The Gate Notes: Nuclear Energy after Fukushima (click on the link, video can not be embedded here)

The Gate Notes: An Energy Briefing with Daniel Yergin: Nuclear Energy

And here are two videos embedded.

The new rumors spread by Alvarez is that the spent fuel pools are in danger of collapsing and that somehow the entire cesium content of the spent fuel would spread uncontrollably, rather silly considering that not even the Chernobyl accident managed to spread more than 20-40% of the cesium inventory of the reactor despite exploding and burning in open air for days. No amount of zirconium fire can approach that.

Akio Matsumura has picked up on the issue and added some "spice" to it.

Many of our readers might find it difficult to appreciate the actual meaning of the figure, yet we can grasp what 85 times more Cesium-137 than the Chernobyl would mean. It would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.

Chernobyl, as bad as it was, will likely not cause more than a couple of thousand extra fatal cases of cancer and so far no increase in cancer rates, except thyroid cancer, has been seen. Even if one where to assume that somehow magically all the Cesium would be released from all the pools, and assume it causes consequences 85 times as bad as Chernobyl, its still hard to see how it would be the "end of our civilization". If one assumes 85 times as many people where to die then the accident would be about half as bad as the Banqiao hydropower disaster, China still exists as a nation! The Chernobyl exclusion zone  is now a thriving wilderness and that makes it hard to understand how it would "destroy the world environment". Chernobyl was in no way pleasant, but 85 times Chernobyl isn't the end of the world. Amusingly Matsumura also quotes this from Alvarez:

The total spent reactor fuel inventory at the Fukushima-Daichi site contains nearly half of  the total amount of Cs-137 estimated by the NCRP to have been released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants (~270 million curies or ~9.9 E+18 Becquerel).

Well uhmmmm, civilization didn't end and the world environment didn't collapse due to that, so why would half again as much make the world kick the bucket? No this isn't rocket science Mr Matsumura, but it seems you fail to grasp it anyway.

TEPCOs reply to the issues is a strong statement that the pool is in good health and that it could handle another earthquake of the same magnitude. Further the pool has been reinforced to the extend that it is even stronger now than before the accident.

The upper part of the Reactor Building of Unit 4 was damaged due to a hydrogen explosion. We confirmed the items below and affirm that the building, including its spent fuel pool will not collapse should another earthquake occur.

1) We measured the distance between the water surface of the spent fuel pool and the floor surface of the building, and confirmed that the building has not tilted.
2) Our analyses show that the building, including the spent fuel pool, will not collapse even if an earthquake equivalent (seismic intensity 6) to the Tohoku-Chihou-Taiheiyou-Oki Earthquake occurs in the area.
3) In addition, we have improved the seismic safety margin by 20% by reinforcing the bottom of the spent fuel pool.
4) We will regularly check the reactor building and the spent fuel pool four times per year to confirm their soundness.

Rod Adams mentions on his blog Atomic Insights that a detailed technical response to Alvarez claims are in the works and it will be very interesting to read it. The #4 spent fuel pool has obviously turned into a disappointment for the anti nuclear crowd since it never ran dry, it never released any activity and it seems to be holding up very well, so they continue to make up more and more fantastic scenarios on how it will fail.

More about the whole thing can be read on Idaho Samizdat and at Atomic Power Review.

A powerpoint presentation made by professor Majia Holmer Nadesan is getting some attention around the web, in the presentation she claims that the Japanese authorities, among others, lied and covered up information about the Fukushima accident. So let's have a look at it.

But first things first; who is professor Nadesan? From her web page at Arizona State University we can read:

Majia Nadesan is a professor of communication in the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences.  She received her Ph.D. in communication studies in 1993 from Purdue University after earning her B.S. and M.S. in the same subject from San Diego State University.  Prior to joining the faculty at ASU's College of Human Services in 1994, Dr. Nadesan was an assistant professor at Syracuse University.

At ASU's West campus, Dr. Nadesan teaches courses in gender and community; theory and research in organizational communication; rhetorical, interpretive and critical methods in communication; and rhetoric of social issues.

The title and abstract of her presentation is

“Lessons From Fukushima: Governments and the Media Will Deceive the Public and Withhold Vital Information, Leaving Citizens to Create Informal Information Sharing Networks”

This paper will demonstrate that the Japanese and U.S. Governments withheld vital information from their citizens about the direction and risks of Fukushima radiation plumes and the degree and consequences of radioactive fallout. Second, the paper will demonstrate that the mainstream news media, including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, were complicit in hiding information about fallout levels, dispersion, and plant conditions. The U.S. media are commonly recognized as more independent from government than Japanese media. This disaster demonstrates that the U.S. mainstream news media censor information, even when public safety is at issue. Finally, this paper examines the spontaneous creation of information sharing sites and the subsequent development of a robust network of citizen-supported information sites in Japan and the United States.

She has divided the presentation into three "lessons learned" and the three lessons are:

Lesson 1: Democratic governments may elect to withhold vital information in the event of severe disasters

Lesson 2: The Western media may censor vital information

Lesson 3: Spontaneous citizens’ networks can emerge in response to government censorship and these networks have multiple functions, benefits, and drawbacks

I will focus on lesson 1 and look at lesson 2 and 3 in later blog posts.

Before I start going over the points she makes in the presentation I want to highlight one thing; Professor Nadesan has no background in engineering or hard science. Normally I would say that it doesn't really matter what kind of education someone has, it is what they say that matters. But it matters in this case because she is a professor, and it is likely people will refer to her as a professor, without specifying in what field that she does research. Secondly, if a person has no background in a field that they want to examine, it becomes very hard to separate the junk from the facts. To expand on this point, we take a look at page 5 of her presentation and find that as her references she cites:

Enenews, Fairewinds,, Fukushima Diary, Ex-SKF, Enformable, If You Love This Planet, NukePimp,etc

Now let's consider these sources. Ex-SKF is a blog that has repeatedly spread the claims of people like Busby and Gundersen. He has made blog posts where Busby claims the reactor 3 explosion was a nuclear explosion etc. Fairewinds is Arnie Gundersen's homepage. The same Gundersen that spices his resume and that claims one of the spent fuel pools exploded in a prompt criticality explosion (obviously Busby and Gundersen are not satisfied with good old fashion hydrogen explosions). After taking a quick glance, Enenews and NukePimp look no better than Ex-SKF. The greatest surprise to me is "If you love this planet", which is a weekly radio program with Helen Caldicott of all people! So let's consider this lineup; Busby is a guy that seriously claims that the Japanese government is intentionally spreading radioactive material around Japan to hide future cancer clusters around Fukushima. He is also a 9/11 "truther", claiming America was dropping neutron bombs over Fallujah and that such a bomb brought down the World Trade Center. Caldicott is not much better. She claims, among other things, that the IAEA, WHO and the UNSCEAR are involved in a big cover up of the health consequences of Chernobyl. So there is the grand lineup of sources that professor Nadesan gets her information from. To put it bluntly they have a history of spreading outrageous claims. For more on Busby see our earlier posts (here, here, here and here).

Is this character assassination? To some extent perhaps, but if someone uses the above people as sources it is warranted, it highlights that professor Nadesan has gotten her information about nuclear engineering and radiation sciences from sources that have no formal qualifications in the fields and that are known to be less than strict about staying truthful. This sets the stage for all that is to come. So now let's go through some of the points in the presentation itself. I will try to evaluate Nadesan's arguments by judging its truthfulness, i.e was the information really hidden; and importance, i.e was the information of any importance for the general public.

Lesson 1: Speedi Censored

SPEEDI is a network system that gathers local meteorological data from around nuclear power plants and combined with estimates of radiation release can create a map that shows radiation dose rates in different regions. The SPEEDI system also collects gamma dose rates from different monitoring posts run by the local authorities in each prefecture. SPEEDI is coordinated by MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology). From all accounts it seems true that SPEEDI information was not given freely and the Atomic Energy Society is quite correct in its critique. But what was the reason for withholding this information? If one reads through the English summary of the report, from the "Investigation Committee on the Accident at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations", on page 9 and 10 it is written:

The communication links were disrupted and inoperative due to the earthquakes, and the SPEEDI could not receive the basic source term information of released radioactivity. It was therefore not possible for the SPEEDI to estimate atmospheric dispersion of radioactive materials on  the basis of the basic source term information. Nevertheless, it is possible for the SPEEDI to estimate the course of dispersion of radioactive materials, making assumption of the reference release rate of 1 Bq/h. And actually those estimates were then calculated by the system.  Such calculation only predicts the direction of dispersion and relative distribution of radioactivity. But, if the information  had been provided timely, it could have helped local governments and population to choose more appropriate route and direction for evacuation.

So did the government withhold information that could have mitigated the consequences? The committee's conclusion is not clear and SPEEDI could not give any absolute dose rates, only an estimate of how the radiation will spread, i.e. a map that shows fractionally how much will go where, for instance 0.01% goes to Ibaraki, 0.03% to Fukushima etc. It is hard to evacuate based on that information because it gives no clue if any dose rate limits are exceeded or not. Now after the incident it seems clear that one could have used the map given by SPEEDI combined with the gamma measurements to extrapolate where doses are likely to be high, but this was probably not thought of in the heat of the moment. This kind of oversight might have caused the delayed evacuation of Iitate. It is a bit strong however to suggest the government withheld information to the public , simply because the information the government had did not give dose rates, only the fractional distribution. Releasing that information would not clarify the situation.

Nadesan further states that the government did not go public with the location of a hot spot in Namie. But Namie was evacuated during March 12 - 13, the days after the tsunami. Releasing that information would not have made any difference. We of course do NOT agree with withholding such information. However, in this case it seems like withholding the information had no consequences and there is no reason to assume there was any malicious intent or an attempted cover up of the whole issue. Regarding dose rates, MEXT did release information about dose rates around the evacuation zone weeks before before mid April. On this blog for instance we posted this picture from MEXT on March 23. Measuring spots 31, 32 and 79 is in Namie and its clear that it is hotter than the rest of the points. The information of the Namie hotspot was then clearly open to anyone. I do not know at which date MEXT started publishing such maps, and the MEXT homepage has apparently been redesigned and I can't find any archive. It is clear that information was released sometime in mid March, not mid April.

In summary, information about dose rates outside the evacuated areas was available earlier than Nadesan claims, but exactly when it became available we can not tell. It is not good that MEXT withheld SPEEDI data and the critique from the Atomic Energy Society is warranted, but it doesn't seem like it has had any consequences. Within two weeks clear information about where the fallout was deposited was publicly available.

Japanese Officials Failed to Dispense Potassium Iodide Pills

Fukushima area municipal entities had supplies of potassium iodide pills but the Japanese disaster manuals stipulated that local officials wait for orders from the national government to distribute.
Tokyo waited 5 days after Mar 11 before ordering distribution
WSJ writes: “The failure to disburse the preventive pills follows other examples of how the Japanese government failed to implement available measuresaimed at protecting local residents from the harms of radiation”

According to the IAEA, iodine tablets where distributed to evacuation centers already on March the 14th (Tokyo didn't wait 5 days, it was rather 3 days) but no decision to give the pills to the evacuees was taken. Why was this decision not taken? We do not know, naively it would seem prudent to give such pills as soon as possible, but without full information about the circumstances it isn't easy to judge. The recommended prophylactic iodine dose by WHO for people over the age of 12 is 130 mg and 65 mg for kids under age of 12. This is close to 1000 times the normal nutritional need and in the range for where adverse side effects can take place. The benefits of iodine has to be weighted against the adverse side effects. It is certainly plausible that the authorities judged that the side effects of iodine might outweigh the benefits in this particular case.

A better question to ask is: Did the Japanese government follow guidelines regarding iodine? The WHO guidelines regarding iodine states this:

In regions where only the likelihood of stochastic effects is a cause for concern, stable iodine prophylaxis should be considered for sensitive population groups if potential exposure to radioactive iodine by inhalation or exposure by ingestion is expected to approach the reference levels given in Table 1, and cannot be prevented by sheltering or food and milk control.

The table they refer to gives these values:

• Children under age of 18 and pregnant and lactating women: 10 mGy avertable dose to the thyroid
• Adults under 40: 100 mGy avertable dose to the thyroid
• Adults over 40 years: 5 Gy projected dose to the thyroid

IAEA guideline (table 3 in the document) is to give iodine if the dose might exceed 50 mGy.

The main purpose of taking iodine pills is to stop the uptake of radioactive iodine by inhalation. Regarding radioactive iodine in food the WHO writes:

Stable iodine could also be used as prophylaxis against ingested radioactive iodine from contaminated food. However, because the risk of exposure from ingestion of iodine will remain for a longer time, iodine prophylaxis will also be required for a longer period of time, leading to a need for repeated doses. The side effect rate from multiple doses would be higher, but the frequency is not known. It is probably low in children but may be significant in adults, especially in areas with dietary iodine deficiency. Exposure by ingestion can also be considerably reduced by agricultural countermeasures such as removing grazing animals from contaminated pasture or by the imposition of appropriate controls on agricultural products. In general, food controls would be easier to implement and more effective in the long term in reducing the collective dose than stable iodine prophylaxis (note emphasis added). Therefore, agricultural and food control measures are preferable to repeated doses of stable iodine.

According to an article in The Asahi Shimbun (22 February 2012) the Japanese Nuclear Safety Comission released a report where they had screened 1080 children from the Fukushima prefecture, out of those 11 kids under the age of 15 received a dose between 5 - 35 mSv to the thyroid. The second highest dose was 25 mSv and the third highest was 21 mSv. Thyroid doses in the Tokyo region was around 1 mSv. Based on the available information it was justified not to give out the iodine pills, less than 1% of the evacuated kids received a thyroid dose high enough to justify iodine pills according to WHO guidelines and none exceeded the IAEA guidelines. Giving out the pills could possibly have caused unnecessary damage. It is hard to find any concrete information regarding scanning of food from the Fukushima prefecture, the earliest mention I can find of any stopped food shipments is from the 19th of March. Edano's wording suggests they were monitoring food and dairy products before that date.

In summary, the inhalation doses were below IAEA limits and possible dose due to ingestion was excluded due to monitoring of food and dairy products which means thyroid pills were not necessary. There is no sign that iodine pill distribution was delayed in order to downplay the severity of the accident. One can criticize the emergency preparedness procedures based on the fact that no iodine pills where available for three days, in case they would have been needed earlier. But we don't see how any information was withheld regarding iodine pills.

Lesson 1: Governments Censor Risk: Leading to Inadequate Evacuation

On March 11, the Japanese government ordered persons within a 1.9 mile radius of the Fukushima I plant to evacuate and recommended that those within 6.2 miles stay within their homes.

On March 12, the evacuation was extended to 20 kilometers.

On March 13, after the first explosion, the World health Organization reported that the risk from the reactors was “probably quite low.”

On March 17, the U.S. declared that U.S. citizens and troops should stay atleast 50 miles from the Fukushima reactors.

March 25 the Japanese government declared a voluntary evacuation for people within 30 kilometers of the plant while the official evacuation zone remained 20 kilometers, or approximately 20 miles.

On April 4, The Wall Street Journal reported that Japanese authorities had finally acknowledged that the evacuation zone needed to be expanded beyond the 20 kilometer zone.

April 8 Evacuation zone still at 20 kilometers intends to limit exposure to 50 millisieverts

Let's again ask the question if the Japanese government was following evacuation guidelines. The IAEA guidelines (table is to, immediately following an nuclear accident, evacuate a zone with a radius of 5-30 km. The Japanese government choose to evacuate an area of 20 km and make a voluntary evacuation area out to 30 km. Further IAEA guidelines (table 3) for evacuation is to immediately evacuate areas where the dose might exceed 50 mSv in the first week and to gradually relocate people from areas where the dose might exceed 100 mSv in a year.

The important question then is, are there any areas outside of the 20 km evacuation zone that have received cumulative doses above 100 mSv since the accident, or where residents were exposed to more than 50 mSv in the first week? If we look at the latest MEXT map of integrated air gamma dose we see this (click on it to make it more clear).

Measuring point 32 clearly has an accumulated dose larger than 100 mSv. Together with measuring points 31 and 79 it is located in the town of Namie. Namie was promptly evacuated despite being outside the 20km zone. Measuring point 33 clearly exceeds 50 mSv and is in Iitate village. Iitate was not evacuated immediately but the government asked the people to evacuate on the 22 April (one month and 11 days after the accident). Iitate is a borderline case. It would certainly not have been bad to evacuate it earlier and the dose rate two weeks after the accident was actually higher in Iitate than in Namie, but it is also plausible that the area did not exceed 50 mSv in the first month. The guidelines for temporary relocation is if the dose will exceed 30 mSv during first month and 10 mSv the following month. Likely Iitate fell under this category and evacuating sooner than the first month would have been advisable. Regardless if Japan followed international guidelines or not it is still surprising that they did not evacuate in an area that more closely resembles the fallout plume from the accident. The shape of the area affected by fallout was known quite early, the map below shows the dose rates currently. Evacuation could easily have been expanded into the entire yellow area outside of the 30 km zone. Why this was not done is not known, but it might be because of the unreliability of the SPEEDI network.

Nothing in this however indicates that the government censored risk and due to the censorship failed to evacuate areas. The Japanese government appears to have followed standard guidelines with the possible exception of Iitate village. It is also worth mentioning this section from the IAEA guidelines:

Typically, following a nuclear or radiological emergency a number of people (not all of whom may be experts) will make estimates of a radiation induced increase to be expected in the incidence of cancers and other effects (e.g. birth defects) that may appear among those population groups who were exposed to radiation as a result of the emergency. Such stochastic health effects would not be individually attributable to radiation exposure (as they could not be distinguished from health effects with other causes). Estimates of consequences for a population may be made on the basis of the collective radiation dose (i.e. the sum total of all individual doses in an exposed population, expressed in man-sieverts) and levels of radiation health risks derived from observations made on exposed population groups who received high radiation doses (e.g. survivors of the atomic bombing in Japan). However, health consequences to be expected are generally estimated for people who have received only low radiation doses. In estimating such health consequences certain assumptions have to be made because of scientific uncertainties concerning the biological effects of radiation exposure at low doses and low dose rates. For the purposes of the system of radiation protection the assumption is made that there is no threshold level of radiation dose below which there is no associated radiation risk. This is only an assumption, however; data on radiation health risks that are yielded by studying the effects of exposure at high doses are not directly applicable for low dose exposure. Moreover, the very small projected increases in the incidence of cancers among those people exposed with such low levels of dose would in any case be undetectable epidemiologically against the fluctuations in the spontaneous incidence. Incautious estimates of the health effects of low dose exposures have led to what many consider is an exaggerated view on the part of the public of the risks associated with radiation, and consequently in inappropriate and, in some cases, counterproductive and harmful ‘protective’ actions being taken by the public and by officials. Risks of stochastic effects occurring as a result of low radiation doses (e.g. lower than 100 mSv) that are quantified for the purposes of radiation protection should therefore be interpreted for and communicated to the public with great caution, if at all. Any such quantification should be accompanied by a plain language explanation that makes it clear that, for such low doses, any radiation induced increase in the incidence of health effects in a population would be inherently very difficult, if not impossible, to detect (note - emphasis added). This plain language explanation should also discuss the risks and consequences of any actions taken to reduce the risks associated with exposure. If others (e.g. official or unofficial parties within or outside the State) make such estimates, consideration should be given to providing a clear explanation that puts these estimates in perspective.

Regardless of whether one agrees with that or not, the Japanese communication strategy might have been lifted straight out of the IAEA guidelines. We don't agree with avoiding to discuss risk from radiation doses below 100 mSv, it just opens the field for people like Busby. But one should certainly point out that there is no evidence of damaging effects from such low dosages and keep that in mind when examining the media handling of the accident by the Government.

Japanese Government Understated Radiation Threats and Set High Standards for Exposure

Toshiso Kosako resigned from the Japanese Government’s panel of nuclear experts on April 30 in response to the government’s ceiling on “unacceptable” standards of radiation levels in schoolyards.
Dr Kosako claimed that the Japanese government understated radiation risks and was slow to test for risks posed by contaminated seawater and seafood “Hayashi, Y. (2011, July 2-3). Ex-Advisor Says Tokyo Understated Radiation Threats. The Wall Street Journal, p. A7

Professor Kosako's reason for resignation from the panel can be found in this link. Regarding the children he wrote this:

This time, upon discussing the acceptable level of radiation exposure for playgrounds in primary schools in Fukushima, they have calculated, guided and determined a level of "3.8μSv per hour" on the basis of "20mSv per year". It is completely wrong to use such a standard for schools that are going to run a normal school curriculum, in which case a standard similar to usual radiation protection measurement (1mSv per year, or even in exceptional cases, 5mSv) ought to be applied, and not the one used in cases of exceptional or urgent circumstances (for two to three days, or at the most, one to two weeks). It is not impossible to use a standard, perhaps for a few months, of 10mSv per year at the maximum, if the public is rightly notified of the necessity of taking caution, and also if special measures are to be taken. But normally it is better to avoid such a thing. We have to note that it is very rare even among the occupationally exposed persons (84,000 in total) to be exposed to radiation of 20mSv per year. I cannot possibly accept such a level to be applied to babies, infants and primary school students, not only from my scholarly viewpoint but also from my humanistic beliefs.

You rarely come across a level of 10mSv per year on the covering soil if you measure the leftover soil at a disposal site in any uranium mine (it would be about a few mSv per year at the most), so one needs to have utmost caution when using such a level. Therefore, I strongly protest the decision to use the standard of 20mSv per year for school playgrounds, and ask for revision.

Professor Kosako's protest seems to have been heard, the target dose rate for this fiscal year for schools and other places that children occupy will be 1 mSv according to MEXT.

With a basic stance to reduce the exposure of pupils and others to radiation as much as possible, using the annual dose of 1–20 mSv indicated in the interim policy as a guide level, MEXT will aim to reduce the annual dose that pupils and others receive in school to 1 mSv or less this fiscal year. MEXT will consider possibilities of additional measures, while continuing to seek the opinions of experts, etc. about the physical and mental health and development of pupils and others.

Getting into a discussion if 20 mSv/year is an unacceptable dose or not is tricky business and it is not a discussion we will delve into now. It involves arguments from all fields of science, from physics to biochemistry and it is not known if small radiation dosages do any harm or not. As the quote from IAEA guidelines states, it is assumed there is no threshold and that damaging effects can occur all the way down to zero dose. Professor Kosako's opinion is clearly that 20 mSv/year is unacceptable and his own moral code did not allow him to stay in the panel if they accept that dose limit for children. It is however worth mentioning that 20 mSv/year is not outside of what occurs naturally in certain areas of the world. One such startling example is the black sand beaches in South America. The dose rates on those beaches can be as high as 50 microSievert per hour. If a group of kids play on the beach 1-2 hours per day on average they would get a yearly dose of 18 to 36 mSv per year. In some densely populated areas of India dose rates can go as high as 35 mSv/year. It would be interesting to discuss those areas with professor Kosako and find out if he would advice Brazil to close of the beaches and India to evacuate areas of Kerala. We don't write that to be callous, it is an honest curiosity. It is however clear that a discussion regarding the dangers of 20 mSv/year is not needed since the target goal is to get doses down to 1 mSv/year in areas occupied by children.

Lets' again ask the question if the actions of the Japanese government follows international standards  The IAEA guideline for permanently resettling an area is if the cumulative life time dose in the area is less than 1 Sv. Assuming all of the dose is caused by Cesium-137 (a conservative assumption since part of the radiation is due to Cesium-134 which has a shorter half life) and assuming a initial yearly dose of 20 mSv/year it is trivial to calculate that the life time dose (assuming a person lives in the area for 70 years) would be about 0.7 Sv. Once again the Japanese government was following international guidelines and then choose to go beyond them and adopt a much stricter limit for playgrounds and schools. Professor Kosako's opinion is thus not shared with the majority of the worlds radiation experts. It is also interesting to observe that, according to the "1 Sv/lifetime" standard, the aforementioned areas in Kerala and Brazil should not be considered fit for occupation.

Lesson 1: Japanese Government Censored Disaster Report

Cabinet Kept Alarming Nuke Report Secret
Japan Times January 22
Japanese Government buried a worst-case account of the Fukushima disaster by treating it as a personal document of Japan’s Atomic Energy Agency. The report projected that in the worst case scenario the plant would intermittently release radiation for about a year.
The report was buried in part because the Japanese government recognized it could not successfully evacuate citizens the necessary 170 kilometers out.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120122a1.html

An interim report produced by the Japanese Government found that the government delayed relaying vital information to the public about the seriousness of the meltdowns and the radiation releases

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Relevant blogs and articles (mixed Swedish and English).

Cornucopia Lögn, förbannad lögn och Fukushima
ASPO Sverige Håll ögonen på block 4 i Fukushima

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/Johan

Helen Caldicott declined to answer questions at a lecture...

The recently started Nuclear Literacy Project has a welcome entry, a person with knowledge in the field of radioactivity and nuclear engineering reports on a visit to an anti-nuclear seminar with Helen Caldicott. The person, PhD student Kallie Metzger, entered the meeting with some hope of a good discussion where there would be room for incorrect statements to be straightened out.

What Kallie found, however, was that the renowned anti-nuclear activist was more keen on scaring people into thinking like herself, and questions from the audience were responded to in a hostile and arrogant manner, if at all.

...attended by Kallie Metzger, Ph.D student in nuclear engineering.

After watching a few videos with Helen Caldicott, including her infamous TV-debate with George Monbiot from last year, we are, unfortunately, not surprised about her behaviour. The good news is that Kallie went to listen to Caldicott, and reported about it. We need more people like Kallie who attends these kind of meetings and try to raise relevant questions when remarkable claims are being stated. If Caldicott continues her tour in the same arrogant manner her audience should diminish rather quickly down to the die-hard fans of her outrageous claims.

So the hero of the week is Kallie Metzger. Read her account of the Caldicott seminar here. Then ask yourself: will you be our next hero?

It has been a busy day here at the NPYP center, where the members of Nuclear Power Yes Please held a press conference. They recently discovered a devastating text by Professor Chris Busby, where he shows that their criticism of his research is completely unfounded. The NPYP Scientific Director Mattias Lantz had attacked Professor Busby's articles about Fallujah (here, here, and here), by making a comparison of the sex-ratio (i.e. the number of boys born vs number of girls born) between the Iraqi city of Fallujah and his own city of birth, Avesta in Sweden. According to Lantz the variations in Avesta were as large, or larger, than the ones in Fallujah, so he reasoned that one could not claim that the variations in Fallujah were due to depleted uranium (DU). Professor Busby turned the data from Avesta around, and showed that Lantz had used the data in a dishonest way, even trying to hide an obvious correlation between increased sex-ratio in Avesta and the 2003 war in Iraq. Professor Busby's eminent rebuttal can be found on the LLRC web site (here). Below is the figure made by Lantz, with Professor Busby's hand-written notes that give evidence of the dishonesty of Lantz.

The plot with sex-ratio for Avesta where Professor Chris Busby could reveal the scientific dishonesty of Lantz and his NPYP cronies.

– ”I never even thought of the correlation,” a humiliated Mattias Lantz said at the press conference, ”but Professor Busby clearly shows that the deviating sex-ratio in Avesta around 2004 is due to the DU-weapons used in Iraq. Furthermore,” Lantz continued, ”this means that all of our past criticism of Professor Busby falls apart, just like a house built from a deck of cards. I now realize what an omnipotent genius he is. He is right about everything, even when he cheats with statistics.”

– ”And he is a great musician!” Gender Issues Director Nils Rudqvist adds.

– What does this mean for the future of NPYP?

– ”This changes everything.” says Policy Director and NPYP founder Michael Karnerfors, ”We have been wrong about all these issues; about radiation effects, nuclear power, cell phone radiation, chem-trails, dowsing, crystal healing and the HAARP experiment. Therefore, we will now turn sides in the debate on all these issues, and we will join Professor Busby, Mona Nilsson, Lennart Hardell and all the other serious researchers in their noble quests. From now on, scrutinizing alarmist claims, checking statistics, or asking the simple question 'Is this relevant?' has no place in what we consider to be a serious debate. Google was created to find the scary claims, not to scrutinize them. Many people are scared about radiation. From now on we will help them to maintain that status.”

– What about your close ties to the nuclear industry?

– ”We will pay back every penny of the funding we got from those bastards,” says Financial Director Christoffer Willenfort, ”and those of us who are employed by the nuclear industry will submit letters of resignation today, we are all done with it.”

– And the organization?

– ”The first reaction was of course that we should dismantle NPYP and join other groups, but after some intense brain storming we decided that it is better to continue, although under a different name.”

– ”Yes, from today we are Nuclear Power No Please,” confirms the Public Relations Director Johan Kreuger, ”and here is the new logotype!”

An embarrassing silence grew in the press room, until somebody in the audience dared pointing out an obvious error in the spelling.

The first version of the new Nuclear Power No Please logotype.

– ”C'mon people, give us a break!” Kreuger burst out. ”We have been wrong about so many things for years, so how can you expect us to get every tiny detail right immediately?”

– What is Lantz' status within the organization, can he continue to be a member?

– ”Well,” says Karnerfors, ”at first we thought that he had to go. We were all very disappointed with him and felt that we needed to distance ourselves from him and the dishonesty that he brought upon us. But we are all to blame. It was certainly Lantz who would initiate the studies of Professor Busby's claims, but we all started to act like stupid physicists and make independent double checks of numbers and other details. That was of course foolish of us, we should have trusted Professor Busby from the beginning without asking any questions.”

– So you now believe in Professor Busby's claims?

– ”How can you not, after what we have been through?” Reactor Technology Director Johan Simu says. ”Professor Busby has an expertise in so many scientific fields, not only in radiation effects. A few months ago he introduced a new definition of the term 'spontaneous fission', and with it he showed that TEPCO is lying about the status of the reactors in Fukushima. With the new definition, the reactors must clearly be active in a critical configuration. My personal reflection at the time was that this is utter nonsense. But now, after Professor Busby's proof of our dishonesty, I am all for it. The effects will be tremendous; all courses in reactor physics will have to be revised, and the commercial codes used today for criticality calculations have to be changed. But that is not all, recently he also showed that Einstein is wrong.”

– What?

– ”Yes indeed, Professor Busby's interpretation of the twin paradox is quite convincing. He has also promised to explain quantum mechanics on Youtube, something that we are all looking forward to. It is about time that somebody settles the issue whether that cat of Schrödinger is alive or not, the world deserves to know. Furthermore, this poor creature has been in this un-collapsed wave function state for so long, it is clearly a violation of animals rights that needs to be brought to an international court. Professor Busby's expertise also in legal matters will be very helpful in order to bring the perpetrators to justice.”

On the way out from the press room we manage to get hold of Mattias Lantz for a personal comment, he looks tired and stressed out.

Our reporter Kazue Avril gets a moment with a humiliated Mattias Lantz at the NPYP press conference.

– Will you apologize to Professor Busby and the other people that you have attacked over the years?

– ”No, of course not!” Lantz responds rather agressively. ”Earlier we would have done such a thing, or corrected our statements if they were found to be in error. Now when we have changed sides in the debate we will follow the established customs of our new friends. Apologies or amends are out of the question. Instead we move on forward, though in the opposite direction as before.”

– How did you react when it became clear that you had been so wrong about Professor Busby?

– ”I felt awful, of course. Not so much for my unfounded attacks on Professor Busby, but on a personal level it is devastating. In the plot that Professor Busby turned against me there is also a peak with high sex-ratio in Avesta during the 1970's when I was born. This puts the question about my gender at stake, maybe I was supposed to be a girl? This will take years of psycho-therapy to sort out.”

Then he excuses himself and pushes through the crowd towards the entrance, stopping every now and then, asking people if they know where he can get hold of a good beret.

We get a private interview with Industry Liaison Director Johan Kihlberg.

– ”Former Industry Liaison Director, if I may! The title does not exist any more now that we have severed the ties with the nuclear industry.”

– So, what is your title?

– ”Alarmist Organizations Liaison Director.”

– Ok, ok, so how was the error of Lantz discovered?

– ”We knew for a while that something was not right. Lantz has of course always been obsessed with Professor Busby. Certainly the money from industry and Socialstyrelsen kept him motivated, but there was also something else, some sort of...envy. And during the last few months he has become more and more deranged. You could find him at late hours in his office, but he would not deliver any new blog posts or forum entries. If you met him in the corridor you could hear him mumbling weird things for himself.”

– Weird things?

– ”Yes, phrases like 'eminent scientists', 'Bramhall is not a pushover', 'ICRP doesn't get it', or 'there must be a third event' were often repeated. Things like that. Then, a few days ago in the coffee room he made no sense at all, trying to convince us that 'the alarmists get laid more often than we do' and that we should buy a boat, or two. Last Friday we discovered that he had asked the market analysis division for an evaluation about entering the field of anti-radiation pills, and there were follow up plans for major investments in this field. When this was found out we decided to check his computer. It turned out that for the last month he had used the computer for only one thing, to visit the 'Dishonesty' page on the LLRC web site, over and over again.”

– So what did you do?

– ”It was the first time that any of us saw that web page, and after reading it we realized that it was all over. A crisis meeting was held, thereafter we summoned Lantz in order to have him explain himself. There was an intense discussion, with harsh words being exchanged in all directions, but finally we could agree on a strategy and decided to call for the press conference.”

– These plans that Lantz had initiated for anti-radiation pills, how far had he gone with them?

– ”Actually, very far,” Kihlberg responds with some excitement.

– So how did you stop it?

– ”We didn't. The analysis shows that we can make a huge profit even if we sell the pills at half the price compared to what Busby and his friends had in mind. We have some connections in Japan that will help us with the promotion, there are many ways to scare people into becoming your customers. For instance the Japanese TV-channel NHK has been very helpful by making an alarmist documentary in which the credibility of ICRP is undermined. We are also considering to buy the recently closed candy factory in Gävle. In that way we can have a local production directly in the areas that were most affected by the Tondel study.”

– You mean the areas that were most affected by the Chernobyl fallout?

– "No, by the Tondel study."

– Ah, whatever. So you will manufacture and sell pills in order to raise money for the suffering children?

– ”What do you mean? We have to make up for the losses now that we have stopped the funding from the nuclear industry. We are the good guys now, we need to make a living. Just look at Green Audit, the Cancer and Birth Defects Organization, and so on. They are registered as companies, not as charities, why should we be any different? Why live on secret funding from evil companies when we can make as much money in the open by exploiting the gullible, the naive, and the vulnerable? To have funding from the industry in order to change people's opinion is a difficult task, it is much easier to get money directly from concerned citizens in order to help them preserve their already established views. Busby is of course a huge inspiration in these matters, but we are also looking at other options.”

– What kind of options?

– ”For instance, Joseph Mangano and his Radiation and Public Health Project is a good example. They have managed to recruit celebrities like Alec Baldwin and Christie Brinkley for the fundraising. And they are very successful, just look at the suits of Mangano! So we hope to be able to do something similar from a Swedish perspective, if we can get stars like Manne the Clown and Solveig Ternström on our team, then we are all set.”

– So the future is bright...?

– ”Yes, brighter than ever. This has been a severe crisis situation for us, but thanks to Professor Busby we are finally on the right track. An event like this does not happen every day, but today it did indeed happen.”

Only 37 centimeters of concrete remains between the fuel and the vessel's outermost steel wall in the most damaged area, TEPCO said.

This wording is repeatedly used by anti nuclear sources to imply that a much worse disaster was very close to happening. What the articles fail to mention however is that there is A LOT more concrete between the ground and the molten core. The reactor building itself is a very thick concrete structure. Will Davis, on his excellent blog Atomic Power Review, talked about this the first time the news about the number one vessel failure showed up last November. Some of what he wrote is worth repeating and I hope he doesn't mind me repeating it here and also posting a picture from his blog.

The NHK report indicates a melt depth of about 2.1 feet(64 cm, my note /Johan). The distance to the ground is roughly eighteen times this depth from the dry well interior floor to grade. Below is a drawing from WASH-1082 which I've marked to show the distance from the dry well floor to the grade outside, which on the particular plant shown is 39' 0"(11.8 meters, my note /Johan). I do not presently know the exact measurement at Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 but it is likely within ten percent of this measurement... meaning that in the worst case that TEPCO is describing, by its own data, the core material may have melted only about as much as 5% of the distance to the grade.

I encourage everyone to read the rest of his blog as it is by far the best information source for the Fukushima accident.

I also want to add this picture of the mark I containment that schematically shows the thick concrete even more clearly! Picture found at the blog "The capacity factor".

So we see that there is a tremendous amount of concrete below the shell of the containment structure. The hints and suggestions that the core would only have to melt another 37 centimeters for a unnamed disaster to take place is obviously false. In reality the shell of the containment is integrated into a thick concrete structure and the molten core would have to melt through several more meters, likely around 10 meters, to get out of the reactor building itself.

The cleanup of the containment is going to be a very hard and messy job, much worse than the cleanup of TMI was. But the core is still a long long way from the ground.

/Johan

It has always mystified me (and I think I can speak for all of us in NPYP) that someone can be anti-something when it comes to energy. Lets suppose for instance that someone declares himself to be anti-chemical energy, the logical follow up question to the fellow would of course be "what kind of chemical energy?". The question is logical because there are so many different ways one can extract chemical energy, everything from burning cow dung in huts to the engine in your car to high tech gas turbines to dynamite. Our friend there probably didn't even think of those distinctions when he made his statement, but what if he did? Let's say he rebukes by stating he really means that he is anti coal. Even that statement can be challenged, it must by necessity be conditional otherwise it is moronic. If he is anti coal because of air pollution, then would he change his mind if there was a solution to the pollution? If someone developed a filter that reduced pollution levels to insignificant amount is fossil fuels then ok? Logically he should think so. If he is anti coal because of the immensely destructive coal mining, would he change his mind if environmentally sound mining practices where developed? The guy is presumably actually anti air pollution or anti dirty mines, not anti chemical energy or anti coal. He just never bothered to go through the chain of reasoning to understand what he really opposes in chemical energy.

Same can be said of any energy source, there is no rational reason to be against the energy source itself, rather one is against some undesirable effect due to the present application of the energy source. NPYP are not fans of coal by any means, but I dare say that if there was solid solutions to its problems, then none of us would oppose its use. There just isn't any justifiable reason to oppose it if the problems are solved. There is no other way to rationally look at energy production.

The advantage with digging deep and specifying exactly what one is actually opposed to means opening up to the possibility of finding solutions! If someone simply state that they are anti windmills then the discussion pretty much ends right there. If the person instead states that the noise from windmills is disturbing then the discussion can turn to possible solutions to reduce noise. Everyone wins on that! There is no reason to be horribly emotional about the whole thing and cling to an anti-something idea so hard that one blocks any fruitful discussion and becomes blind to solutions.

A discussion goes no where until one gets to the core of the argument, which is, what properties of a specific energy source makes you oppose it and and how can it be improved so you no longer oppose it?

The frustrating thing in the nuclear debate is that the discussion never seems to reach that point. Ask leading environmentalists that exact question and they will squirm like a worm on a hook.

If someone specifies that they are opposed to nuclear energy due to the waste problem. Fine we say, but what exactly do you mean by the waste problem and what effect does the waste have that you find repulsive? If you are bothered by the possibility that the waste will hurt future generations, then lets discuss how to safely dispose of the waste. If you are anti nuclear because you are bothered by the safety of nuclear installations, then specify what level of safety is safe enough (obviously there must be a level where an activity is considered safe enough, otherwise the person in question would never get out of bed to shower for fear of slipping and dying) and lets discuss how to reach that.

But the discussion always ends before reaching that point because the "anti person" generally never  seems to be interested in solutions to the posed problems and they are usually not even able to state clearly why they consider the issue as a problem in the first place. This is not only valid for the nuclear debate, one sees the same tendencies in all kinds of discussion where there is a clear anti side. Anti genetic engineering, anti cars, anti meat, anti space exploration, you name it! It seems very hard for people to go past the simple emotional attachment of being against something and instead engage into a meaningful discussion about the issues. It is too easy to just be opposed to something, it is damned much harder to actually find solutions.

So to move the nuclear discussion into a more fruitful direction it would be enlightening if some nuclear opponents could specify what conditions nuclear would have to fulfill to be an acceptable energy source. Believe it or not even we have such conditions. I don't think for instance anyone in NPYP wants to see more RBMK reactors built (the type of reactor at the Chernobyl plant) and just to speak for myself I have quite strict demands on what nuclear energy should be in the long run to be an acceptable energy source. I am not anti nuclear, but I am certainly anti towards some ways of extracting nuclear energy.

To summaries and to state the challenge again clearly.

What conditions would have to be fulfilled for you to consider nuclear an acceptable energy source?

The world has forgotten the real victims of Fukushima

It was at this point, at around day three, that I realised that something had gone seriously wrong with the reporting of the biggest natural disaster to hit a major industrialised nation for a century. We had forgotten the real victims, the 20,000-and-counting Japanese people killed, in favour of a nuclear scare story.

/Johan

First is the article "Energy as the ultimate raw material" by the nuclear energy pioneer Alvin Weinberg. Weinberg used to think of the big picture and this article showcases that. He outlines a few approaches to a asymptotic state of civilization, a state where humanity is using resources at a rate that is practically infinitely sustainable. In such a state humanity uses a lot of energy in order to produce the necessary raw materials from common rock, seawater etc.The article is from 1959 but well worth reading even today.

The second article is a blog post from Will Davis over at Atomic Power Review, "Vogtle COL approval vote indicates perspective on "nuclear renaissance". I selected it because in it Will describes some the various reactors that where developed during the first decades of nuclear energy. In my opinion it speaks volumes of how restricted the view of nuclear energy has become, nuclear power today is pretty much identical to light water reactors, but that is just a fluke of history and some day tinkering with other designs will charge on at full speed again.

As the third article I give you Gismags "Feature: Small modular nuclear reactors - the future of energy?". Aside from a few glaring technical errors or statements that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, it gives a good overview of the developments going on with small modular reactors.

I also end the post with a small section from Freeman Dysons book "Disturbing the universe". A fantastic book by a fantastic scientist! Any spelling errors are mine since I wrote out the paragraphs below.

The fundamental problem of the nuclear power industry is not reactor safety, not waste disposal, not the dangers of nuclear proliferation, real though all these problems are. The fundamental problem of the industry is that nobody any longer has any fun building reactors. It is inconceivable under present conditions that a group of enthusiast could assemble in a schoolhouse and design, build, test, license and sell a reactor within three years. Sometime between 1960 and 1970, the fun went out of the business.

The adventurers, the experimenters, the inventors, were driven out, and the accountants and managers took control. Not only in the private industry but also in the government laboratories, at Los Alamos, Livermore, Oak Ridge and Argonne, the groups of bright young people who used to build and invent and experiment with a great variety of reactors where disbanded. The accountants and managers decided that it was not cost effective to let bright people play with weird reactors. So the weird reactors disappeared and with them the chance of any radical improvement beyond our existing systems.

We are left with a very small number of reactor types in operation, each of them frozen into a huge bureaucratic organization that makes any substantial change impossible, each of them in various ways technically unsatisfactory, each of them less safe than many possible alternative designs which have been discarded. Nobody builds reactors for fun anymore. The spirit of the little red schoolhouse is dead. That, in my opinion, is what went wrong with nuclear power.

- Freeman Dyson

/Johan