[ RadSafe ] [Nuclear News] German debate over nuclear power grows

[Sandy Perle]

Index:

German debate over nuclear power grows
Japan quake causes nuclear plant leak, kills eight
Vattenfall Europe Fires Nuclear Head After Incidents
First Atomic Bomb Test Exposed U.S. Civilians to Radiation 
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German debate over nuclear power grows

BERLIN - A fire at a German nuclear power plant and the temporary 
shutdown of another has boosted supporters of plans to close the 
country's atomic energy program, despite concerns that coal- or gas-
fired replacements will produce more greenhouse gases. 
 
The controversy led the utility Vattenfall AG to dismiss its German 
head over last month's fire at the Kruemmel plant in northern Germany 
and has sharpened tension over energy policy in Chancellor Angela 
Merkel's government.

The debate could be further stoked by an earthquake Monday in 
northwestern Japan that caused a fire and a radioactive water leak at 
a nuclear power facility.

The June 28 fire in a transformer building at Kruemmel and the 
temporary closure of a plant in Brunsbuettel on the same day were "no 
promotional events for an extension of running times for nuclear 
power plants," said Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a critic of 
nuclear power.

The fire at Kruemmel, near Hamburg, was controlled within several 
hours and no radiation leaked. But the inquiry revealed flaws in 
communication between plant workers and plant owner Vattenfall.

The Swedish-based Vattenfall on Monday fired Bruno Thomauske, the 
head of its German branch. The company said "we want to do everything 
to regain trust that has been lost. ... We will do everything to 
eliminate future mistakes and shortfalls."

The power plant in Brunsbuettel, also operated by Vattenfall, went 
back online Friday after a problem at its non-nuclear part was fixed.

The problems were a boost for those who support sticking to the 2000 
shutdown law passed by the previous government of Social Democrats 
and Greens, under which Germany would phase out all its 17 nuclear 
power plants by 2021.

Merkel's Christian Democrats are opposed in principle to abandoning 
nuclear energy. But they agreed to keep to the shutdown plan when she 
and her conservatives forged a coalition government with the left-of-
center Social Democrats.

Since then, as concerns over global warming have grown, Merkel has 
pointed out the clash between the nuclear shutdown and Europe's goal 
of reducing greenhouse gases.

Power from nuclear plants, which produce little in the way of the 
gases believed to cause global warming, would likely be replaced by 
electricity generated using natural gas and coal. Environmentalists 
urge the use of renewable energy such as electricity generated by 
windmills instead, but Germany's utilities say power demand will 
outstrip growth in renewables, meaning more use of coal and natural 
gas.

The Kruemmel and Brunsbuettel incidents are making it harder for 
utilities and conservatives to challenge the nuclear pullout. They 
are giving Gabriel ammunition for decisions to refuse to extend the 
operating lives of individual power plants by transferring running 
time from other reactors, as allowed by the 2000 law.

"The incidents at Kruemmel and Brunsbuettel show in a haunting way 
that the so-called remaining risk does exist and that it is way too 
high to take it into account longer than it is allowed by law," 
Gabriel told the daily Saechsische Zeitung.

A Greenpeace spokesman said Kruemmel did not meet safety standards. 
"It is an old plant and therefore it should be shut down," Thomas 
Breuer said on N24 television. The Kruemmel reactor came online in 
1983 and supplies about 30 percent of the region's power, according 
to Vattenfall.

The local atomic energy agency that oversees the Kruemmel plant 
announced that it will question its shift supervisor and several 
workers while the plant remains closed.

Vattenfall initially refused to identify employees who were working 
during the fire, and only revealed their names to investigators to 
avoid a search by police. The utility has said it would appoint 
independent experts to analyze the incident.

Nuclear power has long been a sensitive subject in Germany, 
especially since the 1986 explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear 
power plant in the former Soviet Union sent radiation over parts of 
Europe.
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Japan quake causes nuclear plant leak, kills eight

KASHIWAZAKI, Japan (AFP) - A powerful earthquake struck Japan on 
Monday, killing eight people, injuring hundreds and causing 
radioactive water to leak from a nuclear plant that also caught fire.
 
The mid-morning quake, striking northwest of Tokyo and registering 
6.8 on the Richter scale, also damaged hundreds of homes, reducing 
some to heaps of rubble.

"The television set and washing machine were thrown across the room," 
said Satoshi Hirokawa, 51, whose house in the worst-hit city of 
Kashiwazaki was partially destroyed.

"But I felt relieved as at least I could confirm that my family was 
safe."

Water containing a "small amount of radioactive material" leaked from 
the massive Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, where a fire caused by 
the quake sent black smoke pouring into the sky for hours.

"The leakage is believed to be far below the levels that could affect 
the environment," said Shougo Fukuda, of Tokyo Electric, which 
operates the facility located near the epicentre of the deadly 
earthquake.

The plant is one of the largest in the world, supplying power to the 
energy-hungry Tokyo region.

The firm said the fire broke out in the area supplying electricity 
but that the four reactors in operation had already been 
automatically stopped after the quake, which also generated small 
tsunami waves.

Dozens of aftershocks were felt throughout the day in central Japan.

Late Monday, a separate earthquake of 6.6 on the Richter scale struck 
in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) off the western city of Kyoto.

There was no immediate fear of tsunami waves, said the Meteorological 
Agency, or reports of damage from the latest quake, which was 
nonetheless felt in much of the Japanese archipelago.

At least 875 people were injured in Niigata prefecture which includes 
Kashiwazaki, local officials said.

Rescue workers were hunting for anyone buried in the wreckage after 
nearly 800 buildings were damaged by the quake, which shook 
skyscrapers in Tokyo more than 200 kilometres (125 miles) away.

The Defence Agency dispatched some 450 troops and 120 military 
vehicles to the region to help support rescue operations.

The eight people killed were all in their 70s or 80s, according to 
the National Police Agency.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe earlier broke away from election 
campaigning to rush to Kashiwazaki, where thousands of people flocked 
to schools and other emergency shelters.

Dressed in a relief worker's uniform, he said he had given 
instructions to his government that "all possible measures be taken 
to ensure the safety of residents, secure lifelines to them and 
relieve their anxieties."

Niigata was hit by another earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter 
scale in 2004 that killed 67 people, most of them elderly who died in 
the days and weeks after the first tremor from stress and fatigue. 

"Even though there was a big one three years ago, you just can't get 
used to these quakes," said Tetsuya Oda, a 17-year-old student. 

The quake also triggered mudslides in Kashiwazaki, where soil was 
already loose following a major typhoon at the weekend, which left 
four people dead or missing and flooded hundreds of homes across 
Japan. 

Monday was a bank holiday in Japan, so financial markets and many 
offices were closed. 

Japan lies at the junction of four tectonic plates and is hit by 
about 20 percent of the world's most powerful earthquakes. 

In January 1995, a 7.3-magnitude quake destroyed much of the western 
metropolis of Kobe, killing more than 6,400 people.
------------------

Vattenfall Europe Fires Nuclear Head After Incidents

July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Vattenfall Europe AG, Germany's fourth-largest 
utility, dismissed the head of its nuclear unit after incidents at 
the Kruemmel and Brunsbuettel reactors triggered a review of its 
operating license. 

Bruno Thomauske will be replaced by Reinhardt Hassa, the Berlin-based 
company said today in a statement distributed by OTS newswire. 
Vattenfall Europe's head of communication, Johannes Altmeppen, 
resigned, the company added. 

State regulators in Schleswig-Holstein, where Kruemmel is based, are 
re-evaluating Vattenfall's license to operate two nuclear plants that 
power the equivalent of 4.1 million homes. The ministry has 
questioned the accuracy of Vattenfall's public statement that a June 
28 fire at the Kruemmel plant didn't affect the plant's reactor. 

``We are going to do everything to rule out mistakes and oversights 
in the future,'' Vattenfall Europe said today in its statement. ``We 
want to win back lost trust.'' 

The state ministry said today after Vattenfall's statement that it 
plans to continue its examination. Kruemmel, which has a capacity of 
1,260 megawatts, will remain stopped until it's clear that the plant 
is secure, the ministry said by e-mail. 

``Releasing Dr. Thomauske from his duties was an overdue step,'' 
Germany's Federal Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in a faxed 
statement. ``It is high time that Vattenfall participated actively in 
the necessary clarification of the incidents at Kruemmel and 
Brunsbuettel.'' 

IAEA Probe 

The federal ministry today asked the International Atomic Energy 
Agency to review Germany's nuclear safety oversight after the 
Kruemmel fire. The probe is scheduled to begin in 2008. 

Vattenfall's statement on July 1 that incidents at its Kruemmel and 
Brunsbuettel plants weren't linked to the reactors may show that the 
company has an incorrect understanding of what parts of a nuclear 
plant are connected to the reactor, the Schleswig-Holstein ministry 
said July 9. 

Vattenfall said at the time that it had informed regulators of the 
halts ``quickly and comprehensively.'' The utility said it would aim 
to inform the public more quickly and in more detail in future. 

The Kruemmel shutdown involved the unplanned stoppage of several 
pumps and a change of pressure in the reactor pressure vessel, the 
ministry said July 3. That may conflict with Vattenfall's statement 
that the ``problems at Kruemmel and Brunsbuettel were conventional in 
nature and weren't connected to the nuclear area of the plant,'' 
according to the ministry. 

No one was injured in the incidents and no radiation was released. 

Vattenfall Europe is controlled by Sweden's Vattenfall AB, whose 
spokeswoman, Maria Parent, declined to comment. 
------------------

First Atomic Bomb Test Exposed U.S. Civilians to Radiation 

The world´s first atomic bomb test might have exposed unaware 
civilians in New Mexico to thousands of times the recommended level 
of public radiation exposure, according to reconstructed data in a 
new study. 
 
The research, led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
(CDC), found that ingestion of radioactive materials-primarily from 
irradiated rainwater and goat´s milk-might have been a substantial 
contributor to public radiation exposure that was largely not 
accounted for. 

The findings come on the 62nd anniversary of the world´s first atomic 
explosion and were presented at the recent annual meeting of the 
Health Physics Society. 

`Trinity´ 

The world´s first nuclear weapons test took place on July 16, 1945 in 
the desolate White Sands deserts of New Mexico. In a cryptic 
reference to a John Donne poem that he knew and loved, J. Robert 
Oppenheimer, lead physicist of the Manhattan Project and scientific 
director of the test, dubbed the location "Trinity." 

At 5:29:45 a.m. local time, a plutonium-based atomic bomb was 
detonated atop a 100-foot steel tower erected at Trinity specifically 
for the test. Scientists hoped that exploding the bomb at an elevated 
height would reduce the amount of radioactive dust raised by the 
explosion. They also needed to simulate the air-drop method of 
deployment that was eventually used by the real bombs. 

The Trinity bomb was an exact replica of "Fat Man," the second and 
last nuclear weapon ever used in war. Fat Man was detonated over 
Nagasaki, Japan less than a month after the Trinity test. 

Exploding with an energy equal to about 20 kilotons of TNT, the blast 
carved a crater in the Earth more than 1,000 feet wide and 10 feet 
deep. Radioactive fallout from the blast was detected as far away as 
Indiana. 

Heat from the explosion was so intense that sand grains fused to form 
a reflective layer of radioactive, green glass, called "Trinitite," 
on the desert floor. 

Dangerous radiation 

Because of its importance in the war, the Trinity test was conducted 
in secret. Little was known about the dangers of radiation exposure 
in the 1940s, so local residents were not warned or evacuated in 
advance of-or even following-the test. As a result, people in 
surrounding areas were exposed to radiation by breathing contaminated 
air, eating contaminated foods, and drinking affected water and milk. 
Some ranches were located within 15 miles of ground zero, and 
commercial crops were grown nearby. 


In the hours after the blast, five monitoring teams traveled along 
local roads recording radiation levels. The highest radiation levels 
from Trinity were measured in a swath 12 miles long and one mile wide 
that started near an area 16 miles northeast of ground zero. Around 
nearby ranches, exposure rates around 15 Roentgen per hour were 
measured just three hours after detonation. 

Currently, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission states that members of 
the public should not receive more than 2 millirem (about 0.002 
Roentgen) of radiation in any one hour from external radiation 
sources in any public area. The exposure rates following the Trinity 
test were more than 10,000 times this recommended dose level. 

T.E. Widner, the director of the new CDC study, said he thinks 
evacuations would have certainly been arranged if scientists and 
physicians had known about the long-term effects of radiation 
exposure, even if the publicity threatened the mission. 

Trinity is now open twice a year to the public, on the first 
Saturdays of April and October for six hours each time. According to 
the public affairs office at White Sands, a one-hour visit to ground 
zero will result in a whole body exposure of one-half to one 
millirem. To put this in perspective, a U.S. adult receives 360 
millirems on average every year from natural and medical sources.

-----------------------------------------
Sander C. Perle
President
Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc.
2652 McGaw Avenue
Irvine, CA 92614 

Tel: (949) 296-2306 / (888) 437-1714  Extension 2306
Fax:(949) 296-1144

E-Mail: sperle at dosimetry.com
E-Mail: sandyfl at cox.net 

Global Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/