[Peace-discuss] GE-designed reactors in trouble in Japan have 23 'sisters' in US - including Clinton IL

[C. G. Estabrook]

Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants
Monday 14 March 2011
by: Greg Palast

I need to speak to you, not as a reporter, but in my former capacity as lead 
investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering 
investigations.

I don't know the law in Japan, so I can't tell you if Tokyo Electric Power Co 
(TEPCO) can plead insanity to the homicides about to happen.

But what will Obama plead? The administration, just months ago, asked Congress 
to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built 
and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas - by TEPCO and local partners. As if the 
Gulf hasn't suffered enough. Here are the facts about TEPCO and the industry you 
haven't heard on CNN:

The failure of emergency systems at Japan's nuclear plants comes as no surprise 
to those of us who have worked in the field.

Nuclear plants the world over must be certified for what is called "SQ" or 
"Seismic Qualification." That is, the owners swear that all components are 
designed for the maximum conceivable shaking event, be it from an earthquake or 
an exploding Christmas card from al-Qaeda.

The most inexpensive way to meet your SQ is to lie. The industry does it all the 
time. The government team I worked with caught them once, in 1988, at the 
Shoreham plant in New York. Correcting the SQ problem at Shoreham would have 
cost a cool billion, so engineers were told to change the tests from "failed" to 
"passed."

The company that put in the false safety report? Stone & Webster, now the 
nuclear unit of Shaw Construction, which will work with TEPCO to build the Texas 
plant. Lord help us.

There's more.

Last night, I heard CNN reporters repeat the official line that the tsunami 
disabled the pumps needed to cool the reactors, implying that water unexpectedly 
got into the diesel generators that run the pumps.

These safety backup systems are the "EDGs" in nuke-speak: Emergency Diesel 
Generators. That they didn't work in an emergency is like a fire department 
telling us they couldn't save a building because "it was on fire."

What dim bulbs designed this system? One of the reactors dancing with death at 
Fukushima Station 1 was built by Toshiba. Toshiba was also an architect of the 
emergency diesel system.

Now be afraid. Obama's $4 billion bailout in the making is called the South 
Texas Project. It's been sold as a red-white-and-blue way to make power 
domestically with a reactor from Westinghouse, a great American brand. However, 
the reactor will be made substantially in Japan by the company that bought the 
US brand name, Westinghouse - Toshiba.

I once had a Toshiba computer. I only had to send it in once for warranty work. 
However, it's kind of hard to mail back a reactor with the warranty slip inside 
the box if the fuel rods are melted and sinking halfway to the earth's core.

TEPCO and Toshiba don't know what my son learned in eighth grade science class: 
tsunamis follow Pacific Rim earthquakes. So, these companies are real stupid, 
eh? Maybe. More likely is that the diesels and related systems wouldn't have 
worked on a fine, dry afternoon.

Back in the day, when we checked the emergency backup diesels in America, a 
mind-blowing number flunked. At the New York nuclear plant, for example, the 
builders swore under oath that their three diesel engines were ready for an 
emergency. They'd been tested. The tests were faked; the diesels run for just a 
short time at low speed. When the diesels were put through a real test under 
emergency-like conditions, the crankshaft on the first one snapped in about an 
hour, then the second and third. We nicknamed the diesels, "Snap, Crackle and Pop."

(Note: Moments after I wrote that sentence, word came that two of three diesels 
failed at the Tokai Station as well.)

In the US, we supposedly fixed our diesels after much complaining by the 
industry. But in Japan, no one tells TEPCO to do anything the Emperor of 
Electricity doesn't want to do.

I get lots of confidential notes from nuclear industry insiders. One engineer, a 
big name in the field, is especially concerned that Obama waved the come-hither 
check to Toshiba and TEPCO to lure them to America. The US has a long history of 
whistleblowers willing to put themselves on the line to save the public. In our 
racketeering case in New York, the government only found out about the seismic 
test fraud because two courageous engineers, Gordon Dick and John Daly, gave our 
team the documentary evidence.

In Japan, it's simply not done. The culture does not allow the salary men, who 
work all their lives for one company, to drop the dime.

Not that US law is a wondrous shield: both engineers in the New York case were 
fired and blacklisted by the industry. Nevertheless, the government (local, 
state, federal) brought civil racketeering charges against the builders. The 
jury didn't buy the corporation's excuses and, in the end, the plant was, 
thankfully, dismantled.

Am I on some kind of xenophobic anti-Nippon crusade? No. In fact, I'm far more 
frightened by the American operators in the South Texas nuclear project, 
especially Shaw. Stone & Webster, now the Shaw nuclear division, was also the 
firm that conspired to fake the EDG tests in New York . (The company's other 
exploits have been exposed by their former consultant, John Perkins, in his 
book, "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.") If the planet wants to shiver, 
consider this: Toshiba and Shaw have recently signed a deal to become worldwide 
partners in the construction of nuclear stations.

The other characters involved at the South Texas Plant that Obama is backing 
should also give you the willies. But as I'm in the middle of investigating the 
American partners, I'll save that for another day.

So, if we turned to America's own nuclear contractors, would we be safe? Well, 
two of the melting Japanese reactors, including the one whose building blew sky 
high, were built by General Electric of the Good Old US of A.

After Texas, you're next. The Obama administration is planning a total of $56 
billion in loans for nuclear reactors all over America.

And now, the homicides:

CNN is only interested in body counts, how many workers burnt by radiation, 
swept away or lost in the explosion. These plants are now releasing radioactive 
steam into the atmosphere. Be skeptical about the statements that the "levels 
are not dangerous." These are the same people who said these meltdowns could 
never happen. Over years, not days, there may be a thousand people, two 
thousand, ten thousand who will suffer from cancers induced by this radiation.

In my New York investigation, I had the unhappy job of totaling up post-meltdown 
"morbidity" rates for the county government. It would be irresponsible for me to 
estimate the number of cancer deaths that will occur from these releases without 
further information; but it is just plain criminal for the TEPCO shoguns to say 
that these releases are not dangerous.

Indeed, the fact that residents near the Japanese nuclear plants were not issued 
iodine pills to keep at the ready shows TEPCO doesn't care who lives and who 
dies, whether in Japan or the USA. The carcinogenic isotopes that are released 
at Fukushima are already floating to Seattle with effects we simply cannot measure.

Heaven help us. Because Obama won't.


On 3/14/11 10:15 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> Published on Monday, March 14, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
> Nuclear Power Madness
> by Norman Solomon
>
> Like every other president since the 1940s, Barack Obama has promoted nuclear 
> power. Now, with reactors melting down in Japan, the official stance is more 
> disconnected from reality than ever.
>
> Political elites are still clinging to the oxymoron of “safe nuclear power.” 
> It’s up to us -- people around the world -- to peacefully and insistently shut 
> those plants down.
>
> There is no more techno-advanced country in the world than Japan. Nuclear 
> power is not safe there, and it is not safe anywhere.
>
> As the New York Times reported on Monday, “most of the nuclear plants in the 
> United States share some or all of the risk factors that played a role at 
> Fukushima Daiichi: locations on tsunami-prone coastlines or near earthquake 
> faults, aging plants and backup electrical systems that rely on diesel 
> generators and batteries that could fail in extreme circumstances.”
>
> Nuclear power -- from uranium mining to fuel fabrication to reactor operations 
> to nuclear waste that will remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years -- 
> is, in fact, a moral crime against future generations.
>
> But syrupy rhetoric has always marinated the nuclear age. From the outset -- 
> even as radioactive ashes were still hot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- top 
> officials in Washington touted atomic energy as redemptive. The split atom, we 
> were to believe, could be an elevating marvel.
>
> President Dwight Eisenhower pledged “to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma” 
> by showing that “the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to 
> his death, but consecrated to his life.”
>
> Even after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl disaster 
> in 1986 -- and now this catastrophe in Japan -- the corporate theologians of 
> nuclear faith have continued to bless their own divine projects.
>
> Thirty years ago, when I coordinated the National Citizens Hearings for 
> Radiation Victims on the edge of Capitol Hill, we heard grim testimony from 
> nuclear scientists, workers, downwinders and many others whose lives had been 
> forever ravaged by the split atom. Routine in the process was tag-team 
> deception from government agencies and nuclear-invested companies.
>
> By 1980, generations had already suffered a vast array of terrible 
> consequences -- including cancer, leukemia and genetic injuries -- from a 
> nuclear fuel cycle shared by the “peaceful” and military atom. Today, we know 
> a lot more about the abrupt and slow-moving horrors of the nuclear industry.
>
> And we keep learning, by the minute, as nuclear catastrophe goes exponential 
> in Japan. But government leaders don’t seem to be learning much of anything.
>
> On Sunday, even while nuclear-power reactors were melting down, the White 
> House issued this statement: “The president believes that meeting our energy 
> needs means relying on a diverse set of energy sources that includes 
> renewables like wind and solar, natural gas, clean coal and nuclear power. 
> Information is still coming in about the events unfolding in Japan, but *the 
> administration is committed to* learning from them and *ensuring that nuclear 
> energy is produced *safely and responsibly *here in the U.S.”
> *
> Yet another reflexive nuclear salute.
>
> When this year’s State of the Union address proclaimed a goal of “clean energy 
> sources” for 80 percent of U.S. electricity by 2035, Obama added: “Some folks 
> want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet 
> this goal, we will need them all -- and I urge Democrats and Republicans to 
> work together to make it happen.”
>
> Bipartisan for nuclear power? You betcha. On Sunday morning TV shows, 
> Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell voiced support for nuclear power, while 
> Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer offered this convoluted ode to atomic flackery: 
> “We are going to have to see what happens here -- obviously still things are 
> happening -- but the bottom line is we do have to free ourselves of 
> independence from foreign oil in the other half of the globe. Libya showed 
> that. Prices are up, our economy is being hurt by it, or could be hurt by it. 
> So I'm still willing to look at nuclear. As I’ve always said it has to be done 
> safely and carefully.”
>
> Such behavior might just seem absurd or pathetic -- if the consequences 
> weren’t so grave.
>
> Nuclear power madness is so entrenched that mainline pundits and top elected 
> officials rarely murmur dissent. Acquiescence is equated with prudent sagacity.
> /
> In early 2010, President Obama announced federal loan guarantees -- totaling 
> more than $8 billion -- to revive the construction of nuclear power plants in 
> this country, where 110 nuclear-power reactors are already in operation.
>
> “Investing in nuclear energy remains a necessary step,” he said. “What I hope 
> is that, with this announcement, we’re underscoring both our seriousness in 
> meeting the energy challenge and our willingness to look at this challenge, 
> not as a partisan issue, but as a matter that’s far more important than 
> politics because the choices we make will affect not just the next generation 
> but many generations to come.”
> *
> Promising to push for bigger loan guarantees to build more nuclear power 
> plants, the president said: “This is only the beginning.”*
> /
>
> [Norman Solomon is president of the Institute for Public Accuracy and a senior 
> fellow at RootsAction. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and 
> Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.”]
>
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