Category Archives: nuclear power

Russians Go To Nuclear War – Without firing a single rocket

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Isn’t Russia Special. They are so inept they want to cause a second nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. Seriously does the world need a bigger excuse to intervene? Hell, we started a War in Vietnam over shots that WEREN’T fired. China has taken over countries just because a 1,000 ago they were part of China. But messing with multiple Nuclear Power Plants ain’t enough? Earth’s Countries are going to mess around here and have a real disaster on its hands.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-chernobyl-nuclear-plant-russia-power-outage/

Ukraine blames Russia for power cut at Chernobyl nuclear plant and says it could cause “nuclear discharge”

By Tucker Reals

/ CBS News

The power supply was cut to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on Wednesday, Ukrainian authorities said, blaming Russia’s invading forces for the blackout and warning that it could lead to “nuclear discharge.”The U.N.-backed global nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, downplayed concerns of an imminent radioactive release, but a Ukrainian national emergency services agency said if power to the plant’s cooling systems — which keep spent nuclear fuel safely surrounded by water — is not ensured, it could create a “radioactive cloud” to blow over “other regions of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Europe.”The Chernobyl power plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986, “was fully disconnected from the power grid,” Ukraine‘s national energy operator Ukrenergo said Wednesday in a statement on its Facebook page, adding that military operations meant there was “no possibility to restore the lines.”

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Go there and be terrified. More next week if we are still here.

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These People Protect Nuclear Waste For 20,000 Years – Hahahahaha

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Excuse me.

https://news.yahoo.com/nrc-fines-owner-former-nuke-220259947.html

NRC fines owner of former nuke plant for 2nd security lapse

WAYNE PARRY
·2 min read

LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) — For the second time in as many months, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has fined the owners of a former New Jersey nuclear power plant for security-related violations.

The agency said Wednesday it fined Jupiter, Florida-based Holtec Decommissioning International $50,000 for security violations at the former Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in the Forked River section of Lacey Township.

The plant was one of the oldest in the U.S. when it shut down in 2018.

The fine involved a company employee working as an armorer at the plant.

In an investigation that concluded in March 2021, the NRC determined the armorer “deliberately failed to properly perform required annual material-condition inspections of response unit rifles, and falsified related records.”

The plant has several fortified bunkers from which armed security staff can fight off attackers. The NRC said the violation was the work of “a now-former security superintendent.”

 

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Go there and read. More next week

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Nuclear Power People Should Be In Jail – But for much simpler crimes

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To me, “having nowhere to store the waste” or “there being cheaper alternatives”, should be jailing offenses before the fact.  I think the crime should be digging a giant hole in the ground and putting nothing in it. I think the crime should be building a power plant you will never fuel. I think. I think there should be a nuclear jail for all the nuclear criminals in the US of A. But I guess this will have to do.

https://news.yahoo.com/more-criminal-charges-filed-south-193059123.html

New criminal charges filed against Westinghouse official in SC’s nuclear plant failure

John Monk
·

A second high-ranking employee of Westinghouse Electric is facing criminal charges in connection with the multi-billion dollar failure of the doomed nuclear project in Fairfield County.

Jeffrey Benjamin, a former Westinghouse senior vice president of new plants and projects, faces multiple counts of fraud, according to an 18-page indictment made public Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Columbia.

It is the latest criminal charge in a four-year federal investigation of what went wrong at the highest levels of two substantial American companies — Westinghouse and the former SCANA Corporation.

The charges against Benjamin are “for his role in failing to truthfully report information regarding construction of new nuclear units at the V.C. Summer nuclear plant,” Acting U.S. Attorney Rhett DeHart said in a press release.

Benjamin’s alleged cover-up of billions of dollars in losses at Westinghouse’s troubled nuclear plants in South Carolina and Georgia were part of a series of events leading to the company’s bankruptcy in March 2017, according to the indictment.

“The defendant’s misrepresentations and omissions, as well as the associated cover-up, resulted in billions of dollars in losses to (SCANA), ratepayers and investors,” the indictment said.

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Go there and get mad. More next week.

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Why Do Nuclear Power Plants Cost So Much – Because they are freakin BIG

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People are always asking why Nuclear Power Plants cost so much. They want to blame regulation, or safety measures. Maybe even because of unnecessary cost over runs. Mainly they do this because “They want to build more NUCLEAR Power Plants”. But the fact of the matter is you can’t build them cheaper and in fact given the costs of the 2 Major Nuclear catastrophes, maybe you need to build them more expensive. The simple fact, is that a new Coal Fired Plant can cost 2 billion dollars and kill the atmosphere while a Uranium Fired Plant could cost 4 billion dollars and kill us.

Anyway here is some discussion of that:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plants-so-expensive-safetys-only-part-of-the-story/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

The price is not right —

Why are nuclear plants so expensive? Safety’s only part of the story

A look at the history of nuclear power in the US, and why plant costs have soared.

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Should any discussion of nuclear power go on for long enough, it becomes inevitable that someone will rant that the only reason it has become unaffordable is a proliferation of safety regulations. The argument is rarely (if ever) fleshed out—no specific regulation is ever identified as problematic, and there seems to be no consideration given to the fact that we might have learned something at, say, Fukushima that might merit addressing through regulations.

Further Reading

Remediating Fukushima—“When everything goes to hell, you go back to basics”

But there’s now a paper out that provides some empirical evidence that safety changes have contributed to the cost of building new nuclear reactors. But the study also makes clear that they’re only one of a number of factors, accounting for only a third of the soaring costs. The study also finds that, contrary to what those in the industry seem to expect, focusing on standardized designs doesn’t really help matters, as costs continued to grow as more of a given reactor design was built.

More of the same

The analysis, done by a team of researchers at MIT, is remarkably comprehensive. For many nuclear plants, they have detailed construction records, broken out by which building different materials and labor went to, and how much each of them cost. There’s also a detailed record of safety regulations and when they were instituted relative to construction. Finally, they’ve also brought in the patent applications filed by the companies who designed the reactors. The documents describe the motivations for design changes and the problems those changes were intended to solve.

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Go there and read. Sorry I was late. More next week.

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What Could Go Wrong With A Russian Nuke – That’s what Lithuanian thought

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After Chernobyl who would trust the Russians to build a Nuclear Power Plant? Nobody that’s who. Except the blind, the feeble, the retarded, the old and Belarus. I need to say no more. This is a very bad idea.

https://news.yahoo.com/belarus-cranks-1st-nuclear-plant-122609420.html

Belarus cranks up 1st nuclear plant; Lithuania is fearful

Associated Press

MOSCOW (AP) — Belarus’ first nuclear power plant began operating Tuesday, a project that has spooked its neighbor Lithuania, which immediately cut off importing electricity from Belarus at the news.

The Russian-built Astravyets nuclear power plant, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, has been connected to Belarus’ power grid and has started producing electricity, according to Belarusian electricity operator Belenergo.

Lithuanian authorities long have opposed the plant’s construction, arguing that the project has been plagued by accidents, stolen materials and the mistreatment of workers. In line with the country’s law banning electricity imports from Belarus once the plant starts, Lithuania’s Litgrid power operator cut the inflow of electricity from Belarus upon receiving data that the Astravyets nuclear reactor had started producing energy.

Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom, which built the plant, has rejected the Lithuanian complaints, saying the plant’s design conforms to the highest international standards as confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. watchdog.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Since Humanity Is Doomed – Let’s talk about a symptom of that, Chernobyl

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Chernobyl symbolized the beginning of the end for me. Man had shown his weakness against forces that he unleashed on the Earth. If that was true then it was only a matter of time before the jinny or jin coalesced and demanded his due. The sum of which men could not produce. So the sword would fall on all our necks. But every once in awhile there is cause for hope.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/8-facts-about-the-animals-of-chernobyl?utm_source=pocket-newtab

8 Facts About the Animals of Chernobyl

Researchers thought the site of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster was unable to support life. But a bunch of wolves, deer, wild boars, bears, and foxes disagree.

Mental Floss

  • Claudia Dimuro

Three decades after the Chernobyl disaster—the world’s worst nuclear accident—signs of life are returning to the exclusion zone. Wild animals in Chernobyl are flourishing within the contaminated region; puppies roaming the area are capturing the hearts of thousands. Tourists who have watched the critically acclaimed HBO series Chernobyl are taking selfies with the ruins. Once thought to be forever uninhabitable, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has become a haven for flora and fauna that prove that life, as they say in Jurassic Park, finds a way.

1. The Animals of Chernobyl Survived Against All Odds

The effects of the radioactive explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986 devastated the environment. Around the plant and in the nearby city of Pripyat in Ukraine, the Chernobyl disaster’s radiation caused the leaves of thousands of trees to turn a rust color, giving a new name to the surrounding woods—the Red Forest. Workers eventually bulldozed and buried the radioactive trees. Squads of Soviet conscripts also were ordered to shoot any stray animals within the 1000-square-mile Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Though experts today believe parts of the zone will remain unsafe for humans for another 20,000 years, numerous animal and plant species not only survived, but thrived.

2. Bears and Wolves Outnumber Humans Around the Chernobyl Disaster Site

While humans are strictly prohibited from living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, many other species have settled there. Brown bears, wolves, lynx, bison, deer, moose, beavers, foxes, badgers, wild boar, raccoon dogs, and more than 200 species of birds have formed their own ecosystem within the Chernobyl disaster area. Along with the larger animals, a variety of amphibians, fish, worms, and bacteria makes the unpopulated environment their home.

THE PEOPLE have moved back too.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/moving_to_Chernobyl?utm_source=digg

The people who moved to Chernobyl

By Zhanna Bezpiatchuk

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 left a ring of ghost villages as residents fled, fearing radiation poisoning.

But now people are choosing to live in the crumbling houses on the edge of the exclusion zone.

On a warm summer’s evening, Maryna Kovalenko is playing football with her two teenage daughters in their backyard.

Iryna and Olena laugh as the family dog attempts to wrestle away the ball, scattering the startled chickens.

But out beyond the family’s back fence, all is silent and still.

Numerous houses, a shop and a library stand vacant in the village of Steshchyna, northern Ukraine. Only the forest is gaining ground as creeping plants explore the cracks in this abandoned village.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Michael Sellenberger Is A Lying Fool – He is a huge supporter of Nuclear Power

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As one of the commenters on Peak Oil said, “yah and smoking cures cancer”. Or as another said. ” a deniers denier, whose paying him”? His editorial is so wrong in so many ways. Yes, we ARE causing the next big extinction by habitat destruction and this pandemic is a perfect result of that habitat destruction and it’s results. Global warming IS the biggest crisis facing humans. Its true – not the biggest crisis facing the Earth cause after we are gone and all the smoke gets reabsorbed the Earth will be just fine. This guy is raising money by spreading feel good skepticism (and that’s all it is) and making himself famous by telling lies.

https://environmentalprogress.org/who-we-are

On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare

The author in Maranhão, Brazil, 1995

The author in Maranhão, Brazil, 1995

On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.

I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.

But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.

Here are some facts few people know:

  • Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”

  • The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”

  • Climate change is not making natural disasters worse

  • Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003

  • The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska

  • The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California

  • Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s

  • Netherlands became rich not poor while adapting to life below sea level

  • We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter

  • Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change

  • Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels

  • Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture

 

 

 

 

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I Never Believed In Godzilla – You know radioactive monsters

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Chernobyl and Fukushima released a lot of radiation. People died from the severe radiation released just after the accident, but “mild” consistent radiation is not dangerous to animals though it may have mild effects on adults and bigger effects on children. But the idea that a major radiation release would create one eyed giant humans or fire breathing dragons like wadzzilla is really remote. The fear of radiation has done some pretty amazing things for the environment, however.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/8-facts-about-the-animals-of-chernobyl?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Pocket worthy Stories to fuel your mind.

8 Facts About the Animals of Chernobyl

Researchers thought the site of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster was unable to support life. But a bunch of wolves, deer, wild boars, bears, and foxes disagree.

Mental Floss

  • Claudia Dimuro

Three decades after the Chernobyl disaster—the world’s worst nuclear accident—signs of life are returning to the exclusion zone. Wild animals in Chernobyl are flourishing within the contaminated region; puppies roaming the area are capturing the hearts of thousands. Tourists who have watched the critically acclaimed HBO series Chernobyl are taking selfies with the ruins. Once thought to be forever uninhabitable, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has become a haven for flora and fauna that prove that life, as they say in Jurassic Park, finds a way.

1. The Animals of Chernobyl Survived Against All Odds

The effects of the radioactive explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986 devastated the environment. Around the plant and in the nearby city of Pripyat in Ukraine, the Chernobyl disaster’s radiation caused the leaves of thousands of trees to turn a rust color, giving a new name to the surrounding woods—the Red Forest. Workers eventually bulldozed and buried the radioactive trees. Squads of Soviet conscripts also were ordered to shoot any stray animals within the 1000-square-mile Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Though experts today believe parts of the zone will remain unsafe for humans for another 20,000 years, numerous animal and plant species not only survived, but thrived.

2. Bears and Wolves Outnumber Humans Around the Chernobyl Disaster Site

While humans are strictly prohibited from living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, many other species have settled there. Brown bears, wolves, lynx, bison, deer, moose, beavers, foxes, badgers, wild boar, raccoon dogs, and more than 200 species of birds have formed their own ecosystem within the Chernobyl disaster area. Along with the larger animals, a variety of amphibians, fish, worms, and bacteria makes the unpopulated environment their home.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Nuclear Power Is The Forever Curse – Now that we have created it, it will never go away.

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This was the original problem for/with Nuclear Power. It wasn’t the cost. It wasn’t the Carbon. It wasn’t about the size of the solution vs. the size of the problem. It wasn’t even the danger. It was the DURATION. This will be with humans forever. Maybe towards the end of our time here on Earth we can salvage some plutonium and uranium for constructive uses but that is forever too.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-13/chernobyl-fires-crews-battle-contain-blaze-nuclear-power-plant/12144956?utm_source=digg

Radiation levels rise as fires burn near Chernobyl’s former nuclear power plant

Posted

A photo taken from the roof of Chernobyl’s old nuclear power plant has revealed how close the bushfires raging through Ukraine’s forests are from the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster.

Key points:

  • Crews are working to contain the forest fires burning through the territory surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
  • Radiation levels near the fires have been elevated, with the blazes producing swirling smoke
  • Winds are blowing smoke towards Kiev though authorities say radiation levels in the city remain normal

Firefighters are working to control the blazes burning through the irradiated forests in the territory surrounding the former nuclear plant.

Radiation levels near the wildfires have risen, and the blazes have produced swirling smoke which is being blown towards neighbouring regions.

Winds had blown the smoke towards rural areas of Russia and nearby Belarus, but they shifted in the direction of Ukrainian capital Kiev over the weekend.

Authorities in Kiev, which has a population of about 3 million people, say radiation levels in the city remain normal.

Its citizens are already in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The winds are more of a significant headache for the site of Chernobyl’s closed nuclear power plant. Strong gusts could spread the fires towards what is left of the facility as well as the abandoned equipment used to clean up the disaster.

“At the moment we cannot say the fire is contained,” acting head of the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management Kateryna Pavlova said.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Alternative Energy Will Never Work – They said

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The wind doesn’t blow all the time.

The sun only shines during the day.

Geothermal can’t be done everywhere.

Heat Pumps only work in certain temperature ranges.

There will never be enough storage.

Storage will be too expensive.

You can’t power an industrial society like this.

Then there is the big LIE, Nuclear Power is carbon free.

So much CARBON goes into a Nuclear Power Plant the it would never be carbon free…Not in a hundred years.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032118303897?amp=1

The feasibility of 100% renewable electricity systems: A response to critics?

BenEllistonc

Highlights

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Large-scale electricity systems based on 100% renewable energy can meet the key requirements of reliability, security and affordability.

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This is even true where the vast majority of generation comes from variable renewables such as wind and solar PV.

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Thus the principal myths of critics of 100% renewable electricity are refuted.

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Arguments that the transition to 100% renewable electricity will necessarily take as long or longer than historical energy transitions are also refuted.

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The principal barriers to 100% renewable electricity are neither technological nor economic, but instead are primarily political, institutional and cultural.

There is this as well:

100% renewable electricity is viable  

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Go there and read. One is a book. So you may have to check it out of the library. More next week.

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