20 June 16

DISASTER LOOMS!

NUCLEAR WASTE LEAKING AT ‘AMERICAN FUKUSHIMA’ IN NORTHWEST

The Hanford Nuclear Reservation sits on the plains of eastern Washington, where the state meets Oregon and Idaho. This is open country through which cars pass quickly on the way to the Pacific coast or, conversely, deeper into the heartland. The site is nearly 600 square miles in area and has been largely closed to the public for the past 70 years. Late last year, though, it became part of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, which will allow visitors to tour B Reactor, where plutonium for one of the two atomic weapons dropped on Japan in World War II was produced.

This was a hopeful turn for a place that, for four decades, stocked the American nuclear arsenal. A total of nine reactors operated at Hanford, and though they are now decommissioned, the reactors have left behind 56 million gallons of radioactive waste. That a place so tainted with radioactive material could become parkland was a positive sign.

Not quite, it seems, with recent reports indicating new breaches in the tanks holding the nuclear waste. Workers on the site have been sickened too, suggesting that the rush to designate Hanford as a park may have been premature.

The 177 underground tanks were never a permanent solution, and the government has hired private contractors to build a plant that will solidify the waste and prepare it for permanent safe storage. The project will cost an astonishing $110 billion, according to estimates, making it what many believe to be the most expensive, and extensive, environmental remediation project in the world. Completion is about five decades away.

The question remains disturbingly open. Of the 28 newer double-shelled tanks, AY-102 was already known to be leaking toxic sludge into the soil. Now a second double-shelled tank, AY-101, is believed to be leaking as well, according to a report by Seattle news station KING 5. A contractor’s memo obtained by the station acknowledges “the possibility that the material is from tank waste that has escaped from the primary shell of the double-shell tank.” That material likely includes radioactive isotopes like cesium-137 and strontium-90, though nobody really knows the exact composition of the sludge in each tank. But everyone is certain that their escape bodes poorly for the thousands who live and work in the Tri-Cities area of Washington state.

Those worries were further compounded late last week when 11 workers at Hanford became ill due to vapors emanating from AY-102, the leaking double-shelled tank.

The ill workers and revelations about the second leaking tank are likely to dampen enthusiasm about Hanford’s unlikely return to nature. In the wake of the most recent revelations, a nuclear-energy historian warned on the liberal site CounterPunch that “at Hanford we have the threat of a radiological explosion or terrorist act that could release volumes more radiation than was released by Fukushima…and spread radiation across the West Coast and mountain west.”

This is an unwelcome development for one of the nation’s newest national parks. Maybe the federal government was cavalier in this designation: It’s hard to enjoy nature when the possibility of man-made disaster looms.

From NemesisMaturity:

The University of Miami has found that the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant, located just South of Miami, has caused levels of tritium, a radioactive isotope produced by nuclear reactors, in Biscayne Bay to spike to 200-times higher than normal levels. 

This would confirm suspicions that Turkey Point’s aging canals are leaking into the nearby national park. 

The site’s cooling canals, which are the part of the facility that appears to be leaking the radiation, are currently permitted to operate at 104 degrees, the hottest in the nation.
“This is one of several things we were very worried about,” South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard, who is also a biological sciences professor at Florida International University, told the Miami New Times. 

“You would have to work hard to find a worse place to put a nuclear plant, right between two national parks and subject to hurricanes and storm surge.”
Samples of the water at various depths and sites around the power plant showed elevated levels of salt, ammonia, phosphorous and tritium.
“We now know exactly where the pollution is coming from, and we have a tracer that shows it is in the national park,” said Laura Reynolds, an environmental consultant who is working with the Tropical Audubon Society and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which intended to file the lawsuit. 

“We are worried about the marine life there and the future of Biscayne Bay.”
While all of this should sound alarms, nobody especially people who could do something about seems to care

Turkey Point Nuclear Plant Is Pumping Polluted Water Into Biscayne Bay

As Florida Power & Light finalized plans to expand its nuclear reactors at Turkey Point three years ago, critics were aghast. The nuclear plant already stands on environmentally fragile land, and upping the power production would seriously threaten the ecosystem, they argued.

Turns out they may have been right. This morning, the county released the results of a study into whether Turkey Point has been leaking dangerous wastewater into Biscayne Bay. County water monitors found more than 200 times the normal levels of tritium, a radioactive isotope linked to nuclear power production, in the bay water, a finding environmentalists say justifies their concerns.

“This is one of several things we were very worried about,” says South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard, who is also a biological sciences professor at Florida International University. “You would have to work hard to find a worse place to put a nuclear plant, right between two national parks and subject to hurricanes and storm surge.”

County commissioners and other local politicians are scrambling this morning to get answers about how threatened Biscayne Bay is by the leakage. 

“I was shocked to read this,” says Commissioner Xavier Suarez, who in a letter demanded answers from FPL “by the end of the day.” County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, meanwhile, says the county has “aggressively enforced its regulations” and would demand that the state force FPL to fix the problem.

Adds State Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez: “For years our state regulators have failed to take seriously the threat to our public safety, to our drinking water and to our environment posed by FP&L’s actions at Turkey Point. Evidence revealed this week of radioactive material in Biscayne Bay is the last straw and I join those calling on the US EPA to step in and do what our state regulators have so far refused to do – protect the public.”

At the heart of the troubling issue revealed in the new report is a system of canals surrounding the nuclear plant in southeast Miami-Dade. Nuclear cores must be constantly cooled to avoid meltdowns. The canals circulate water through the plant to leach heat off the reactors.

As FPL prepared to expand the plant’s reactors in 2013, critics such as Stoddard warned that relying on the canals was a mistake. For one thing, environmentalists argued, the hot, salty canal water would inevitably leak back into Biscayne Bay and the Everglades.

“They argued the canals were a closed system, but that’s not how water works in South Florida,” Stoddard says. 

In the two years since, environmentalists have pointed to a growing litany of concerns, including spiking heat levels in the canals and saltwater plumes exploding from the power plant into nearby groundwater systems. Stoddard says salty water has intruded as far as four miles inland through groundwater.

But FPL resisted new monitoring, Stoddard says, and deflected blame. “FPL has argued and argued and denied and denied there was any connection to their canals,” he says. “They’ve tried to prevent monitoring. They were successful until the county commission finally demanded this study.”

FPL hasn’t returned New Times‘ phone calls for comment on the study. The county’s numbers are cited in another report released today, which was conducted by University of Miami scientist Dr. David Chin, who analyzed how an influx of new water could affect the cooling canals. 

As for those elevated tritium levels, it’s not clear whether the isotope itself is dangerous to people or wildlife at that concentration; that’s one topic on which the commission will demand answers from FPL, Suarez says. 

But the hot, salty water is certainly a problem for the delicate ecosystems in Biscayne National Park and the Everglades. Stoddard — who argues the new study might point to violations of the federal Clean Water Act — says he believes only two solutions are viable: building new cooling towers to replace the canals, or shutting down the plant. 

“There’s a certain validation to critics in seeing this result in the study,” he says. “But more important, it’s now crossed the threshold of federal law here.”

Update 12 p.m.: While FPL says it needs to review the new county data on tritium levels in Biscayne Bay, the utility strongly defended its work to protect Biscayne Bay. Cruz, the FPL spokeswoman, points out the agency reached an accord with the county last October. In the agreement, FPL promises to clean up its act by pumping wastewater into a deep aquifer, among other steps. 

“We’ll continue to comply with regulatory agreement we reached with the county in October,” Cruz says. 

Cruz also emphasized that FPL has collected its own data on impacts to Biscayne Bay and has seen no indication of a larger pollution problem. 

“We’ve collected this data for many years, and this data has reviewed by independent scientists,” Cruz says. “We’re going to continue to work closely with regulatory agencies.”

Cruz also criticized Stoddard for slamming the agency over the latest report. “He’s selecting portions of the data to further his anti-FPL campaign,” she says.     SOURCE

ARE YOU COMPLETELY PREPARED? 

IT’S THE MOST IMPORTANT PREP YOU CAN DO!   

The Bible tells us that every human has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God which is  is a heart-penetrating truth. He has provided a way to cleanse us of our sins since we can never be “good enough” to cleanse ourselves. That avenue to God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness (the cleansing of our sins) is through His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ of Nazareth Who is equally God.