In 1946, Hermann Muller won the Nobel Prize for demonstrating the ability to x-rays (and therefore other forms of ionizing radiation) to cause mutations in living cells. There is no doubt that Muller’s discovery was profound and vital to understanding radiation’s effects on living things and to establishing the field of health physics and radiation protection. The fact that radiation could cause mutations also had important implications to the understanding of cell biology and genetics.

Muller was also an early proponent in the establishment of the linear non-threshold hypothesis for radiation exposure. Despite a lack of conclusive supporting evidence, LNT has become the mainstay for radiation policy and is accepted as fact by many government agencies. The simplistic model basically states that radiation always causes damage with the potential for cancer and that the increase in risk is directly proportional to the exposure level. Thus, there is no “safe” level and all radiation should be avoided when possible, though the danger is small if the exposure is small.

Despite the fact that, even by LNT predictions, the level of exposure from living near a nuclear power plant presents a miniscule increase in risk (less than living next to a coal burner), the model has been used very effectively to argue that nuclear energy is always unacceptable, because the tiny amounts of radiation involved still present a risk. (Don’t ask me how they can make the case that nuclear is worse than coal or gas, or for that matter, having a granite counter top which involve more exposure. I still can’t figure that out.) The model has also resulted in extreme fear of medical radiation, resulting in calls for limiting of potentially life saving imaging and cancer treatment procedures.

While it has always been known that Muller did not have conclusive evidence to prove his claims of an LNT dose-risk relationship, evidence now indicates he may have had evidence that actually refuted it.

Via UMass Amherst News and Information:

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Much to do has been made of the fact that the majority of nuclear plants in the United States are scheduled to operate beyond the initial operating period that was estimated when they were first constructed. This all seems to have started when the Associated Press “broke” the story, despite the fact that it had never actually been a secret at all. None the less, many followed reporting how plants were being stretched far beyond the expectations of what their designers had intended, exposing the public to untold risks as they rust and fall apart.

Of course, this is not really the case. The plants have undergone numerous upgrades and refits over the years and continue to be upgraded and inspected to maintain high levels of safety. New procedures and new systems retrofitted to older reactors have improved their efficiency and safety beyond what it was originally. Of course, even with improvements, the older Generation II reactors still are not as good as new Generation III+ designs, but none the less, they are perfectly safe and reliable sources of power.

The primary reason why the designs have outlasted what was assumed to be their design life comes down to economics. While it has become cheaper and easier to extend the life of reactors, it has also become much more difficult to build new ones. The original designers might have presumed that after twenty or thirty years, their designs would have been so far surpassed that new power plants would have made them obsolete and redundant.

Unfortunately, they had not counted on just how difficult it has become to build a new reactor.  Just getting the permits to build a new nuclear reactor can take upwards of a decade, and a combination of political lobbying, lawsuits and other tactics by special interest groups meets a potential reactor operator at every step of the way, possibly even derailing plans completely before construction is completed but after billions have been spent.   There exists no other facility whose construction will be opposed by so many with so much effort at so many levels.   Paperwork costs alone can top the hundreds of millions, and final costs for construction have skyrocketed since the 1970’s.

Thus we have what we have and their life is extended to the maximum possible since replacements remain so difficult and expensive to built.

This does not mean that they are unsafe.  In fact, there are many examples of technology lasting far longer than its designers had anticipated.

Reasons why something may outlast its original design life:

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If you have been watching the news or seen any news sites today you have likely heard about the reports of an explosion at a French nuclear facility.   The explosion has repeatedly been reported to have happened at a “nuclear power station” or “nuclear plant.”   This is false.   Reports of fears of radiation releases are also not accurate since the explosion did not actually occurs anywhere near high level waste material or any nuclear reactor.

Background of the Marcoule Site:

The Marcoule site is a large industrial site that conducts activities related to nuclear technology and nuclear energy. It was first setup to produce and process materials for the French nuclear weapons program in the 1950’s. The last French reactors dedicated to plutonium production for weapons were shut down in the 1980’s and activities related to refining and processing weapons materials at Marcoule ceased in 1997.

Beginning in the 1970’s, the Marcoule site has shifted from weapons-related activities to nuclear energy and nuclear materials-related activities in support of the French nuclear energy program. This includes research and development of nuclear energy systems, fuel fabrication and materials processing, remediation and disposal. In 1995, a MOX fuel fabrication plant opened at Marcoule, making the site an integral part of France’s nuclear fuel reprocessing program.

Activities at the site also include such things as the remediation and recycling of low level materials from nuclear reactors, processing of medical radiological waste and the fabrication of components and materials for nuclear systems.   Marcoule is the primary site in France for receiving materials from decommissioned nuclear reactors.

There are currently no active nuclear reactors on the site, although it has hosted some nuclear reactors in years past.   The site has three inactive UNGG reactors, which were built starting in 1955.   The last of these reactors was shut down in 1984.   These reactors are gas cooled, graphite moderated reactors, similar in principle to the British Magnox reactors, though developed entirely separately.  Like early Magnox reactors, the UNGG reactors did produce electricity, but were primarily built to breed weapons-grade plutonium.  The site is also the home of the Phénix reactor, an experimental fast-spectrum sodium cooled reactor which was operated from 1968 until 2009. Phénix is now in cold shutdown and is expected to be fully decommissioned in the near future.

As an industrial nuclear site which now functions largely for civilian purposes, but which was originally built for weapons material, the Marcoule site may be considered analogous to the Savannah River or Hanford Site in the United States or to the Sellafield site in the UK.

Information On the Explosion:

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Via the Courthouse News Service:

Plant Must Disclose Data to Fight Cancer Lawsuit

CHICAGO (CN) – The parents of a girl who developed brain cancer can access over a decade of data on an Exelon power plant they claim discharged harmful radiation, a federal judge ruled, but the energy giant can withhold certain other information.
Joseph and Cynthia Sauer say their daughter, Sarah, was diagnosed with a medulloblastoma, a highly malignant brain tumor, roughly three years after the family moved to Grundy County, where Exelon operates the Dresden Generating Station and Unitech Services Group has a nuclear facility.
They claim that radioactive discharges from the plants traveled through the groundwater, causing Sarah’s cancer.
After receiving the Sauers’ lawsuit, Exelon and Unitech said Sarah’s diagnosis should frame the discovery period, which it proposed to run between 1996 and 2004, two years before and three years after.
The Sauers countered with a motion to access Exelon’s historical data going back to the early 1990s, which they said their expert witness need to determine the impact of the facility on Sarah, since radioactive materials persist for long periods of time in groundwater.
The plaintiffs also moved to compel Exelon to produce documents related to three similar lawsuits filed in 2006.
Meanwhile, Unitech filed a motion to compel the plaintiffs to provide specific facts underlying their claims against Unitech and to provide a damages disclosure statement.
The court partially granted the Sauers’ motion against Exelon, but also directed them to clarify and substantiate their claims against Unitech.
Exelon’s objections to the requested time frame are premature, U.S. Magistrate Judge Nan Nolan found. “Given plaintiffs’ expert’s statement that contamination from the Dresden facility can persist for long periods of time, releases dating back to the early 1990s could be relevant to Plaintiffs’ claims or could lead to the discovery of admissible evidence,” she wrote.

It’s impossible not to feel sympathy for someone like Sarah Sauer. She’s a completely innocent child who did nothing wrong and is faced with a life or death battle with cancer. It must be terrifying for her and her family. I’m sure all readers wish her nothing but the best in beating this cancer and going on to live a long, happy life.

But it was not caused by Dresden Generating Station. It’s impossible to say what caused a given incident of cancer, of course, but in this case, the circumstances are such that the probability of this case of cancer being related to the nearby nuclear plant is so astronomically low that I’m willing to just say that it’s not related.

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It seems every time there is any development in nuclear technology, the media immediately starts equating it with weapons and assumes that it will be used for such. Not only that, but it also seems that the prevailing belief is that the only way to keep the world safe is to assure the United States does not engage in the new technology, because, if we don’t, well then obviously nobody else will, right?

Via the New York Times:

Scientists have long sought easier ways to make the costly material known as enriched uranium — the fuel of nuclear reactors and bombs, now produced only in giant industrial plants.

One idea, a half-century old, has been to do it with nothing more substantial than lasers and their rays of concentrated light. This futuristic approach has always proved too expensive and difficult for anything but laboratory experimentation.

Until now.

In a little-known effort, General Electric has successfully tested laser enrichment for two years and is seeking federal permission to build a $1 billion plant that would make reactor fuel by the ton.

That might be good news for the nuclear industry. But critics fear that if the work succeeds and the secret gets out, rogue states and terrorists could make bomb fuel in much smaller plants that are difficult to detect.

Iran has already succeeded with laser enrichment in the lab, and nuclear experts worry that G.E.’s accomplishment might inspire Tehran to build a plant easily hidden from the world’s eyes.

Backers of the laser plan call those fears unwarranted and praise the technology as a windfall for a world increasingly leery of fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases.

But critics want a detailed risk assessment. Recently, they petitioned Washington for a formal evaluation of whether the laser initiative could backfire and speed the global spread of nuclear arms.

“We’re on the verge of a new route to the bomb,” said Frank N. von Hippel, a nuclear physicist who advised President Bill Clinton and now teaches at Princeton. “We should have learned enough by now to do an assessment before we let this kind of thing out.”

New varieties of enrichment are considered potentially dangerous because they can simplify the hardest part of building a bomb — obtaining the fuel.

General Electric, an atomic pioneer and one of the world’s largest companies, says its initial success began in July 2009 at a facility just north of Wilmington, N.C., that is jointly owned with Hitachi. It is impossible to independently verify that claim because the federal government has classified the laser technology as top secret. But G.E. officials say that the achievement is genuine and that they are accelerating plans for a larger complex at the Wilmington site.

“We are currently optimizing the design,” Christopher J. Monetta, president of Global Laser Enrichment, a subsidiary of G.E. and Hitachi, said in an interview.

The company foresees “substantial demand for nuclear fuel,” he added, while conceding that global jitters from the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan “do create some uncertainty.” G.E. made those reactors.

Donald M. Kerr, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons lab who was recently briefed on G.E.’s advance, said in an interview that it looked like a breakthrough after decades of exaggerated claims.

Laser enrichment, he said, has gone from “an oversold, overpromised set of technologies” to what “appears to be close to a real industrial process.”

…

The plan was to exploit the extraordinary purity of laser light to selectively excite uranium’s rare form. In theory, the resulting agitation would ease identification of the precious isotope and aid its extraction.

At least 20 countries and many companies raced to investigate the idea. Scientists built hundreds of lasers.

Ray E. Kidder, a laser pioneer at the Livermore nuclear arms lab, estimated that the overall number of scientists involved globally ran to several thousand.

“It was a big deal,” he said in an interview. “If you could enrich with lasers, you could cut the cost by a factor of 10.”

The fervor cooled by the 1990s as laser separation turned out to be extremely hard to make economically feasible.

Not everyone gave up. Twenty miles southwest of Sydney, in a wooded region, Horst Struve and Michael Goldsworthy kept tinkering with the idea at a government institute. Finally, around 1994, the two men judged that they had a major advance.

The inventors called their idea Silex, for separation of isotopes by laser excitation. “Our approach is completely different,” Dr. Goldsworthy, a physicist, told a Parliamentary hearing.

….

In May 2006, G.E. bought the rights to Silex. Andrew C. White, the president of the company’s nuclear business, hailed the technology as “game-changing.”

Mr. Monetta of Global Laser Enrichment, the G.E.-Hitachi subsidiary, said the envisioned plant would enrich enough uranium annually to fuel up to 60 large reactors. In theory, that could power more than 42 million homes — about a third of all housing units in the United States.

The laser advance, he added, will promote energy security “since it is a domestic source.”

In late 2009, as G.E. experimented with its trial laser, supporters of arms control wrote Congress and the regulatory commission. The technology, they warned, posed a danger of quickening the spread of nuclear weapons because of the likely difficulty of detecting clandestine plants.

Experts called for a federal review of the risks. In early 2010, the commission resisted.

Late last year, the American Physical Society — the nation’s largest group of physicists, with headquarters in Washington — submitted a formal petition to the commission for a rule change that would compel such risk assessments as a condition of licensing.

“The issue is too big” to leave to the federal status quo, Francis Slakey, a physicist at Georgetown University and the society official who drafted the petition, said in an interview. He added that Mr. Obama or Congress might eventually have to get involved.

This year, thousands of citizens, supporters of arms control, nuclear experts and members of Congress wrote the commission to back the society’s effort. Many of them cited well-known failures in safeguarding secrets and detecting atomic plants.

But the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group in Washington, objected. It said new precautions were unnecessary because of voluntary plans for “additional measures” to safeguard secrets.

A commission spokesman said the petition would be considered next year. In theory, the risk-assessment plan, if adopted, could slow or stop the granting of a commercial license for the proposed laser plant or could result in design improvements.

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Every year I hear this same bullshit and it never irritates me less:

Via NPR:

Nuclear Power Criticized On Hiroshima Anniversary
On Saturday, Japan commemorated the 66th anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, but the ceremony was different this year.

In March, a massive earthquake triggered a meltdown at the Japanese nuclear plant in Fukushima. The plant continues to leak radiation in the worst atomic accident since Chernobyl. Saturday’s ceremony focused on the nuclear attack on Japan in 1945, but the country’s ongoing nuclear disaster loomed large.

The atomic bomb detonated over Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m., killing 70,000 people instantly. As the bell tolled Saturday, most people froze, closed their eyes and put their hands together to pray.

Cicadas roared in the trees overhead.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan remembered the dead from long ago, then he spoke of Japan’s most recent atomic tragedy.

“I deeply regret believing in the security myth of nuclear power and will carry out a thorough verification on the cause of this incident,” he said.

The “security myth” was the Japanese government’s pledge that it could control the atom. Officials said the same forces that leveled Hiroshima could be harnessed to power this resource-poor nation. Most Japanese believed it for years.

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, a poll showed that 70 percent of Japanese now want nuclear power phased out.

After Saturday’s ceremony, anti-nuclear activists took their cause to the streets of Hiroshima. They drew a direct line between the two atomic events separated by more than six decades.

One group of activists peeled off and headed to the Chugoku Electric Power Co. The company has been trying to build a plant 50 miles from Hiroshima for the past three decades. Local resident have been fighting the whole time. Saturday, they shook their fists at the granite walls of the company’s headquarters.

Toshiyasu Shimizu, a member of the Kaminoseki town council, says fighting the plant has felt lonely at times.

“People, including those in the neighboring town, were not interested. But now they see nuclear power as their own problem, so there has been a dramatic difference,” he says.

After all these years, Shimizu says, he feels like most of the country is beginning to agree with him

They’re not the same:

Lets get something straight:  Nuclear weapons are not nuclear power reactors and nuclear power reactors are not nuclear weapons.  Power reactors don’t produce the kind of material usable for weapons and are operated by different entities for different purposes.   Many nation states have nuclear power programs but do not have nuclear weapons.  Conversely, a nuclear power program is not necessary to produce nuclear weapons.   The US, for example, amassed hundreds of weapons in the 1940’s and early 1950’s, yet the first electricity producing commercial reactor was not operational until 1956, long after the weapons program was well established.

Both nuclear weapons and nuclear power reactors use nuclear fission.  That is the extent of their similarities.  Yet not even this is quite the same, since weapons use fast fission of a supercritical mass of material without a moderator, while reactors use a continuous thermal-spectrum reaction in low enrichment material.    Fission is a fundamental source of energy as broad and natural as fire and nuclear energy is as broad a category of energy as chemical energy and even more fundamental to nature.

On Ionizing Radiation:

Nuclear weapons produce radioactive fallout.  Nuclear power plants also produce radioactive material, although except in the case of catastrophic failure, it is contained and sequestered.   None the less, it would be a mistake to see radiation as some kind of evil entity unique to artificial nuclear reactions or uniquely dangerous.   ANY kind of energy can be deadly if it is not contained and exists in sufficient quantity.   People have been killed by the loss of containment of high pressure steam or heat.  Others have died when insulation breakdown exposed them to electricity or when a machine flew apart and the mechanical energy bashed their skull in.  Historically, if you actually look at how many lives are lost, the failure of proper containment of radioactivity is quite low in deaths per gigawatt hour.

Ionizing radiation is also a fundamental force of nature, just as other forms of energy are.  It is part of the electromagnetic spectrum and exists with or without human activity.  It’s produced by stars, lightning bolts, natural radioisotopes and other sources.   It is also produced by humans, in many cases intentionally to produce medical images or destroy tumors.   Medical radiation has saved countless lives.   Its dangers exist only as a product of its missus.  Just as a medical laser or scalpel can heal or harm.

Finally, most of the deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki had nothing to do with ionizing radiation.  Most died as a result of heat, overpressure or trauma falling debris.

Why is it, we that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the focus of so many memorials, so many demonstrations and such intense media attention when much greater loss of life has gone largely forgotten?

This is photograph shows a Japanese city that has been completely destroyed.  Only a handfull of scattered concrete or stone buildings stand and they are gutted and empty.   However, this is not Hiroshima.  This is not Nagasaki.   This is Tokyo.   Tokyo, which was never subjected to nuclear attack was largely reduced to cinders and rubble.  More than 50% of the enormous city was completely destroyed.   The total number killed during the Second World War in Tokyo is unknown.   The official counts top 100,000, but in reality, it was probably far more.

Tokyo was destroyed by a combination of conventional high explosive bombs and incendiary bombs.   It was the incendiary bombs that caused the most damage.   The destruction of Tokyo was accomplished by several B-29 bomber raids, with each attack involving dozens or hundreds of aircraft, up to 520 bombers in some cases.   During the Second World War, the US developed highly effective tactics for the use of incendiary bombs.    These included the use of high explosive bombs to blow open roofs and break apart buildings followed by wave after wave of incendiary bombs, packed with super hot burning white phosphorus and sticky napalm, which would splatter onto structures and anything else in the area and create a nearly unstoppable inferno.

Especially effective against cities with many wood structures, firebombing produced a man-made firestorm, a massive city-wide blaze that firefighters could do little to stop.   The flames would become so violent they would form tornado-like vortexes of flames that engulfed whole structures.   The heat could melt glass and crack concrete.   All organic material in the area became fuel.    For those unfortunate enough to be caught in the flames, there was no escape.   In most fires, victims die of smoke inhalation, but in these firestorms, people could be burned to death before they could take many breaths.   Some bodies were cremated on the spot, others were burned beyond recognition.   A few managed to escape the heat and flames in cellars or other sheltered areas, only to suffocate due to the flames consuming all available oxygen.

But Tokyo was not alone in being leveled by firebombs.   There were many more.   At least 25,000 died in the firebombing attacks on Dresden alone.   Hundreds of thousands more, mostly civilians died due to explosive and firebombing of Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Milan, Kobe and elsewhere.   In Japan alone, more than 50 cities were destroyed or heavily damaged by bombing.  Of course, such raids were not limited to the Allied side of the war effort.   The Luftaffa laid waste to Rotterdam, Stalingrad and Warsaw.   Bombing of London, Belfast and other British cities was intended to destroy the cities and kill hundreds of thousands or millions.   It was only due to advanced radar and highly effective air defense, combined with the limited bomb loads of German aircraft that saved the British Isles from similar destruction, though thousands of lives were still lost.   The Japanese also engaged in massive aerial bombardment in China, the Philippines and elsewhere in the Pacific.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki must be understood not as isolated events but within this greater context of strategic bombing of World War II.

The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed large portions of the cities and killed tens of thousands.   This is really no different than the other air raids of the era, except that it was done with only one aircraft and one bomb.  It took a fraction of a second and not days.   It used a different technology.   Otherwise, it was no more deadly or devastating than conventional bombing.

Of course, the ethics and effectiveness of citywide bombing can be debated. At the time, precision bombing was not available in any large scale and the destruction of urban areas was considered the most effective way of both forcing an enemy to consider surrender and destroy their ability to make war. The Second World War was the last true example of total war, where the entire economies and industries of world powers are shifted completely to making war and as such, are considered targets in their own right.

So perhaps we should ban fire, since that has proven to be a much more horrific weapon.   It’s killed scores more than nuclear weapons.  It’s easier to acquire, nations are more prone to using it, it is just as indiscriminate, perhaps more so, it kills in a mercilessly painful manner, it’s environmentally destructive and it can easily get out of control and cause more damage than had been planned.

Of course, fire also powers everything from automobiles to candles and even the cells in our body use a form of low temperature, enzyme-catalyzed combustion in cellular respiration.

Finally, why I like nuclear explosions:

(Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb)

To most the image of a nuclear explosion is one of horror and destruction.   There’s certainly good reason for this.  The idea of such a device being used against humanity, to destroy cities and end lives is a horrific one.   Nobody would want to see a modern nuclear weapon used in anger.  The consequences would be a nightmare.

Yet a nuclear explosion is also something else.  It is a release of energy, a huge release of energy.   That’s really all that an explosion is.   Explosions can be used for fighting wars or for fireworks, mining, seismic sounding, explosive welding and any other number of purposes.  Nuclear explosions are huge because of the density of the energy source they tap.  They use the most fundamental type of energy in the universe and do so with very high efficiency.

Nuclear bombs are by far, the most energetic devices humans have ever created.   And unless there is a source of antimatter in large quantities for the taking, they will be the most energetic devices humans have ever created.   The largest bombs produce more energy than all humanity produced for thousands of years yet they could fit in your garage.   When set off, they are the greatest expression of humanity’s ability to harness the forces of the universe to produce energy – so much energy they transform huge areas of the atmosphere into plasma and create shockwaves that travel around the earth.  Large nuclear explosions can create their own weather systems, move mountains or carve enormous chambers under the earth’s crust.

It’s a nearly cosmic level of energy.  It has no upper bounds, as explosives can be built using the Teller-Ulam design to any size.   This is humanity’s great step toward something almost unimaginable.

While fallout concerns have greatly limited peaceful nuclear explosions on earth, the potential is even greater beyond this planet.  Nuclear explosives could potentially change the orbit of asteroids, mine asteroids and comets and propel spacecraft to a significant portion of the speed of light.

On earth, nuclear explosions have proven as awe-inspiring as they are destructive.   They are the only example of humanity seeing the effects of unrestrained thermal fusion up close.  The elements einsteinium and fermium were first observed in the fallout of a nuclear blast. The power of nuclear explosions has helped unlike the secrets of the ionosphere, the earth’s crust and fundamental properties of matter.

It is simply energy: A huge amount of energy. Whether it is destructive depends on how it is used.  Like all forms of energy, it has dangers and can be a weapon.  It also has much greater potential.

I recently got an email and I figured I might as well share it.   It relates to this posting:
Panic and madness in a radiophobic world

Subject: Blog posting March 18th

My name is Emily Peck. I am writing to you in reference to a blog posting from March 18th called “Panic and madness in a radiophobic world” in which you unfairly judge me based on one article you read. If living 4 kilometres from 6 nuclear reactors during a 9 earthquake causes me to panic or be worried does that make me an attention seeker? Does being upset about losing all my possesions including my car make me an attention seeker? Does me using the media to help raise $70,000 for my community in Japan and not a cent for myself make me an attention seeker?

You cannot possibly understand what we went through on March 11 and the days after. If you were standing for 6 hours outdoors 4kms from 3 reactors approaching meltdown would you not get checked out at the hospital? I suppose the post traumatic stress myself and the residents of my town must be attention seeking too?

I have returned to Japan and am living as a nuclear refugee in the hotels with the other refugees as we cannot return home and we possibly never can. I am eating Fukushima produce and drinking the water. I still live in Fukushima with my community but live in a different location. I returned to Japan to cheer up the children who have had such a terrible time and I work with them everyday at their school but I suppose that makes me an attention seeker too?

I am asking you very nicely to please remove that blog entry – not the whole thing just the unfair, nasty comments about me and that article. If you have a heart, I am sure you will as my friends in Japan and I have been through enough without having unfair judgements cast upon our fear of the nuclear power plant and what might happen next. My friend pointed me in the direction of this blog and I kind of wish he didnt due to the angst it has caused me, so please consider my request.

Thanking you in anticipation
Emily Peck

My response:

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The press has been going nuts the past few hours with stories of “weapons grade uranium” or “highly enriched uranium” being for sale on the black market in Moldova.   A group of men have apparently been arrested for selling what they claim was enriched uranium, with some reports indicating that they were selling it as nuclear bomb material.

The reported amounts were relatively small, not nearly enough to actually build a nuclear weapon.  Even if they had been highly enriched uranium of a quantity necessary, it would still have taken knowledge and facilities beyond those of any non-state terror group to build a functional nuclear weapon.   Still, if this was highly enriched uranium, it’s still a very big deal.  For one thing, HEU is pretty damn valuable stuff, which is generally guarded quite closely if only for it’s value.  It’s used for many research and military nuclear reactors, but becomes too radioactive to easily transport after it has been in the reactor for even a short period of time.

While HEU is not easily fabricated into a weapon by most groups, even a small amount of it could really help a country like Iran or North Korea jump several months ahead in a nuclear weapons program, as production of HEU requires a great deal of enrichment. Even a small amount of highly enriched uranium could also be quite dangerous, as criticality accidents can easily occur with such material.

Here’s what the New York Times Says about the incident:

Arrests in Moldova Over Possible Uranium Smuggling
MOSCOW — The police in Moldova said Wednesday that they had arrested six people involved with a criminal group that said it was dealing in smuggled nuclear materials and was active in the former Soviet Union and in Arab countries.

The group had been negotiating the sale of uranium, police officials said in a statement and in remarks reported by news agencies, and the authorities suggested that the material had come from Russia.

Some of the suspects were arrested while they were carrying a lead canister, the authorities said. In a video released to the news media, police officers wearing gloves showed how a Geiger counter clicked rapidly when brought near the dull gray metal tube. The police said the contents of the tube would be sent for analysis.

Though associated with the chaos of the immediate years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, reports of nuclear smuggling in the former Eastern bloc continue to this day, and are no less ominous for the number of false alarms that are raised from time to time. Last year, for example, the Moldovan authorities arrested members of a group that was selling what turned out to be only slightly radioactive uranium.

The prevalence of these cases, including frauds and other scams, illustrates the difficulties associated with the legacy of the loosely guarded Soviet weapons program.

The Moldovan authorities said that the suspects, who included four Moldovans, one Russian and one resident of the Russian-backed separatist region of Transnistria in eastern Moldova, had sought a buyer for what the suspects said was bomb-grade uranium, Western and Russian news agencies reported.

The gang thought it was negotiating with a North African buyer who turned out to be an undercover security agent, according to the police and the news agency reports. They gang’s members had sought to sell uranium that they said was enriched to an unspecified refinement of the isotope 235 for between $29 million and $144 million per kilogram, the police statement said.

Other press outlets are even less restrained, coming right out and saying that this was indeed weapons grade uranium intended for construction of a nuclear bomb.

But is this actually highly enriched, even weapons-grade uranium?

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It seems now Australia is in on the action, after South Korea, Russia and a few others stated that they would preform “tests for radiation” on major imports from Japan such as automobiles.
Via Fox News:

SYDNEY — A boatload of 800 cars arriving Down Under from Japan will be tested for radiation by Australia’s nuclear watchdog after other Japanese vehicles were found to be radioactive, The (Sydney) Daily Telegraph reported Tuesday.

The move is the first Australian test of non-food exports from the fallout-ravaged Asian nation, and marks a turnaround in position for the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).

Officials from ARPANSA will board the cargo ship Trans Future 7 when it docks at Port Kembla, south of Sydney, on Thursday, after picking up 700 Toyotas and 100 other cars from the Japanese port of Yokohama.

Thirty of those vehicles are used cars, which the maritime union fears could have been in areas affected by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that damaged nuclear reactors along the Japanese east coast.

The officials will use hand-held radiation detectors and will also take surface samples from spots where people in Japan could have touched the vehicles.

Previously, the agency had said such tests were unnecessary. However, after intense pressure from dock workers and the discovery in Chile of low levels of radioactivity in cars shipped from Yokohama, ARPANSA said it will conduct the tests to reassure stevedores.

The Maritime Union of Australia said the decision was a win for both workers and the general public.

Well, it sure seems clear to me that this is not just a case of dock workers who know nothing about radiation pressuring the government to do silly and unnecessary tests.

As such, I am offering my services in this area. If any radiation is detected anywhere near the vicinity of a brand new car, I will accept the responsibility for properly disposing of said vehicle. I will do so free of charge, except, of course, for the cost of shipping the car to me. Once I have received the car I can assure any party that sends it that it will not pose a radiological hazard to anyone.   It will be dealt with accordingly.

Please note: I am especially experienced in the radiological remediation and disposal of high end and luxury vehicles. It should be noted that vehicles which contain materials such as top grain leather or have large high-performance engines could pose a special challenge – one which I am more than willing to take on.

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What the hell are Greenpeace and similar groups going to be thinking about this?   It seems like they may have been hit by a genuine conflict that even their spineless leadership can’t slip around.

Via the Associated Press:

Traces of radiation found in 2 whales off Japan
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese whalers caught two animals along the northern coast that had traces of radiation, presumably from leaks at a damaged nuclear power plant, officials said Wednesday.

Two of 17 minke whales caught off the Pacific coast of Hokkaido showed traces of radioactive cesium, both about one-twentieth of the legal limit, fisheries officials said.

They are the first whales thought to have been affected by radiation leaked from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant since it was hit by a March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

“The levels are far below the limit, and the meat from the catch is safe for consumption,” Fisheries Agency official Kosei Takekoshi said.

One of the minkes had a cesium reading of 31 becquerels per kilogram, and the other 24.3 becquerels, compared to the legal limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram for highly migratory marine products.

The 17 whales were caught off the shores of Kushiro city — a main coastal whaling hub — during an April 25-June 10 expedition.

The agency has not previously surveyed radiation in whales, so no comparison is available before and after the Fukushima crisis.

The government has banned fishing around the coastal nuclear plant. Local government and fisheries officials have been monitoring radiation in seafood along the coast weekly.

What must they be thinking??

“We hate whaling, because people like whales and it gives us good publicity to harass whalers. But whaling provides evidence of “radiation” and people are really scared of radiation. We hate nuclear power a real lot. Whaling is bad because whales are natural and cuddly. But whaling is good because it gives us more radiation headlines to scare people. But it kills whales. But the whales are radioactive so they don’t belong in the environment anyway. But it’s wrong to kill them. But it’s wrong to irradiate them. But doing so makes nuclear power look bad.

Whales are natural. But radioactive whales are a danger to nature. But whaling is more human intervention. But human intervention is okay as long as it somehow hurts nuclear energy’s future.”

And by the way: One would expect some radioisotopes to be found in marine life as a result of the discharges from Fukushima. This is not unexpected. It’s also a trivial amount of radioactivity.