If You Love This Planet, Dr. Helen Caldicott

Arnold Gundersen with a fresh report on Fukushima

 

Arnie Gundersen

Arnie Gundersen

This week, Dr. Caldicott and Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear energy consultant with Fairewinds Associates, have another look at how the Fukushima disaster is affecting Japan, and how the U.S. nuclear industry continues its plans to build new plants in America. As background for today’s program, read the recent articles Mothers Rise Against Nuclear Power in Japan, Nuclear Russian Roulette in California: Dr. Helen Caldicott and Dan Hirsch Warn How Accident at San Onofre Would Trap Eight Million People, and Fukushima Shutdown Still At Least 40 Years Away. Be sure to visit Gundersen’s website for many articles, reports, videos and other resources about Fukushima and the hazards of nuclear power. Watch Gundersen’s October presentation on YouTube (9 minutes), Nuclear Oversight Lacking WORLDWIDE. And fully inform yourselves about nuclear energy with Dr. Caldicott’s books Nuclear Power is Not the Answer and Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do.

18 Responses to “Arnold Gundersen with a fresh report on Fukushima”

  1. Neil Says:

    Well Arnie is a good man but he is too meek and mild and as a nuclear consultant overly cautious or even deferential thinking of his professional future.
    The man is nearly retired so he could actually stick his neck out further for the sake of tens of thousands of victims of this terrible event.
    Anyone with half a brain can tell what is happening in Japan in regard of public health is grossly irresponsible if not criminal.
    Fancy drawing a 20km circle on a map and calling elsewhere safe enough.
    What we need is people with balls to get out tell it like it is and condemn the official line as genocidal BS.
    Why appease to save the face of the few in the Japanese government when it is the people who will suffer. Tell the people the truth.

  2. Harry Macey Says:

    When will they ever learn, if you play with fire - you get burned. This one generation has ruined the future for the next 10 generations. What right do we have to do this? The world should stop using any radioactive materials and work on cleaning up the mess we have created. God help us - we are doing this to ourselves.

  3. Frank B. Counts Says:

    Thanks for the great report. However, all the experts keep talking about the dangers involved in this accident - but nobody ever goes the extra mile and tells us their ideas of how to end this accident. Does anyone have any credible ideas how to stop this ugly situation?

  4. Howard T. Lewis III Says:

    Ignornce is never a successful survival technique. thank you Arnold Gunderson and Dr. Helen Caldicott.

  5. William Bibb Says:

    Thanks for the information. Nowhere else can this information be obtained.

  6. Joe Neubarth Says:

    Arnie is not taking into consideration the fact that without the boron, there was limited criticality of the corium as it flowed down from the Reactor Vessel. The fact that we were detecting substantial I-131 over a month after the melt downs is confirmation that we were seeing some limited fissioning in the corium. A little additional criticality generates a lot more heat than a reactor with boron rods still in it. In a melt down with water present, the boron is most likely carried away in solution. As the boron disappeared it was less effective in preventing fissioning. I believe both Reactor One and Reactor Three’s cores are in the ground or are very close to it.

  7. Joe Neubarth Says:

    For those who wonder how it is that the Nuclear Industry can get away with all of this corruption and coverup and endangerment of the public. It is very simple, almost all politicians can be bought and the Nuclear Industry has the money to buy them. You can call it campaign contributions or money for the home district, the fact remains that money speaks. It speaks loudly and can always buy silence.

  8. steve from virginia Says:

    Prof. estimates of decay heat are incorrect:

    unit #1 output: 460 mWe (mega watt electric).

    units #2 and 3 output: 790 mWe.

    THERMAL output of the reactors is 3x as electric generators are 1/3 efficient at thermal conversion:

    unit #1 output: 1.3 gWt (giga watt thermal).

    units #2 and 3 output: 2.0 gWt.

    A giga-watt is one BILLION watts, 5% decay heat for unit #1 would be 65 million watts (65 mWt).

    5% decay heat for the other units would be almost 100 mWt. This is the energy level within the fuel mass itself, not the output of the generator turbines.

    This ASSUMES that control blades worked as designed and that all chain reactions were halted on March 11. It is possible that reactor cores were critical during the point they melted down, Tepco lacked the instrumentation to determine whether chain reactions were underway within the cores.

    If there was chain reactions taking place the heat output of the cores would have been higher still.

    Pressure vessels are ‘pots’ made of stainless steel approximately 155mm thick. In addition to the fuel there are steam dryers, flow control nozzles, fuel support racks, and makeup piping in the amount of 150 tons or more within each reactor PV. This material is melted in addition to PV itself as well as fuel and fuel cladding.

    Fuel cladding reactions w/ steam+oxygen generates large amounts of heat much like oxy-acetylene torch.

    I also disagree with melt sequence. Tepco’s models are self-serving. It doesn’t and cannot tell where cores are or in what condition.

    Reactors were under full power when scrammed, steam circuit shut: heat output of reactors had nowhere to go (w/o condensers). It is remarkable that the reactors did not blow up on the spot!

    Suppression pools became condensers w/ steam supercriticality in PVs sending water to suppression pools. After isolation condenser/emergency cooling failed PVs likely lost all water in minutes with meltdowns taking place within an hour after water loss. Superheated melted fuel leaking into suppression pools caused steam explosions w/ hydrogen in fuel loading areas exploding at same time.

    Videos appear to be of steam/hydrogen explosions with unit 3 explosion very severe with damage to containment and ejection of (melted) fuel material into the environment.

    A problem w/ cores in ground is possibility of runaway criticality in fuel mass that cannot expand due to being in the ground. Given enough generations of chain reactions w/o fuel reconfiguration and the outcome is a powerful explosion.

    It is possible that prompt criticality caused explosion in unit 3 but in core not spent fuel pool. The multi-ton mass of fuel striking concrete floor (as neutron reflector) could have caused an explosion.

  9. Dave R Says:

    Thanks for the info, Dr. Helen & Arnie !

  10. A Green Road Says:

    What Arnie says that I agree with is that Japan is NOT taking this crisis seriously. They are NOT being honest with a lot of what is going on… But then again, the whole nuclear industry is built on scientific hot air, smoke and mirrors, in my opinion.

    Radiation meters are all upwind at Fukushima, but none are downwind.

    NO radiation meters are located on radiation ‘vent’ stacks, which puts all radiation up high in the atmosphere, where no one can measure it. Previous nuclear tests then get blamed for the high altitude radiation belts.

    No radiation is counted that is going into on site tanks, or into ocean, or into ground, as far as total released, and only 2 isotopes are being counted out of the fifty or more released into the air.

    I bet that they are NOT counting the long lived isotopes at all. There are potentially 13 of them being released that last millions or billions of years. But, not matter what happens here… Bottom line, who knows how much total radiation was and is still being released? It is all based on assumptions, and Arnie explains very well what happens when you assume something.

    There are no plans to install radiation meters anywhere downwind of Fukushima, or in the vent stacks, in the ocean, or in the groundwater..

    NASA reports that a Carrington Event WILL take down our electrical grid eventually, anywhere from 1 day to 300 years from now. No matter what happens with Fukushima, if this happens and we still have 400 plus civilian nuke plants, plus 400 military/research facilities, you can kiss all life on the planet goodbye.
    http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06may_carringtonflare/

    We need to start getting honest and telling it like it is, not making up stories for short term gain of worthless paper.

    Shut them all down, if you want a future.. PERIOD.

  11. Neil Says:

    I see you removed my comment.
    Unfortunately it seems when it comes down to it you don’t have a lot of spine either.
    Lots of time to natter in whiny despairing tones about the lamentable state of things but no useful action when its most needed.
    So now we see why things are as they are in the world.
    Those who know do nothing but observe, make nice tidy speeches and talk among themselves about their impotence.
    Have a Merry Christmas. ;)

  12. Al Persohn Says:

    Question Regarding This Broadcast

    In this broadcast you mentioned that unborn children are more sensitive to radiation than young children and that young children are more sensitive than adults. I have heard that before. You also said something that I have not heard and that is that older people are also highly sensitive to radiation. I have not heard that - can expand on that in a future broadcast or on this blog please?

    Kind Regards

  13. James Madsion Says:

    Thanks for the truthful information. It is nearly impossible to get that these days. This should make all aware of our desperate situation on this planet. There are some 700 nuclear plants around the world. Any one of these could have the same problems should there be either a natural phenomenon (earthquake, hurricane, tornado, etc.) or man created incident (EMP).

    Scientists around the world speak of the very definite possibility of a coronal mass ejection from the sun that would have a similar effect as seen in 1856. In such an event, we lose the electronic grid and all ability to cool or shut down the plants. Obviously, such a situation (700 Fukishima’s at the same time) will result in the EXTINCTION OF ALL LIFE ON THE PLANET.

    Are we INSANE? How can we allow these facilities to continue to exist? If we do not get a grip on this SOON we can all kiss our butts goodbye. WE MUST come together as intelligent beings IMMEDIATELY and shut down all nuclear use of any kind. Not doing so is saying we don’t care if our planet survives or not. How insane is that? How can we be so indoctrinated by our governments as to care less about anything so concerning.

    Thanks for all you do to wake people up. I hope it is not yet too late.

    James Madison

  14. Annamaria Says:

    Heartfelt thanks for providing this critical information for humanity.

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  16. david Says:

    i thank g.d for such a knowledgable generous man brave as well we must keep an eye on people of his caliber i have not sent any donation yet but i will try in the future which is running its coarse very quickly from the looks of it thank you mr gunderson sir

  17. Sheila Cook Says:

    And to think….the people in control of this don’t seem to give a damn just as long as they make their money.

    Where are their brains? How can they not care? It’s just too much for my po’ lil’ brain to fathom.

  18. stephen andrew persaud Says:

    so I guess that if the China Syndrome is actually taking place …then military intelligence I guess will wait until the see the first rumblings of a hydro volcanic explosion…then we (joe public) will all be distracted by either the dollar or euro (perhaps both) being collapsed…then at all most the same time there will be some kind of a False Flag cyber attack on utlities and communications systems in order to confuse us and make it difficult for individuals to get news as well as organise in order to save themselves……then comes martial law….yada yada yada…..

    oh well………it just proves the old adage….”what goes up …..really must come down”