear power reactors at its Comanche Peak site, where two reactors are already in place.

This is part of a national wave of new commercial reactor proposals after a three-decade lapse in new orders – eight in Texas alone. Having failed miserably to deliver on the 1950s promise that nuclear electricity would be "too cheap to meter," the industry now says it will save us from climate change. If you don't like coal, you have to take nuclear, goes the nuclear establishment's hopeful mantra.

Clean Skies/ Clean Energy Resolution

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:47:20 -0500

For an Energy Efficient/ Renewable Energy Economy for Texas

WHEREAS; Texas skies should be clean and pristine, but the air in the Dallas/Forth Worth, El Paso, Houston and Beaumont/Port Arthur areas fails to meet health based standards, and air quality in Austin, San Antonio and Tyler-Longview is close to violating health based standards, and the state air plans for these regions remain inadequate,

WHEREAS; Five additional coal plants are under construction and three more are proposed for Texas despite opposition and the fact that studies show strong links between air pollution and asthma, respiratory illness, strokes, and deaths from lung cancer and heart disease, and 1160 Texans die prematurely every year from power plant particle pollution, and

Dr. Arjun Makhijani on KERA's THINK

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:18:07 -0500

Civilian Nuclear Incidents

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 13:06:43 -0500

US incidents in bold

• March, 1957– Employees of a Houston company licensed by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to encapsulate sources for radiographic cameras were exposed to 192Ir powder. This resulted in radiation burns to the two workers that were directly exposed. The 192Ir powder was then spread to several homes and cars in the community.
• 21 January 1969 In Lucens, Switzerland, a pilot power reactor suffers a loss of coolant accident and partial core meltdown.
• July 16, 1979 (34th anniversary of the Trinity test) – In Church Rock, New Mexico, the earth/clay dike of a uranium mill's settling/evaporating pond fails. The pond was past its planned and licensed life and had been filled two feet deeper than design, despite evident cracking.
• September 29, 1979 - Tritium leak at American Atomics in Tucson, Arizona; at the public school across the street from the plant food is found to be contaminated.
• February 11, 1981 – A new worker inadvertently opened a valve and more than 100,000 gallons of radioactive water leaked into the containment building of the Tennessee Valley Authority Sequoyah 1 nuclear power plant in rural Tennessee.
• March 1981 – More than 100 workers were exposed to doses of up to 155 millirad per day radiation during repairs of a nuclear power plant in Tsuruga, Japan.
• July 1981 – Lycoming, Nine Mile Point, New York. An overloaded wastewater tank was deliberately flushed into the waste building sub-basement, filling it to a depth of four feet. This caused some of the approximately one hundred fifty fifty-five-gallon drums that were stored there to overturn and spill their contents. Fifty thousand gallons of contaminated water was discharged into Lake Ontario.
• 1982 – International Nutronics of Dover, New Jersey spilled an unknown quantity of radioactive cobalt solution used to treat gems for color, modify chemicals, and sterilize food and medical supplies. The solution spilled into the Dover sewer system and forced the closure of the plant. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was not informed of the accident until ten months later.
• 1982 to present – radioactive steel scavenged from a nuclear reactor was melted into rebar and used in the construction of apartment buildings in northern Taiwan, , from 1982 through 1984. Over 2,000 apartment units and shops were suspected as having been built with the materials. At least 10,000 people are known to have been exposed to long-term low-level irradiation as a result, with at least 40 deaths due to cancer.
• December 6, 1983 – Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, A local resident salvaged materials from a discarded radiation therapy machine carrying 6,000 pellets of 60Co. The dismantling and transport of the material led to severe contamination of his truck; when the truck was scrapped, it in turn contaminated another 5,000 metric tonnes of steel with an estimated 300 Ci (11 TBq) of activity. This material was sold for kitchen or restaurant table legs and building materials some of which was sent to the U.S. and Canada.
• January 6, 1986 – At the Kerr-McGee nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in Gore, Oklahoma, a cylinder of UF6 burst after being improperly heated. One worker died of caustic chemical exposure; 30 were injured.
• 1986 – The NRC revoked the license of a Radiation Technology, Inc. (RTI) plant in New Jersey for worker safety violations. A safety device to prevent people from entering the irradiation chamber during operation had been bypassed. A worker had received a near-lethal dose of radiation. RTI was cited 32 times. Violations also included throwing radioactive garbage out with the regular trash.
• January 1987 – A Columbia University undergraduate steals radioactive 238U from an abandoned basement lab.
• September 13, 1987 – In the Goiânia accident, scavengers broke open a radiation-therapy machine in an abandoned clinic of Goiânia, Brazil. They sold the kilocurie (40 TBq) 137Cs source as a glowing curiosity. Four hundred were contaminated, four died.
• June 6, 1988 – Radiation Sterilizers in Decatur, Georgia, reported a leak of 137Cs at their facility. Seventy thousand medical supply containers and milk cartons were recalled. Ten employees were exposed, and three "had enough on them that they contaminated other surfaces," including their homes and cars.
• 5 February 1989 Three workers were exposed to gamma rays from the 60Co source in a medical products irradiation plant in San Salvador, El Salvador. The most exposed person died while the other two lost limbs. This was a human error accident where a person made the wrong choice to enter the irradiation room.
• June 24, 1990 – Soreq, Israel An operator at a commercial irradiation facility bypassed the safety systems on the JS6500 sterilizer to clear a jam in the product conveyor area. He died 36 days later despite extensive medical care.
• October 26, 1991 – Nesvizh, Belarus An operator at an atomic sterilization facility bypassed the safety systems to clear a jammed conveyor. Prompt intensive medical care managed to keep him alive for 113 days after the accident.
• April 6, 1993 – Tomsk, Russia At the Tomsk-7 Siberian Chemical Enterprise plutonium reprocessing facility, a pressure buildup led to an explosive mechanical failure in a reaction vessel buried in a concrete bunker. The vessel contained a mixture of concentrated nitric acid, uranium, plutonium and a mixture of radioactive and organic waste from a prior extraction cycle. The accident exposed 160 on-site workers and almost two thousand cleanup workers.
• August 31, 1994 – Commerce Township, Michigan David Hahn's experimental reactor was discovered in his mother's back yard. The unshielded reactor exposed his neighborhood to 1,000 times the normal levels of background radiation.
• October 21, 1994 a large radioactive ore source is stolen by scrap metal scavengers in Tammiku, Estonia.
• May 1998 – Recycler Acerinox in Cádiz, Spain, unwittingly melts scrap metal containing radioactive sources; the radioactive cloud drifts all the way to Switzerland before being detected.
• 1999 – A road near Mrima Hill, Kenya was rebuilt using local materials later found to be radioactive. Some workers were exposed to excessive radiation, and many residents of the area were tested for exposure. 2,975 tons of roadway material were to be dug up to eliminate the hazard.
• February 1, 2000 – The radiation source of a teletherapy unit was stolen from a parking lot in Samut Prakarn, Thailand and dismantled in a junkyard for scrap metal. Workers completely removed the 60Co source from the lead shielding, and became ill shortly thereafter. The radioactive nature of the metal and the resulting contamination was not discovered until 18 days later. Seven injuries and three deaths were a result of this incident.
• December 2000 – Three woodcutters in the nation of Georgia spent the night beside several "warm" canisters they found deep in the woods and were subsequently hospitalized with severe radiation burns. The canisters were found to contain concentrated 90Sr. The disposal team consisted of 25 men who were restricted to 40 seconds' worth of exposure each while transferring the canisters to lead-lined drums. The canisters are believed to have been intended for use as generators for remote lighthouses and navigational beacons.
• February 9, 2002 – Two workers were exposed to a small amount of radiation and suffered minor burns when a fire broke out at the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station in Miyagi Prefecture. The fire occurred in the basement of reactor #3 during a routine inspection when a spray can was punctured accidentally, igniting a sheet of plastic.
• March 11, 2002 – A 2.5 metric ton 60Co gamma source was transported from Cookridge Hospital, Leeds, UK, to Sellafield with defective shielding.
• 2003 – Cape of Navarin, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. A radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) located on the Arctic shore was discovered in a highly degraded state. in July 2004, a second inspection of the same RTG showed that gamma radiation emission had risen and begun to leak into the environment. In November 2003, a completely dismantled RTG located on the Island of Yuzhny Goryachinsky in the Kola Bay was found. The generator's radioactive heat source was found on the ground near the shoreline in the northern part of the island.
• September 10, 2004 – Yakutia, Russia. Two radioisotope thermoelectric generators were dropped 50 meters onto the tundra at Zemlya Bunge island during an airlift when the helicopter flew into heavy weather. According to the nuclear regulators, the impact compromised the RTGs' external radiation shielding.
• 2005 – Dounreay, UK. In September, the site's cementation plant was closed when 266 liters of radioactive reprocessing residues were spilled inside containment. In October, another of the site's reprocessing laboratories was closed down after tests of eight workers tested positive for trace radioactivity.
• November 3, 2005 – Haddam, Connecticut, USA. The Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Company reports that water containing quantities radioactive material leaked from a spent fuel pond.
• March 11, 2006 – at Fleurus, Belgium, an operator working for the company Sterigenics, at a medical equipment sterilization site, entered the irradiation room and remained there for 20 seconds. The room contained a source of 60Co which was not in the pool of water. Three weeks later, the worker suffered of symptoms typical of an irradiation (vomit, loss of hair, fatigue). The operator spent over one month in a specialized hospital before going back home. Today he still shows after-effects (fatigue) that should attenuate in several months. To protect workers, the federal nuclear control agency AFCN and private auditors from AVN recommended Sterigenics to install a redundant system of security.
• March 16, 2006 – The State of Illinois sued Exelon Corporation for repeated leaks of tritium into water discharged around its Braidwood Nuclear Generating Station. Exelon states that despite the leaks it has operated within legal limits, but agreed to compensate landowners. The tritium was produced during normal operation and, as fuel reactivity declines, is legally discharged with the borated water into the nearby river. However, some of this water leaked onto land. On March 20, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced it had formed a task force to examine tritium leaks.
• May 5, 2006 – An accidental release of 131I gas at a nuclear power plant in Minnesota exposed approximately one hundred plant workers to radiation.