Fukushima: Two Years & Counting

[Polish_Silver]

Accident costs and alternatives

It evaluated a range of disaster scenarios that might occur at the Dampierre plant. In the best-case scenario, costs came to €760 billion—more than a third of France’s GDP. At the other end of the spectrum: €5.8 trillion! Over three times France’s GDP. A devastating amount. So large that France could not possibly deal with it.

If this article is correct, than nuclear nations have these choices:

1) continue with existing plants, and

1a) hope the accident never happens.

1b) make saftey improvments, so that the probability of an accident goes down.

2) decomission the plants, and replace the nuclear power with

2a) fossil fuels, hydroelectric or whatever.

2b) safer next-gen nukes


1b) would be the most cost effective. Just taking Fukushima, relatively low cost improvements would have turned the problem into a trivial shut down.

for example, if a second diesel-electric generator had been built at 100 foot higher elevation, the reactors never would have lost cooling. Another idea, already used on newer reactors, is "passive cooling" . There is an artificial water resorvoir at an elvation slightly higher than the reactor. If the reactor loses it's normal cooling water, the resorvoir water flows through the reactor, propelled by gravity. This requires very few moving parts and makes very few assumptions about what has gone wrong.

[c1ue]

Re: Accident costs and alternatives

Yes but the point people miss is that giant leaps often lead wealth disparities and social stratification .

I don't quite see how electrification equates to a giant leap that results in wealth disparity and social stratification.

If the electrification occurs such that only the 1% get access to it, this might be true, but in reality the 1% in these nations already has electricity access. It is just via diesel generators. There's no point whatsoever in building a 500 megawatt coal fired electricity plant to serve a few hundred people.

The entire point of electrification is for access to the many.

[jabberwocky]

Re: Accident costs and alternatives

I don't quite see how electrification equates to a giant leap that results in wealth disparity and social stratification.

If the electrification occurs such that only the 1% get access to it, this might be true, but in reality the 1% in these nations already has electricity access. It is just via diesel generators. There's no point whatsoever in building a 500 megawatt coal fired electricity plant to serve a few hundred people.

The entire point of electrification is for access to the many.

The developement of the electric grid was, in fact, a general good. It represented an expansion of "real capital", that was labour enhancing, and resulted in the generation of immense "real wealth". The explosive expansion of "financial capital", on the other hand, has lead to wealth redistribution, primarily to the rentier class, while buying votes via a "bread and circuses" policy enacted by a captured executive, congress, and, judiciary. This has consumed real wealth, and tragically altered the broad society, but this is not a new story.
I hope we don't grow our own Praetorian guard. It seems not to be working well in Egypt.

[don]

Re: Accident costs and alternatives

Renowned theoretical physicist Michio Kaku stated in an interview a few weeks after the initial accident that “TEPCO is literally hanging on by their fingernails.” They still are, and always have been. The Japanese have proven time and time again they are not capable of handling this disaster. Now we are entrusting them to execute the most dangerous fuel removal in history.

Radioactive Water Leaking From Fukushima: Why Millions Of Lives Are At Stake



Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/17/2013 17:44 -0400


In lieu of the Japanese government doing the right thing and finally coming clean about the epic environmental catastrophe that is Fukushima, which it hopes to simply dig under the rug even as the inconvenient reality gets worse and thousands of tons of radioactive water make their way into the ocean, one is forced to rely on third-party sources for information on this tragedy. We present a useful primer from Scientific American on Fukushima "water retention" problem and "what you need to know about the radioactive water leaking from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean."

Radioactive Water Leaks from Fukushima: What We Know

Scientists on both sides of the Pacific have measured changing levels of radioactivity in fish and other ocean life since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. On Aug. 2, 2013, when Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) gave its first estimate of how much radioactive water from the nuclear plant has flowed into the ocean since the disaster, the company was finally facing up to what scientists have recognized for years.

"As an oceanographer looking at the reactor, we've known this since 2011," said Ken Buesseler, a marine chemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Mass. "The news is TEPCO is finally admitting this."

TEPCO estimated that between 20 trillion and 40 trillion becquerels (units of radioactivity representing decay per second) of radioactive tritium have leaked into the ocean since the disaster, according to the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun. The Fukushima plant is still leaking about 300 tons of radioactive water into the ocean every day, according to Japanese government officials. [Infographic: Inside Japan's Nuclear Reactors]

Japan is haunted by two lingering questions from this aftermath of the disaster: First, how the radioactivity might seriously contaminate ocean life that represents a source of seafood for humans; second, whether it can stop the leaks of radioactive water from the Fukushima plant.

Radioactivity is not created equal

The Fukushima plant is leaking much less contaminated water today compared with the immediate aftermath of the nuclear meltdown in June 2011 — a period when scientists measured 5,000 to 15,000 trillion becquerels of radioactive substances reaching the ocean. Even if radioactivity levels in the groundwater have spiked recently, as reported by Japanese news sources, Buesseler expects the overall amount to remain lower than during the June 2011 period.

"The amount of increase is still much smaller today than it was in 2011," Buesseler told LiveScience. "I'm not as concerned about the immediate health threat of human exposure, but I am worried about contamination of marine life in the long run."

The biggest threat in the contaminated water that flowed directly from Fukushima's reactors into the sea in June 2011 was huge quantities of the radionuclide called cesium. But the danger has changed over time as groundwater became the main source for leaks into the ocean. Soil can naturally absorb the cesium in groundwater, but other radionuclides, such as strontium and tritium, flow more freely through the soil into the ocean. (TEPCO is still coming up with estimates for how much strontium has reached the ocean.)

Tritium represents the lowest radioactive threat to ocean life and humans compared with cesium and strontium. Cesium’s radioactive energy is greater than tritium, but both it and tritium flow in and out of human and fish bodies relatively quickly. By comparison, strontium poses a greater danger because it replaces the calcium in bones and stays for much longer in the body.

Not fishing for trouble

A number of fish species caught off the coast of the Fukushima Prefecture in 2011 and 2012 had levels of cesium contamination greater than Japan's regulatory limit for seafood (100 becquerels per kilogram), but both U.S. and Japanese scientists have also reported a significant drop in overall cesium contamination of ocean life since the fall of 2011. The biggest contamination risks came from bottom-dwelling fish near the Fukushima site.

The radioactive groundwater leaks could still become worse in the future if TEPCO does not contain the problem, U.S. scientists say. But they cautioned against drawing firm conclusions about the latest impacts on ocean life until new peer-reviewed studies come out.

"For fish that are harvested 100 miles [160 kilometers] out to sea, I doubt it’d be a problem," said Nicholas Fisher, a marine biologist at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, N.Y. "But in the region, yes, it's possible there could be sufficient contamination of local seafood so it'd be unwise to eat that seafood."

The overall contamination of ocean life by the Fukushima meltdown still remains very low compared with the effects of naturally occurring radioactivity and leftover contamination from U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s. Fisher said he’d be "shocked" if the ongoing leaks of contaminated water had a significant impact on the ocean ecosystems.

Source of radioactive water

TEPCO is facing two huge issues in stopping the radioactive water leaks. First, groundwater from nearby mountains is becoming contaminated as it flows through the flooded basements of the Fukushima plant's reactor buildings. The water empties into the nuclear plant's man-made harbor at a rate of about 400 tons per day — and TEPCO has struggled to keep the water from leaking beyond existing barriers into the ocean.

"This water issue is going to be their biggest challenge for a long time," said Dale Klein, former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "It was a challenge for the U.S. during Three Mile Island [a partial nuclear meltdown in Pennsylvania on March 28, 1979], and this one is much more challenging."

Second, TEPCO must also deal with contaminated water from underground tunnels and pits that hold cables and pipes for the Fukushima nuclear plant’s emergency systems. The underground areas became flooded with highly radioactive water during the initial meltdown of the Fukushima plant’s reactors, and have since leaked water into the ocean despite TEPCO’s efforts to seal off the tunnels and pits.

TEPCO has also been racing to deal with the problem of storing hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive water from the Fukushima plant, said Hiroaki Koide, a nuclear engineer at Kyoto University in Japan. The Japanese utility is testing a water decontamination system called ALPS that can remove almost all radioactive substances except for tritium, but has put much of the contaminated water in storage tanks in the meantime.

"The tanks are an emergency solution that is not suitable for long-time storage," Koide said. "Water will leak from any tank, and if that happens, it will merge with the groundwater."

What must be done

So what solutions exist beyond building more storage tanks? Klein reviewed a number of possible solutions with TEPCO when he was picked to head an independent advisory committee investigating the Fukushima nuclear accident.

One possible solution involves using refrigerants to freeze the ground around the Fukushima plant and create a barrier that stops the inflow of groundwater from the mountains. TEPCO is also considering a plan to inject a gel-like material into the ground that hardens into an artificial barrier similar to concrete, so that it can stop the contaminated groundwater from flowing into the ocean.

Such barriers could help hold the line while TEPCO pumped out the water, treated it with purification systems such as ALPS, and then figured out how to finally dispose of the decontaminated water.

"My priority would be stop the leak from the tunnel immediately," Klein said. "Number two would be to come up with a plan to stop the inflow and infiltration of groundwater. Number three is to come up with an integrated systematic water treatment plan."

Meanwhile, both Japanese and U.S. scientists continue to gather fresh scientific data on how the radioactivity impacts ocean life. Despite low contamination levels overall, studies have shown great differences in certain species depending on where they live and feed in the ocean.

"The most straightforward thing the Japanese can do now is measure the radionuclides in fish tissue, both at the bottom of the ocean and up in the water column at different distances from the release of contaminated groundwater," Fisher said.


RT: How serious is the fuel rod situation compared to the danger of contaminated water build-up which we already know about?

Christina Consolo: Although fuel rod removal happens on a daily basis at the 430+ nuclear sites around the world, it is a very delicate procedure even under the best of circumstances. What makes fuel removal at Fukushima so dangerous and complex is that it will be attempted on a fuel pool whose integrity has been severely compromised. However, it must be attempted as Reactor 4 has the most significant problems structurally, and this pool is on the top floor of the building.

There are numerous other reasons that this will be a dangerous undertaking.

- The racks inside the pool that contain this fuel were damaged by the explosion in the early days of the accident.
- Zirconium cladding which encased the rods burned when water levels dropped, but to what extent the rods have been damaged is not known, and probably won't be until removal is attempted.
- Saltwater cooling has caused corrosion of the pool walls, and probably the fuel rods and racks.
- The building is sinking.
- The cranes that normally lift the fuel were destroyed.
- Computer-guided removal will not be possible; everything will have to be done manually.
- TEPCO cannot attempt this process without humans, which will manage this enormous task while being bombarded with radiation during the extraction and casking.
- The process of removing each rod will have to be repeated over 1,300 times without incident.
- Moving damaged nuclear fuel under such complex conditions could result in a criticality if the rods come into close proximity to one another, which would then set off a chain reaction that cannot be stopped.

What could potentially happen is the contents of the pool could burn and/or explode, and the entire structure sustain further damage or collapse. This chain reaction process could be self-sustaining and go on for a long time. This is the apocalyptic scenario in a nutshell.

The water build-up is an extraordinarily difficult problem in and of itself, and as anyone with a leaky basement knows, water always 'finds a way.’

At Fukushima, they are dealing with massive amounts of groundwater that flow through the property, and the endless pouring that must be kept up 24/7/365 to keep things from getting worse. Recently there appears to be subsidence issues and liquefaction under the plant.

TEPCO has decided to pump the water out of these buildings. However, pumping water out of the buildings is only going to increase the flow rate and create more of these ground issues around the reactors. An enormous undertaking - but one that needs to be considered for long-term preservation of the integrity of the site - is channelling the water away, like a drain tile installed around the perimeter of a house with a leaky basement, but on an epic scale.

Without this effort, the soils will further deteriorate, structural shift will occur, and subsequently the contents of the pools will shift too.

Any water that flows into those buildings also becomes highly radioactive, as it is likely coming into contact with melted fuel.

Without knowing the extent of the current liquefaction and its location, the location of the melted fuel, how long TEPCO has been pumping out water, or when the next earthquake will hit, it is impossible to predict how soon this could occur from the water problem/subsidence issue alone. But undoubtedly, pumping water out of the buildings is just encouraging the flow, and this water problem needs to be remedied and redirected as soon as possible.

RT: Given all the complications that could arise with extracting the fuel rods, which are the most serious, in your opinion?

CC: The most serious complication would be anything that leads to a nuclear chain reaction. And as outlined above, there are many different ways this could occur. In a fuel pool containing damaged rods and racks, it could potentially start up on its own at anytime. TEPCO has been incredibly lucky that this hasn't happened so far.

My second biggest concern would be the physical and mental fitness of the workers that will be in such close proximity to exposed fuel during this extraction process. They will be the ones guiding this operation, and will need to be in the highest state of alertness to have any chance at all of executing this plan manually and successfully. Many of their senses, most importantly eyesight, will be hindered by the apparatus that will need to be worn during their exposure, to prevent immediate death from lifting compromised fuel rods out of the pool and placing them in casks, or in the common spent fuel pool located a short distance away.

Think for a moment what that might be like through the eyes of one of these workers; it will be hot, uncomfortable, your senses shielded, and you would be filled with anxiety. You are standing on a building that is close to collapse. Even with the strongest protection possible, workers will have to be removed and replaced often. So you don't have the benefit of doing such a critical task and knowing and trusting your comrades, as they will frequently have to be replaced when their radiation dose limits are reached. If they exhibit physical or mental signs of radiation exposure, they will have be replaced more often.

It will be one of the worst, but most important jobs anyone has ever had to do. And even if executed flawlessly, there are still many things that could go wrong.

RT: How do the potential consequences of failure to ensure safe extraction compare to other disasters of the sort – like Chernobyl, or the 2011 Fukushima meltdown?

CC: There really is no comparison. This will be an incredibly risky operation, in the presence of an enormous amount of nuclear material in close proximity. And as we have seen in the past, one seemingly innocuous failure at the site often translates into a series of cascading failures.

Many of their 'fixes' are only temporary, as there are so many issues to address, and cost always seems to be an enormous factor in what gets implemented and what doesn't.

As a comparison: Chernobyl was one reactor, in a rural area, a quarter of the size of one of the reactors at Fukushima. There was no 'spent fuel pool' to worry about. Chernobyl was treated in-situ...meaning everything was pretty much left where it was while the effort to contain it was made (and very expeditiously I might add) not only above ground, but below ground.

At Fukushima, we have six top-floor pools all loaded with fuel that eventually will have to be removed, the most important being Reactor 4, although Reactor 3 is in pretty bad shape too. Spent fuel pools were never intended for long-term storage, they were only to assist short-term movement of fuel. Using them as a long-term storage pool is a huge mistake that has become an 'acceptable' practice and repeated at every reactor site worldwide.

We have three 100-ton melted fuel blobs underground, but where exactly they are located, no one knows. Whatever 'barriers' TEPCO has put in place so far have failed. Efforts to decontaminate radioactive water have failed. Robots have failed. Camera equipment and temperature gauges...failed. Decontamination of surrounding cities has failed.

We have endless releases into the Pacific Ocean that will be ongoing for not only our lifetimes, but our children’s' lifetimes. We have 40 million people living in the Tokyo area nearby. We have continued releases from the underground corium that reminds us it is there occasionally with steam events and huge increases in radiation levels. Across the Pacific, we have at least two peer-reviewed scientific studies so far that have already provided evidence of increased mortality in North America, and thyroid problems in infants on the west coast states from our initial exposures.

We have increasing contamination of the food chain, through bioaccumulation and biomagnification. And a newly stated concern is the proximity of melted fuel in relation to the Tokyo aquifer that extends under the plant. If and when the corium reaches the Tokyo aquifer, serious and expedient discussions will have to take place about evacuating 40 million people from the greater metropolitan area. As impossible as this sounds, you cannot live in an area which does not have access to safe water.

The operation to begin removing fuel from such a severely damaged pool has never been attempted before. The rods are unwieldy and very heavy, each one weighing two-thirds of a ton. But it has to be done, unless there is some way to encase the entire building in concrete with the pool as it is. I don't know of anyone discussing that option, but it would seem much 'safer' than what they are about to attempt...but not without its own set of risks.

RT: Finally, what is the worst case scenario?

CC:At any time, following any of these possible events, or even all by itself, nuclear fuel in reactor 4's pool could become critical, mostly because it will heat up the pool to a point where water will burn off and the zirconium cladding will catch fire when it is exposed to air. This already happened at least once in this pool that we are aware of. It almost happened again recently after a rodent took out an electrical line and cooling was stopped for days.

Once the integrity of the pool is compromised that will likely lead to more criticalities, which then can spread to other fuel. The heat from this reaction would weaken the structure further, which could then collapse and the contents of the pool end up in a pile of rubble on the ground. This would release an enormous amount of radioactivity, which Arnie Gundersen has referred to as a “Gamma Shine Event” without precedence, and Dr. Christopher Busby has deemed an “Open-air super reactor spectacular.”

This would preclude anyone from not only being at Reactor 4, but at Reactors 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, the associated pools for each, and the common spent fuel pool. Humans could no longer monitor and continue cooling operations at any of the reactors and pools, thus putting the entire site at risk for a massive radioactive release.

Mathematically, it is almost impossible to quantify in terms of resulting contamination, and a separate math problem would need to be performed for every nuclear element contained within the fuel, and whether or not that fuel exploded, burned, fissioned, melted, or was doused with water to try to cool it off and poured into the ocean afterward.

[Polish_Silver]

extent of glowing fish

"For fish that are harvested 100 miles [160 kilometers] out to sea, I doubt it’d be a problem," said Nicholas Fisher, a marine biologist at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, N.Y. "But in the region, yes, it's possible there could be sufficient contamination of local seafood so it'd be unwise to eat that seafood."

The overall contamination of ocean life by the Fukushima meltdown still remains very low compared with the effects of naturally occurring radioactivity and leftover contamination from U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons testing in the 1960s. Fisher said he’d be "shocked" if the ongoing leaks of contaminated water had a significant impact on the ocean ecosystems.

Doesn't seem like much of a public health problem, but definitely a problem for local fishermen.

I didn't read the whole article. The water problem seems quite extensive.

[don]

2.5 years and counting

Japan is to issue its gravest warning about the state of the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant since the facility suffered a triple meltdown almost two and a half years ago.

The new warning, expected on Wednesday, comes only a day after the nuclear watchdog assigned a much lower ranking when the plant's operator, Tepco, admitted about 300 tonnes of highly toxic water had leaked from a storage tank at the site.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority has now said it will dramatically raise the incident's severity level from one to three on the eight-point scale used by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for radiation releases. Each single-digit increase in the scale actually represents a tenfold increase in the severity of a radiological release, according to the IAEA.

The NRA on Tuesday classified the leakage only as an "anomaly" on the IAEA scale but now considers it a "serious incident".

The leak is the single most dangerous failure at the plant since the 2011 meltdown, which warranted the maximum level of seven on the severity scale, putting it on a par with the Chernobyl disaster 25 years earlier.

"Judging from the amount and the density of the radiation in the contaminated water that leaked ... a level three assessment is appropriate", the NRA said in a document posted on its website on Wednesday.

Tepco has admitted it has yet to identify the cause of the leak, in which highly radioactive water appears to have breached a steel storage tank and seeped into the ground. The leak from the tank, which can hold up to 1,000 tonnes of water, has yet to be stemmed, according to Japanese media reports.

The incident is separate from additional water leaks of up to 300 tonnes a day recently reported by Tepco.

Those spillages involve groundwater that is leaking into the nearby Pacific ocean. Tepco said there was no evidence that water from the storage tank had found its way into the sea. The utility said radioactive matter, including caesium and strontium, had seeped into soil, which may have to be dug up and removed.

Puddles near the faulty tank are so contaminated that a person standing 50 centimetres away would in one hour receive five times the annual dose limit for Japanese nuclear workers. Initial readings showed that radiation levels in one puddle were 100 millisieverts an hour.

[mercerbear]

Re: 2.5 years and counting

I have been following all of the Fukushima news releases closely. Within the past week I have noticed an increase in negative reporting from "major" news outlets.

As the drum beats become louder, I am really hoping the ROW will somehow get involved to actively manage the Fukushima project or at least audit it. China "expressed shock" in a Reuters article today. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...97K02B20130821

I am pro nuclear but the design of this particular plant and the response to this disaster are irresponsible.

[shiny!]

Re: 2.5 years and counting

I have been following all of the Fukushima news releases closely. Within the past week I have noticed an increase in negative reporting from "major" news outlets.

As the drum beats become louder, I am really hoping the ROW will somehow get involved to actively manage the Fukushima project or at least audit it. China "expressed shock" in a Reuters article today. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...97K02B20130821

I am pro nuclear but the design of this particular plant and the response to this disaster are irresponsible.

Isn't this the same design of plants we have in the United States, including on fault lines in California?

[c1ue]

Re: 2.5 years and counting

I am pro nuclear but the design of this particular plant and the response to this disaster are irresponsible.

Right, definitely the design should have been better in the 1970s. /sarc

One of the reasons why these old plants keep going on is because of anti-nuclear NGO and protest activity - the result is that it is far easier to keep an existing plant open than it is to close it down and build a newer, better, safer one.

[mercerbear]

Re: 2.5 years and counting

Shiny,

I am not sure where else the Fukushima design has been implemented. My criticism of the design is more of a general criticism of the design/location combination. Hindsight is always 20/20, but it was obviously a bad idea.

The Westinghouse AP1000 design is being constructed in Waynesboro, GA by GA Power through SHAW [Now Chicago Bridge & Iron Works] and Westinghouse. The AP1000 design has already been built in China but it is the first new reactor that I know of in the United States to go up since 3 Mile Island. Hopefully the passive safety utilized in this design is all it's cracked up to be. I understand that Jenkinsville, SC will get an AP1000 plant in the future also.

I hope safe nuclear is more than a pipe dream and really hope that we can harness fusion [ITER] at some point in the future.

[don]

Re: 2.5 years and counting

Coming Full Circle in Energy, to Nuclear

By EDUARDO PORTER

NORTH ANTELOPE ROCHELLE MINE, Wyo.

I’m staring over the edge of a cliff into a seam of coal some 80 feet thick running along a chasm cut deep into the earth. A gargantuan claw rips a massive bite from the slab and swings it into the bed of a preposterously large dump truck.
Scott Durgin, who manages the mine for Peabody Energy, tries hard to communicate its enormous scale.

In a typical day, Mr. Durgin tells me, 21 trains depart the mine, pulling 135 cars each. Each car bears 120 tons of coal. At this pace, he says, there is more than 20 years’ worth of coal ready to mine under my feet.

North Antelope Rochelle is among the biggest coal mines in the world. It produced 108 million tons last year — about 10 percent of all the coal burned by the nation’s power plants.

Standing at the precipice, staring into the thick black mineral vein, I find it difficult to envisage how an enterprise of this magnitude could be stopped, and what could take its place.

North Antelope Rochelle is only 30 years old. It wasn’t around during the first oil shock of 1973 or during the Iranian revolution of 1979, which led to a second oil shock. It hadn’t opened for business when a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania melted down, when 200,000 people gathered in New York City’s Battery Park to hear Ralph Nader demand the end of atomic power and Carly Simon sing yearningly about the “comforting glow of a wood fire.”
Those events set the nation on a hurried quest for alternative sources of energy.

Coal was the big winner. In April 1977, President Jimmy Carter call ed Americans to arms, urging a vast increase in coal production to “protect ourselves from uncertain supplies” of oil. North Antelope Rochelle and the other vast strip mines cutting through the plains of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin — whose low-sulfur carbon met standards imposed by the Clean Air Act — were the result. Since then, coal production west of the Mississippi has multiplied by four times, to about 640 million tons a year.

While nuclear power also ranked high in President Carter’s speech, it proved no match against cheap coal and gas — especially after the force of American public opinion, scarred by visions of Three Mile Island and Ukraine’s Chernobyl disaster, contributed to delays and regulatory hurdles that made building a new nuclear power plant prohibitively more expensive.

Today, the world is staring at a similar inflection point in energy policy. Glowing wood fires are now understood to be a problem, spewing heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Most scientists see coal — what James Schlesinger, the nation’s first energy secretary, called America’s “black hope” — as one of the biggest threats to the world’s climate.
But even as the consensus among experts builds that coal and other fossil fuels must be sharply reduced and eventually removed from the energy matrix, there is no agreement on what sources of energy could feasibly take their place, and how to get from here to there.

As in the 1970s, environmental activists remain enthralled by the sun and the wind. But three decades’ worth of renewable energy dreams have yielded too little to entrust them with the job of replacing fossil fuels.

Today renewable energy supplies only about 6 percent of American demand. And most of that comes from water flowing through dams. Solar energy contributes next to nothing.

Averting climate change is likely to require much less eco-friendly sources of power. This includes natural gas, of course, which emits about half the carbon dioxide of coal. But over the long term it is likely to require much more investment in a big bugaboo of the environmental movement: nuclear power.

The arithmetic is merciless. To make it likely that the world’s temperature will rise no more than 2 degrees Celsius above the average of the preindustrial era — a target agreed to by the world’s governments in 2010 — humanity must spew no more than 900 billion more tons of carbon dioxide into the air from now through 2050 and only 75 billion tons after that, according to an authoritative new study in Britain.

The question is how to square that both with the energy that we need and the energy that we have.

The United States Energy Information Administration forecasts that global energy consumption will grow 56 percent between now and 2040. Almost 80 percent of that energy demand will be satisfied by fossil fuels. Under this assumption, carbon emissions would rise to 45 billion tons a year in 2040, from 32 billion in 2011, and the world would blow past its carbon ceiling in fewer than 25 years.

“We have trillions of tons of coal resources in the world,” Vic Svec, spokesman for Peabody Energy, told me. “You can expect the world to use them all.”

The only way around this is to put something in coal’s place, at a reasonably competitive price. Neither the warm glow of the sun nor the restless power of the wind is going to do the trick, at least not soon enough to make a difference in the battle to prevent climate change.

An analysis of power generation in 21 countries by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the International Energy Agency projected that even if the world were to impose a tax of $30 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, neither wind nor solar could outcompete gas and coal.

A new generation of nuclear power, by contrast, is potentially the cheapest energy source of all.

The study projected that the typical nuclear generator in North America could produce power at $50 to $75 per megawatt-hour, depending on assumptions about construction costs and interest rates, against $70 to $80 for coal-fueled power. Wind-powered electricity would cost from $60 to $90, but there are limits to how much it can be scaled up. A megawatt-hour of solar power still costs in the hundreds.

The study concluded that nuclear power would prove even more competitive in Asia and Europe.

It is easy to despair about the climate’s prospects. Sure, President Obama’s new energy policy calls for tight limits on coal-fired power plants. But nuclear power barely merited a mention in his speech at Georgetown University. The odds that Congress will pass a tax on carbon emissions seem as low as ever. Without one, any alternative energy source will have a hard time competing against fossil fuels.

Public opinion around the world has become vehemently against nuclear energy after the tsunami damage to the power reactor in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. Germany, one of the most committed nations in the combat against climate change, has turned its back on nuclear power and, intentionally or not, increased its dependence on carbon-heavy coal. China, the world’s fastest-growing energy hog, is building reactors at speed, but it is building coal-fired power plants even faster.

Robert Stone, a documentary filmmaker who directed “Pandora’s Promise,” about the environmental case for nuclear power, argues that atomic energy’s time is coming. Younger environmentalists don’t associate nuclear power with Chernobyl and the cold war. Studies have revealed it to be safer than other fuels.

In the movie, Michael Shellenberger, an environmental activist whom Time magazine once named a Hero of the Environment, argues that beliefs that solar and wind power can displace fossil fuels amount to “hallucinatory delusions.”

Still, the hurdles are substantial. There are fewer nuclear generators in the United States than in 1987. Just maintaining nuclear energy’s share of 19 percent of the nation’s electricity generation will require adding several dozen new ones. Each will take some 10 years and $5 billion to construct. If nuclear power is to play a leading role combating climate change, it should start now.

E-mail: eporter@nytimes.com; Twitter: @portereduardo

[don]

Re: 2.5 years and counting

The third carbon age
By Michael T Klare

The First Carbon Era

The first carbon era began in the late eighteenth century, with the introduction of coal-powered steam engines and their widespread application to all manner of industrial enterprises. Initially used to power textile mills and industrial plants, coal was also employed in transportation (steam-powered ships and railroads), mining, and the large-scale production of iron. Indeed, what we now call the Industrial Revolution was largely comprised of the widening application of coal and steam power to productive activities. Eventually, coal would also be used to generate electricity, a field in which it remains dominant today.

This was the era in which vast armies of hard-pressed workers built continent-spanning railroads and mammoth textile mills as factory towns proliferated and cities grew. It was the era, above all, of the expansion of the British Empire. For a time, Great Britain was the biggest producer and consumer of coal, the world’s leading manufacturer, its top industrial innovator, and its dominant power - and all of these attributes were inextricably connected. By mastering the technology of coal, a small island off the coast of Europe was able to accumulate vast wealth, develop the world’s most advanced weaponry, and control the global sea-lanes.

The same coal technology that gave Britain such global advantages also brought great misery in its wake. As noted by energy analyst Paul Roberts in The End of Oil, the coal then being consumed in England was of the brown lignite variety, ''chock full of sulfur and other impurities''. When burned, ''it produced an acrid, choking smoke that stung the eyes and lungs and blackened walls and clothes''. By the end of the 19th, the air in London and other coal-powered cities was so polluted that ''trees died, marble facades dissolved, and respiratory ailments became epidemic''.

For Great Britain and other early industrial powers, the substitution of oil and gas for coal was a godsend, allowing improved air quality, the restoration of cities, and a reduction in respiratory ailments. In many parts of the world, of course, the Age of Coal is not over. In China and India, among other places, coal remains the principal source of energy, condemning their cities and populations to a 21st century version of 19th century London and Manchester.

The Second Carbon Era

The Age of Oil got its start in 1859 when commercial production began in western Pennsylvania, but only truly took off after World War II, with the explosive growth of automobile ownership. Before 1940, oil played an important role in illumination and lubrication, among other applications, but remained subordinate to coal; after the war, oil became the world’s principal source of energy. From 10 million barrels per day in 1950, global consumption soared to 77 million in 2000, a half-century bacchanalia of fossil fuel burning.

Driving the global ascendancy of petroleum was its close association with the internal combustion engine (ICE). Due to oil’s superior portability and energy intensity (that is, the amount of energy it releases per unit of volume), it makes the ideal fuel for mobile, versatile ICEs. Just as coal rose to prominence by fueling steam engines, so oil came to prominence by fueling the world’s growing fleets of cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships. Today, petroleum supplies about 97% of all energy used in transportation worldwide.

Oil’s prominence was also assured by its growing utilization in agriculture and warfare. In a relatively short period of time, oil-powered tractors and other agricultural machines replaced animals as the primary source of power on farms around the world. A similar transition occurred on the modern battlefield, with oil-powered tanks and planes replacing the cavalry as the main source of offensive power.

These were the years of mass automobile ownership, continent-spanning highways, endless suburbs, giant malls, cheap flights, mechanized agriculture, artificial fibers, and - above all else - the global expansion of American power. Because the United States possessed mammoth reserves of oil, was the first to master the technology of oil extraction and refining, and the most successful at utilizing petroleum in transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and war, it emerged as the richest and most powerful country of the twenty-first century, a saga told with great relish by energy historian Daniel Yergin in The Prize. Thanks to the technology of oil, the US was able to accumulate staggering levels of wealth, deploy armies and military bases to every continent, and control the global air and sea-lanes - extending its power to every corner of the planet.

However, just as Britain experienced negative consequences from its excessive reliance on coal, so the United States - and the rest of the world - has suffered in various ways from its reliance on oil. To ensure the safety of its overseas sources of supply, Washington has established tortuous relationships with foreign oil suppliers and has fought several costly, debilitating wars in the Persian Gulf region, a sordid history I recount in Blood and Oil. Over reliance on motor vehicles for personal and commercial transportation has left the country ill-equipped to deal with periodic supply disruptions and price spikes. Most of all, the vast increase in oil consumption - here and elsewhere - has produced a corresponding increase in carbon dioxide emissions, accelerating planetary warming (a process begun during the first carbon era) and exposing the country to the ever more devastating effects of climate change.

The Age of Unconventional Oil and Gas

The explosive growth of automotive and aviation travel, the suburbanization of significant parts of the planet, the mechanization of agriculture and warfare, the global supremacy of the United States, and the onset of climate change: these were the hallmarks of the exploitation of conventional petroleum. At present, most of the world’s oil is still obtained from a few hundred giant onshore fields in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Venezuela, among other countries; some additional oil is acquired from offshore fields in the North Sea, the Gulf of Guinea, and the Gulf of Mexico. This oil comes out of the ground in liquid form and requires relatively little processing before being refined into commercial fuels.

But such conventional oil is disappearing. According to the IEA, the major fields that currently provide the lion’s share of global petroleum will lose two-thirds of their production over the next 25 years, with their net output plunging from 68 million barrels per day in 2009 to a mere 26 million barrels in 2035. The IEA assures us that new oil will be found to replace those lost supplies, but most of this will be of an unconventional nature. In the coming decades, unconventional oils will account for a growing share of the global petroleum inventory, eventually becoming our main source of supply.

The same is true for natural gas, the second most important source of world energy. The global supply of conventional gas, like conventional oil, is shrinking, and we are becoming increasingly dependent on unconventional sources of supply - especially from the Arctic, the deep oceans, and shale rock via hydraulic fracturing.

In certain ways, unconventional hydrocarbons are akin to conventional fuels. Both are largely composed of hydrogen and carbon, and can be burned to produce heat and energy. But in time the differences between them will make an ever-greater difference to us. Unconventional fuels - especially heavy oils and tar sands - tend to possess a higher proportion of carbon to hydrogen than conventional oil, and so release more carbon dioxide when burned. Arctic and deep-offshore oil require more energy to extract, and so produce higher carbon emissions in their very production.

''Many new breeds of petroleum fuels are nothing like conventional oil,'' Deborah Gordon, a specialist on the topic at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in 2012. ''Unconventional oils tend to be heavy, complex, carbon laden, and locked up deep in the earth, tightly trapped between or bound to sand, tar, and rock.''

And here’s another problem associated with the third carbon age: the production of unconventional oil and gas turns out to require vast amounts of water - for fracking operations, to extract tar sands and extra-heavy oil, and to facilitate the transport and refining of such fuels. This is producing a growing threat of water contamination, especially in areas of intense fracking and tar sands production, along with competition over access to water supplies among drillers, farmers, municipal water authorities, and others. As climate change intensifies, drought will become the norm in many areas and so this competition will only grow fiercer.

Along with these and other environmental impacts, the transition from conventional to unconventional fuels will have economic and geopolitical consequences hard to fully assess at this moment. As a start, the exploitation of unconventional oil and gas reserves from previously inaccessible regions involves the introduction of novel production technologies, including deep-sea and Arctic drilling, hydro-fracking, and tar-sands upgrading. One result has been a shakeup in the global energy industry, with the emergence of innovative companies possessing the skills and determination to exploit the new unconventional resources - much as occurred during the early years of the petroleum era when new firms arose to exploit the world’s oil reserves.

This has been especially evident in the development of shale oil and gas. In many cases, the breakthrough technologies in this field were devised and deployed by smaller, risk-taking firms like Cabot Oil and Gas, Devon Energy Corporation, Mitchell Energy and Development Corporation, and XTO Energy. These and similar companies pioneered the use of hydro-fracking to extract oil and gas from shale formations in Arkansas, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Texas, and later sparked a stampede by larger energy firms to obtain stakes of their own in these areas. To augment those stakes, the giant firms are gobbling up many of the smaller and mid-sized ones. Among the most conspicuous takeovers was ExxonMobil’s 2009 purchase of XTO for $41 billion.

That deal highlights an especially worrisome feature of this new era: the deployment of massive funds by giant energy firms and their financial backers to acquire stakes in the production of unconventional forms of oil and gas - in amounts far exceeding comparable investments in either conventional hydrocarbons or renewable energy. It’s clear that, for these companies, unconventional energy is the next big thing and, as among the most profitable firms in history, they are prepared to spend astronomical sums to ensure that they continue to be so. If this means investment in renewable energy is shortchanged, so be it. ''Without a concerted policymaking effort'' to favor the development of renewables,'' Carnegie’s Gordon warns, future investments in the energy field ''will likely continue to flow disproportionately toward unconventional oil.''

In other words, there will be an increasingly entrenched institutional bias among energy firms, banks, lending agencies, and governments toward next-generation fossil-fuel production, only increasing the difficulty of establishing national and international curbs on carbon emissions. This is evident, for example, in the Obama administration’s undiminished support for deep-offshore drilling and shale gas development, despite its purported commitment to reduce carbon emissions. It is likewise evident in the growing international interest in the development of shale and heavy-oil reserves, even as fresh investment in green energy is being cut back.

As in the environmental and economic fields, the transition from conventional to unconventional oil and gas will have a substantial, if still largely undefined, impact on political and military affairs.

US and Canadian companies are playing a decisive role in the development of many of the vital new unconventional fossil-fuel technologies; in addition, some of the world’s largest unconventional oil and gas reserves are located in North America. The effect of this is to bolster US global power at the expense of rival energy producers like Russia and Venezuela, which face rising competition from North American companies, and energy-importing states like China and India, which lack the resources and technology to produce unconventional fuels.

At the same time, Washington appears more inclined to counter the rise of China by seeking to dominate the global sea lanes and bolster its military ties with regional allies like Australia, India, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea. Many factors are contributing to this strategic shift, but from their statements it is clear enough that top American officials see it as stemming in significant part from America’s growing self-sufficiency in energy production and its early mastery of the latest production technologies.

''America’s new energy posture allows us to engage [the world] from a position of greater strength,'' National Security Advisor Tom Donilon asserted in an April speech at Columbia University. ''Increasing US energy supplies act as a cushion that helps reduce our vulnerability to global supply disruptions [and] affords us a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing our international security goals.''

For the time being, the US leaders can afford to boast of their ''stronger hand'' in world affairs, as no other country possesses the capabilities to exploit unconventional resources on such a large scale. By seeking to extract geopolitical benefits from a growing world reliance on such fuels, however, Washington inevitably invites countermoves of various sorts. Rival powers, fearful and resentful of its geopolitical assertiveness, will bolster their capacity to resist American power - a trend already evident in China’s accelerating naval and missile buildup.

At the same time, other states will seek to develop their own capacity to exploit unconventional resources in what might be considered a fossil-fuels version of an arms race. This will require considerable effort, but such resources are widely distributed across the planet and in time other major producers of unconventional fuels are bound to emerge, challenging America’s advantage in this realm (even as they increase the staying power and global destructiveness of the third age of carbon). Sooner or later, much of international relations will revolve around these issues.

[c1ue]

Re: 2.5 years and counting

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08...nothing_again/

The world's media is working itself into an unedifying state of hysteria (again) following the news that radioactive water has leaked from a holding tank at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, damaged two years back by a tsunami and earthquake which led to the death and injury of more than 20,000 people - though not a single one of those casualties resulted from radiation.

However the frightful death toll which actually happened was pretty much ignored by the world's media, which chose to focus on non-existent dangers that might have resulted from radioactive material escaping from the damaged reactors at Fukushima. In the end, the nuclear apocalypse failed to appear - the scientific consensus is that absolutely no health effects due to the Fukushima radiation will ever be detectable - and the journalists reluctantly gave up.

But now they're back. We hear from Reuters today:

Japan's NUCLEAR CRISIS escalated to its WORST LEVEL since a massive earthquake and tsunami CRIPPLED the Fukushima plant more than two years ago ... nearby China said it was "SHOCKED" ... the DISASTER - the WORST nuclear accident since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier ... Water in the latest leak is so CONTAMINATED that a person standing close to it for an hour would receive FIVE TIMES the annual recommended limit for nuclear workers.

[Our caps. Just trying to help.]

'Nuclear crisis' - 'disaster' - FIVE TIMES the annual recommended limit? Surely this is it at last? The disaster is finally happening!

Well, no. The situation is this. The melted-down cores at the damaged reactors (the site is not "crippled", two reactors were undamaged and will return to service) are still hot - though much less hot than they were two years ago - and need to be cooled. This is done by pumping water through their buildings, then sucking it out again and putting it into holding tanks before purifying it to remove the radiation it picks up from the cores. Then it gets used again.

What has happened is that one of the holding tanks, containing water that had only been through one stage of purification, has sprung a leak and about 300,000 litres of water has got out. Almost all of this was contained by a backup dam which had been built around the tanks when they were set up (this is the nuclear industry, there is always a backup). However, "two shallow puddles" of the water got out of the dam via a rainwater drain valve which has since been sealed off.

The water is quite radioactive, and dose rates measured next to the puddles were 100 milliSieverts per hour. Nuclear powerplant workers, whose cancer rate is somewhat lower than in the general population (probably because they don't smoke so much) are allowed to sustain 50 millisievert in any one year in normal times and average doses across five years of 20 millisievert/yr.

However what Reuters haven't picked up on is that the high 100 milliSievert reading is for beta radiation only. The reading for gamma rays is only 1.5 milliSieverts per hour.

As we no doubt all recall from skool, beta radiation is not very penetrating: it can't get through human skin and it only travels a few feet through air. So you'd have to stand very close indeed to the two puddles, in them probably, for their beta rays even to reach you. A sturdy pair of wellingtons would have a good protective effect, if you should do this. As far as beta radiation is concerned, the only ways to seriously harm yourself with that water would be to get it on your exposed skin and leave it there for some time, or to drink it. This is also true of many domestic cleaning products.

The gamma hazard is noticeable, you wouldn't want to take up residence next to the pool of water, but you could work for days around it without breaching normal nuclear-worker health limits and the crews in the vicinity are being rotated regularly. Tepco is pumping all the water back into another tank pending purification, and segregating wet soil from the area. The firm told WNN that it has no indication so far of any water having got into a drainage channel or otherwise left the area.

So this is a pretty minor industrial-waste spill; thousands of more serious accidents occur every single day.

It's not global news. It's not national news. It would barely even be local news, in a sane world.

But it's not a sane world, and the media crusade against nuclear power rolls on.

[vinoveri]

Re: 2.5 years and counting

reminds me of the BP oil spill in the gulf - the seafloor is fractured- we'll never stop the oil- the gulf ecosystem will be a dead zone- OMG .... silence

[cobben]

Re: extent of glowing fish

The ROW may yet regret not having declared the Japanese incompetent, if this worst case scenario occurs it will then be too late. The solution might after all have to be the soviet one - a massive use of warm bodies. Perhaps a world-wide draft of pensioners would kill two birds with one stone?

Mt. Fuji in Red Kurosawa

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=8f5_1300209850

http://<iframe src="http://www.livel...640"></iframe>


How do insane decisions to build things like this get made?


(the original 0hedge posts referenced from 2011 do not seem to be there anymore.)

FuKuSHiMa: CoRRuPTioN, SySTeMiC FaiLuRe oR BoTH?


Posted 28 March 2011 - 05:58 PM
Understanding Japanese society, continued.

A lot, though not all of this sounds oddly familiar, perhaps because Sweden is the Japan of Europe? Sweden also has a long, 500 year unbroken bureaucratic tradition.

"the concept of continuity and the placing of importance on precedent have severe implications for crisis management"

CaSTRaTioN", THe HIV SCaNDaL aND THe JaPaNeSe BuReauCRaCY (A Speech by MASAO MIYAMOTO, M.D.)

After going over this information, I have come to see ten problems with the MHW's bureaucratic structure.

1.The harmony of the ministry or the group is more important than reality.[WB7: This explains why you are not seeing the Ministries hammer TEPCO publicly]
2.The major task of the ministry or the bureaucracy is the protection of industry, not the protection of people. [WB7: No need to panic folks.]
3.The concept of continuity, which is an important dogma within the bureaucracy, clashes with crisis management. [WB7: Which explains the apparent lack thereof despite the best efforts of the PM.]
4.The seniority system minimizes criticism of one's superiors, obscuring the existence of problems. [WB7: Paging President Shimizu]
5.No leadership is exercised in the decision-making process, and the people are made to pay for the bureaucrats' mistakes. [WB7: Are you scared yet?]
6.The system of "amakudari" (bureaucrats joining related industries in their field upon retirement) fosters the status quo and maintains the pre-existing regulations. In other words 'amakudari' functions as a watchdog for regulations. [WB7: Government Sachs Japanese style]
7.The lack of a Freedom of Information Act in Japan. [WB7: I am not certain if this is still the case. Have to check]
8.Individual rights are not respected. [WB7: This is the well known stereotype of the Japanese sheeple.]
9.Clinical trials for new drugs are a form of non-tariff trade barrier. [WB7: Not particularly germaine to the Fukushima situation, or is it?]

__________________________________________________ _________

Posted 30 March 2011 - 07:57 AM
Following the positive response to Dr. Miyamoto's MIT speech, I am presenting another one of his speeches which relates to the role of education in Japan and how it pertains to the Japanese bureaucratic state and the subject of market deregulation. These two speeches provide superb insights with respect to the Japanese institutional and popular reaction to the epic calamity we are all witnessing in Japan.

CaSTRaTioN: PaRT II

WB7: Although the theme of this speech is bureauracy, deregulation and protecting the status quo through educational indoctrination, Zero Hedge readers will find the speech useful in interpreting the public statements made by the bureaucrats involved in the Fukushima disaster. While this speech was made over a decade ago, I am not aware of any major tectonic shift in the behavior and prominance of the bureaucratic elite in Japan.Naturally the advent of the internet has brought new pressures to bear on the old order.But my own observation is that the growing influence of China may have hardened the defensive mindset. As I have said previously, I believe the events unfolding in Tokyo and Fukushima could herald a major systemic unraveling.