Sep 29, 2024: The case against restarting Three Mile Island’s Unit-1

About the book:

A novel describing life in a family compound near the Pilgrim nuclear plant during the summer after the Fukushima disaster. For five generations the extended family has spent quiet secluded summers in the shingled houses on a beautiful ocean front property. The family's reaction to the dangers of the nearby nuclear power plant, combined with what is happening in their own lives, brings up the question of selling the property.

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From the back cover:

Military leaders and historians have told the story of the atomic bomb. But the official accounts never focus on the thousands of ordinary Americans who helped make it happen. Rain of Ruin tells the story from their point of view for the first time. It follows Agnes Jenkins Flaherty, an eighteen-year-old country girl, as she takes her devout religious faith and towering sense of responsibility to wartime Washington, D.C. to work with the Manhattan Project. She quickly finds love in the city, but her budding romance is overshadowed by a growing sense of terror when she learns, from the Top Secret documents crossing her desk, that project scientists think setting off the bomb might destroy the earth. Agnes escapes that prospect, but not the heartbreaking disappointment and tragedy that follow. (Note: Rain of Ruin is based on the author’s mother’s true-life experience.)

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From the Tokyo Reporter:

The amount of radioactive cesium released after the March 11 nuclear disaster in Fukushima Prefecture is 20 times higher than reported by the plant’s operator, French scientists said, according to Japan’s NHK news service.

The French government’s nuclear research institute, IRSN, said its calculations show 27.1 thousand terabecquerels of radioactive cesium 137 leaked from the crippled Tokyo Electric Power Daiichi power plant by the middle of July. That number is about 20 times the estimate by the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, NHK said.

The French institute says leakage from the damaged nuclear facility continues to contaminate nearby waters and has called for continued testing of marine products, the Japanese broadcaster said.

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SUSQUEHANNA STEAM ELECTRIC STATION, UNITS 1 AND 2 - AUDIT OF THE LICENSEE'S MANAGEMENT OF REGULATORY COMMITMENTS (TAC NOS. ME7014 AND ME7015

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From Bellona:

The estimate of much higher levels of radioactive caesium-137 in the atmosphere comes from a worldwide network of sensors that was studied by the Norwegian Institute for Air Research in a report authored by Andreas Stohl  .

The Norwegian study says the Japanese government estimate came only from data in Japan, and that would have missed emissions blown out to sea.  Its says that Fukushima Daiichi radioactive releases equal 40 percent of those from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

A study by the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety also stated that the amount of caesium-137 that flowed into the Pacific from the coastal plant is some 30 times more than was estimated by the plant’s owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO).

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From USA Today:

As the nation explores whether to invest more in nuclear energy, the National Academy of Sciences has begun a study of  cancer risks faced by people living near nuclear facilities -- a study it admits is worrisome.

A patchwork of state and local mortality reports, inconsistent data on illnesses and pollution combined with an American population that has moved around quite a bit in the past 50 years are just some of the challenges, said John Burris, chairman of the cancer-risk study committee.

Proving scientifically whether long-term exposure to low doses of radiation around the nation's 104 nuclear facilities has meant a higher rate of cancer for those living nearby will be a daunting task, Burris said.

"If you show living near a nuclear facility increases your chances of getting cancer, there will have to be radical changes, but that is not up to the committee," Burris said at a public meeting in Tennessee this month. The study, called for by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is planned to update a 1991 National Cancer Institute study that found no danger in living near nuclear plants. President Obama has called for $36 billion in federal loan guarantees for nuclear power plant construction.

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From Nature:

The disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March released far more radiation than the Japanese government has claimed. So concludes a study¹ that combines radioactivity data from across the globe to estimate the scale and fate of emissions from the shattered plant.

The study also suggests that, contrary to government claims, pools used to store spent nuclear fuel played a significant part in the release of the long-lived environmental contaminant caesium-137, which could have been prevented by prompt action. The analysis has been posted online for open peer review by the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

Andreas Stohl, an atmospheric scientist with the Norwegian Institute for Air Research in Kjeller, who led the research, believes that the analysis is the most comprehensive effort yet to understand how much radiation was released from Fukushima Daiichi. "It's a very valuable contribution," says Lars-Erik De Geer, an atmospheric modeller with the Swedish Defense Research Agency in Stockholm, who was not involved with the study.

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CORRECTION LETTER FOR PEACH BOTTOM ATOMIC POWER STATION, UNIT 3 - SAFETY EVALUATION REGARDING SAFETY LIMIT MINIMUM CRITICAL POWER RATIO VALUE CHANGE (TAC NO. ME6391)

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From Kyodo News:

The secretariat of the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan proposed on Thursday expanding the maximum evacuation perimeter around a nuclear power plant to a 30-kilometer radius from the current 10 km in the event of a future nuclear accident.

The secretariat also proposed newly designating a 5-km radius around a nuclear plant as a zone from which people should immediately be evacuated following a plant accident.

SUSQUEHANNA STEAM ELECTRIC STATION, UNIT 1 - CORRECTION LETTER RE: TRANSMITTAL OF ACCIDENT SEQUENCE PRECURSOR ANALYSIS FOR SUSQUEHANNA STEAM ELECTRIC STATION, UNIT 1

Adams Accession No. ML11286A202