Nuclear Plants Leaking Radiation in Japan, California, Russia and that’s just the one’s they tell you about.

Radiation, Arbitration, Interpretation; we ain’t getting no Satisfaction.  The rhyme doesn’t exactly jive, nor does the information about nuclear energy and the amount of radiation being released.

While Japan has stopped operating ALL 50 of it’s nuclear reactors, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a license for the construction of two new nuclear reactors at Georgia’s Power Plant Vogtle.  The NRC voted 4-1 to allow Atlanta-based Southern Co to build and operate two new nuclear power reactors at its existing Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia. The units will cost Southern and partners about $14 billion and enter service as soon as 2016 and 2017.

Karen Harbert, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, issued the following statement.

The approval of two new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle represents an enormous milestone in the effort to provide safe, reliable, and clean electricity to consumers. This important step allows full construction to begin on the first new reactors built in over 30 years and is the result of hard work by Southern Company and its partners, and the NRC. This first-ever approval of a reactor under this new licensing regime demonstrates the process works and goes a long way in reducing the risk for other new nuclear reactors to follow.

REGIME?  We have a freaking regime?

Are you kidding me?  Obama has trouble signing gas, oil, and coal licensing, but can sign up for nuclear energy?

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko cast the lone dissenting vote on plans to build and operate the two new nuclear power reactors, citing safety concerns stemming from Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, and saying “I cannot support issuing this license as if Fukushima never happened”. There’s a vote of confidence for you, when even the chairman knows this is a bad idea.

Obama has promised $8 BILLION in loans.  The new plant will use AP1000 reactors built by Westinghouse Electric, a standardized design approved by the NRC in December that will be the foundation for several other proposed nuclear plants. Westinghouse is majority owned by Japanese multinational Toshiba Corp.

Imagine that, Toshiba isn’t building any reactors in Japan, so they can build them for America.  We suppose the only good news is that they are not using the jobs Czar from GE  and its Mark I design which exploded at Fukushima.  Nuclear power might create jobs but it can kill hundreds, if not millions of people when things go wrong, and wrong they sometimes do.  From ABC NEWS-

Guess what? The links don’t work. How about that? A unit at UNLV is now also offline after being outed by high winds. http://www.ansatunlv.com/air_monitoring.html

Operated by the Department of Energy and the Desert Research Institute, the Community Environmental Monitoring Program only covers Nevada and Utah, but it should be of interest to states downwind.  THE LINK WORKS! Canada offers a weekly report that includes a single daily dose calculated mid week from FPS monitoring stations across Canada at http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hc-ps/ed-ud/respond/nuclea/data-donnees-eng.php#ddrl_mar2011

Here’s one from Tokyo. http://securitytokyo.com/ (live link) and more can be found at the

Online Geiger Counter Nuclear Radiation Detector Map

http://www.blackcatsystems.com/RadMap/map.html (more live links)

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) had originally planned to begin accepting spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain nuclear repository, a deep geological formation 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 31, 1998.  It still isn’t open. We have to guess at where all that nuclear waste is being stored and how much of it may be leaking.  Japan keeps hosing theirs down with water and  leaking it into the ocean.

TOKYO (AP) — The government approved on Wednesday a 1 trillion yen ($12.5 billion) public bailout for the operator of Japan’s tsunami-devastated nuclear power plant and put it under temporary state control.

In exchange, Tokyo Electric Power Co. has appointed new management and pledged to cut costs while raising utility rates as it works to stabilize the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant and compensate tens of thousands of victims of the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

Chernobyl still hasn’t stopped leaking

Twenty-six years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Ukraine is launching the construction of a new protective layer to cover the section of the reactor that exploded. The disaster, caused by an explosion and fire in the nuclear power station’s main reactor, spread clouds of radiation across Europe and forced hundreds of thousands of people to be evacuated. The BBC’s David Stern says the current protective covering is leaking radiation. video http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17853134

Lastly, if you need a vote of confidence on the nuclear industry and monitoring,

To save money, EPA relies in part on trained volunteers to regularly change out air filters on theRadNet monitors and mail them to a federal lab in Alabama where the data gets a detailed analysisa few days later. Volunteers are also tasked with alerting EPA if something goes wrong with the machine.  http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-03-26-radiation-gaps_N.htm

Additional Sources-

http://ncf.uschamber.com/blog/2012/02/construction-first-new-nuclear-reactor-more-30-years-approved?utm_source=Outbrain&utm_medium=related%2Bcontent&utm_campaign=Website%2BLaunch%2B3-12

http://www.projectnoproject.com/category/project/nuclear/

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/1300-tubes-damaged-ailing-cal-reactors-16304993#.T6qK1-3UaQJ

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2011/03/28/epa-expect-more-radiation-in-rainwater/

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/09/us-usa-nuclear-nrc-idUSTRE8182J720120209

Stay tuned and have a good day, one day it will be your last.  God Bless.

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