Radiation Coverups And Dangers Exposed Worldwide

Alex Thomas
The Intel Hub

The nuclear industry and nuclear regulators worldwide, as well as specifically in the United States, have continually covered up disasters and radiation releases as if they never happened or posed no danger to the public.

To begin to understand the corruption of the nuclear power industry and the danger we are in because of it, you must first realize that they actually fund their regulators, The NRC in the United States and the IAEA for the world.

The Christian Science Monitor reported in mid March that lax oversight, specifically at the IAEA may have caused the Japan nuclear crisis.

Just as the BP oil spill one year ago heaped scrutiny on the United State’s Minerals Management Service, harshly criticized for lax drilling oversight and cozy ties with the oil industry, the nuclear crisis in Japan is shining a light on that nation’s safety practices

[Russian nuclear accident specialist Iouli Andreev, who as director of the Soviet Spetsatom clean-up agency helped in the efforts 25 years ago to clean up Chernobyl ] has also accused the IAEA of being too close with corporations. “This is only a fake organization because every organization which depends on the nuclear industry – and the IAEA depends on the nuclear industry – cannot perform properly.”

Unfortunately the NRC isn’t any better.

An article from Rolling Stone, America’s Nuclear Nightmare, exposed the mentality at the NRC and how it is essentially caught in the grip of the industry that it is supposed to regulate.

The NRC has long served as little more than a lap dog to the nuclear industry, unwilling to crack down on unsafe reactors. “The agency is a wholly owned subsidiary of the nuclear power industry,” says Victor Gilinsky, who served on the commission during the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979.

Even President Obama denounced the NRC during the 2008 campaign, calling it a “moribund agency that needs to be revamped and has become captive of the industries that it regulates.”

In the years ahead, nuclear experts warn, the consequences of the agency’s inaction could be dire. “The NRC has consistently put industry profits above public safety,” says Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear executive turned whistle-blower. “Consequently, we have a dozen Fukushimas waiting to happen in America.”

How can we trust the credibility of the IAEA and the NRC when it is documented fact that they depend on the very industry they supposedly regulate?

In America there are numerous vulnerabilities at multiple nuclear power plants and areas contaminated with radiation that are literally being ignored by almost every single expert who has the know how to expose the dangers.

One exception has been nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen. Gundersen has raised many startling issues at our nations nuclear power plants that should open the eyes of all Americans.

Washington’s Blog
April 18, 2011

As nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen, Duane Peterson (president of VPIRG & coordinator for the campaign to retire Vermont Yankee nuclear plant), investigative reporter Harvey Wasserman and Paul Gallay (executive director of Riverkeeper) point out in a roundtable discussion:

• The NRC won’t even begin conducting its earthquake study for Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York until after relicensing is complete in 2013, because the NRC doesn’t consider a big earthquake “a serious risk”

• Congressman Markey has said there is a cover up. Specifically, Markey alleges that the head of the NRC told everyone not to write down risks they find from an earthquake greater than 6.0 (the plant was only built to survive a 6.0 earthquake)

• The budget for the NRC comes from the nuclear power companies [just like banks fund the Federal Reserve]

• The NRC is wholly captive to industry

• The NRC has never turned down the request of a nuclear power plant to be relicensed in the United States. Relicensing is solely a paper process; there is no safety review.

• The NRC’s assumptions regarding a worst-case accident are ridiculous. For example, the NRC assumes only 1% of the fuel could meltdown, while 70% melted down at Fukushima. The NRC assumes no loss of containment, while there has been a major loss of containment in reactors 1-3 (especially 2) at Fukushima.

• “If there was a free market in energy, nuclear power would be over … immediately”. Nuclear plant owners can’t get insurance; they can only operate because the U.S. government provides insurance on the taxpayer dime. The government also granted a ridiculously low cap on liability

• If we had no subsidies for nuclear, coal or oil, we’d have a clean energy economy right now

• We have 4 reactors in California – 2 at San Onofre 2 at San Luis Obisbo – which are vulnerable to earthquakes and tsunamis.

No state or federal agency knows who would be in charge in case of an accident at Indian Point. It’s like the Keystone Cops

That’s right, there are numerous dangers that are KNOWN and being ignored and or downplayed right here in America yet most Americans are oblivious to this obvious danger.

With all this documented corruption it is no wonder that numerous radiation dangers have happened in the last few months as well as some are actually happening now.

Flood waters have threatened the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant in Nebraska for at least the last month, with the dangers continually being downplayed by the NRC and the corporate controlled media.

Tom Burnett is reporting that officials are now trying to replace the punctured aqua dam at the plant.

This dam was previously labeled unneeded but apparently that has changed as flood waters threaten to REALLY flood the nuclear power plant.

hawaiinewsdaily.com

The Omaha Public Power District has said that, as of today, they are trying to replace the punctured aqua dam that they said they didn’t need anyway but now they do because the water really IS going to flood the plant.

If you have ever played with water toys you can imagine how much fun it will be trying to fill a 2,000 foot-long innertube in 7 feet of running Missouri river water.

The other nuclear power plant in Nebraska that is threatened by flood waters is the Cooper Nuclear Plant. Levees holding back flood waters are apparently about to break.  
 
At Los Alamos, where a major fire threatened at least 20,000 barrels of plutonium stored above ground in fabric tents, officials are now preparing for floods as well as cleaning up radiation contaminated soil.

KOAT.com
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — Crews at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have completed the first of a series of projects designed to prevent any trace of nuclear and other contamination from being washed downstream by flooding triggered by the huge Las Conchas fire.

Lab spokesman Fred deSousa says crews installed water diversion barriers and removed more than 1,200 cubic yards of sediment over the weekend. They also sealed wells and installed sampling stations that will test runoff.

Flash flood warnings have caused officials at Los Alamos to start clearing out CANYONS that are full of contaminated waste, waste that could end up in the Rio Grande river!

KOAT.com
Trails have been closed in the canyon as officials attempt to monitor cold war era contamination.

According to Cantwell, only one acre burned on lab property, but two major canyons above the lab suffered damage.Cantwell said lab crews had also begun installing additional storm water controls and monitoring systems in canyon bottoms where trace Cold War-era contamination may be present. The controls were aimed at slowing the ability of sediments to move down canyon.

Considering that the information that is being acknowledged to the public is already bad, the real truth behind possible disasters such as this one may be even more horrific.

Meanwhile, Information about the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant is being openly kept from the public.

Associated Press
When a nuclear watchdog group asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a study on leaks of radioactive water at the Vermont Yankee plant, it was told the NRC had seen the report but had never officially taken custody of it – so it wasn’t public.

Critics say it’s a style of communication between regulator and regulated that cuts out the public and even state regulators trying to track leaks of tritium, a radioactive form of water linked with cancer when ingested in high amounts.

An already difficult-to-navigate NRC online documents service recently was redesigned and became more so, Keegan said. The NRC uses company claims of proprietary information, security concerns and exceptions to limit access, he added. The agency also notes that the industry is sharing information with it voluntarily.

The NRC also has been coming under scrutiny from critics who say it hasn’t been a tough enough regulator. In an investigative series last month, The Associated Press reported that the NRC has been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation’s aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them.

Here we see an agency working with a nuclear power plant to cover up radiation releases that have effected unknowing Americans.

As the governor and legislator of Vermont moves to shut down the Vermont Yankee Plant, the owners of the plant are suing to renew their license.

In Vermont we are witnessing the fact that governors and legislators of the states with nuclear power plants may not even have the power to shut them down!

High levels of radiation were recorded in rainwater in Seattle just days after the Fukushima disaster yet this fact was KEPT from the public!

King5.com
Most of the public attention went to the air monitoring which showed little or no radiation coming our way. But things were different on the rain water side.

“The level that was detected on March 24 was 41 times the drinking water standard,” said Gerry Pollet from Heart of America Northwest. He reviewed Iodine 131 numbers released by the Environmental Protection Agency last spring.

“Our government said no health levels, no health levels were exceeded.When in fact the rain water in the Northwest is reaching levels 130 times the drinking water standards,” said Pollet.

People in the pacific northwest were exposed to radiation in the rainwater without any warning from local, state, or federal officials.

In Nevada, a wildfire is currently hitting an old government nuclear testing grounds, with officials drumming up the old, “there is no danger claim.”

Associated Press
A wildfire at the government’s former nuclear testing area in southern Nevada poses no threat of kicking up radiation, federal officials said Saturday.

National Nuclear Security Administration spokeswoman Kelly Snyder said the lightning-caused blaze was not burning near any site where 100 above-ground tests left radiation in the soil.”We have all the locations mapped and know where the contaminated areas are and this fire is not burning near them,” she told The Associated Press. “It’s further than two miles from the nearest impacted soils.”

In a world where the nuclear power plant companies have a cozy relationship with their regulators, all potential radiation releases are immediately labeled harmless!

The radiation dangers listed above are but a few examples of the world we now find ourselves in.

Whether it be Fukushima, Fort Calhoun, or any number of other nuclear power plant problems, the fact remains that the people of the world are in real danger from an invisible enemy, too dangerous to be ignored, but too controversial and profitable to be fully exposed.