Environmental coalition attorney Diane CurranAn environmental coalition of nearly three dozen groups, including Beyond Nuclear, has submitted comments on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) “Nuclear Waste Confidence” Draft Generic Environmen…
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Street theater performers, activist supporters, and members of the news media in front of DOE HQ on Dec. 11, 2009 protesting nuclear loan guarantees in solidarity with an International Climate Day of ActionAs the Vogtle 3 & 4 new reactor constr…
Continue readingMark Cooper of Vermont Law SchoolOn Thurs., Dec. 19th at 11 AM Eastern, Diane Curran and Mark Cooper (photo, left), attorney and expert witness, respectively, representing a coalition of dozens of environmental groups, including Beyond Nuclear, will …
Continue readingvia Al Jazeera / December 16, 2013 / Fifty-one crew members of the USS Ronald Reagan say they are suffering from a variety of cancers as a direct result of their involvement in Operation Tomodachi, a U.S. rescue mission in Fukushima after the nuclear disaster in March 2011. The affected sailors are suing Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), alleging that the utility mishandled the crisis and did not adequately warn … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Voice of Russia / December 17, 2013 / Japan has presented a model of unmanned aircraft that will monitor radiation background around the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japanese media report. The round-shape six-engine crash-proof drone was designed in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It has an in-built camera and several radiation meters and can perform autonomous flights. The aircraft is currently undergoing tests. If … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Yomiuri Shimbun / December 17, 2013 / It is imperative to speed up efforts to contain contaminated water at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. A government panel on measures to dispose of contaminated water at the crippled nuclear complex has compiled a set of additional steps aimed at reducing radioactive water collecting there and preventing the water from leaking into the environment. The source … Continue reading →
Continue readingVirginia Uranium, the company hoping to mine the Coles Hill site in Virginia, has suspended plans for the project. Despite investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in junkets to France and Canada for Virginia legislators and other lobbying efforts, t…
Continue readingvia Phys.org / December 15, 2013 / Japan is incapable of safely decommissioning the devastated Fukushima nuclear plant alone and must stitch together an international team for the massive undertaking, experts say, but has made only halting progress in that direction. Unlike the U.S. and some European countries, Japan has never decommissioned a full-fledged reactor. Now it must do so at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. Three of its six reactors … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Asahi Shimbun / December 15, 2013 / Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara (pictured below) and reconstruction minister Takumi Nemoto on Dec. 14 asked the Fukushima governor and mayors of three towns in the prefecture to accept facilities to temporarily store soil and other materials contaminated with radioactive substances. The government hopes to buy a total of 19 square kilometers of land in Futaba, Okuma and Naraha for the construction of … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Asahi Shimbun / December 2014 / Fire engines were used in a desperate, and ultimately futile, attempt to pump water to cool overheating reactors during the early phase of the 2011 Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant disaster, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said. According to a Dec. 13 report by the operator of the crippled facility, water was pumped in sufficient quantity to avert core meltdowns in the No. … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Asahi Shimbun / December 13, 2013 / A record 1.8 million becquerels of beta-ray sources per liter of water were detected at a monitoring well at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Dec. 13. The reading concerns strontium and other beta-ray sources. The water was sampled at a monitoring well in an area close to the sea near the No. 2 … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Presna Latina / December 13, 2013 / Tokyo Electric Power Company admitted errors in the security system of Fukushima Nuclear Plant, destroyed by an earthquake and later a Tsunami in March 2011, reported NHK channel. In the continuation of public reports in this regard, requested by the government, spokesmen of the company noted that the errors in the cooling system and water injection prompted the meltdown of the number … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Reuters / December 13, 2013 / Japanese labor regulators have sanctioned a construction firm involved in the decommissioning of the Fukushima nuclear power plant for improperly employing workers to repair another nuclear plant, also damaged by the 2011 earthquake. ABL Co Ltd, based in Okuma, where the Fukushima plant is located, managed at least eight workers who had been supplied illegally by several layers of subcontractors for inspection and … Continue reading →
Continue readingEnvironmental coalition members from the Crabshell Alliance, Sierra Club Nuclear-Free Campaign, NIRS, PSR, NEIS, and Public Citizen “just say NO!” at the NRC HQ nuke waste con game public comment meeting on 11/14 in Rockville, MD. Photo cre…
Continue readingRalph NaderOn Dec. 12th, Beyond Nuclear’s Kevin Kamps joined with Ralph Nader (photo, left) in an hour-long presentation to the Climate Reality Check Coalition on why nuclear power is a false solution to the climate crisis.
As described in the event an…
via Russia Today / December 11, 2013 / Tokyo is looking to invest 100 billion yen ($970 million) for storing more than 130,000 tons of contaminated soil dug out near the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, according to local media. No nearby town has offered its land for the plan, though. The Japanese government wants to buy some 3 to 5 square kilometers (1.2 to 2 square miles) of land … Continue reading →
Continue readingBeyond Nuclear is pleased to be associated with Beyond Business as Usual (BBAU), a coalition of environmental groups opposed to dirty energy, such as fossil fuels and nuclear power, and advocates for clean energy (efficiency and renewables). Beyond…
Continue readingvia Fairewinds.org / December 11, 2013 / At Fairewinds we get numerous questions about Fukushima Daiichi and nuclear power in general. This is the first in a a series of short videos designed to answer the questions that come in from you, our supporters. From recently released FOIA (freedom of information act) documents about the condition of Fukushima Daiichi in 2011 it’s clear from the documents that the NRC believed … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia ex-SKF / December 10, 2013 / What’s more pressing at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant is not measuring radiation levels around the SGTS pipe where 25 sieverts/hour radiation source may be inside (to be sure, again, this 25 sieverts/hour was NOT measured but derived by calculation), nor removing the fuel assemblies from the Spent Fuel Pool on the top floor of Reactor 4 (again, not individual “fuel rods” that … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia RT.com / Dcember 11, 2013 / Over two years after an earthquake and tsunami devastated areas in and around the Japanese city of Fukushima, many residents have been left to live in impromptu residential camps with no hope of returning to their previous ways of life. The March 2011 tsunami forced hundreds of thousands in the Fukushima area to flee at a moment’s notice. RT’s Aleksey Yaroshevsky reports that … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia GlobalPost / December 10, 2013 / Two Japanese ministers will visit Fukushima on Saturday to seek consent from local authorities for the construction of facilities to store radioactive and other waste created by decontamination work around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The Environment Ministry on Monday announced the planned visit of its head Nobuteru Ishihara and Reconstruction Minister Takumi Nemoto, who will meet with Fukushima Gov. Yuhei Sato … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Yahoo!7 / December 9, 2013 / If there was any question about the deadly nature of the Fukushima nuclear plant’s meltdown three years ago, it is pretty clear now. The levels of radiation in the area have set a new record for outdoor exposure, Japanese media reported. […] n two areas, the tests found levels at 25 Sieverts (Sv) per hour and about 15 Sieverts per hour, the Tokyo … Continue reading →
Continue readingBy Matthew Winkler and Yuriy Humber / Bloomberg / December 10, 2013 / The global atomic power industry needs to share cross-border information to prevent nuclear accidents, replicating the transparency of international air-traffic control, said the head of the investigation into Japan’s Fukushima disaster. Nuclear plant operators and regulators need an international common language and standard for investigating and preventing disasters, Kiyoshi Kurokawa, who headed the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia WBUR.org / December 6, 2013 / Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency are praising Japan for making progress to stabilize the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, which was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami nearly three years ago. This week, the IAEA inspectors wrapped up a 10-day inspection of the plant, where the decommissioning process started a few weeks ago. Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson gets the latest from … Continue reading →
Continue readingEnvironmental coalition members from the Crabshell Alliance, Sierra Club Nuclear-Free Campaign, NIRS, PSR, NEIS, and Public Citizen “just say NO!” at the NRC HQ nuke waste con game public comment meeting on 11/14 in Rockville, MD. Photo credit …
Continue readingby Charlie Smith / via Straight.com / December 4, 2013 / A study by several researchers, including Health Canada monitoring specialist Ian Hoffman, reveals a sharp spike in radiation over southwest B.C. on March 20, 2011. That was nine days after a devastating earthquake hit Japan, triggering a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima power plant. Hoffman and the other researchers (Environment Canada’s Alain Malo, Jean-Philippe Gauthier, and Gilles Mercier, and … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia The Economic Times / December 5, 2013 / Japan’s ruling party could set up a British-style agency to shut down the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, taking control of a project now managed by the station’s embattled operator, a senior party policymaker said on Thursday. A huge earthquake and tsunami in March 2011 triggered three meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station, the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1986, … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Japan Times / December 3, 2013 / Incumbents have suffered one defeat after another in city mayoral elections in Fukushima Prefecture — where more than 140,000 residents remain evacuees some two years and nine months after the meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. The losing streak that happened this year in the cities of Koriyama, Iwaki, Fukushima and Nihonmatsu reflects local voters’ frustration over the lagging … Continue reading →
Continue reading“We don’t do nuclear energy” was the categorical pronouncement made this week by the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim. The World Bank says it will not fund nuclear power instead giving development money to sustainable ene…
Continue readingBeyond Nuclear is headquartered, appropriately, in the nuclear-free city of Takoma Park. On December 14th, the City of Takoma Park will celebrate 30 years as a nuclear-free zone. We encourage all those within reach of Takoma Park to join us for the eve…
Continue readingvia Mainichi.jp / December 3, 2013 / The operator of the disaster-hit Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant said on Dec. 2 that it has detected radioactive materials that topped 36,000 times the permissible level in underground water extracted in the area. According to plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), strontium-90 and other radioactive substances that emit beta rays were detected at a level of 1.1 million becquerels per … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Associated Press / December 3, 2013 / A government panel proposed additional measures to lessen the radioactive water crisis at Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant, saying Tuesday that current plans are not enough to prevent the risk of a disaster. Officials on the Industry Ministry’s contaminated water panel also said that the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant could run out of storage space for contaminated water within two years if current … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Voice of Russia / December 2, 2013 / A trouble-prone system used to decontaminate radioactive water at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant was switched off Sunday because of a chemical leak, the plant’s operator said. Hydrochloric acid, used to neutralise alkaline water being decontaminated, was found seeping from a pipe joint, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) said in a statement. The joint was wrapped in a vinyl bag … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia The Real News Network / December 1, 2013 / Gundersen: Agencies overseeing cleanup like the IAEA are biased towards defending and promoting nuclear power
Continue readingby Washington’s Blog / December 1, 2013 / “[The Odds of] Longer Term Chronic Effects, Cancer Or Genetic Effects … Cannot Be Said To Be Zero” It is very difficult to obtain accurate information on the dangers from Fukushima radiation to residents of the West Coast of North America and Hawaii. On the one hand, there is fear-mongering and “we’re all going to die” type hysteria. On the one hand, … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Voice of Russia / November 30, 2013 / Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) announced its intention to build two advanced coal-fired power plants in Fukushima. Company officials claim that the new power plants will help the region recover after the nuclear disaster. TEPCO promises that the new construction project will help fight unemployment by creating two thousand jobs and a source of cheap energy. The intended capacity of the … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia ABC.net.au / November 29, 2013 / Typhoons that hit Japan each year are contributing to the spread of radioactive material from the Fukushima nuclear disaster into the country’s waterways, researchers say. A joint study by France’s Climate and Environmental Science laboratory (LSCE) and Tsukuba University in Japan shows contaminated soil gets washed away by the high winds and rain and deposited in streams and rivers. “There is a definite … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Panorama.am / November 28, 2013 / After the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, little attention was paid to how the radiation leaks can affect the health of children who live in the US. Joseph Mangano, epidemiologist and Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project research group, speaks with the Voice of Russia about the study that showed that kids born after 2010 have some … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Washington’s Blog / November 27, 2013 / 2 weeks after the Fukushima accident, we reported that the government responded to the nuclear accident by trying to raise acceptable radiation levels and pretending that radiation is good for us. We noted earlier this month: Japan will likely pass a new anti-whistleblowing law in an attempt to silence criticism of Tepco and the government: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government is … Continue reading →
Continue readingby Simon Tisdall / via The Guardian / November 19, 2013 / The catastrophic triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March 2011 was “a warning to the world” about the hazards of nuclear power and contained lessons for the British government as it plans a new generation of nuclear power stations, the man with overall responsibility for the operation in Japan has told the Guardian. Speaking at … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Reuters / November 28, 2013 / Japan is considering more than $100 million in extra government spending to handle contaminated water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, boosting the budget allocation by at least a fifth, government officials familiar with the matter said. The additional budget allocation of between 10 billion and 15 billion yen aims to accelerate work on containing leaks and decontaminating the water, said the officials, … Continue reading →
Continue readingby Jay T. Cullen / TimesColonist.com / November 21, 2013 / Since the Fukushima Daiichi disaster on March 11, 2011, there are many reports of the potential impact of radioactivity from Fukushima causing harm to sea life and people on the West Coast of North America. But radioactivity from Japan poses no danger and little risk to us on the West Coast. A commonly used unit to measure radioactivity is … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Russia Today / Japan’s lower house has passed a heavy-handed state secrets act despite fears that it will have severe repercussions for state freedoms. Officials will now face a maximum punishment of ten years in prison if they are found to have leaked to the press. Japan’s Diet (parliament) passed the bill, which is aimed at expanding the definition of a state secret and place increasing penalties upon anyone … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia The Japan News / November 26, 2013 / The steering committee of the government-backed Nuclear Damage Liability Facilitation Fund requested Monday that costs for dealing with the crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant be shared by the state, the company and financial institutions. “It would be difficult for TEPCO to deal with the crisis and cover related costs singlehandedly,” the fund said in … Continue reading →
Continue readingA message from Debra Stoleroff of Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance (VYDA):
After more than 40 years, our efforts have paid off and the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is closing in 2014 and will be decommissioned. There are many…
Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar, Institute for Policy StudiesRobert Alvarez (photo, left), Senior Scholar at Institute for Policy Studies, has prepared a report entitled “The West Lake Landfill: A Radioactive Legacy of the Nuclear Arms Race.”
In 1973, t…
via Energy Business Review / Tokyo Electric Power Company has transported 22 fuel assemblies from the Unit 4 of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Loaded into a cask (pictured), the fuel assemblies were transferred from the crippled reactor building to the nearby common pool building at the power plant for safe storage. The extraction of fuel from the Unit 4 spent fuel pool will pause shortly for … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Energy Business Review / Tokyo Electric Power Company has transported 22 fuel assemblies from the Unit 4 of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Loaded into a cask (pictured), the fuel assemblies were transferred from the crippled reactor building to the nearby common pool building at the power plant for safe storage. The extraction of fuel from the Unit 4 spent fuel pool will pause shortly for … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Russia Today / Thousands of people protested in Tokyo against a bill that would see whistle-blowing civil servants jailed for up to 10 years. Activists claim the law would help the government to cover up scandals, and damage the country’s constitution and democracy. A 3,000-seat outdoor theater in a park in downtown Tokyo, near the parliament, was not enough to contain everyone who came on Thursday to denounce government … Continue reading →
Continue readingvia Russia Today / Thousands of people protested in Tokyo against a bill that would see whistle-blowing civil servants jailed for up to 10 years. Activists claim the law would help the government to cover up scandals, and damage the country’s constitution and democracy. A 3,000-seat outdoor theater in a park in downtown Tokyo, near the parliament, was not enough to contain everyone who came on Thursday to denounce government … Continue reading →
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