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

["E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森"]

The problem is not the limits of technology as much as it is the 
unlimited avarice and stupidity of the electrical power utility 
companies, their shareholders, and directors, and their 39 cent 
politicians and bureaucrats.

It's also very difficult to discover the truth about the meltdowns due 
to the intrinsic tendency toward hubris, reticence, and prevarication 
that oft characterizes the Japanese ruling class.

On 2011-3-15 11:24, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 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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