Wednesday, October 12, 2011

COLLECTIVE SUICIDE: WAKE UP!


Arnie Gunderson's latest Fairewinds video is a big WAKE-UP call, despite its under-stated delivery.
http://www.fairewinds.com/content/are-regulators-and-nuclear-industry-applying-valuable-lessons-learned-fukushima

I'm in a super rush today so for now I will just summarize some of his main findings.

US Nuclear power plants are set up as limited liability corporations with little-to-no assets backing them so the public will have to pay majority of clean up costs from a nuclear accident.
Losses caused by nuclear accidents in the US are limited by price Anderson at approximately $10 billion

Design bases limits that are used to specify the plant’s safety structures against earthquakes, hurricanes, and the like are set by industry scientists who grossly underestimate the likelihood of severe earthquakes, storms, etc.

Nuclear power plants use a cost-benefit analysis system that grossly reduces anticipated costs of accidents.

Gunderson identifies the cost-benefit system as the Max 2 design analysis system (I may have misspelled the name of the system).

David Shannon, who developed this cost-benefit system, decried its use by the nuclear power industry. He had designed it for a dirty bomb and feels its extrapolation to nuclear plant accidents is inappropriate.

Gunderson identifies some of the cost-benefit analysis system’s limitations.

It only looks at some kinds of cancer that would be caused by a nuclear accident, not all forms.

It doesn’t look at other illnesses besides cancer caused by radiation, such as heart attacks caused by exposure to cesium.

It assumes radiation that lands on field will be plowed under, not decontaminated.

It presumes houses will be  hosed off and the water will be allowed to drain into rivers and ground water.

It includes no clean up for forests.

It plans for NO storage of radioactive material in drums  after clean up.

It presumes radiation stays in ground and doesn’t get thrown up in air by winds, thereby artificially limiting extent of human exposure.

It presumes accident lasts 2 and ½ hours ONLY. Fukushima has been 7 months.

It assumes not much fuel is damaged

It assumes wind blows in straight line

It gives plant owner option of compensation or clean up and compensation is always cheaper.

It lowballs human life at $3 million dollars.

It allows NRC to choose whether or not to make changes outlined by the cost-benefit system.

THE NRC wants RADIATION EXPLOSURE LEVELS 100 times HIGHER THAN APPROVED BY EPA

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