Fukushima Leaks, ReStarting MORE Nuclear Reactors, Oceans & Air Sick update 6 18 13
Channel: onthewaytoextinction
Date: 2013-06-21

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As Japan Says Fukushima Daiichi Disaster Man-Made & Preventable, Fears Grow for Nuclear Plants Worldwide Jun 15, 2013

Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez hosts Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Energy Education. A Japanese parliamentary inquiry has concluded last year's nuclear meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was "a profoundly man-made disaster — that could and should have been foreseen and prevented." Arnie Gundersen and Juan Gonzalez talk about the report and what it means for U.S. nuclear facilities, in particular the 23 with a similar design to the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Man-made disaster, we are able to say, that based on all the facts gathered, that the cause of the accident was, in fact, we believe, to be man-made.

The more than 600-page report urged greater safety around nuclear plants and called on parliament to closely monitor a new nuclear watchdog due to be launched in a few months. It also urged the government to be more transparent about its relationship with the nuclear industry.

the government and all those involved really shock me.

Q: we're joined by Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear power industry executive. He's the chief engineer at Fairewinds Associates and co-author of the Greenpeace report, "Lessons from Fukushima." He often provides independent testimony on nuclear and radiation issues to the NRC and other government agencies. Arnie Gundersen, welcome to Democracy Now!

A: Well, you know, we can no longer call it the Fukushima Daiichi accident. An accident is when a bolt of lightning comes out of the blue, and you have no idea why—what caused it. This report hit the nail on the head. This was man-made. The Japanese have known for at least 20 years, and perhaps a lot longer, that tsunamis of the size that could hit Fukushima Daiichi were in fact likely and never did anything about it. There's a coziness between the regulator and the people that run the nuclear power plants, not just in Japan, but worldwide. This report focused on that relationship between the regulator and the power plant owners in Japan.

Q: And one of the fascinating parts of the report is that it says that at least one of the reactors may not actually have been damaged by the tsunami but actually by the earthquake itself, that preceded the tsunami, which would at least suggest major structural flaws in the design of these reactors to withstand earthquakes.

A: Yeah, there's actually some curious information on Fukushima Unit 1. That was the first one to fail. Interesting, too, that was built by an American company, General Electric, and an American architect/engineer. So it's hard to—for the Japanese to blame themselves, when this was an all-American design. Strange things happened before the tsunami hit on Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1. Also, though, there's some bulges in Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4. And those bulges are called something: a first mode Euler strut bulge. And they're definitely seismically induced. So, I don't think the nuclear industry wants to acknowledge that their seismic codes may be faulty, but I think it's certainly likely, and I agree with the report.

Q: And what implications might this have for other nuclear plants here in the United States, for instance, who maybe have had the similar design to the—to Unit 1 in Japan?

A: There's 23 plants in the United States that are essentially identical to all three of the Daiichi plants that blew up. And, you know, I'm of the opinion that they should all be shut down. We had a bad design back in the '70s. This design was known to be bad. There were a series of Band-Aid fixes, but it never really got to the root cause that this is just too small a containment. Two days after the accident, NRC key people were discussing it, and blurted out, "These are the worst containments in the world." So if we know they're the worst containments in the world, why are those 23 plants still running in the United States?

And where are some of those 23 plants in the U.S.?

There's a few in the East: Pilgrim, Vermont Yankee, Oyster Creek. There's a bunch in Illinois: the Dresden plants right near Chicago and the Quad City plants. And there's also several in the Southeast. So they're all essentially east of the Mississippi but in—near areas where there's high population densities.

The wind was blowing offshore, and about 80% of the radiation wound up in the Pacific. The amount of radiation released was clearly as much as Chernobyl, but most of it headed out to sea. That, by the way, wouldn't be the case in Illinois, for instance, where these reactors are surrounded, no matter which way. My estimate is that over the next 30 years we're going to see about a million cancers as a result of this. it could have been worse had the wind not been blowing out to sea.