Nothing.

But that won’t stop the antinuclear fear mongers from writing editorials and planning protests of nuclear power on the 66th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing on August 6, 2011.

What better way to manipulate the headlines than to put their fear mongering spin on a historical anniversary?  This is exactly what they’ve done with Hurricane Katrina, the BP Oil Spill, wildfires, floods, 9/11, and any other major events for the last few decades. When you have no shame and sell fear for a living, I suppose there is little standing in your way.

Just because nuclear power plants use fission to generate electricity, doesn’t mean they have anything to do with nuclear weapons. Just like burning fossil fuels has nothing to do with the combustion that occurs in every bullet, bomb, or missile around the world.  What is bound to happen on August 6 will be no different than Greenpeace protesting the BP Deep Water Horizon oil spill at a hunting shop (doesn’t make much sense does it?).

It’s important to remember on August 6th that a nuclear power plant which reliably puts out electricity 24/7 without emitting a single molecule of CO2 is NOT a weapon or a weapon factory. Quite the opposite.

Nuclear plants don’t make bombs, they destroy them!

United States nuclear reactors have destroyed 15,000 nuclear weapons since 1993 by converting former soviet warheads into usable fuel under a treaty known as Megatons to Megawatts. As I commonly say, we are literally powering our cities with the bombs that were built to destroy them.

But this isn’t the only example of nuclear power ridding the world of nuclear weapons. At the Savannah River Site, where weapons were once made, a facility is being built to convert 34 tons of weapons grade plutonium into Mixed Oxide Fuel for nuclear reactors. Remember the next time you flip a light switch or plug in your cell phone that 10% of that electricity is coming from a nuclear bomb that now can never hurt anyone.

No other industry or organization has ever destroyed more nuclear weapons than the commercial nuclear power industry. If the fanatics at Greenpeace were truly interested in promoting world peace and ridding the world of nuclear weapons, then they would be in Washington DC right now begging the government to allow the construction of new nuclear power plants. Instead they continue with their silly publicity stunts that usually involve climbing something (?).  Meanwhile the nuclear power industry is doing more to advance the cause of world peace by ridding the world of more weapons and more firepower than any other group or government in the history of human civilization.

So the next time an antinuclear activist tries to tell you Hiroshima and Fukushima are the same thing, remind them that they’re the opposite, and ask them not to be so predictable.

Image Credit

Antinuclear March courtes of Flickr user Takver published under the CC license.

Further Reading

• Megatons to Megawatts: Power from Nuclear Weapons

Below is a video showing just a few of the volunteers. Please join me in thanking the organizers of this event and the other volunteers who did such a great job this weekend.

If you’re interested in learning more about the work NA-YGN does in the industry and community, please visit the NA-YGN Blog, Clean Energy Insight.

Further Reading

• Utilities Service Alliance Controls Costs for Nuclear Plants
• Rod Adams Defends Nuclear on Bloggingheads TV

A Tsunami one meter (just over 3 ft) in height is expected to impact in the area of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The tsunami that struck on March 11 was 10 meters high (over 33 ft). The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant is protected by a seawall designed to withstand a 5.7 meter tsunami (19 feet).

NHK is reproting that TEPCO says there are no additional problems at the plant.

Please keep the brave workers at Fukushima and the people in Japan who are still recovering from the first quake in your thoughts and prayers today.

UPDATE: The tsunami warning has been lifted.

Further Reading

• Q&A on Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant
• What Does “Nuclear Meltdown” Mean?
• Beware the Fake Fallout Map!
• 3 Months In: A Look at Nuclear Fissionary Site Statistics

The map claims that fallout measuring 750 RADS/hr (1 RAD = 1 REM = 10 millisieverts) will reach the west coast of the US within 10 days. This is preposterous. To date, the worst dose rate found directly at the reactors was 40 Rads/hr and the current dose rate at the plant is less than 0.05 Rads/hr. There is absolutely zero chance that any measurable radiation will reach the west coast of the United States as a result of the events in Japan.

ARS has released the following quote in response to this misinformation:

Australian Radiation Services is aware of information about radioactive contamination being spread from the Japanese nuclear reactor incident released under the ARS logo and name.  We wish to be clear that this information has not originated from ARS and as such distance ourselves from any such misinformation.

If you see this map, or if someone sends it to you, please tell them it is a fake that is meant to cause an unnecessary panic. I certainly hope whoever created this map is found and thrown in a cell as what they’ve done here is no different then yelling “fire” in a crowded theater.

Image Credit

Fake Fallout Map courtesy of some shameless loser.

Further Reading

• What Does “Nuclear Meltdown” Mean?

So given what’s happening in Japan right now, we thought we’d open this forum up for your questions. If you have any questions about what’s happening right now at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, post them in the comments below. If we don’t have an answer for you, we’ll do our best to ping our colleagues in the industry and other nuclear websites to get you the most current and accurate information available.

Further Reading

• Greenpeace Fanatics Assault Officers at Cofrentes Nuclear Power Plant
• Operating Costs of a Nuclear Power Plant
• What Does “Nuclear Meltdown” Mean?
• Confirmation Bias Ever-Present in Nuclear Energy
• Nuclear Power Plants and Other Nuclear Facilities

By now you’ve heard about the magnitude 8.9 earthquake that struck Japan on Friday, March 11 2011, and the 33 foot tsunami that followed.  Both the quake and the tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The plant stood up to the initial quake and was shutdown within seconds. However the tsunami knocked out the diesel generators which powers the pumps that supply cooling water to the reactor core in the event of a loss of power. What followed remains somewhat unclear, but we do know that two hydrogen explosions have occurred at Units 1 and 3 and the media chain-reaction that followed has carelessly thrown about words like “meltdown” and “catastrophe.”

So What Does “Meltdown” Mean?

One of the unique properties of nuclear power is that the fuel continues to generate heat after the reactor is shut down. This requires backup cooling systems to cool the fuel. If the fuel is not cooled, it can reach temperatures as high as 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit and eventually melt.

A partial meltdown occurred in 1979 at Three Mile Island Unit 2 (TMI) in Pennsylvania. When the fuel melted, it pooled at the bottom of the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV). The RPV is an 8 inch thick steel container that is shaped like a pill.  The RPV is located inside of the primary containment dome which is a hardened bunker constructed of several feet of steel and concrete.  At TMI in 1979, the partially melted core material melted just a fraction of an inch into the RPV before it cooled and hardened. The core was still safely contained behind two barriers.

As was the case at TMI, there has been a small release of radiation to the environment.  Operators at Fukushima are periodically venting steam that builds up in the core in order to keep pressure down inside of the reactor. While this steam is mildly radioactive, it contains mostly short lived isotopes that do not pose any threat to the health and safety of the public.  Despite similar releases at TMI in 1979, there was not a single injury, illness, or death as a result of that accident. As a precaution, the Japanese government has implemented their preexisting emergency plan and evacuated all residents within a 12 mile radius of the plant. Once the reactors reach cold shutdown, these people will be allowed to return.

Despite what you may be hearing, this will NOT leave vast areas of land uninhabitable for generations. Again look no further than TMI where the other reactor, Unit 1, remains in Operation today and will continue to do so for another 20 years. The people in the areas surrounding TMI were never in any tangible danger and remain perfectly safe there today.

Media Chain Reaction

As my friend and colleague Gwyneth Cravens said earlier today, what is happening on TV and in the papers right now is best described as a “Media Chain Reaction.”  Fear sells papers. It’s a simple as that.

Even though the event in 1979 didn’t hurt a single person, that event happened just a few days after Jane Fonda inspired wannabe journalists around the country in The China Syndrome which caused media from around the world to flock to Pennsylvania in hopes of covering the ‘catastrophe.’

Of course, it was all just a bunch of hot air, as no catastrophe ever happened, other than the damage to US energy policy over the following decades of course.

Words like nuclear, radiation and meltdown frighten people who don’t fully understand them, at the keeps them glued to the TV. Your everyday earthquake, tsunami, and humanitarian crisis, such the one that struck Haiti last year are not nearly as sexy as an “imminent nuclear meltdown” and a media that is best describe as lazy and sensationalist will persist in painting this picture of radioactive gloom and doom while the real risk to the people of Japan (dysentery, infection, starvation, and exposure) will go largely unreported.

The Business of Fear: Then and Now

Here’s just a taste of how ludicrous media coverage of nuclear power really is. The following is a news broadcast from 1979 during the TMI Unit 2 event. Remember, the event below did not cause one single human death, injury, or illness:

Now let’s take a look at what CNN has to say today. Does anyone notice any similarity here?

Let me end by saying that what is happening at the Japanese reactors is serious. My goal is not to cover this up or make it seem like nothing is happening. My aim is to put the actual risk in perspective in contrast to the chicken-little reporting you may see in the main stream media. I’ll add that the Japanese government and nuclear industry are handling the situation in a professional and transparent way as they follow procedures and contingency plans that have been drilled and practiced for years. This plant stood up to two helpings of the very worst that mother nature can dish out and the fact that nobody has been killed as as result of the quake and tsunami hitting the plant is a testament to the resilient design and inherent safety of the Light Water Reactor. Unfortunately for the people of Japan, much of the surrounding area did not fare as well as the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant did.

Image Credit

Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant courtesy of Wikimedia Commons published under the CC license.

Further Reading

• Response to Charles Faddis’ Op-ed in the New York Times
• Greenpeace Fanatics Assault Officers at Cofrentes Nuclear Power Plant
• Nuclear Fission for Dummies: Moderation

Just in case you thought that sabotage and ramming ships constitutes “peaceful protest,” there can no longer be any doubt about the violent nature of the Greenpeace organization and what it’s willing to do.

Greenpeace claims this reckless PR stunt demonstrates that nuclear power plant security is weak. The truth is, the cooling tower is outside of the secure areas of the plant and the fanatics never got anywhere near the reactor or the redundant security barriers. While a cooling tower is important to generating electricity, it has nothing to do with safety thus Greenpeace has proven little other than the fact that they’re willing to use violence to achieve their goals and that they still have no clue what they’re talking about.

Media coverage of this stunt has been disgraceful as usual. The injured officers were briefly mentioned in short quips toward the end of a few stories, while every piece of coverage I read included prepared soundbites from the fanatics that premeditated the attack.

Truth be told, all 15 of the attackers are lucky to be alive as the guards showed considerable restraint in holding their fire. This could very easily have been much worse than that. But then again, the leadership at Greenpeace has demonstrated time and again that they are willing to risk the lives of the kids who volunteer for them as they continue to have them chain themselves to train tracks even after one of them was accidentally run over and killed by a train.

I certainly hope that any organization, individual, and company that is making donations to Greenpeace thinks long and hard about whether or not they want their name associated with financing violence.

Image Credit

Greenpeace Fanatic courtesy of Flickr user Greenpeace Finland under the CC license.

Further Reading

• Greenpeace Disables Comments on Antinuclear Blog
• Using Sewage at a Nuclear Plant
• Operating Costs of a Nuclear Power Plant
• Response to Charles Faddis’ Op-ed in the New York Times
• Nuclear Waste Disposal and Plant Decommissioning Costs

The new units will be 1,100 Megawatt (MW) Westinghouse AP1000 Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) and would be added to the existing 1,000 MW PWR reactor which began operation in 1982 and won license renewal until 2042 . Upon completion of the two new reactors, the combined V.C. Summer plant will be capable of generation 3,200 MW of emission-free electricity. That is enough electricity to power 2,240,000 homes in South Carolina.

The existing reactor at V.C. Summer is already the largest employer in Fairfield County with over 600 full time employees. Construction of the two new reactors is expected to generate some 3,000 construction jobs and upon completion, the two new units will create about 800 permanent jobs for Fairfield County. With unemployment in South Carolina at 10.7%, these new jobs cannot come soon enough for the state hard hit by recession.

Early phases of construction have already begun on site. To date, over 6.5 million cubic yards or earth has been excavated in early site preparation for the power block area, the circulating water system, and the switch yard area for Unit 2. Work is also underway on fabricating the Reactor Pressure Vessel and the Steam Generators, the largest and heaviest components of the AP1000.

Currently 25 Reactor Operator Training Instructors are currently being trained on the AP1000 systems and a simulator is under construction. The simulator will be a fully functional mock-up of the AP1000 control room which will be used to train the first generation of reactor operators for the two units.

The combined priced tag for the project is $9.8 billion. So far the project is on schedule and under budget, much to the dismay of antinuclear activists who pretend to care for such details (they really don’t but it doesn’t stop them from pretending). Unit 2 is expected to become operational in 2016 with Unit 3 following in 2019.

The last remaining hurdle for the project is to secure a Combine Operating and Construction License from the NRC. The commission has not granted such a license for over 30 years. Currently, the COL is expected in late 2011 to early 2012. Until then site prep and component fabrication will continue.

Image Credit

AP1000 Reactor image courtesy of Westinghouse

Further Reading

• New Nuclear Construction: Vogtle 3 and 4
• Construction Costs of New Nuclear Energy Plants
• Financing Costs in New Nuclear Power Plant Construction
• President Obama: Unexpected Nuclear Supporter
• US Government Loan Guarantees for New Nuclear Construction

Nuclear Medicine is an especially important topic for me as it was just 39 days ago that I received a dose of medical radiation.

In early 2010, I began to tire easily. I initially thought I was just out of shape, so I joined a gym and started exercising. But the results were not what I expected. As I hit the gym, instead of improving, the condition became worse. The slightest amount of physical exertion would cause me to sweat profusely and I often had to take a knee just to keep from collapsing right then and there. Even at rest my heart was racing and I had trouble doing simple tasks like tying my shoe laces because my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. It soon got so bad that I couldn’t even stand in front of the mirror long enough to shave in the morning without becoming dizzy and I was sleeping as much as 20 hours per day. It was then that my better half noticed a lump on my throat.

After several tests and trips to different doctors, I was diagnosed with Grave’s Disease, a condition where the immune system is essentially stuck on overdrive. One of the most prevalent symptoms of Grave’s Disease is an over-active thyroid gland or hyperthyroidism. If something wasn’t done, eventually my heart would have stopped and I’d have died at a very early age. Although Grave’s Disease is incurable, its effect on the thyroid gland can be countered with radioisotope therapy.

On December 20, 2010 I was given a pill containing 18.5 millicuries (mCi) of Iodine-131 (I-131), an emitter of beta radiation. Since the thyroid gland acts like an iodine sponge, much of this radio-iodine would end up in my thyroid gland, where the beta radiation would slowly kill off some of the tissue in the gland thus reducing the amount of hormone it produced and returning my metabolism to normal.

For the first few days following the treatment, I would be giving off considerable amounts of radiation as much of the isotope would leave my body through normal biological processes (I’ll spare you the details). Even my breath would be slightly radioactive (sadly, they don’t make a mint for that). After three or four days, all of the radio-iodine would either have left my body or been collected by the thyroid, its intended target.

Given my employment in the nuclear industry, I was forced to take an extended vacation as employees who receive nuclear medicine are known to be so radioactive that they would set off the alarms on the area radiation monitors in the power plant.

21 days after the treatment, I decided enough time had passed since I-131 has an 8 day half life. It was time to go back to work. Of course, when I got to the gate, I was greeted by the klaxon of area radiation monitors protesting my entry into the plant. When a radiation protection technician, otherwise known as Rad Pro, came out to assess my condition, it turned out that my neck was giving off 3 millirem per hour of radiation. To put that in perspective, if you were to stand next to me for 20 minutes, you would have received as much radiation as the people who lived near Three Mile Island in 1979 during the partial meltdown (an entirely harmless amount of radiation).

I was then informed that it would be at least another week before they would let me into the nuclear power plant because I was too radioactive.

More than a five weeks later, I am still slightly radioactive. I still set off the radiation alarms at the entry to the plant, although Rad Pro has made special arrangements where I am frisked before I go into and out of the plant to make sure it is only my neck that is radioactive.

Now consider the fact that nearly 30 days after receiving a relatively routine amount of medical radiation, I was too radioactive to get INTO a nuclear power plant and yet five minutes after taking the pill I was allowed to walk right out the front door of the hospital. There were no men in yellow bubble suits that tackled me to the ground and dragged me to a decontamination shower. There was no EPA at my house declaring it a disaster area even though I left a trail of contamination everywhere I went.

Now consider that antinuclear activists are up in arms over a mere few thousand picocuries of tritium at Vermont Yankee even though none of it will ever make its way to their tap water. Yet a Doctor made me take a pill with 18.5 BILLION picocuries in order to improve my health. When put in context of routine medical procedures, you can see just how skewed the point of view of antinuclear activists really is. Now ask yourself why those fanatics are not standing in front of every hospital in the country with their ridiculous picket signs.

This post is submitted as part of the 37th Carnival of Nuclear Energy Blogs hosted by Idaho Samizdat.

Image Credit

Thyroid Gland courtesy of Wikimedia Commons published under the CC license.

Further Reading

• National Nuclear Science Week 2011: Get to Know Nuclear
• Radioactive Banana
• National Nuclear Science Week 2011: January 24-28
• Safe Levels of Radiation
• National Nuclear Science Week: Nuclear Safety

Nuclear power is one of the safest forms of energy generation available today. Despite the reputation of being unsafe that has been orchestrated by a well organized and well financed smear campaign, the nuclear power industry has managed to operate more than 100 reactors for several decades without the slightest impact on the health of the public in the United States.

Not only is nuclear power safe for the public, but nuclear power is also safe for the employees. According to OSHA, in 2009 nuclear power had an industrial accident rate of 0.1 accidents per 200,000 man hours worked. That means it’s actually safer to work in nuclear power than jobs like real estate, nursing, and social work. If it’s that safe to work inside a nuclear power plant, then you can bet it’s perfectly safe to live next to one.

The worst accident at a United States nuclear power plant was the partial meltdown of Three Mile Island Unit 2. Although that reactor would never operate again, the accident resulted in not one single human death, injury, or illness. Only one accident at a commercial power reactor has ever resulted in a human death. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the Chernobyl accident resulted in a total of 56 deaths, mostly among those sent to put out the fire at the plant. The death toll of this disaster is often overstated by antinuclear activists who distort the truth in order to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about nuclear power. In fact, those 56 are the only deaths in more than 14,000 reactor-years of commercial nuclear power operation worldwide.

To put this in perspective, we need look no further than 2010. In 2010, fossil fuel accidents included, just to name a few, an exploding natural gas plant in Connecticut which killed 8 workers, a coal mine collapse in West Virginia that killed 29 miners, and of course the BP Deep Water Horizon disaster that killed 11 oil rig workers and pumped millions of gallons oil into the Gulf of Mexico. 2010 was also a good year for Chinese coal miners as just under 3,000 miners died in various floods, explosions, and other accidents in coal mines. Of course all of these accidents pale in comparison to the estimated 25,000 people who die every year from respiratory illness caused by fossil fuel emissions in the US alone.

It’s bordering on comedy that antinuclear activists claim nuclear power is not safe when it has killed only 56 people in 14,000 reactor years of operation, especially when you consider that the alternative, fossil fuels, kills more people EVERY DAY. In fact, the argument can be made that antinuclear activists, in blocking expansion of nuclear power and thus prolonging global dependence of fossil fuels, are indirectly responsible for far more deaths than nuclear power.

Image Credit

Vermont Yankee courtesy of Wikimedia Commons published under the CC license.

Further Reading

• National Nuclear Science Week 2011: Get to Know Nuclear
• Antinuclear Spin Machine Exploiting Fossil Fuel Disasters
• National Nuclear Science Week 2011: January 24-28
• National Nuclear Science Week: Nuclear Energy Generation
• National Nuclear Science Week: Nuclear Careers