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ack into the ocean, either actively being pumped out after some
decontamination or through leaks in the building, so [Tepco’s] not able to
contain all of the water that they use to cool.”
The government and Tepco moved quickly to deny Science. The
federal fisheries ministry claimed that cesium from Fukushima’s wrecked
cooling systems — about 16,000-trillion becquerels, what Science called
“by far the largest discharge of radioactivity into the ocean ever seen”— is
“sinking into the seabed” and no longer entering the food chain. (A
becquerel is one subatomic disintegration per second) Tepco
representatives just said contaminated water was not leaking from any of
its wreckage.
Oceanographer Kanda at Tokyo University told the journal Nature
that his analysis indicates the site itself is leaking about 300 billion
becquerels into the sea every month.
John LaForge is on the staff of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog and
environmental justice group in Wisc., and edits its Quarterly.
Double Your Trouble With Nuclear Power
Bad for Health, Bad for Business
by
Joseph Mangano, MPH MBA and Dr. Janette Sherman
Industry leaders will have no problem closing nuclear reactors that
don’t generate expected profits. Exelon, the Chicago-based company that
owns 17 of the 104 U.S. reactors, recently saw its stock price drop below
$30 a share, the same level as mid-2003, and a whopping 70% below its
peak of over $92 a share in mid-2008.
The standard explanation for this reversal is cost. In particular,
electricity from growing natural gas and wind sources costs less to
produce than that from nuclear reactors. The famous 1954 promise by
Atomic Energy Commission head Lewis Strauss that the atom would
create energy “too cheap to meter” has failed miserably. But while cost is
the reason why utilities will be closing reactors, most reports fail to look
beneath the surface and understand WHY nukes are so expensive.