"Dozens of active and idle laboratories and manufacturing and military facilities across the nation that use, store or are contaminated with radioactive material are increasingly vulnerable to #ExtremeWeather. Many also perform critical energy and defense research and manufacturing that could be disrupted or crippled by fires, floods and other disasters."
#OnThisDay, April 20, 1902, Marie and Pierre Curie successfully isolated radioactive radium salts from the mineral pitchblende in their laboratory in Paris (depicted in Radioactive, 2019
Good article on the non-cleanup of #radioactive contamination near the #StLouis airport. ("Good" in the sense of interesting and detailed, not the actual situation.)
My earlier post that featured a photo of official signage warning of radioactive waste at Dalgety Bay was removed by moderators on the grounds of disinformation.
Out of site, out of mind. A little bit like the remoter (and even not so remote - see #Faslane) parts of the surface world and ever diminishing ground water supplies. But dumping and attempts to mine without the concomitant pollution becoming obvious too soon is still occurring.
The ocean’s depths are intimately entangled with every other part of the planet.
The "Turtle Island" marathon tour of this worldwide unique film festival on all #nuclear topics and #radioactive dangers includes more than 10 cities in 9 states.
#KleeBenally, #Diné artist, activist and filmmaker, died suddenly on December 30, 2023, just days after completing his designs for the 2024 IUFF tour of North America and the Window Rock festival. We are so sad about Klee's death! Our hearts are with him.
Today in Labor History March 1, 1954: The U.S. detonated Castle Bravo, a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll. It caused the worst radioactive contamination ever by the U.S. However, this occurred after years of nuclear testing and contamination of the islands and waters around them. The U.S. detonated 23 nuclear devices on the islands from 1946 to 1958. They blew up the bombs on the reef, in the sea, in the air and underwater. They relocated islanders several times, each time to supposedly safe islands. But they neglected to provide sufficient food and water, causing starvation. When the islanders tried to catch fish to eat, or grow their own crops, they were so contaminated from radioactive fallout, that it poisoned all who ate it. Women started having miscarriages and giving birth to babies with abnormalities.
Today in Labor History February 18, 1955: The U.S. launched Operation Teapot at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. Teapot included 14 nuclear bomb tests. Wasp was the first, detonated on February 18. It had a yield of 1.2 kilotons. During shot Wasp, ground forces participated in Exercise Desert Rock VI. This included an armored task force moving to within 3,000 ft of ground zero, while the mushroom cloud was still growing. From 1945 through 1962, the U.S. conducted 230 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests, with approximately 235,000 military personnel participating. Most were enlisted men, from the navy. However, millions of people were exposed to the fallout from U.S. nuclear weapons tests in the southwest of the U.S. and the Marshall Islands. University of Arizona economist Keith Meyers estimates that radioactive fallout was responsible for 340,000 to 690,000 American deaths from 1951 to 1973.
Today in Labor History February 3, 1961: The U.S. Air Forces began Operation Looking Glass, code name for its airborne nuclear weapons command and control center. Ever since, there has been a "Doomsday Plane" always in the air, able to take direct control of U.S. nuclear bombers and missiles if the land-based strategic command (USSTRATCOM Global Operations Center (GOC) is incapacitated. Perhaps it will come in handy, should its current game of chicken between the US/NATO and Russia go sideways.
"As of 8 June 2023, there were 1,335,381 cubic meters of radioactive wastewater stored in tanks, but due to the failure of the #ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System) processing technology, approximately 70% of this water will have to be processed again. Scientists have warned that the #radiological risks from the discharges have not been fully assessed, and the biological impacts of #tritium, #carbon14, #strontium90, and #iodine129, which will be released in the discharges, have been ignored.
"The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) endorsed Japan’s plans for discharge. However, the IAEA has failed to investigate the operation of the ALPS, has completely ignored the highly radioactive fuel debris that melted down which continues every day to contaminate ground water – nearly 1000 cubic meters every ten days. Furthermore, the discharge plan has failed to conduct a comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment, as required by its international legal obligations, given that there is a risk of significant transboundary harm to neighboring countries. The IAEA is not tasked with protecting the global marine environment but it should not encourage a state to violate it."
‘I’ve never seen anything like this’: Japan says reason behind 1,200 tonnes of fish washing ashore is unknown
The sardines and mackerel were found floating on the surface of the sea near the fishing port of Hakodate in Hokkaido
by Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Wed 13 Dec 2023
"Officials in Japan have admitted they are struggling to determine why hundreds of tonnes of fish have washed ashore in recent days.
"Earlier this month, an estimated 1,200 tonnes of sardines and mackerel were found floating on the surface of the sea off the fishing port of Hakodate in Hokkaido, forming a silver blanket stretching for more than a kilometre.
"On Wednesday, officials in Nakiri, a town on the Pacific coast hundreds of miles south of Hokkaido, were confronted with 30 to 40 tonnes of Japanese scaled sardines, or sappa, which had been observed in the area a couple of days earlier.
"But no one has been able to confirm the cause. 'The cause is unknown at the moment,' Mikine Fujiwara, a local fisheries official, told the newspaper. 'We plan to sample the seawater at the site and examine it to uncover the cause.'
"Japanese government officials have blasted a report in the British newspaper the Daily Mail that appeared to link the phenomenon to the release of treated water from the #FukushimaDaiichi nuclear power plant.
"The report noted that dead fish had begun washing ashore almost four months after the plant began discharging the water – which contains small quantities of the #radioactive isotope #tritium – into the #Pacific."
What’s #koi got to do with it? Souring relations between #Asian#rivals#Japan and #China now seem to be snagged on calm-inducing beauty in spas, museums and gardens. The slippery dispute between Asia’s two biggest #economies adds to their spat over Japan's release into the sea of treated but #radioactive water from the tsunami-hit #Fukushima#nuclear power plant. And it has prompted more questions than answers.
Today in Labor History November 6, 1971: The US Atomic Energy Commission conducted its largest ever underground hydrogen bomb test, code-named Cannikin, on the tectonically unstable Amchitka Island in the Aleutians. It had an explosive yield of almost 5 megatons of TNT. Greenpeace arose from the opposition movement against this test. By comparison, the largest ever nuclear test was Tsar Bomba (designed by Andrei Sakharov and others), at over 50 megatons, detonated on October 17, 1961. Its mushroom cloud was 8x the height of Mount Everest and its flare could be seen from 1,000 miles away.
The United Nuclear Corporation is asking to transfer 1 million cubic yards of mine waste to a spot still near the Nation
By: Arlyssa Becenti - October 22, 2021
“The #Navajo people have endured decades of radiation exposure and #contamination caused by #uranium mining and production, and continues to impact the health of individuals, families and communities. We strongly oppose the proposed amendment that would allow the transfer of uranium mine waste and contamination just a short distance from the Navajo Nation and the homes of our Navajo people.” -- Navajo President Jonathan Nez
The Dirty Deadly Front End of Nuclear Power — 15,000 Abandoned Uranium Mines (Pt. 1)
by Josh Cunnings, March 11, 2016
"The perplexing problem of these open, deadly, toxic messes was discussed between Emerson Urry and Arnie Gundersen.
"Urry: I want to go back for a minute to the uranium. We were talking about Fukushima and obviously the myriad isotopes that are put off as a byproduct of the nuclear fission that is happening in the reactor. It all starts there with the uranium, and there was quite a rush for that, and now we have all of these situations. To our understanding there are about 15,000 abandoned uranium mines that have been left in complete ruin with very little cleanup or remediation at all, just in the western United States. This has happened, by-and-large, because of an antiquated mining bill – the 1872 Mining Bill – still affecting these situations today – that kind of allowed miners to just walk away from these situations — but yet, they remain in the open leaching off tailings – blowing around #radioactive dust. I think there’s about 4,500 of these exposed mining sites just in #Navajo country – another 2,500 or so in #Wyoming. How do we deal with that situation? What does the future hold in those regards, and quite frankly, are we all being poisoned by these mines?
"Gundersen: I’ll give you another example of the same thing, and I would say 'yes' to everything you said is the quick answer. There is a mill-tailings site in Moab, #Utah. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission [#NRC] told the owner of the site that they needed to set aside six million dollars to clean it up. Well, the actual #cleanup is a billion dollars. What did the owner do? They declared #bankruptcy and walked away.
"Urry: And it wasn’t bonded? No bond?
"Gundersen: Right. It wasn’t bonded. You know, if you bonded uranium mining, you wouldn’t have uranium mining."
Synroc (proposed by Ted Ringwood, for whom the high pressure mantle mineral is named) is composed of #perovsite and two other Ti- and Zr- bearing minerals. Perovskite, due to it's large crystallographic sites, high melting point, resistance to radiation damage, and stability in extreme hydrothermal conditions, is ideal for encapsulating high level radioactive waste for long-term storage. 85 litres of highly radioactive liquid waste can be processed into 5 kg of Synroc-C. #MinCup23#Radioactive