The Legacy of Three Mile Island: It Could Happen Again At Any Time

[ensho]

http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/3102


As radiation poured from 3 Mile Island 31 years ago this weekend, utility executives rested easy. They knew that no matter how many people their errant nuke killed, and no matter how much property it destroyed, they would not be held liable. Today this same class of executives demands untold taxpayer billions to build still more TMIs. No matter how many meltdowns they cause, and how much havoc they visit down on the public, they still believe they’re above the law.

Fueled with more than $600 million public relations slush money, they demand a risk-free “renaissance” financed by you and yours. As if! In 1980 I reported from central Pennsylvania on the dead and dying one year after. Dozens of interviews documented a horrifying range of radiation-related diseases including cancer, leukemia, birth defects, still births, malformations, sterility, heart attacks, strokes, emphysema, skin lesions, hair loss, a metallic taste and much more.

As reported by the Baltimore News-American among others, such ailments also ripped through the animal population. (http://www.ratical.com/radiation/KillingOurOwn/ ). To this day no one knows how much radiation was released at the 1979 TMI accident, where it went or whom it harmed. The official line that “no one was killed” is arguably the biggest lie ever told in US industrial history. It parallels Soviet lies about the 1986 catastrophe at Chernobyl, whose health effects continue to skyrocket. A devastating summary report issued by the New York Academy of Sciences (Yablokov, Nesterenko & Nesterenko: Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People & the Environment) says at least 980,000 people are likely to die from the fallout.

-I'm just posting 3 of the 9 points-

1) Four northeastern nukes---in Vermont, New Jersey and the two at Indian Point--- are under intense public pressure to shut within the next two years. Numerous other elderly reactors are likely to go down long before any new nukes could come on line.

3) Documents leaked from inside France’s national utility EDF indicate cost-cutting has made the new French reactor design exceedingly prone to explosion, further unsettling potential investors.

8) As a lame duck, George W. Bush signed agreements apparently obligating the feds to assume responsibility for enough radioactive waste to fill two of the cancelled Yuccas. (http://salem-news.com/articles/march242010/nuke-costs.php ) The complete lack of even one such facility means the potential taxpayer bill is beyond meaningful calculation.

-snip-

To this day the families of those harmed by radiation at Three Mile Island have been denied the right to make their case in federal court.

But now the shoe is on the other foot.

Desperate for cash, the nuclear industry wants us all to pay hundreds of billions for the joy of living downwind from still more 3 Mile Islands for which they intend to assume NO liability.

They want our money AND our lives.

From central Pennsylvania after 31 years, the message is clear: Just Say NO!
----------------------------

agree. I'm saying NO

[stray cat]

1. So your favorite alternative.........with its pros and cons

[ensho]

2. anything but nuke or coal

nt

[pundaint]

74. Would you like to have electricity on a still dark night in the winter in a cold location?

We know burning stuff for energy will make the planet much less hospitable for humans. What do you offer as an alternative for the Northern States? Why aren't you arguing against cars? Last week more people were killed in cars than by all the nuclear plants ever in the US.

The same technique has been used for years by the anti nuke folks as are being used by Republicans now. They create a row, that makes progress more difficult and expensive, and then blame those who deliver thru all the extra difficulties for the results.

We couldn't support any of our Cities without a good deal of potentially dangerous technology. We learn and constantly improve our management of those risks over time. The same is done with nuclear technology. The French have proven that it can be managed, hell we've proven that it can be done. By turning away from this technology we have greatly slowed progress for 40 years. Did it ever occur to you that Big Oil and Big Coal might have been behind the scare campaigns, for their own profits. They'll get us into wars, and fill West Virginia streams with former West Virginia mountains for profit but the nukes are the scary things.

The Whip facility in NM or Yucca Mountain in Nevada would both be safe disposal alternatives. There are challenges, but they are manageable. Every alternative has a downside, whether it be discontinuous generating as with wind or solar, carbon emissions with coal oil or gas, remoteness from point of use as with hydro and tidal. Yup nuclear is dangerous, but so are the chemicals used to make the chips in your computer, but we handle it.

If we in America devoted half the energy to oversight that we do to fear, we'd be better rested, and a lot better off.

But if you have a better alternative, please share it.

[closeupready]

88. More people were killed by cars last week than grizzly bears, too.

So what. Some of us know how to walk and chew gum at the same time.

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. Agressive Conservation

Programs to energy retrofit most buildings in America, not just Federal office buildings. Dramatic subsidies for the replacement of energy inefficient appliances with energy effecient appliances. Building codes that take energy usage profiles into account on new buildings. Increasing incentives for off peak hour energy usage so there is less need to build new power plants just to handle peak loads. R&D money for developing energy efficient technologies. Capturing the heat generated by large scale industrial acitivity and recyling it for other energy uses. More emphasis on recycling, etc.

A massive Pro for the above is that it would become a huge jobs program as well as an energy program; from the level of handy men all the way up to new factories.

And of course I would ramp up wind and solar and geothermal and tidal etc. But concerted conservation is a much more attractive energy bridge to the future than nuclear.

[Robb]

10. We have a saying in the West:

"You can't conserve your way out of a drought." ;)

Your other ideas are worth exploring, however. :hi:

[Tom Rinaldo]

12. A sensible saying, I agree.

Conservation can't create something out of nothing, but it can stretch a resource so that you get more out of what you have. No one would argue that fixing leaking water pipes during a drought is not worth the effort. Some California suburbanites have gotten the message that landscaping with drought resistant vegetation makes a whole lot more sense than planting greenery that constantly needs to suck up water to survive.

Not a bad analogy, thanks for raising it.

[LWolf]

34. Wind, wave, and solar. nt

[Pavulon]

35. All derivative from a large yellow reactor...(nt)

[Naturalist111]

4. I have always said "If you are for Nuke Reactors....

send them your name and address so they can bury the stuff in your back yard.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Naturalist111]

6. No that would be you and you just proved it.

If you wouldn't want it in your own back yard why do you want to produce it and put it elsewhere? That would mean you want the benefits but not the responsibility. You really think that makes you smart huh?

[Codeine]

7. I'd be fine with a deep bedrock depository in my backyard

provided that the geology supports it. Some of the new storage ideas are pretty ingenious. :shrug: No NIMBY here.

[Naturalist111]

8. Make sure you are in a no fault zone

:-) Have you made yourself aware of the devastation of Chernobyl and 3 mile Island fully? Hopefully a new source of energy, new ideas or old one will be put in place. There has to be a better way.

[Codeine]

9. That's why I said

"if the geology supports it." Unlikely in my case, but if I lived in a less rumbly-grumbly zone I'd be all for it. I'm not afraid of the boogeyman either.

[Naturalist111]

11. Radioactive waste

is not a boogeyman. It is real. Creating extremely highly toxic waste is never a good idea.

[ensho]

13. true

nt

[pundaint]

75. We refine it, we don't create it. It was in the ground, we refined it, depleted some of it, and

would like to put the rest back in the ground where it came from in the first place.

[HillbillyBob]

20. I lived about 40 miles upwind of TMI

There seemed a lot of coverup by whomever and a lot of people got sick so did their farm animals and crops..all hush hush. I remember the civil defense sirens going on and on.
I was in high school at the time, there was no real panic, but we were scared and upset. All we were getting was meltdown and no danger, but there was still a lot of fear.

[madokie]

25. and you can bet your ass that some people

as well as animals died due to this 'mishap' as they like to refer to it as. I followed the story as best I could and the coverage at the time only reinforced my long held belief that the nuclear power industry will and do lie to us even when it would better serve their purpose to not do that.

[Pavulon]

33. I'll take that bet. penn paper (you know real research)

say no death. Not one.
http://books.google.com/books?id=gckmUJNYqA8C&lpg=RA1-PA70&ots=mdk3Cy2ruU&dq=pitt%20study%20tmi&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[paulsby]

47. chernobyl happened in a country (the USSR) with a massive

history of environmental abuse, complete lack of worker safety, etc.

as for 3 mile island, i'm more than happy to compare the "devastation" of 3 mile island to the devastation of literally THOUSANDS of dead coal miners, roughnecks, and other coal and oil industry workers.

[paulsby]

46. i don't want convicted criminals in my backyard either

it doesn't therefore folloow that i don't want them treated humanely and incarcerated SOMEWHERE ELSE to serve their sentences.

this argument is shockingly illogical

[Brickbat]

14. Huh, just like I always say, "If you are for hospitals...

...send them your name and address so they can bury the medical waste in your back yard."

Or, you know, "If you are for hamburgers...send your name and address to your nearest slaughterhouse, so they can move in next door."

[Naturalist111]

15. We have other alternatives for power and are using them now.

Please list the alternatives for hospitals. I hunt and fish and do slaughter in my own back yard. If I couldn't kill something, dress it and cook it then I would turn vegetarian.

[pundaint]

76. What's your alternative to replace Vermont Yankee, and Palo Verde near Phoenix?

[Tesha]

45. Medical waste has proven, well-accepted, permanent, safe disposal methods. (NT)

[anigbrowl]

49. you know some medical waste is radioactive, yes?

As a matter of fact may techniques developed to deal with radioactive waste from nuclear medicine have informed the power generation industry in turn. I don't think nuclear power is safe or risk-free by default, but neither do I think the problem is so intractable that there's no point in pursuing the idea.

[Tesha]

55. Happily, the half-life of Technetium (and most of the other medically-useful isotopes)...

...is rather short. The total volumes are rather low as well.
So nice attempt at throwing up a strawman, but please
consider it knocked down now.

Tesha

[anigbrowl]

56. And where do you think they come from?

Most medically useful isotopes are made in small nuclear reactors employing conventional uranium fission techniques.

There is no strawman being thrown up here. I simply observed that some insights from the waste management of medical isotopes have been incorporated back into other areas, and that difficult problems are not necessarily insoluble.

[Tesha]

67. See my reply below.

We could easily continue to operate these isotope-generation
reactors even if there were *NO* nuclear power program
anywhere in the world.

Tesha

[Statistical]

60. Where do you think all manmade isotopes come from?

There is only one fissionable element that is abundant enough to be used in production of radioactive isotopes and that is uranium.

"In contrast with its rare natural occurrence, bulk quantities of technetium-99 are produced each year from spent nuclear fuel rods, which contain various fission products. The fission of a gram of uranium-235 in nuclear reactors yields 27 mg of technetium-99, giving technetium a fission product yield of 6.1%"

You can't just make Tc-99 (or any other medical isotope). It all comes from spent fuel. Uranium goes in and whole mess of isotopes and actinides come out.

Of spent fuel most of it is still uranium. A small portion of valuable isotopes (for medicine or industry) and other are undesirable isotopes (long lived "waste").

Not sure where you get the idea that it is a short lived isotope though. Half life is 2.1x10^5 years.

[Tesha]

66. *NOT* power reactors (but you knew that)

Medical isotopes come from rather small, "purpose
built" nuclear reactors. And lately, they're tending to
not come from anywhere, which is becoming problem-
atical; see AECL's problems bringing their MAPLEs
reactors on-line.

As always, you're throwing up a strawman in an attempt
to defend fission-based nuclear power generation.

Tesha

[Statistical]

68. So you are in favor of medical isotope reactors but not power reactors?

Seems kinda stupid when you think about it.

If one is dangerous they both are dangerous.
If one is safe they both are safe.

Also the irony is your choice of Tc-99 as an example medical isotope.

Tc-99 is currently the ONLY medical isotope that is exracted from POWER REACTOR spent fuel in PUREX processing (done in France).
Roughly 1/3 of world's supply of Tc-99 comes from reprocessed spent reactor fuel.

A very good thing givent the massive shortage of Tc-99 right now due to outages as both Chalk River & Peten medical isotope reactors (produce vast majority of Tc-99 in the world).

If Tc-99 wasn't extracted from spent reactor fuel the world would have run completely out of Tc-99.

[Tesha]

94. I didn't realize we were in danger of running out of un-reprocessed nuclear waste...

...from power reactors; thanks for clarifying that!

And yes, I'm a realist who would tolerate isotope
production reactors while still banning fission power
reactors. BTW, what's the difference in total waste
production volumes worldwide? 100:1? 1000:1? More?

Tesha

[pundaint]

77. You do understand that a short half-life, means a high rate of decay, and decay is the stuff

the anti nuke argument is concerned with?

[Statistical]

79. Science is lost on anti-nukkers (like anti-vaxxers). Long half life means low energy thus

the longest halflife isotopes are the least dangerous.



Spent fuel doesn't decay linearly. Spent fuel is a mix of dozen istopes. Some with very short half-lives (thus high energy) and some with very long half lives (low energy). As time passes the short half lives will decay out at much higher rate and total activity drops very fast.

Each horizontal line is a reduction in activity by a factor of 10 (90% reduction).

So spent fuel will lose 90% of its activity after 1 year.
After 50 years it activity is 1% of original.
After 1000 years activity is 1/1000th of 1% of original.

Other than activity the second aspect important in long term storage is mobility.

Some isotopes like Uranium and Plutonium tend to bind to soil and thus are relatively immobile. Even if storage container leaked they would bind to rock. Even when washed into water supply they quickly settle out and can be separated.

Other isotopes (ironically Tc-99 touted by the anti-nukker for medicine) tend to not bond to soil and become very mobile. If they leak they can be carried freely into water supply. There is a lot of research into finding method to have Tc-99 isotopes bind to another material and reduce the mobility.

[Tesha]

95. Why yes, I actually *DO* understand that! (NT)

[LWolf]

38. Perfect. nt

[Odin2005]

16. More fearmongering.

[SidDithers]

22. +1...nt

Sid

[madokie]

17. Due to the fact that the industry as a whole would rather mislead you

as be honest with us leads me to believe that they have something to hide. Its that old story thats as old as stories are themselves that when you get too close to the truth the lying screaming ass bullshit starts. Case in point, nuclear waste. Mention that and the pro nukie start going apeshit cause they know that we know that that is a very serious side effect of the medicine they're peddling, I say shut them down as their designed age is reached and make the industry at least help pay for the decommissioning. There is no chance that the spot they set on can ever be truly safe for man or animals so write those off as no mans lands after we do as best we can at cleaning them up. There is a real good chance that we'll have an incident that will cause much harm to our environment and to many people as these plants in use today reach their designed age. Nuclear energy is not safe nor is it co2 neutral and it damn sure isn't a sane energy policy.
Do I want to see a big chunk of or country as a no mans land, not no but hell no.

Another old one, shits happens

[Naturalist111]

18. Those who accuse

are usually the ones with the proposed accusation. They are unable to see it. They see in others what is in themselves. I agree with you.

[northernlights]

51. where to dispose of radioactive waste is just one minor detail

how to transport it there safely is another. Good luck with that one too!

[Statistical]

52. We have been transporting waste safely for decades.

There have never been a single spent fuel transport accident.

High Level Spent Fuel is transported in Type B Shipping Cask.



They have very high standards can mask survive and prevent radiological release in the event of:
* A 9 meter (30 ft) free fall on to an unyielding surface
* A puncture test allowing the container to free-fall 1 meter (about 39 inches) onto a steel rod 15 centimeters (about 6 inches) in diameter
* A 30-minute, all-engulfing fire at 800 degrees Celsius (1475 degrees Fahrenheit)
* An 8-hour immersion under 0.9 meter (3 ft) of water.
* a one-hour immersion under 200 meters (655 ft) of water.

[madokie]

73. I'm not so sure you can make that statement honestly

Beings as how not many of us have Geiger counters. How do we know that there has been no increase of cancers along these tracks or hiways whichever may apply. Do we do that by taking for fact what the nuclear industry or the NRC says? I don't believe a word of anything said by either entity. You claim that no one has died because of nuclear power but yet many died because of nuclear power in Russia. Cancer rates were shown to be elevated down wind from TMI. The Navaho's have a few words they'd like to say to you about how safe mining uranium is or how safe living near where our government used to do open air nuclear bomb test. No, we have not done anything safely concerning nuclear power. There is no way that nuclear power can stand on its own in a level playing field, it's be like the New Orleans Saints against our high school football team. You want to believe that nuclear power is safe go for it, I can't stop you but until the industry starts telling me the truth I won't be believing any of their bullshit, for that matter yours either. :hi:

You want to tell me that the industry is being truthful with us and I will laugh at you, real loud.

[pundaint]

80. You know why that uranium mining was so dangerous? Because that part of the Earth is radioactive.

The Russian plant is not representative of American or French power plants, and there should be no need to blow up any more land with nuke testing - besides that never was about nuclear power. Your repeat of the TMI misinformation was debunked above. And that coal fired generator powering Window Rock has a higher background radiation than Palo Verde on the outside. Digging up mountains, and polluting the air causing acid rain to fall on those East of you isn't such a great alternative either, but you enjoy.

Laughing doesn't make you right, and your disbelief doesn't alter reality.

[madokie]

82. I'm not advocating more coal to start with

The TMI misinformation has not been debunked anywhere except the part where yes there was an increase in cancers down wind of TMI. You chose to believe the info put out by the nuke industry I choose not too.

[pundaint]

84. There are plenty of non nuke industry citations elsewhere in this topic. I have some first-hand

experience, having spent part of 2002 working on a system for tracking nuke waste management in Idaho, and I observed the shipping containers first-hand, spoke extensively with the union guys working at INEEL, and learning the NRC incredibly picky auditing requirements. The confidence I had prior to the assignment, was not diminished one bit during the process.

If you don't want coal, then in AZ, you got Glen Canyon filled up with water, or Palo Verde. How would you suggest you get your power? Perhaps one could choose to not believe in electricity.

[ensho]

90. I've been saying for some time that more of us should have Geiger counters

and should go around our neighborhoods and areas to see for ourselves what is there.

are they too expensive? who/how are the calibrated? etc.

[Statistical]

91. You are aware the earth is radioactive right?

That presence of radiation is not proof of manmade radiation.

There are cheap geiger counters.

Cheap models can only detect gamma radiation.
http://www.amazon.com/Quarta-Radiation-Monitor-RD-1503/dp/B00051E906
$159

Higher end models use calibration sources (known about of radioactive matieral to calibrate/test counter
http://scientificsonline.com/product.asp?pn=3102300&cm_mmc=Mercent-_-Google-_-NULL-_-3102300&mr:trackingCode=0A721735-DB81-DE11-8C0A-000423C27502&mr:referralID=NA

They are also sensitive enough to pickup beta & gamma. Alpha emitters are essentially undetectable without high level equipment (tens of thousands of dollars). Remember even a single sheet of paper (or particles in air) can block alpha radiation.

Then of course is the surplus civil defense meters
http://store.colemans.com/cart/gamma-radiation-detector-geiger-counter-cdv715-tested-p-2272.html?currency=USD

They were made in 1960s so who knows how useful they are.


It must suck to be Muller though. He was the other half of the team that invented the Geiger-Muller counter.

[ensho]

92. thanks for the info - of course we would be looking for HIGH amount places

not normal amount

[Statistical]

93. Well there is no "normal". Background radiation is simply an average exposure varies dramatically.

High amounts occur even in nature.

Geiger counter is kinda the first step.
Just finding hot spot doesn't tell you anything other than it is a hotspot.
The next step would be taking samples and doing some isotope identification.

Once example is radon gas. naturally occurring radon gas (created in decay of underground uranium) can build up to 1000x atmospheric concentrations in an improperly venting basement.

Another example is rare earth element. Remove the shield from electric motor on a Prius (or any hybrid or EV) and you will pickup a dose much higher than background radiation levels. This is from Thorium. Rare Earth elements are often found in Thorium seam and processing isn't 100% perfect so some Thorium remains.

[northernlights]

87. sorry, I'm not impressed

I've seen train tracks running alongside the Colorado river in southern Colorado that could potentially cause a drop much further than 3 feet -- further even than 30 feet -- off of cliffs and onto boulders, and on into water a lot deeper than 3 feet. And that was just one small stretch of track.

A 30 minute all-engulfing fire? :rofl: What about a 45 minute all-engulfing fire? Or a 2 hour fire? How long does it take to put out, say, a forest wildfire in California or the Cascades? A few days? A week?

Our infrastructure is decrepit, with many, many bridges on the brink. Many of these are in urban areas.

How much waste has been transported. And to where? How many trips? On how many miles of tracks? Is there a regular schedule that, say, a terrorist could target?

Getting all the nuclear waste we already have entombed to Yucca, or anywhere else, will significantly magnify the risks involved. Sorry, your data doesn't make me feel all warm and cozy.

[Heywood J]

107. I'll point out that most fires aren't all-engulfing for very long

before all the burnable fuel is used up and the fire moves on or the local temperature drops. Wildfires and forest fires only burn for so long because they're so large and they move/spread. I'd like to know what temperature of "all-engulfing fire" the container is rated for. If it's rated for 30 minutes at 2000C or more, it would last substantially longer at the 500-900C encountered in wood-burning fires.

Residents of Colorado receive more radiation from natural sources like uranium/radon in the earth, solar radiation, and past nuclear bomb testing than they do or would from transport of properly-sealed concrete containers. http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/vvc/theory/radiation.html">1 http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/risk.htm">2 (see "Doses") http://www.cdphe.state.co.us/hm/rad/radon/index.htm">3

In general, when waste is shipped, it's entombed in fortified concrete as a solid, immobile form. Blowing up a container might expose the people on-site to a dose, but it's not like a release of radioactive water or steam that would contaminate the surrounding area for miles. If you're concerned about transport, the best thing to do would be to have regional disposal facilities to greatly reduce the number of miles traveled by each container. It would also be relatively easy to inspect any bridges over which the material must travel and re-route around anything damaged or substandard, including urban areas.

All of this assumes that we choose not to reprocess or otherwise burn up the large amounts of waste into something smaller and more manageable. There are ways to manage nuclear waste, it's just a question of how cost-effective and feasible it would be to take any particular course. I live comparatively close to several nuclear reactors and it's already being stored on-site at each. Any proposed solution can't be much worse than stationary targets concentrated in one place.

[pundaint]

78. If Sarah Palin spoke about nuclear power, she could use your post ad a wink and she'd be done.

Another old one, scare me once shame on you, scare me twice shame on me.

[madokie]

98. LOL

Truth hurts, huh

[HillbillyBob]

19. I see the unrec trolls have been here

I speak of saving energy, if we all did even a little the impacts of power generation can be held down some or even a lot.
We have been at it for about 6 or 8 yrs, starting by learning the recycling ins and outs,compost, buy less packaging, trying to buy local when possible.

Traded in the old gas guzzler when the trans went again(256,000 miles at push, pull or drag sale for a Versa(33 38 mpg), drove it 30 miles in 1st and 2nd gear to get there.

There is no such thing as a good nuke. We could do better for less cost and enviro impact by making small loans to home owners to radically improve home power efficiency and put solar panels on roofs.

The real hitch is grid tie and battery back up.A grid tie system has to be installed by licenced electrician.
There are grid tie solar panels that produce line voltage DC so a straight side to side inverter would work, the grid would be your back up.
Lower voltage panels 12/24/48VDC to 120/240AC plus inverter and charge control to charge batteries.
These should have price supports/low cost loans from the government instead of the millions and billions in subsidies paid out of our taxes to coal, oil, gas and nukes.

I am retired/disabled electrician and we will be installing off grid circuits some at a time until we can call up the local coal burner and tell them to cut the cord.

We have a large house and have been steadily chipping away at our energy needs with intention of being off the grid.
Our power spending is down by 3/4s of the use when we first moved in here just over 3 yrs ago. $3600 invested in LEDS and more efficient dish and clothes washers and deep freeze=2500$ yearly savings.

Small steps, things that any one can do even on a fixed income. Each time some appliance dies or light bulb burns out we replace with a more efficient light or appliance.

Each payday I buy a pair of leds, insulation, insulating paint for the roof or the like.
What we save on power bills adds up.
Hopefully with luck and some breaks we can earn some extra $ to get parts and supplies to install the solar oven and solar water heater this year.
We have the unit we got cheap on sale, after we got it found that it would be too heavy for our modular home roof, it might hold, but we need a new roof too~!

I know it is hard and can be very costly to make efficiency improvements, but start with the small stuff, if enough of us can do that we will make big strides to energy independence and not need nukes..
For all you pro nukers how bout we bury that spent ,but still radioactive waste in your back yard?
I sure as hell don't want it in mine.

Google up Depleted Uranium armour and weapons and the cost to our soldiers and the people we have invaded.

[apocalypsehow]

30. Because the article, like all articles with dishonest content bordering on propaganda, deserves to

be unrecced.

[JerseygirlCT]

21. Being fairly close by when it happened has left me always

skeptical of nuclear power.

One of the most scary things about those days was how much panic was happening in NY, NJ, MD, DC, etc., while those of us in central PA were told it was nothing to really be concerned about - though the college did send us home. (Of course, for those who called the area even closer to TMI home, that wasn't very helpful).

I don't think we understand it, I don't think we have the slightest clue about how to dispose of the waste, and I think mixing business interests with power of that potential is always going to be a recipe for disaster.

[pundaint]

85. There is real info out there, you could replace all those "thinks" with "knows."

We don't understand it, We don't know how to fab a computer chip, We don't know how to crochet, but some of us do. By disaster, do you mean something that threatens the ecology, like global warming?

[Statistical]

23. 30 years of studies find not a single death related to TMI.

http://www.pennlive.com/specialprojects/index.ssf/2009/03/studies_find_no_deaths_related.html

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/20_years_laters_no_significant_cancer_increase_in_three_mile_island_residents



The event has been studied more than any other industrial accident in the world:

30 years of studies from such "industry shills as"
University of Pittsburgh
NY State
University of Michigan
American Cancer Society
Environmental Protection Agency
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection
etc..

The reality is nuclear energy has now more than 50 million operating hours nationwide without a single public death. Not one. No other form of power (hell no other industry) has such a near perfect operating record.

Nuclear energy is safe, clean, and emission free. A few Luddites not withstanding.

The three decades of fear mongering is finally coming to an end.

[Liberation Angel]

26. Lies and damn lies - see my post below

Of course the most powerful and deadly industry in the world has covered up the deaths and cancer and miscarriages and birth defects and thyroid damage and immune system disorders and hormonal/metabolic destruction.

And of course they used "mainstream" establishment organizations to promote the lies and damn deadly lies.

This is why people are bamboozled into believing that nukes are "safe" when in fact they are just killing machines for the elites.

www.radiation.org has the data and studies that show the assertion no one died is a false claim and damned one at that.

[Pavulon]

31. I prefer the MIT paper... You know THE MIT...

not op-ed.

http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/

[Liberation Angel]

61. The MIT study says NOTHING about safety of the fuel cycle and in fact

pretty much says that the future of nuclear is in grave doubt.

It IS a puff piece for the industry but it also is nerdy enough to be honest that they do not address the dangers nor are they (the authors) qualified to. See the executive summary for these admissions.

MIT, then, basically say in this study that nukes suck ass and are too expensive and will not work and god only knows how dangerous they are. So I kinda like this report. It is essentially antinuke in pronuke guise. Dude. Thanks for the ammo.

[Statistical]

72. Maybe you need to read closer.

Lowering or eliminating this risk-premium makes a significant contribution
to making nuclear competitive. With the risk premium and without a
carbon emission charge, nuclear is more expensive than either coal (without
sequestration) or natural gas (at 7$/MBTU). If this risk premium can be
eliminated, nuclear life cycle cost decreases from 8.4¢ /kWe-h to 6.6 ¢/kWe-h and
becomes competitive with coal and natural gas, even in the absence of carbon
emission charge.

So nuclear with higher cost of capital is cheaper than all renewables and only 2 cents more per kWh than Coal or Natural Gas.
At lower cost of capital it is comparable to the cheapest forms of power on the planet (coal & natural gas).

Furthermore if you look at the optimal situation (lower costs of capital AND $25 per ton CO2 tax).
Nuclear: 6.6 cents per kWh
Coal: 8.3 cents per kWh
Natural Gas: 7.4 cents per kWh

The combination of more nuclear AND carbon tax could finally break the back of fossil fuels used for electricity (at least in this country).

Note this is total life-cycle cost. Planning, construction, financing, operation, maintenance, fuel, spent fuel storage, decommissioning.

[Liberation Angel]

104. Not Safe and ONLY competitive if you ELIMINATE the RISK PREMIUM read closer

Really - read your own post and link.

Plus these are industry lies, these socalled figures.

And guarding nuke waste for 250,000 years is hardly gonna be a low carbon footprint. Its bull dookie.

[Statistical]

106. Why would it be high carbon? It just sits there.

It has been sitting there (at nuclear reactors) for 50 years now.

Once moved from cooling pond, and casked it literally sits there without moving for decades, centuries, millenniums if needed.

The advantage of a single repository would be one well guarded location. Economies of scale. While they will have guards on site and even some vehicles they will be guarding decades and eventually centuries worth of spent fuel.

When you amortize the tiny amount of CO2 required for guarding them in the final location over the trillions of kwh of energy produced the grams of CO2 per kwh is a rounding error.

[pundaint]

89. have you heard, they're out to get the paranoids

[apocalypsehow]

28. Very good data, thanks for posting it.

:thumbsup:

[SidDithers]

36. Don't confuse 'em with facts...

and I feel a euradcom link coming soon.

Sid

[Liberation Angel]

24. Legacy of Death from Three Mile Island (link)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harvey-wasserman/cracking-the-corporate-me_b_181565.html

(C)ancer, leukemia, birth defects, stillbirths, malformations, spontaneous abortions, skin lesions, hair loss, respiratory problems, sterility, nausea, cataracts, a metallic taste, premature aging, general loss of bodily function and more can be caused by radioactive emissions of the type that poured out of TMI. And all such ailments have been documented there OUTside the corporate media. ... Despite solid publicity from Eric Epstein and the long-standing Three Mile Island Alert, not a single corporate reporter covered presentations by nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen and University of North Carolina epidemiologist Dr. Stephen Wing. Once a top industry executive, Gundersen has shown that the containment at Three Mile Island Unit 2 did not completely hold, and that far more radiation was released than previously believed.

Dr. Wing reports that levels of radiation-related disease significantly rose in the downwind area. Wing and three co-authors looked at statistics used in a major study by Columbia University and other sources. They concluded that---despite official denials---the numbers clearly indicate serious potential health effects. Gundersen and Wing were neither hiding nor alone. University of Pittsburgh radiology Professor Emeritus Dr. Ernest Sternglass and health researchers Joe Mangano and Jay Gould have long since documented that public health catastrophe. House-to-house surveys from local residents Jane Lee and Mary Osborne confirm the damage. Massive anecdotal evidence collected in a book and radio show by Robbie Leppzer appears at www.turningtide.com. Published in 1982 by DellDelta, Killing Our Own correlated the death toll at TMI with that from other mis-uses of radiation. Other books have followed with similar conclusions.

This tidal wave of proof about the TMI death toll spread through the "alternative" media prior to the accident's anniversary. Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales talked with me about it on March 27. Announced by the Institute for Public Accuracy, the story appeared on the Pacifica and Counterspin/Fair radio networks , and with Peter B. Collins on the Thomm Hartmann Show. It was also heard on stations such as WORT (Madison), KBOO (Oregon), KDKA (Pittsburgh), radioornot.com, and more. Websites like Huffington Post, CommonDreams, Alternet, FreePress.org, NukeFree, CounterPunch, BuzzFlash, Smirking Chimp, Daily Kos, and dozens more got the story out, as did environmental groups like Greenpeace, NIRS and Beyond Nuclear. (If your website, radio show or organization also carried it, please contact me).

But the word never crossed the conceptual chasm between the "mainstream" media and the "alternative." Despite a federal class action lawsuit filed by 2400 Pennsylvania families claiming damages from the accident, despite at least $15 million quietly paid to parents of birth-defected children, despite three decades of official admissions that nobody knows how much radiation escaped from TMI, where it went or who it affected, not a mention of the fact that people might have been killed there made its way into a corporate report.

[Pavulon]

37. op ed hack. science has proven that to be BS

http://books.google.com/books?id=gckmUJNYqA8C&lpg=RA1-PA70&ots=mdk3Cy2ruU&dq=pitt%20study%20tmi&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

[Liberation Angel]

57. Your source says otherwise (see page 70) Can NOT rule out cancer deaths

they urge more research AND state the data on breast cancer increases were not consistent with some conclusions that TMI was "not significant" in terms of cancer deaths.

This does not even address infant mortality (which Sternglass does at length in his book)

And the mortality from heart problems increased and they claim there is no relation to TMI radiation but..... WELL....Thyroid damage leads to heart problems (you can look it up) so this claim is very weak as well.

Evemn the publisher says these are just opinions of the aiuhor and not by reputable aithprities who supported its publication.

BS is BS and this book you site and your claim here is the real foulness: it is not based on ANY real evidence.

At least Sternglass and others provide solid data and explain why the official studies are BS.

But read Sternglass's account and judge for yourself.

It can be found at www.radiation.org (Radiation and Public Health Project)

[Go2Peace]

64. You sound like a lawyer for the tobacco industry.

I have been paying attention and reading on this for 30 years. There are plenty of problems and a ton of coverup. If this industry were transparent nobody would be for it.

[Statistical]

71. You sound like a truther.

There is this massive conspiracy which involves the highest levels of govt, dozens of companies, and numerous international agencies. Hell even nuclear operators and inspectors put their OWN families in danger to continue this ultra-secret coverup. These are some seriously dedicated people. They risk killing their own children simply to allow this conspiracy to go own.

Despite all that secrecy. Despite the coverup extending to academia (dozens of schools have looked into the issue) and NGO like Cancer Istitute and American Cancer Society it is only brave few armed with only the INTERTUBES who know the real truth.

"The truth is out there". - Cue x-files music.

:rofl:

[Liberation Angel]

27. SECRET FALLOUT LOW-LEVEL RADIATION FROM HIROSHIMA TO THREE-MILE ISLAND ERNEST STERNGLASS

http://www.ratical.org/radiation/SecretFallout/

You can read his account in its entirety at his website.

He documents both the events and the coverup as well as exposes the TMI lies and how they are perpetuated.

Dr. Sternglass, who was head of the first Apollo Lunar Scientific Station Project for NASA and Westinghouse - and a Holocaust survivor - is a personal hero of mine and is THE preeminent authority on this subject, bar none.

But the industry denigrates him and has tried to destroy him for decades.

He speaks truth to power and until you have read this material you really cannot say you are informed on the subject.

more can be found at the organization's website he works with at www.radiation.org

Nukes Kill. Lies about nukes do too.

[ddeclue]

29. You lost me at sentence one: Radiation never "poured" out of TMI.

This article is a totally biased lie.

Fail.

[Cetacea]

42. Do you know exactly how much radiation was leaked?

I understand the meters all broke down...

[Statistical]

53. Where did you hear that?

According to the official figures, as compiled by the 1979 Kemeny Commission from Metropolitan Edison and NRC data, a maximum of 480 petabecquerels (13 million curies) of radioactive noble gases (primarily xenon) were released by the event.<1> However these noble gases were considered relatively harmless,<28> and only 481 to 629 GBq (13 to 17 curies) of thyroid cancer-causing iodine-131 were released.

[Cetacea]

54. That is very odd.

Back in the day it was reported that there was no way to measure just how much radiation escaped.
Perhaps it was an urban myth but I distinctly remember the major media reporting that from the time it happened and a few years out.
Maybe some other old dinosaurs here can verify this?

[Liberation Angel]

62. Read Sternglass's account below. He had a dosimeter WITH him when he went.

He measured radiation spikes in the PLANE over TMI before he landed.

His account linked below in this thread is detailed on amounts and why there are no proper records (industrial criminality.coverup) and how women immediately began having miscarriages and infant mortality rose downwind of the releases.

Or go to www.radiation.org and look for the link to "Secret Fallout" about TMI

[Statistical]

70. The quack Sternglass is your big gun? ROFL

He is a crackpot junk science pusher.

He has been discredited in virtually every major scientific journal in the world.

Most will no longer accept papers from him or he equally quack science RPHP organization.

:rofl: It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

“For over three decades, Ernest Sternglass (recently joined by Jay Gould) has made more than 50 similar allegations connecting radioactivity from fallout from nuclear weapons testing and, subsequently, from nuclear reactors, with increased infant mortality, a decline in SAT scores, and an increase in leukemia mortality. Lately, they have begun to make claims of a correlation between breast cancer incidence and releases of radioactivity from nuclear power plants.

“In the past, over 50 critical examinations of these types of allegations by numerous reputable scientists have found the Sternglass methodology scientifically deficient and consisting principally of selected evidence. Furthermore, as an example of the numerous formal refutations of the claims by Sternglass and/or Gould, the Minnesota Energy Agency concluded that ‘with respect to Dr. Sternglass, both his methodology and his conclusions have been repeatedly rejected in numerous scientific and technical studies, including evaluations done by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the National Cancer Institute, the National Academy of Sciences and by many independent scientists.’”

International Journal of Health Services, 1995, 25(3), 475-480

[Liberation Angel]

96. Wikipedia Biography of Sternglass says otherwise: The Nuke industry smears him relentlessly

and no wonder: his credential;s are impeccable:

from wikipedia:

Biography

Both of Sternglass' parents were Jewish physicians. The Sternglass family left Germany in 1938, when Ernest was fourteen. He completed high school at the age of sixteen, then entered Cornell, registering for an engineering program. His family's financial troubles forced him to leave school for a year; by the time he returned to Cornell, the US had entered World War II. Sternglass volunteered for the navy. He was about to ship out when the atomic bomb was detonated over Hiroshima. After the war, Sternglass married. In Washington, D.C. he worked as a civilian employee at the Naval Ordinance Laboratory, which researched military weapons. Sternglass began studying night vision devices, which led him to work with radiation. In 1947, his first son was born, and he got a chance to meet Albert Einstein.

From 1952 to 1967 Sternglass worked at the Westinghouse Research Laboratory. All his work there involved nuclear instrumentation. At first he studied fluoroscopy, which "exposes an individual to a considerable dose of radiation." Then he worked on a new kind of television tube for satellites. Eventually he was put in charge of the Lunar Station program at Westinghouse. Sternglass is Emeritus Professor of Radiological Physics in the Department of Radiology, at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Sternglass is Director, Cofounder, and Chief Technical Officer of the Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP).

Radiation studies
In the early 1960s Professor Sternglass became aware of the work of Dr. Alice Stewart. Stewart was head of the Department of Preventive Medicine of Oxford University, responsible for a pioneering study on the effects of low-level radiation in England. Stewart had discovered that a small amount of radiation to an unborn child could double the child's chances for leukemia and cancer.

In the 1960s, Sternglass studied the effect of nuclear fallout on infants and children. He found not only an increase in leukemia and cancer, but a significant increase in infant mortality. In 1963 he published the paper "Cancer: Relation of Prenatal Radiation to Development of the Disease in Childhood" in the journal Science.<2>
In 1963, Professor Sternglass testified before the congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy regarding the level of strontium-90 in baby teeth. The result of bomb-test fallout, strontium-90 was associated with increased childhood leukemia. His studies played a role in the Partial Test Ban Treaty signed by President John F. Kennedy.

In 1969, Sternglass reached the conclusion that 400,000 infants had died because of medical problems caused by fallout—chiefly lowered resistance to disease and reductions in birth weight.<3>
In April 1979, Sternglass was invited to testify to Congressional hearings on the Three Mile Island accident. Two days later, when the hearings were moved from the House to the Senate, he was told his testimony was no longer desired. Sternglass believed that an effort was being made to suppress any evidence about possible deaths as a result of the accident.<4> A major study by Sternglass showed that the 1979 accident led to a minimum of 430 infant deaths.<5>



YOUR INFO IS FROM AN ANTI-STERNGLASS NUKE INDUSTRY SMEAR SITE. (I notice you have not provided a link but it can be found at the wiki site --- it is a collection of industry attacks on Sternglass without real data.

The most powerful industry in the world spends LOTS of energy and money attacking Sternglass, but his credentials are impeccable and I trust him.

[Cetacea]

100. You lost me with using "quack" to discredit.

[Pavulon]

32. Unless god comes down and miracles up some gigawatts

you have nuke and coal. Pick one.

[Greyhound]

39. More nukes, more nukes!

*shaking head in disbelief*
:kick: & R

[Cetacea]

44. Nuke the Whales!

We are regressing. We now have relaxing whaling bans and nukes "on the Table"...

[madokie]

69. figuratively speaking

http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/mafias-new-business-sinking-nuclear-waste-sea

This is but one of many articles concerning what seems like the new way of disposing of this waste.


More here: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=mafia+nuclear+waste+disposal&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=bcdf8cbbf06dc4f

[pundaint]

81. No Nukes, No Nukes

"shaking head at complete lack of argument"

[xchrom]

40. Recommend Hell no. Nt

[Greyhound]

41. The usual line-towers have spoken...

but here's a kick to keep them angry a while longer.

[Nikki Stone1]

43. This is horrific: To this day the families of those harmed by radiation at Three Mile Island have...

"To this day the families of those harmed by radiation at Three Mile Island have been denied the right to make their case in federal court. "

Unbelievable.

And yet, we're being told that this stuff is "green."

[pundaint]

83. OMG the Nuclear industry has bought off the judges!

[951-Riverside]

48. No it can't! 'cause Nuclear power is SAAFE!

[SidDithers]

50. Safer than the only realistic alternatives...nt

Sid

[amborin]

58. K&R

[Liberation Angel]

59. Releases at TMI were greater than believed and were NOT all recorded/monitored (link)

You can read an in depth account of the whats. hows and whys at this link written by a distinguished scientist, physicist and founder of the University of Pittspurgh School of Medicine Dept. Of radiological pgysics.

He brought his own geiger counter to the site and his book has the lurid and heinous details of the coverup of the harm.


http://www.ratical.org/radiation/SecretFallout/

ypu can get more studies and data and info at www,radiation.org

forewarned is forearmed when encountering the pronukers here and abroad

so LEARN the facts

no industry is more powerful globally. No industry's constant lies are more deadly and dangerous to humanity.

Nukes mutate the genes FOREVER and for all future generations. It is the cancer causer and mutation mechanism giver that keeps on giving death to thousands of future generations (100's of thousands of years of toxicity, mutation and death)

[Go2Peace]

65. You have been keeping up. This industry has more propaganda and secrecy

than most are aware. Incidents have been covered up, reporting has been full of missing information. The nuclear industry has been corrupt from the beginning, and they have taken advantage of our lack of research and understanding of cancer to trick the courts and public opinion in the same way that the tobacco industry did.

[pundaint]

86. What does that benzene spewed by coal plants do? King Coal covers up.

[Desertrose]

63. Downwind from TMI - 1 yr later.....oak leaves 16" long

I kid you not...some strange stuff was happening after that mess.

All my old oak trees had these HUGE leaves on them....never before or since......


We don't need any more nukes. We just don't. The ones we have....gettin' old like me.

[Liberation Angel]

97. I found WHITE buttercups near my (formerly) local nuke plant

less than a mile downwind.

That freaked me out.

Lots of them.

Never seen that before...

[Cetacea]

99. Did you ever the see The Village Voice article 10 yrs. out?

Wonderful things like two foot long maple leaves and many other oddities that no one reported on...

[Liberation Angel]

102. yes - in fact Sternglass worked with that researcher, a Japanese scientist

I have forgotten his name - but I have interviewed Sternglass and can tell you he is a genius.

The industry lies and the supporters of it are dangerous and clueless.

[Taitertots]

101. How many people have died over the years mining coal and drilling for oil?

How much damage to the environment are any of the half solutions available going to take to implement?

We need a manhattan project level push toward real sustainable power, with nuclear to tide us over.

[Liberation Angel]

103. A Nuclear tide is the WORST alternative - and yes oil and coal suck too - RENEWABLES

Renewables and conservation are not half measures.

They are the only safe measures.

[Taitertots]

105. They can't replace growing demand for energy

So they are half measures.

They will require a great deal of resources to implement. They will not be able to meet the increasing demand for energy.

How much energy does a wind turbine need to make to offset the energy used in their production?

[Heywood J]

108. I have to agree.

Let's say we go completely anti-nuclear. We have two options: 1) let the licenses expire and the plants be decommissioned at that point, and 2) rescind all licenses and shut down all plants now. Regardless of the legalities associated with any choice, that still leaves us with nuclear waste stocks to be dealt with. Even option 1 would leave many reactors shutting down in 2011-2013.

According to the DOE, "There were 65 nuclear power plants with 104 operating nuclear reactors that generated a total of 808.97 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), or almost 20% of the nation’s electricity." This is a considerable amount of energy to make up, however the means. Some of these plants also produce heat for domestic consumption, but it's harder to find figures for that.

According to the AWEA, "A 5-MW turbine can produce more than 15 million kWh in a year". With wind power alone, we would need 53,931 wind turbines to make up for this. Obviously, that number can't be built in such a short time, nor are there enough suitable sites to place them.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, "For example, a one square meter solar electric panel with an efficiency of 15 percent would produce about one kilowatt-hour of electricity per day in Arizona." This is optimistic, because most of the country is north and east of Arizona. However, with solar alone in this case, we would thus need 808.97 billion square meters. This is 312,345 square miles - 20% larger than Texas. Assuming we could build this many solar panels, how badly would we be indebted to the Chinese for the money or raw materials to build them? What would it cost to reconfigure the transmission grid to the southwestern states, where most solar power would be produced?




This is not to say that renewables shouldn't be pursued or that they're not worthwhile. Just that they can't serve to completely replace other forms of energy. The US just requires too much energy to make that happen.

[Statistical]

109. Nice stats. Puts a real world look on what is otherwise staggeringly large numbers n/t

[Liberation Angel]

110. Please vote in my poll on this subject in GD (New Nukes Poll)

nt