Another example as to why the nuclear industry isn't to be trusted.

[madokie]

O’Brien: 2005 leak not related to current tritium probe

Update: Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear expert who conducted an audit of Vermont Yankee for the Legislature and who spoke with the unnamed employee in question, confirmed yesterday that the previous radioactive leak from a steam pipe occurred in 2005.

David O’Brien, commissioner of the Department of Public Service, said on Tuesday that a 2005 leak at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is not related to the current tritium leak under investigation.

O’Brien said that a steam pipe leak identified in a statement last week by an unnamed Vermont Yankee employee is not a source of the tritium contamination now found in groundwater monitoring wells, one of which has registered a reading of the radioactive isotope as high as 2.5 million picocuries per liter.

(snip)

“I’m relieved to determine this doesn’t date back to 2005,” O’Brien said in an interview.

(More) http://vtdigger.org/2010/02/24/obrien-2005-leak-not-related-to-current-tritium-probe/

Close the SOB already or do we wait until the state of Vermont is a hazardous waste site

[stray cat]

1. Agreed-but what energy companies do you trust?

[madokie]

2. All except for the coal industry, they lie too.

I'll take my chances with any of the alternate methods of producing power. I'd love to be able to be comfortable with the use of nuclear power but due to the enormity of the potential for a catastrophe with Nuclear power being so great that I do not wish to see any more of those type plants being built and the ones we have now phased out as their designed lifetimes are reached. We, they, have no plans as to what to do with the very dangerous, for a long time, waste. One would think that would be job number one but in reality job number one with the nuke industry is obfuscate and when that doesn't wash outright lies. Natural gas would be a huge improvement over the coal plants we have now.
You have to keep in mind that nuclear energy is neither safe, clean nor environmentally sound. It can not stand on its own as the enormity of the subsidies received by them shows.
Solar, wind and natural gas would be a big improvement over what we have now.

Check out Chernobyl and while you're at it take a look at what is going on with DU munitions in both Iraq and Afghanistan, especially Fallujah and what the lingering effects are.

Talk to the Navaho's while you're at it too and see what they have to say about the uranium mining industry and just how not safe that is.

[Nihil]

3. That explains some posts in the past

> All except for the coal industry, they lie too.

So you don't trust the nuclear industry (fair enough) or the coal
industry (fair enough) but you do trust the oil industry and the
gas industry ...
:wow:

[madokie]

4. I wouldn't say I trust them

And yes the coal industry lies too.

I think we can get there without poisoning our planet making parts of it highly dangerous for thousands of years. How can we know that the future man doesn't stumble upon one of our reinforced, so that it may survive, nuke facilities and bring others in, (for whatever reason) not knowing the damage they may be doing with our human gene pool. Any one who advocates that nuclear is on the same par, concerning the danger to man, as the fossil fuels are nuts. The world can rebound after our killing it off with our lifestyles and the things it takes to support that when that is primarily CO2. No big loss but when we poison all or parts of it with radioactive material, some of which last many many human lifetimes, we are being irresponsible because we have no way of knowing that we can secure this material nor do we know for sure we can even warn the future man who comes behind us about its dangers. If you don't think that ia future human race is possible then check out some of the history of what has been that we have today.

[Nihil]

5. It sounds like they (oil & gas) get far more of a pass.

> I think we can get there without poisoning our planet making parts of it
> highly dangerous for thousands of years.

Wrong. We have already done this and continue to do it every day as a part
of business as usual. We cannot "get there" without drastic change and I see
little to suggest that drastic change (or any non-PR change for that matter)
is high on anyone's agenda.

> How can we know that the future man doesn't stumble upon one of our reinforced,
> so that it may survive, nuke facilities and bring others in, (for whatever
> reason) not knowing the damage they may be doing with our human gene pool.

Darwin will still apply in the future too.

> Any one who advocates that nuclear is on the same par, concerning the danger
> to man, as the fossil fuels are nuts.

Anyone who pretends that fossil fuels have not been killing people every day
for centuries, are not killing people every day now and will not be killing
people every day in the future are either naively ignorant or, as you say, "nuts".

We could handle the "cost" of a Chernobyl every year as long as the benefit
for it was the removal of the ongoing constant "cost" of fossil fuels being
used in the place of nuclear energy.


> The world can rebound after our killing it off with our lifestyles and the
> things it takes to support that when that is primarily CO2. No big loss ...

"No big loss".

In some ways I could agree with you but in so many other your handwave about
CO2 is just wrong - it ignores the toxic waste from the production of almost
every element of "our lifestyles", the destruction of forests (complete with
unique fauna), the depletion of marine life (both deliberately through
overfishing of food animals & commercial mammal slaughter and "accidentally"
via pollution, "by-catch" & ecosystem destruction), the cancerous human
population growth and the dispersal & isolation of previously viable animal
populations.


> No big loss but when we poison all or parts of it with radioactive material,
> some of which last many many human lifetimes, we are being irresponsible
> because we have no way of knowing that we can secure this material

Instead, we knowingly pollute vast areas of land and water with materials
that are every bit as deadly as "radioactive materials" and, simply because
they DO NOT DECAY, those materials will stay around for far longer than
"many human lifetimes". This is *not* irresponsible?

:wow:

[Statistical]

6. You are arguing logic to someone who is using faith. It never works.

The reality is that it is easily proven fossil fuels kill a magnitude more people and create thousand times as much toxic waste.

Every single day fossil fuels kills people. Day after day after day. Coal kills more people each year than Chernobyl did (which was a one time event).

The analogy is like people talking about 9/11 being the largest loss of human life in the US and ignoring the 45,000 people that die every year from lack of healthcare.

Still you can't argue with faith.

[kristopher]

11. It isn't "faith", it is rational risk assessment.

Whether or not you like the method lay people employ it is rational.

It could just as easily be said that the type of risk assessment that you embrace is nothing more than "faith" since it 1) evaluates probabilities of an failure in an incredibly complex system on the basis of what is a very small (relative to the complexity) sample and 2) is based on a well known and documented tendency within the industry and its regulators to falsify and hide data relevant to accurate risk assessment (much like creationist try to ban the teaching of evolution).

Case in point: the reporting of the consequences of Chernobyl and the lessons learned by the industry from that failure.

Abstract:

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Volume 1181 Issue Chernobyl
Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, Pages 31 - 220

Chapter II. Consequences of the Chernobyl Catastrophe for Public Health

Alexey B. Nesterenko a , Vassily B. Nesterenko a ,† and Alexey V. Yablokov b
a
Institute of Radiation Safety (BELRAD), Minsk, Belarus b Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
Address for correspondence: Alexey V. Yablokov, Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninsky Prospect 33, Office 319, 119071 Moscow,
Russia. Voice: [phone]; fax: [phone]. [e-mail]
†Deceased


ABSTRACT

Problems complicating a full assessment of the effects from Chernobyl included official secrecy and falsification of medical records by the USSR for the first 3.5 years after the catastrophe and the lack of reliable medical statistics in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Official data concerning the thousands of cleanup workers (Chernobyl liquidators) who worked to control the emissions are especially difficult to reconstruct. Using criteria demanded by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) resulted in marked underestimates of the number of fatalities and the extent and degree of sickness among those exposed to radioactive fallout from Chernobyl. Data on exposures were absent or grossly inadequate, while mounting indications of adverse effects became more and more apparent. Using objective information collected by scientists in the affected areas—comparisons of morbidity and mortality in territories characterized by identical physiography, demography, and economy, which differed only in the levels and spectra of radioactive contamination—revealed significant abnormalities associated with irradiation, unrelated to age or sex (e.g., stable chromosomal aberrations), as well as other genetic and nongenetic pathologies.

In all cases when comparing the territories heavily contaminated by Chernobyl's radionuclides with less contaminated areas that are characterized by a similar economy, demography, and environment, there is a marked increase in general morbidity in the former.

Increased numbers of sick and weak newborns were found in the heavily contaminated territories in Belarus, Ukraine, and European Russia.

Accelerated aging is one of the well-known consequences of exposure to ionizing radiation. This phenomenon is apparent to a greater or lesser degree in all of the populations contaminated by the Chernobyl radionuclides.

This section describes the spectrum and the scale of the nonmalignant diseases that have been found among exposed populations.

Adverse effects as a result of Chernobyl irradiation have been found in every group that has been studied. Brain damage has been found in individuals directly exposed—liquidators and those living in the contaminated territories, as well as in their offspring. Premature cataracts; tooth and mouth abnormalities; and blood, lymphatic, heart, lung, gastrointestinal, urologic, bone, and skin diseases afflict and impair people, young and old alike. Endocrine dysfunction, particularly thyroid disease, is far more common than might be expected, with some 1,000 cases of thyroid dysfunction for every case of thyroid cancer, a marked increase after the catastrophe. There are genetic damage and birth defects especially in children of liquidators and in children born in areas with high levels of radioisotope contamination.

Immunological abnormalities and increases in viral, bacterial, and parasitic diseases are rife among individuals in the heavily contaminated areas. For more than 20 years, overall morbidity has remained high in those exposed to the irradiation released by Chernobyl. One cannot give credence to the explanation that these numbers are due solely to socioeconomic factors. The negative health consequences of the catastrophe are amply documented in this chapter and concern millions of people.

The most recent forecast by international agencies predicted there would be between 9,000 and 28,000 fatal cancers between 1986 and 2056, obviously underestimating the risk factors and the collective doses. On the basis of I-131 and Cs-137 radioisotope doses to which populations were exposed and a comparison of cancer mortality in the heavily and the less contaminated territories and pre- and post-Chernobyl cancer levels, a more realistic figure is 212,000 to 245,000 deaths in Europe and 19,000 in the rest of the world. High levels of Te-132, Ru-103, Ru-106, and Cs-134 persisted months after the Chernobyl catastrophe and the continuing radiation from Cs-137, Sr-90, Pu, and Am will generate new neoplasms for hundreds of years.

A detailed study reveals that 3.8–4.0% of all deaths in the contaminated territories of Ukraine and Russia from 1990 to 2004 were caused by the Chernobyl catastrophe. The lack of evidence of increased mortality in other affected countries is not proof of the absence of effects from the radioactive fallout. Since 1990, mortality among liquidators has exceeded the mortality rate in corresponding population groups.

From 112,000 to 125,000 liquidators died before 2005—that is, some 15% of the 830,000 members of the Chernobyl cleanup teams. The calculations suggest that the Chernobyl catastrophe has already killed several hundred thousand human beings in a population of several hundred million that was unfortunate enough to live in territories affected by the fallout. The number of Chernobyl victims will continue to grow over many future generations.

[madokie]

7. All of it is irresponsible, our whole life style

and everything it takes for us to live it. What I'm saying is yes we are killing ourselves and our planet, yes we are. What I'm saying is that the poisons such as you mention here are not on the same level of concern as is radioactive material such as we have right now and the pile is growing by day. Hell the Europeans have been sinking old ships loaded down with the stuff to get rid of it. You reckon the sea life can deal with this stuff better than we can when we can't in all our wisdoms do it? I don't

Anyways :hi: and bye and have a great day/night, not sure which it is for you all over there. I have some work to do today. The boss, my wifie, says she wants some cabinets above her washer and dryer and now. So its now. Luckily I'm at the finishing stages on that project where all I have to do now is cut and fit the boards and fasten them in place, all the 'brain work' :-) has been done. I'm on easy street today listening to kpig radio and working away.

[NNadir]

8. Actually, the anti-nuke industry is tightly bound to the oil and gas industry.

Note that you do not see one anti-nuke on this website shedding a single tear about the workers at the gas plant which blew up in Connecticut a week or so ago but they weep and weep and weep about the stupid tritium issue - which they do not understand in any sense.

The gas and oil industry owns every prominent anti-nuke in the world outright. Gerhard Schroeder works for Gazprom, the Imperial Russian State gas company, Joschka Fisher for Nabucco, and Amory Lovins for Shell (Nigerians aren't people like white guys in Snomass) Oil, Chevron, Shell Oil, Petrobas, ConocoPhillips and BP.

http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Amory+B.+Lovins

The number of anti-nukes who are induced to "not trust" the oil and gas industry because of dangerous fossil fuel wars, dangerous fossil fuel unrestricted waste dumping, dangerous fossil fuel accidents, etc, etc, etc is ZERO.

[BeFree]

9. We're all attached

We're all energy junkies and the industries are feeding our addiction.

None of them are honest, none to be trusted.

The only energy we can't live without, however, is the sun.

[kristopher]

10. What does polling tells us about that assertion?

The claim is that those who oppose nuclear power are friends of the fossil fuel industries. However by considering both the traditional alignment of the political parties on what energy technologies they support, and polling of public sentiment on energy sources, a very different picture emerges

Traditional Republican energy platform - drill for oil, burn coal, and build 100 nuclear plants;
traditional Democratic energy platform - phase out fossil fuels, develop and deploy renewable energy, improve efficiency and promote conservation.

Note the identical rate of support for nuclear and coal and how that fits as a subset of drilling. Also note the UNIVERSAL approval of renewables and extremely high rate of support for electric autos.

The presumptive reading of this polling is that even the Republicans can't argue against the benefits of renewables or electric autos and they favor an "all of the above" approach to energy. This is consistent with their level of environmental consciousness (0) and their concern about energy security.
So if they take an "all of the above" view, that leaves the support for renewables that is above the level of support for nuclear AND coal as an indicator of where support lies among environmentally aware progressives.

IOW nuclear power supporters are much more likely to be supporters of both coal and petroleum than those who support AND advocate for renewables instead of nuclear.

Associated Press/Stanford University Poll conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media. Nov. 17-29, 2009. N=1,005 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.1.

"In general, would you favor or oppose building more nuclear power plants at this time?"
Favor 49 Oppose 48 Unsure 3

***********************************************************************

CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll. Oct. 16-18, 2009. N=1,038 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.

“To address the country’s energy needs, would you support or oppose action by the federal government to ?” (Half Sample)

"Increase coal mining"
Support 52, Oppose 45, Unsure 3

"Build more nuclear power plants"
Support 52, Oppose 46, Unsure 2

"Develop more solar and wind power"
Support 91, Oppose 8, Unsure 1

"Increase oil and gas drilling"
Support 64, Oppose 33, Unsure 3

"Develop electric car technology"
Support 82, Oppose 17, Unsure 2

"Require more energy conservation by businesses and industries"
Support 78, Oppose 20, Unsure 2

"Require more energy conservation by consumers like yourself"
Support 73, Oppose 25, Unsure 3

"Require car manufacturers to improve the fuel-efficiency of vehicles sold in this country"
Support 85, Oppose 14, Unsure 1

Asked of those who support building more nuclear power plants:
"Would you favor or oppose building a nuclear power plant within 50 miles of your home?"
Favor 66, Oppose 33