25 Comments

  1. It did not take long to remove all doubt!
    Can you explain more about his fraudulent resume?
    BTW, I really appreciate your efforts/this blog – pretty impressive Canoe U grad 🙂
    USAFA ’92

    1. @Papa Bear 38:
      Here it is:
      http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2011/02/arnie-gundersen-has-inflated-his-resume.html
      I get all kinds of grief from people who think that the past should be ignored and that we should only try to attack the specific words being uttered in each argument. From my point of view, integrity and reputation matter. Unfortunately, the civilian world does not seem to have a well enough developed grapevine to keep incompetent people out of important roles.

      1. Thank you for the prompt reply and prior research. I just discovered your blog and was not aware of this. I was a bit shocked to see how bold and bad his lies were about his “experience” and “qualifications”!

        1. Surely comments like ‘Chernobyl on steroids’ and my favorite ‘radioactive rabbit droppings’ have demonstrated just how much of a fraud Gundersen is. Remember, he was fired because he designed the spent fuel pool racks for Vermont Yankee that didn’t fit, you can say that he has an axe to grind with the nuclear industry.

  2. Hi Ron,
    Right now I’m living in Tokyo. So far nobody wants to explain or describe which would be the worst case scenario.
    With your expertise, can you give us an idea how bad it could be?
    – For example in one scenario assume that one container is totally broken and all its fuel gets exposed (no more water and all its rods starts melting).
    #NAME?
    How much fuel those reactors have in comparison with the other incidents like The Three Mille and Chernobyl?
    I will really appreciate you can give us a straight and clear description,
    Kind regards.

    1. @Kevin – I stand by the description of “the worst case” scenario that I provided on Saturday, within 24 hours of the earthquake/tsunami combination. It will not get any worse than that, despite all of the confusion and handwringing that has happened since. I hope it answers your questions and allows you to focus on more important issues. Please share what you learn with others. Let me know if you have any questions.
      http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2011/03/nuclear-plant-issues-in-japan-are-least.html

      1. I’m re-reading again, and please correct me if I’m wrong… The worst case then is that all the fuel rods will melt and that material will be kept inside of the container, and that’s it, the pellets will generate just enough heat to melt themselves but will not affect the vessel. So whatever happens the container is strong enough to isolate the melting core.
        But what about the unused fuel in the pools? Those are not inside the container! How much fuel is that? What is going to happen if they melt near the roof?

        1. Kevin – the used fuel in the pool will do no worse than melt to the bottom of the used fuel pool. The only part of it that might become airborne are the isotopes that are somewhat volatile. Most of those will have already decayed considerably after just a few months in the pool. The rest will be dispersed.
          If the pools are somehow emptied of water, they will be a local radiation hazard until water can be added back into the pool to provide shielding or until some other means is used. There is no way for those materials to be spread into the environment – the studies that claim otherwise generally include some rather unrealistic assumptions.

          1. Thanks for your time and quick reply. It is relieving to hear that…!
            At least one thing to not worry more.
            Right now we are still experiencing aftershocks (5.8, 6.1, 6.4… in Richter’s scale)…

  3. “Chernobyl on Steroids”
    I’m having t-shirts and bumper stickers made as we speak!

  4. I reside in the anti Atomic haven of VT. Could you please expand on his resume “issues” and the highlights of his misinformation in the video so I may better inform my fellow Vermonters if you have the time/interest?

  5. “Chernobyl on steroids”
    Now if that doesn’t sound to you like the musings of a technical expert, than what does?
    In other news, planes have been rerouted around Vermont such as not to be contaminated by the plume of BS emanating from the “Fairwinds Associates Corporation” (otherwise known as Arnie and his wife).

  6. totally off the topic, but the world nuclear news site is getting weird. “The high levels of radiation braved by workers at the scene in Fukushima Daiichi appear to have reduced after the expansion of the workforce and announcements of infrastructure improvements to come. ” oh yes, the radiation was frightened by the announcement made by the administration and has retreated back to the containment pools… and I can’t really parse this sentence at all “…army fire engine was able to “deliver 30 tonnes of water” towards or into unit 3’s fuel pond, but this is not confirmed, nor is the expected drop in radiation levels expected to accompany it. ”
    nor is the expected drop in radiation levels expected to accompany it… Do they mean it didn’t work, or that they didn’t except the reduction that was expected?
    Their rhetoric was very good in the beginning but I think they have been watching TV news again as the prose has started to include a lot of “scrambling to”‘s and battling too’s and major struggles…

  7. One of the hard things about debating with Gundersen is he makes many statements that are clearly incorrect and even loopy (there are 16 shad in the Connecticut River, for example). BUT, if I try to answer all of these, he gets to set the agenda for the debate! Very difficult. A charge un-answered is a charge believed, I know. But to answer Gundersen’s statements, one after another after another: this would have me following a deeply odd agenda.

    1. You did well in the VY debate with him. Unfortunately, the current course of events in Japan have doomed, in my opinion, any chance of VY life extension.

  8. Rod and others, I really appreciate all the infro on the site. Obviously, Mr. Gundersen is not a good source of info on this matter. However, the news from sources such as IEAE and how such people as the man who wrote the Wall Street Journal have changed their minds on this issue leave me quite worried about my own health and that of my wife and newborn in Tokyo.
    I am not at all insisting that any of the people who are saying there is nothing to worry about in regards to this issue are liars. However, the facts being presented by the officials involved and the numbers presented don’t seem very promising either(I can read and understand Japanese).
    Could someone please give me an honest and straight view on the danger of the fuel pools? I am quite up to date on the situation based upon the facts presented by TEPCO, the Japanese Government, and the Nuclear Safety Commission here.

  9. It took about 30 seconds for all doubt to be removed.
    I have been trying to caution my friends and colleagues that most of the people being passed off as experts on television news shows are paid spokespeople for anti-nuclear organizations and that their on air testimony should be treated with a great deal of scepticism.
    I am currently in Toronto, Canada and was watching CBC news, they interviewed Duncan Hawthorne, CEO of Bruce Power, who was much calmer and more rational than any other commenter I’ve seen on TV. He said that TEPCO and the Japanese government seem to be doing the right thing, taking a calm approach and doing things logically. He thinks that as soon as they can get the plant reconnected to the grid and check the electrical systems and get the onsite electric pumps working, they’ll be in a much better position. On CBC’s evening news, they had a medical practitioner and a real radiation expert providing advice on the effects (or rather the lack thereof) of ionising radiation, noting that everything from bananas to your spouse is radioactive, and that the danger lies in the dose.
    Unfortunately, the rest of the talking heads on Canadian TV are just as bad as those on CNN, ABC and Fox.

    1. It seems impossible to avoid the alarmist disinformation that is being spread everywhere. Every frontpage on the web, every newspaper, every magazine. Articles that mention all the *other* catastrophes that the quake has caused, including energy related ones, are moved to the back of the paper (30 dead here, 100 dead there, who cares as long as it’s not nuclear?).
      Next thing you know somebody is going to make hasty decisions based on all that overblown fearmongering … oops, it has already happened, Switzerland, Venezuela…

  10. It seems this disaster so far is of the order of maybe 0.1 Chernobyl and it has some way to run before it is all over.

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