Friday 29th of March 2024

he knows everything there is to know about glowing in the dark...

man of rust...

You might have been emailed by some Americans who are panicked that their lovely nuclear power stations could be closed "prematurely" by "ideology"... Yesterday came the news that "Iron Man's Robert Downey, Jr. Speaks Out for Nuclear Power".

In a photograph taken on the premiere of Iron Man, the movie sequel of the sequel, flanked by a couple of cuties, one of them interviewing him, our hero talks about the chain reaction of uranium 235 decay with alpha, beta and gamma plutonium-ised emissions that powers his iron suit and that will solve the global warming problem for ever, and we'll all be happy ever after. No more rust.

bad idea...

As the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster approaches, Noel Wauchope outlines just a few compelling reasons why the Coalition Government's uranium deal with Ukraine may have further disastrous consequences.

WHAT AMAZINGLY insensitive timing. As the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe approaches, Australia makes a deal (at the Nuclear Security Summit) to sell uranium to Ukraine. 

This is such a bad idea for so many reasons — it's hard to know which to pick first! 

Economics: simply because uranium exporting is not really economically worthwhile. 

Chernobyl's plight: because Ukraine's Chernobyl radioactive disaster is continuing. (We supplied uranium for that other catastrophe — Fukushima.) 

Insecurity: Ukraine's dangerous nuclear industry due to civil war, ageing reactors, risks of smuggling and terrorism.

Political crisis: Ukraine's notoriously corrupt and unstable political regime.

Let's check those four reasons. 

https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/fourbig-reasons-not-to-sell-uranium-to-ukraine,8895

 

And nuclear power is not safe. Full stop.

another bad idea... nukey poo... another 200,000 years to go...

nukey poo in the deep freeze....

Now comes news that a faulty plant—nicknamed Nukey Poo, for its leaky reputation—may have contributed to cancer among many of its government employees during a shortened, 10-year history.

Where was this now-notorious facility—formally known as PM-3A—located? In Antarctica, at the big U.S. base of McMurdo.

Authorized and funded by a 1960 act of Congress, the McMurdo plant was switched on in March 1962 and managed by the U.S. Navy. It worked, more or less, for 10 years, but hundreds of malfunctions, shutdowns and, ultimately, a leak marked its history. Still, PM-3A wasn’t closed because the Navy couldn't live with its well-documented inefficiencies. The site was shut because operating—and fixing—a nuclear plant in such a remote part of the world proved too expensive.

The idea for building a nuclear plant in Antarctica originated in the mid-1950s. The Eisenhower Administration considered atomic energy a cost-effective way to power a permanent Antarctic station, where shipping fuel oil was both difficult and expensive—$1 to $3 per gallon (equivalent to $7 to $22 today). While the Antarctica Treaty—written in 1959—forbids testing of nuclear weapons or burying nuclear waste on the continent, the pact allowed the generation of nuclear power.

http://www.takepart.com/article/2011/05/23/antarcticas-failed-atomic-power-plant-still-deadly-30-years

 

Image above from a 1958 SMH... in the Gus collection of useless information and other paper planes...

nuke exclusion zone...

The scope of the special intervention plans (PPI) around nuclear sites in case of incidents will be extended to 20 km, against 10 currently, announced Tuesday, April 26 Ségolène Royal.

The Minister of Environment and Energy has expressed the day of 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on the sidelines of the fourth environmental conference.

France has 58 reactors and 19 nuclear power plants. Incident, the PPI provide for information to the population, mobilizing hospitals, the organization of a possible last refuge of the population, etc.


"dressing" for Greenpeace

"The European authorities for safety and radiation protection had recommended extending the perimeters of PPI," recalled Ségolène Royal, adding that the General Secretariat of Defence and National Security "will implement this decision," without giving dated.

The announcement received a cold reception from NGOs. For the non-governmental organization Sortir du nucléaire, the perimeter of 20 km is "ridiculous": "Ségolène Royal is content to throw crumbs! "Judge the NGO in a statement.

"Extending 20 km east of simply window dressing," added Greenpeace, which said that "the radiological impact of the Fukushima accident extended over a radius of 100 km. Regarding the Chernobyl disaster, the perimeter was 300 km. "

 

Learn more about http://www.lemonde.fr/energies/article/2016/04/26/nucleaire-le-perimetre...

another 45 years to clean up nuke poo

Since 1989, the only work at the Hanford Site has been related to cleaning up the waste left behind. The site stores approximately 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive hazardous waste in tanks, the size of over 2,600 rail cars. The waste is housed in 149 single-shell tanks and 28 double-shell tanks. All 149 tanks are unfit for use, according to the Energy Department, and the contents are supposed to be transferred to double-shelled tanks.

The Associated Press reported the cleanup at Hanford is not likely to be completed until 2060 and will take $107.7 billion to complete.

read more: https://www.rt.com/usa/341438-chemical-vapors-sicken-11-workers/

 

 

and in fukushima...

The operator of the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has revealed that 600 tonnes of reactor fuel melted during the disaster, and that the exact location of the highly radioactive blobs remains a mystery.

Key points:
  • 600 tonnes of nuclear fuel still needs to be accounted for
  • Robots sent into the reactor have been disabled by radiation
  • 10 million bags of contaminated soil have been removed

 

In an exclusive interview with Foreign Correspondent, the Tokyo Electric Power Company's chief of decommissioning at Fukushima, Naohiro Masuda, said the company hoped to pinpoint the position of the fuel and begin removing it from 2021.

But he admitted the technology needed to remove the fuel has to be invented.

"Once we can find out the condition of the melted fuel and identify its location, I believe we can develop the necessary tools to retrieve it," Mr Masuda said.

"So it's important to find it as soon as possible."

Clean-up to take decades, cost tens of billions of dollars

Reactors 1, 2 and 3 at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant suffered catastrophic meltdowns in the hours and days after a giant tsunami swamped the facility on 11 March, 2011.

Thousands of workers are braving elevated radiation levels to stabilise and decommission the plant.

read more: https://www.rt.com/news/344200-fukushima-melted-nuclear-fuel/

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and see: https://www.rt.com/news/344200-fukushima-melted-nuclear-fuel/ (based on the report above)