It’s time for another weekly roundup of the best of the pronuclear blogs. Last week included the fifth anniversary of the March 11, 2011 twin natural disaster that included a 9.0 earthquake and a 15 meter tall tsunami. Those two closely linked forces of nature resulted in widespread infrastructure devastation over a 150 km long…
Last week I pointed out that Scientists for Accurate Radiation Information (SARI) had submitted a letter to a number of scientific advisory groups requesting that they provide clear guidance to governments on the lack of harm associated with exposure to the residual radioactive materials released from the Fukushima Daiichi accident. That initial post also provided…
This is a reprint of an article published in HP News, an official publication of the Health Physics Society (www.hps.org). Neither the Health Physics Society nor the author of the article have any affiliation with Atomic Insights. Barbara Hamrick, CHP, JD, HPS Fellow At 2:46 p.m. Japan Standard Time (JST) on 11 March 2011, the…
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….
The above trailer for Stories from Tohoku is both heart-rending and heart-warming. It reminds us of the tragedy that struck the northeast Japanese coast on March 11, 2011 that has been too often overlooked in all of the discussion about the temporally-related, but far less devastating, events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Atomic…
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…
Though I would dearly love to have the opportunity to visit Fukushima Daiichi to obtain a first hand view of the efforts being undertaken to clean up after the effects of the tsunami and earthquake, this video is the next best thing to a personal site tour. It is less expensive and far more convenient…
After deliberating for a period of time approaching a decade, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a new draft Protective Action Manual that includes Protective Action Guides (PAG) for people responsible for responding to radioactive material releases that might come from one of the following sources: a fire in a major facility such…
Before March 11, 2011, “Fukushima” was the name of a relatively unknown prefecture in Japan. Now it is a shorthand reference to an event in which three large nuclear power plants melted and released a small quantity of long lived radioactive material that has not harmed any human being. Here is a brief synopsis of…
On December 21, 2012, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) blog posted a letter from Chairman Macfarlane titled A Visit to Japan: Reflections from the Chairman. She has recently returned from a trip to Japan and a visit to the evacuated areas near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. Here are her concluding thoughts: On…
There are 34 nuclear reactors located in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy. Of those, 7 were shutdown for planned maintenance. Three units tripped due to disturbances on the grid or issues with one of their redundant cooling systems. The other 24 remained operational and supplied as much power as the grid could accept. On Sunday,…
One of the best things about nuclear energy is that the fuel is cheap and densely concentrated. That characteristic enables facilities to be hardened against external events, and has the potential to reduce the vulnerability of nuclear energy facilities to infrastructure damage that happens outside of the facility. The low cost fuel also enables a…