Monthly Archives: April 2018

Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster: 32 Years Young

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32 years ago tomorrow – April 26, 1986 – the Chernobyl nuclear disaster began. Since nuclear accidents never actually end, we’ll never be able to record its end date (or that of any of the other myriad nuclear disasters, most of which you’ve almost certainly never even heard of).

They just go on & on & on – radioactivity doing its forever thing. In the air. The water. In the ground, and the critters that walk, fly & swim. In the plants, & in our food,

And in our bodies. Down through the generations. (Watch this documentary – Chernobyl Heart – about long-term heart issues among the young, post-Chernobyl accident.)

I can still remember being out at the clothesline, as a young(ish) mother, 32 years ago, wondering “Gosh. Will my sheets be contaminated by fallout from this nuclear accident happening halfway across the world?”

Then catching myself, & telling myself I was being a ninny to have such thoughts.

A brilliant article in Counterpunch a year ago quoted the U.S. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) from a May 1986 Duluth Herald article:

“Airborne radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear accident is now so widespread that it is likely to fall to the ground wherever it rains in the United States, the EPA said.”

As the 2017 Counterpunch writer goes on to comment,

“This warning should never stop being flabbergasting, and should have been the death knell for nuclear power.”

I guess I wasn’t being such a ninny after all, was I? And heck, I was still about a quarter of a century away from becoming an anti-nuclear activist.

Some things we just know in our guts, hmmm?

 

A Few Resources I Recommend on the 32nd Anniversary

& finally, but definitely not least!!

Nuclear Hotseat’s April 24/18 podcast – Chernobyl 32 Anniversary SPECIAL

& very special it is, too, featuring enlightening interviews with

  • a woman who was a teen-ager in Bulgaria when Chernobyl went postal
  • scientist Timothy Mousseau, talking about his research exploring the consequences of radiation fallout exposure in Ukraine & Belarus, & also Japan (YouTube of 2016 lecture by Dr. Mousseau here & his Web site is here).
  • Dr. Janette Sherman (M.D.) & her surprising revelations about health impacts from Fukushima fallout in the U.S. AND elevated cancer rates in eastern Pennsylvania (yes: Three Mile Island)

… & more.

Sooo very worth 60 minutes of your time!!

 

Previous Years’ Chernobyl Postings on this Site

31st Anniversary of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster (1 year ago today)

Chernobyl: 30 years. The ongoing disaster. Tons of links (2 years ago)

Chernobyl: 29 years (3 years ago)

 

Book VERY Highly Recommended!

Voices from Chernobyl – The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, by Nobel Prize for Literature winner Svetlana Alexievich

 

What to Do? What to Do? What to Do Now?

Well, Dr. Janette Sherman (from the Nuclear Hotseat podcast) figures the only sane response is to shut down the nuke plants.

Heck, even shut-down plants carry plenty of risks, what with all the wastes stored on-site!

But it’s clearly a great place to start.

Our own friendly (not) neighbourhood nuclear plant is right in Toronto’s backyard.

 

8 reactors, 6 of them functioning (2 in shutdown mode) – & their bosses, as it were, the folks who make so much money (& so much nuke waste!) want to keep them operating for at least another 6 years (maybe longer; who knows? They just don’t seem to know when to quit, & they just keep moving the goal posts).

The current licence for the Pickering reactors run by OPG (Ontario Power Generation) expires August 31, 2018.

However, only a very great deal of (LOUD) noise-making in upcoming months will cause them to be shut down.

The previous posting on this site provides information about the upcoming licensing hearing.

Join the party!

Raise a ruckus! Many, many, many people in the Greater Toronto Area want to see this nasty, risky, dangerous, nuclear-waste-producing dinosaur shut down. You can read about that on the Ontario Clean Air Alliance’s Close Pickering page.

Help make it happen.

Join the party!

 

p.s. Just for the record, this article ‘Risk of another Chernobyl or Fukushima type accident plausible, experts say’ provides a list of the costliest nuclear accidents – & a 1983 spill at Pickering comes in at # 14 in the list of 15. Here’s yet another (short) accidents list.

 

Relevant Quotations

“The lesson of TMI (and Chernobyl, and Fukushima)? Shut ‘em down before they melt down!” – Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear

“…What part of Fukushima don’t you understand? If you don’t make the modifications [re: safety & emergency planning] you run the risk of destroying the fabric of a country. It happened at Chernobyl, and it’s happening right now in Japan…” – Arnie Gundersen in an interview on March 27/14.

“Chernobyl is a word we would all like to erase from our memory. But more than seven million of our fellow human beings do not have the luxury of forgetting. They are still suffering, every day, as a result of what happened… The exact number of victims can never be known.” – former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

“Nuclear power is an idea whose time has never come, except at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. It almost came at Fermi 1. It’s up to us that it never happens at Fermi 2 or 3, and that we get to Solartopia–a green-powered Earth–before it’s too late.” — Harvey Wasserman

“Today no task is more pressing and noble, not only for a scientist, but also for any sober-minded individual, than to prevent nuclear insanity.” – Valery Legasov, head of the former Soviet delegation to the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). He was upset over both the Chernobyl disaster & its handling at the IAEA & United Nations, & later took his life over it.

“Nobody really knows how to clean up radiation.” – day labourer in Japan working on clean-up in village 20 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi reactors (source)

** lots more quotations about nuke accidents & inadequate nuclear emergency planning here

 

 

Pickering Hearing. Again!?

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I’ve lost track by now of how many times OPG (Ontario Power Generation) has said the Pickering reactor complex (8 reactors, 6 of them operating, 2 in “cold shutdown,” right beside Lake Ontario, just east of the City of Toronto) is going to be shut down – only to change their minds later, & keep pushing it beyond its “design life.”

Too many!

But now the plan is to run this aging complex yet another 10 years (or rather, another 6 years, but the request is for a 10-year licence). They refuse to let it die!

Hearing time is coming up!

See links below for hearing details from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission or CNSC, Canada’s nuclear “regulator.”
 

Date (Part 1): April 4, 2018

Place: CNSC public hearing room, 14th floor, 280 Slater Street, Ottawa.

Time:  As set by the agenda published prior to the hearing date.

** note: this part is for the proponent (i.e., OPG) to tell CNSC tribunal members what its plans are. Some might call it a kangaroo court.*  See below.

** See THIS page on the CNSC site for relevant documents, including the transcript of the April 4th, ‘Part I’ hearing. The archived Webcast of the April 4th hearing is here.

Date (Part 2): June 25–29, 2018

Place: Pickering Recreation Centre. [note on May 24/18: the location has been changed! Some folks laid into the CNSC for planning to hold the hearing 30 K away from the location of the generating station. Some activists + a local MP weighed into the fray, & blessedly, the location has been changed from Courtice to Pickering. Sometimes it really does pay to speak up, make a fuss, etc. Hmmmmm??]

Time: As set by the agenda published prior to the hearing date.

** note: this is the part the public gets to participate in, & say their piece. Some might call it a kangaroo court.*  See below.  

** In both cases, you can watch the hearing via Webcast. Go to the CNSC Web site & look around in the top middle section or upper right-hand corner for how to do this.

** Find the (revised) hearing notice here. *** Note: May 7th is the deadline for written interventions

***** You can now download ALL of the submissions here.

&/or, use this link to access hearing notice, (revised) agenda & for downloading submissions.

Very Important Note!!

CNSC is a licensing body. An organization that exists to license nuclear operators. (That’s even how they obtain 2/3 of their funding! So there’s little incentive for the organization to bite the hands that feed it, hmmmm?)

They never turn down a licence request.

So this licensing hearing is liable to be the usual slam-dunk for the industry.

Listen, don’t trust me on this (though I’ve been attending CNSC hearings for 12 years now, have lost track of how many I’ve attended (TOO many), & have yet to see them refuse a licence request).

Here’s the word from the horse’s mouth, okay?

Never a single licence they’ve ever wanted to turn down.  Here.  

** Be sure to scroll down for a super-relevant quotation about nuclear hearings!

Information Relevant for this Hearing **

** with more to be added as the days & weeks roll on

Ontario Clean Air Alliance has a Close Pickering campaign. Check it out!

Other OCAA materials:

** plenty more on their site too! Including a series of short YouTubes by a retired Ontario Hydro scientist, an M.D., the head of OCAA, a radiation biologist, & others … on why the Pickering station should be shut down.

Greenpeace Q & A: What you need to know about the Pickering nuclear reactors

More great info from Greenpeace.

On THIS site:

  • Nuclear ‘Elephants in the Room’ – a posting with information about a few of the “elephants in the room” with respect to the PNGS (Pickering Nuclear Generating Station).
  • Nuclear Emergency Plans in Ontario (‘PNERP’) Update – about the province’s not-very-robust, newly-revised nuclear emergency plans. (By all means, download & read the PNERP for yourself, on this page here.)
  • many links in that posting above, to other matters relating to nuclear emergency planning & plans.
  • KI: truth or Lies?  There is quite a lot of B.S. afoot on the subject of KI (potassium iodide) pills – this posting from October 2015 remains relevant.

** Lots of great quotations / insights about nuclear accidents on the DNA site, here. The Fukushima disaster in particular,  & an ever-important, still-utterly-relevant article about Nuclear “Regulatory Capture” – A Global Pattern.

 

Super-Relevant Quotation:

“There has not existed the slightest shred of meaningful evidence that the entire intervention process in nuclear energy is anything more than the most callous of charades and frauds.” – Dr. John Gofman, M.D., Ph.D.  in “Irrevy” – An Irreverent, Illustrated View of Nuclear Power <pg 125>