The Fukushima nuclear disaster isn’t over, the radioactive waste is still leaking, and it isn’t just a Japanese problem.

I remember exactly where I was when news of the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami broke in the US. Sitting on the edge of a hotel room bed, I watched in horror as it became obvious that the nuclear power plant at Fukushima had been seriously affected.

The fact that someone thought it was a good idea to build a nuclear power plant on the coast, in an areas known to see frequent earthquakes and tsunamis is mind boggling, but it’s nothing compared to what happened immediately after the meltdown. Within days, so-called “nuclear experts” were reassuring the rest of the world, that while Japan was screwed, we had nothing to fear.

Well, fast forward a year or two, and Fukushima is still a nuclear disaster. Just days ago, the Japanese government declared a state of emergency, this time because of a build-up of radioactive groundwater near the plant.

In July, Tepco (the energy company that operates the Fukushima plant) admitted for the first time that radioactive groundwater had breached an underground barrier and been leaking into the sea, but said it was taking steps to prevent it. The head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority task force, Shinji Kinjo, recently told the Reuters news agency that the countermeasures were only a temporary solution, however, and groundwater contamination was imminent.

[Let’s pause here for a note about water: There is only one ocean. All the rivers, streams, and aquifers of the world are replenished by rain evaporated from that same ocean. It is complete foolishness to talk about this in terms of ‘Japan’s water’ or ‘American water’. It’s our water. And thanks to the Fukushima nuclear disaster, it’s all contaminated with toxic levels of radiation. That’s what makes this next bit particularly disturbing.]

“While the government has deemed some areas safe enough for part-time access, locals and activists say conflicting science and official secrecy surrounding the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl have bankrupted public trust,” reports TIME. “On Wednesday, just weeks after beaches south of the reactor were reopened, plant officials admitted that up to 300 tons of contaminated water are flowing into the sea each day.”

The good news is this is less that what was flowing into the ocean immediately after the disaster. The bad news is, since its mostly groundwater, the type of radiation now making its way into our ocean poses even more risk to human and animal life.

“Soil can naturally absorb the cesium in groundwater, but other radionuclides, such as strontium and tritium, flow more freely through the soil into the ocean,” notes Scientific American. “Tritium represents the lowest radioactive threat to ocean life and humans compared with cesium and strontium[…]. By comparison, strontium poses a greater danger because it replaces the calcium in bones and stays for much longer in the body.”

Still think you have nothing to fear? A study published in the International Journal of Health Services found that thousands of Americans have already been affected by radiation drifting to our shores from Fukushima. Nuclear energy isn’t safe, it won’t ever be safe, and what happened at Fukushima is just another reason to get out of the dirty energy game for good.

Related on Ecosalon:

Thirsty Trees Drink Up Contaminated Water From Superfund Site

7 Biggest Environmental Disasters: Where Are They Now?

Image: NOAA

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With Japan at risk, the nuclear energy debate returns.

Japan’s nuclear power plants were supposed to be safe. Theoretically, one safety mechanism after the other would prevent damage to the plants in the event of an earthquake. But on March 11th, that theory was disproved when a massive earthquake and subsequent tsunami washed away backup generators that were designed to keep nuclear reactors cool in the event of a power outage.

Now, frantic efforts to cool the nuclear cores might not be enough. Four of the six nuclear reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi plant have faced crises, and toxic radiation is threatening citizens that have already been through the trauma of losing loved ones and seeing their cities flattened to the ground.

For decades, America and other nations have held up Japan as a model of safe nuclear power. President Obama continues to assert that nuclear power is an essential part of a ‘clean energy economy’, and has called for over $50 billion in federal loan guarantees to build new nuclear power plants around the country.

There’s no doubt that we need viable alternatives to fossil fuels, and we need them as soon as possible. But in light of the disaster, we’ve got to ask ourselves: is nuclear power really the answer? What about ongoing environmental effects?

We like to think that major disasters simply won’t happen – and so do nuclear safety regulators and advisers. David Okrent, who advised the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on reactor safety for 20 years, told Bloomberg that reactors are only designed for events that are highly probable, not for anything remotely approaching worst-case-scenario.

“It’s hard to quantify a rare event. When you get to rare events, the design is usually up-to-but-not-including.”

The 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan was certainly a rare event. Japan’s nuclear reactors were designed to withstand up to a 7.2. The designers of the Fukushima Daiichi plant even built a 25-foot tsunami wall between the ocean and the reactors – but the 30-foot wave triggered by the earthquake plowed right through it.

Proponents of nuclear power plants, even those built on major fault lines, are willing to accept the risk of such an event. After all, Mother Nature is unpredictable, and we can’t control when a natural disaster might strike or how powerful it will be. But it’s all too easy to be lulled into a false sense of security as decades pass in between major disasters.

California, which sits on the San Andreas and Hosgri faults as well as the Hayward-Rodgers Creek Fault, has a 99% chance of getting hit by a 6.7 or greater earthquake in the next 30 years. It’s also home to two coastal nuclear power plants, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County and the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in San Clemente. Diablo Canyon officials believe that their tsunami walls are ‘robust’, but Japanese authorities said the same thing about Fukushima.

And what most Americans don’t realize is that when it comes to potential for catastrophic damage from an earthquake-induced nuclear meltdown at a power plant, California is pretty low on the list. The highest risk is in places you wouldn’t expect.

The reactor with the highest earthquake risk rating is actually the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, New York, just 24 miles north of New York City. Other high-risk locations are found in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Florida. Why would these locations be more prone to core damage from an earthquake, when they’re in areas with far less seismic activity? Mostly because plant designers consider earthquakes to be such a low risk here, they lowered their safety standards for the structures.

Nuclear power is often held up as a ‘clean’ source of energy, and when we’re talking emissions – especially compared to those released by coal-fired power plants – that’s true enough. But what do we do with the radioactive waste? Right now, without a central permanent repository, nuclear waste is stored near the facilities where it’s generated. A plan to turn Nevada’s Yucca Mountain into the nation’s dedicated disposal site was overturned by President Obama when Nevadans protested their backyard being turned into a radioactive wasteland – and can we blame them?

Part of the problem currently unfolding in Japan has to do with spent nuclear fuel rods, which are stored in pools of cooling water to contain high levels of radioactivity. Unlike the fuel rods used in the reactor vessel, spent fuel rods aren’t protected by a steel-and-concrete containment vessel designed to prevent leaks of radiation. Once water evaporates from the pool, the rods overheat and release radioactivity directly into the atmosphere. Clearly, this isn’t a great way to deal with the problem.

Accidental release of radioactivity isn’t unheard of even in the best of circumstances. Last year, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a disturbing report detailing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s inconsistent oversight of radioactive releases from nuclear power plants. UCS reports on over 400 accidental leaks, many of which remained undetected for years. These leaks have resulted in radioactivity contaminating the soil and nearby waterways.

Even beyond the issue of radioactivity, reliance on nuclear power introduces the need to mine a finite resource: uranium. Mines have already cropped up in places like the edge of the Grand Canyon, and more will be needed if the number of nuclear power plants in the U.S. increases as planned. Furthermore, uranium mining is an incredibly water-intensive process.

The fact of the matter is, nuclear power is risky, harmful to the environment, and expensive. Why should we accept this technology as a cleaner replacement for coal-fired plants when we could be using natural sources of power that are far safer? Large-scale solar and wind power generation projects, not to mention wave power, algae and other biofuels, offer literally endless sources of energy without the danger of wayward radioactivity. They will require a shift in research and development, to be sure. And it’s up to us to do so.

Editor’s note 3.18.11: the opening description of this article has been modified from the original version for tone. We appreciate constructive feedback from our readers.

Image: daveeza

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When the peace of a community is shattered by man-made disaster – an oil spill, a toxic gas leak, a nuclear meltdown – a scar is left that may fade with passing decades but will never fully heal. While some may be able to clean up and return to a sense of normalcy, others stand fenced-off and unchanged like a silent memorial. Located around the globe, these seven catastrophic environmental disasters have had a profound effect upon the earth and local residents that continues today, as many as 50 years later.

Love Canal Community Contamination

In the late 1950s, the little neighborhood of Love Canal, New York seemed idyllic. Located just miles from the picturesque Niagara Falls, the land was purchased by the city from Hooker Chemical Company for a dollar. It was worth much less. The residents of the neighborhood’s 100 newly constructed homes had no idea that they were living atop one big hazardous chemical dumping ground.

But the consequences of building homes and a school where over 21,000 tons of toxic waste lurked just beneath the surface became all too clear by the 1970s with shockingly high rates of miscarriages, birth defects, cancer and nervous disorders. Resident Lois Gibbs led a campaign to uncover the cause, and a federal health emergency was declared, demolishing houses and relocating more than 800 families.

As a result of the tragedy, the Superfund Act was passed by Congress to hold polluters responsible for severe environmental damage. In 2004, Love Canal was finally declared clean, though most of the neighborhood remains abandoned – even though hundreds of similar toxic Superfund sites still sit waiting for their turn.

Three Mile Island Nuclear Meltdown

March 28, 1979 marked the beginning of a three-day series of “mechanical, electrical and human failures” that produced a catastrophic meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power facility in Pennsylvania.

Though the radiation released wasn’t significant enough to cause a public health crisis, the accident brought a general lack of oversight and emergency response planning in the nuclear power industry to light and led to a huge spike in local opposition to the construction of new nuclear power plants.

Cleanup and decontamination of the Three Mile Island accident site cost $975 million and wasn’t completed until 1993. Today, Three Mile Island is still in operation, though the generating station involved in the meltdown is no longer used. A radiation leak was investigated in November 2009, but federal officials say there was no threat to public safety.

Minamata Mercury Poisoning

It’s not common knowledge amongst Westerners, but the Minamata mercury incident in Japan was severe enough to get a disease named after it. A chemical company called Chisso Corporation disposed of thousands of tons of industrial wastewater containing methyl mercury in the town of Minamata from 1908 to 1968, which poisoned the local population through consumption of contaminated seafood.

What’s now known as Minamata Disease was discovered in 1956, when clusters of victims in fishing hamlets along the bay came forward with strange symptoms. Severe cases of the disease led to paralysis, insanity, coma and death within weeks of symptoms first appearing. Similar effects were seen in local animals like cats and birds.

Over 2,265 victims have been officially certified by the Japanese government – 1,784 of whom have died – but over 17,000 people have applied for certification. Chisso Corporation, which stopped using mercury in 1969, has spent $86 million compensating over 10,000 victims and was ordered to clean up the contamination in 2004.


Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill

Who can forget the Exxon-Valdez oil spill? 11 million gallons of sticky black crude oil fouled the pristine Prince William Sound in Alaska on March 23rd, 1989 after a tanker crashed into an iceberg as the captain napped. While it’s far from the largest oil spill in history, it caused the most environmental damage, and images of wildlife suffocating in oil hit the public hard.

10,000 workers spent four summers cleaning up 1,400 miles of coastline, and recent images of Prince William Sound seem to show total recovery. But swaths of oil are still buried just beneath the surface of many beaches and many species affected by the spill are still struggling. If there’s one positive thing that came out of this disaster, it’s the federal Oil Pollution Act, which changed critical industry practices and standards to prevent similar damage from subsequent spills.

Bhopal Gas Leak

The death toll may be as high as 35,000 and the nightmare still continues for victims of one of the most horrendous environmental disasters of all time. Half a million residents of Bhopal, India were poisoned on December 3rd, 1984 when the Union-Carbide pesticide manufacturing plant released extremely volatile methyl isocyanate gas and other toxins into the air due to lax safety standards and budget cuts. Bodies lined the streets and thousands more suffered agony, blindness and permanent health problems.

Many survivors unwittingly passed Bhopal’s legacy to their own children in the form of congenital defects, but that’s not the only way the incident still haunts the population. Union Carbide – now owned by Dow Chemical Company – never cleaned up the contamination and the factory site continues to leak deadly chemicals into the air, soil and water.  The company has eluded charges of culpable homicide in Bhopal for over 20 years.

TVA Coal Sludge Spill

America’s worst man-made environmental disaster occurred on December 22nd, 2008 at the Kingston Tennessee Valley Authority power plant as 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic coal sludge burst over a dam wall, invading the Emory River and 400 acres of nearby homes and farmland.

Coal ash, a waste product, contains arsenic and potentially carcinogenic heavy metals, yet is not regulated by the EPA. That was supposed to change within a year of the spill, but the agency has delayed action. Meanwhile, experts say the spill could have severe lasting health effects for area residents.

TVA estimated that it would have all 2.4 million cubic yards out of the area by 2013, but announced in March 2010 that a complete cleanup is “technologically impossible.”

Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

Nobody knows exactly how many people died as a result of the catastrophic nuclear meltdown at the Chernobyl Power Plant in Ukraine on April 26th, 1986. Officials count 56 direct fatalities and 4,000 cancer deaths, but these estimates are likely on the low side. 1,100 buses evacuated area residents the day the accident occurred, but they had already been exposed to radiation that was high enough to set off alarms in Sweden.

Today, the adjacent city of Pripyat is a disturbing ghost town full of rusting metal, peeling paint and evidence of lives seemingly abandoned in mid-step. Gas masks and baby dolls litter the hallways of a school, clothes still flutter in the wind on a clothesline at an apartment complex.  The displaced survivors may be going on with their lives in other cities, but they’re often doing so with brain tumors, debilitating headaches and birth defects.

People are officially forbidden to live within the 17-mile “Exclusion Zone” around Chernobyl, and radiation levels in the area are still 10-100 times higher than normal “background levels” but several million people continue to live on contaminated land.

Images: coal-ash-spill.com, google sightseeing, Three Mile Island via wikimedia commons, Chisso Factory Effluent via wikimedia commons, Exxon Spill via wikimedia commons, Dow Chemical Banner via wikimedia commons and View of Chernobyl via wikimedia commons

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Capitalizing on the pro-nuclear-power views of President Obama, privately held companies and investors, in particular Bill Gates and Nathan Mhyrvold, are investing in the development of miniature and traveling wave nuclear reactors that could use spent uranium from nuclear power plants to safely supply energy to our humble abodes.

At least entrepreneurs are talking directly about what to do to solve nuclear waste problems. Because this week the Obama Administration released its plan to reduce and put limits on the usage of the United States’ nuclear arsenal, but disappointingly failed to address the costs and impact of nuclear waste from power plants and the weapons industry, on our health and the environment.

The Nuclear Posture Review, a 49-page document, contains plenty of prose about aging nuclear warheads and facilities that are in decline, and admits these need to be revamped to better handle nuclear materials. But words like cancer, sludge and water pollution did not appear. The phrase “safe, secure and effective nuclear arsenal” was repeated copiously, though.

The nuclear lobby spent almost half-a-million dollars in the last four months of 2009 to sway public and political opinion, according to Business Week. And perhaps not surprisingly, Gallup polls show that Americans are more approving of nuclear power these days than they have been in decades. They are also more willing to accept environmental suffering in exchange for more sources of energy.

This is all despite some good arguments against nuclear power from the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth.

Sierra Club notes that nuclear reactors, even the safest ones, can be susceptible to natural disaster and rendered unsafe. As recently as 2007, an earthquake in Japan impacted a nuclear power plant there, releasing radioactive water into the Sea of Japan. Friends of Earth suggests that nuclear power investments are a distraction from better renewable energy and efficiency alternatives. They found that “from 1948 to 1998, the government awarded nearly $75 billion in handouts to the nuclear power industry while spending less than $15 billion on renewable energy and only about $12 billion on energy efficiency measures.”

But nuclear energy and science insiders resoundingly believe nuclear is part of the essential, global, clean energy solution. Prof. Kathryn Higley, the acting department head at Oregon State University’s Nuclear Engineering & Radiation Health Physics department, points out that some environmentalists who changed their mind and supported nuclear power, over time, include some of our favorites!

They are: Stewart Brand, a founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, one of the Greenpeace founders Patrick Moore, Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel, and Gwyneth Cravens, author of The Power to Save the World.

Some anti-nuke environmentalists, Higley believes, hold on to outdated fears. “While I’m not advocating that you go and hug a fuel rod, we understand very well by now how radiation interacts with matter,” she says. “We understand the hazards of radiation and radioactive material more than any other type of hazard, today. In fact, we use radiation and radioactive materials to diagnose and treat a variety of diseases, including cancer now.”

Higley explains that in order to meet growing demands for energy, while limiting the CO2 emissions that are produced from power facilities, we are limited currently to hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, and nuclear energy. Some of these low CO2 technologies are limited in their ability to expand capacity, she says, and have their own negative impacts on the environment. For example: hydro dams adversely effect salmon populations in the Northwest today, and solar works, only where it is sunny.

Waste not, want not, Higley believes: “Spent nuclear fuel shouldn’t be viewed as waste! There is so much energy left in the fuel, so it is really silly to permanently dispose of it. New fuel reprocessing techniques can reduce waste volume as well as the radiotoxicity of the residual material so that the volume of real waste is very small and…more easily stored.”

Are no nukes, good nukes to you? Or can you see a way to make the problem into the solution? Learn more about nuclear weapons, waste and how it can get recycled, with the links and resources below. Then call it like you see it, here or on Twitter @ecosalon.

Basic Reading:

– A Smartplanet.com article on the Bill Gates-backed Terrapower plan to develop “traveling wave” nuclear reactors, safe for home-use

– “Can Bill Gates and Toshiba save us from global warming? They plan a miniature traveling-wave nuclear reactor in every home, to spell the end of climate change…” – Interesting opinions on the idea of home, mini-reactors curated by blogger Richi Jennings for Computer World

– “Not that long ago, any Democratic president daring to fly a ‘More Nukes’ banner would have been fried by his own base. But Obama’s request for $54 billion in federal loan guarantees, and his State of the Union pitch for a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,’ have barely moved the ire meter… [T]here is still no solution to the radioactive-waste storage problem. Current plants produce 2,200 tons of waste a year, all of which has to be stored on-site. Do the math: That’s more than 60,000 tons over the last 30 years. Some California plants are storing their waste next to seismic faults. ” – A political op-ed by Dick Polman via the Philadelphia Inquirer

– “Energy development and energy independence are enormous issues our nation must continue to address aggressively. The economy will recover, growth will resume and energy deficiencies will, once again, be front and center as topics of major concern. That’s why it is heartening to see the Obama administration tackle energy issues head-on, with aggressive support for all forms of energy, including new nuclear plants…” A pro-nuclear argument from the Salt Lake City Tribune

– The U.S. Department of Energy Environmental Management page, detailing different types of nuclear waste, and admitting that the D.O.E. lacks information about the impact of nuclear waste and possibility for true, environmental restoration around contaminated land and water

Further Resources:

The Sierra Club’s guide to nuclear waste issues

“A False Solution to Climate Crisis,” statement by Friends of the Earth, and their anti-nuclear campaign website, NuclearLie.org

An Associated Press story on recent, nuclear waste management issues and politics in Utah

Roger Alford’s news brief on nuclear politics and past problems in Kentucky via Business Week

A discussion on the Flickr comment board of investor Steve Jurvetson, about Bill Gates’ TED talk on the Nuclear Future

This is the latest installment of EcoMeme, a column featuring eco news, tech and business highlights by EcoSalon columnist and tech editor Lora Kolodny.

Image: World Economic Forum

The post EcoMeme: Nuclear Weapons and Waste appeared first on EcoSalon.

Imagine the consequences of 20 years of nuclear waste dumping in the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea that surround the Italian Peninsula and its islands.

It’s an unfolding crisis that has the international community alarmed, including the fishing interests in Japan.

We’re talking about the coasts of 22 countries in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and a pending ecological and public health disaster which is being allegedly swept under the rug by the Italian government.

I only learned about it recently in a Counterpunch post on the nightmare, passed along to me by a devastated reader. Meantime, the disaster is also catching on in the mainstream media.

The post writer, Michael Leonardi, is a university educator who lives in Calabria with his wife and baby. He says after returning from a visit to the States, he was alarmed to learn that the Tyrrhenian Sea – which his daughter has been bathing in since birth – was intentionally poisoned with toxic waste.

“How shocked and dismayed we were to discover that government officials have known about it all along,” he shares. “And how enraged we are that a journalist has been killed, possibly for trying to reveal the truth about the disposal of waste by the international Ecomafia and their colluding government and corporate interests.”

The journalist described was Rai television reporter Ilaria Alpi. Leonardi says she was following the trail of arms and toxic garbage trafficking from Italy to Somalia in 1994 when she and her camera man, Miran Hrovatin, were gunned down and killed in Mogadishu.

“Many here believe, including the Mafia pentito, Franceso Fonti, that she was killed because she learned too much about the collusion between the Mafia and Italian military,” argues a bold Leonardi.

So how is the dumping engineered by the bad guys?

Leonardi says dozens of ships with the radioactive and toxic cargoes have been intentionally sunk by organized crime syndicates.

Leonardi says epidemic levels of cancerous tumors and thyroid problems have occurred in the area and along the coasts of the Mediterranean – where fishermen make a living by selling their catch throughout Italian and on the international market.

The public outcry is heating up as Greenpeace and the Italian environmental organization Legambiente work to bring the disaster to the surface. CNN reported on the scuttled hips, as well, last week. The report says it is believed between 32 and 41 of the ships sunk in international waters between Italy, Greece and Spain.

Lending credence to the sinking, testimony by Franceso Fonti, who admitted his role in helping to sink three ships in the fishing waters, including the Cunsky.

Last week a robot sub was sent down off the coast of Centraro to shoot photos of the ship thought to be the Cunsky. The images document the presence of drums like those used to transport and store radioactive and toxic wastes. The hope is that the barrels are still in tact but no one knows for certain what they contain.

“Traces of Mercury and Cesnium 137 have recently been found near the town of Amantea in Calabria further south of Cetraro by about 50 kilimeters,” explains Leonardi. “Amantea is considered a “hot spot” for tumors and ground temperature around the contamination area is six degrees warmer than normal.

“The population is demanding the truth and government action,” he says, adding international cooperation is needed.

Images: enigmachck1, Wiki, Wiki

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Trees – is there anything they can’t do? Besides producing oxygen, preventing erosion, providing wood and fiber for human use and mopping up carbon dioxide, trees are being used to clean up contaminated water from Superfund sites. It’s called phytoremediation.

Just 25 miles south of Chicago, a sizable supply of nuclear waste is buried underground, compliments of Argonne National Laboratory. Argonne has used extraction wells to pump tainted wastewater to a treatment plant, but underground waterways change direction all the time, and besides, why be inefficient when you can subcontract nature instead?

Now, over 900 willow and poplar trees are on the job they do best: absorbing groundwater and sending roots out searching for more when it changes course. The contaminated water is processed naturally by the trees and rendered completely harmless by the time it evaporates through the leaves back into the atmosphere. And the trees themselves show no signs of harm. Now that’s good performance.

Image: dano

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