By Les Corrice It is widely reported that hundreds of tons of highly contaminated Fukushima Daiichi groundwater pours into the Pacific Ocean every day. But, an objective look at the evidence tells a completely different story. It’s long-past time for the Tokyo Electric Company (Tepco) and the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) to broadcast the truth…
By Les Corrice I’ve seen every Godzilla movie ever made. I was an adolescent when the first one hit America, and I immediately fell in love with monster movies…a passion I have held to this day. Needless to say, when the latest Godzilla movie hit the big screen a few weeks ago, I was there….
An Atomic Insights reader (thanks Pete51) sent me a link to an amazing documentary that ran at the beginning of May on NHK, a Japanese network that is available now on some US cable systems. It tells the story of six retirees who now work daily to protect and preserve Okuma Town, which is the…
By Mike Derivan Editor’s note. This post has a deep background story. The author, Mike Derivan, was the shift supervisor at the Davis Besse Nuclear Power Plant (DBNPP) on September 24, 1977 when it experienced an event that started out almost exactly like the event at Three Mile Island on March 28, 1979. The event…
On March 28, 1979, a little more than thirty-five years ago, a nuclear reactor located on an island in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, suffered a partial core melt. On some levels, the accident that became known as TMI (Three Mile Island) was a wake-up call and an expensive learning opportunity for both the…
At 4:00 am on March 28, 1979, the accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 began. That day, 35 years ago this coming Friday, is seared into the memory of most of the people who were working in the industry, who regularly watched the evening news, or who lived in the northeast US. Most can…
Editor’s Note: On March 11, 2013, Dr. Timothy Mousseau gave a presentation at the Helen Caldicott sponsored symposium on the Medical and Ecological Consequences of Fukushima. This analysis by Dr. Patrick Walden, was posted as a TRIUMF wiki soon after that event and is republished here with his permission. Dr. Walden is a retired nuclear…
On most issues, I tend to side with the opinions expressed on Democracy Now. The journalists on that viewer/listener-supported show do real investigative journalism and often question the spin provided by commercial media. When it comes to nuclear energy, however, the show and its host are unreliable and biased. On March 19, 2014, Democracy Now…
On Wednesday, February 5, 2014, a salt-hauling truck in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) caught fire when flammable liquids (either diesel fuel or hydraulic fluid) in the engine compartment contacted hot surfaces, most likely the catalytic converter. Though the fire filled much of the underground with smoke, all 86 workers underground at the time…
Several times during the past couple of days, I have encountered comments from a variety of people who have claimed that a document released as a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request proved that the accident at Fukushima resulted in 5 people receiving lethal radiation doses. That claim does not match the…
On March 9, 2014, a small group of nuclear professionals gathered to talk about the events at Fukushima on March 11, 2011 and the continuing situation during the subsequent three years. The conversation included: Cal Abel – PhD candidate in Nuclear Engineering at Ga Tech who also blogs at Statistical Economics Meredith Angwin, who publishes…
On March 6, 2014, the Department of Energy held a town hall meeting for the residents of Carlsbad, NM to provide an update on the efforts of the WIPP facility to recover from the airborne contamination issue that occurred in the underground facility on February 14. DOE representatives then conducted a brief press conference summarizing…