Gentle readers, may I present Mr. Arnold Gundersen. Because, unlike what the main stream media must have concluded, not only can we understand the true nature of the disaster, but we are more likely to unnecessarily panic when we don't.
All the media I could find, as of June 6th.
All the media I could find, as of June 6th.
Newest first.
Please comment if a link is broken or if you know of any not shown.
Fairewinds' chief engineer Arnie Gundersen emphasizes the need to enlarge evacuation zones around US nuclear plants to 50 miles. Reducing US evacuation zones to only 10 miles during a nuclear power accident compromises public safet
33.6 Part 2 of Exclusive Arnie Gundersen Interview: Protecting Yourself If The Situation Worsens
transcript available at source: The Martenson Report
Chris Martenson: So yes, I am interested in personally, now much more than I used to be, I think in really thinking these issues through. So the first thing is here is where I’d like to start because here is where a huge source of confusion lies - and the media hasn’t helped this one a lot. It's the difference between radiation dangers and contamination dangers from radioactive particles. Can you talk to us about that?
Arnie Gundersen: There are three kinds of radioactive material: there are gamma rays: initially when the nuclear reactors blew they emitted large clouds of xenon and krypton gases. Those are noble gases. They don’t react with your skin or anything but they emit gamma rays. So the readings you saw with people walking around with the Geiger counters were from essentially being in a cloud of gamma rays hitting them from the outside. And that’s significant but it is also dispersed over your entire body. To my mind, the bigger problem, are the two ways that radioactive material decays and those are called beta particles and alpha particles. They don’t travel as far but they have an enormous amount more energy than a gamma ray. So if they lie on your skin, you are just fine. You can wash it off and life goes on. The problem is if they get inside they can selectively go to an organ and bombard a very small piece of tissue with a lot of exposure and potentially cause a cancer and that is what we call a hot particle.
Part 2 of Chris' interview with Arnie Gundersen (runtime 22m:26s):
33.3 Exclusive Arnie Gundersen Interview: The Dangers of Fukushima Are Worse and Longer-lived Than We Think
Part 1 of Chris' interview with Arnie Gundersen (runtime 36m:31s):
"I have said it's worse than Chernobyl and I’ll stand by that. There was an enormous amount of radiation given out in the first two to three weeks of the event. And add the wind blowing in-land. It could very well have brought the nation of Japan to its knees. I mean, there is so much contamination that luckily wound up in the Pacific Ocean as compared to across the nation of Japan - it could have cut Japan in half. But now the winds have turned, so they are heading to the south toward Tokyo and now my concern and my advice to friends that if there is a severe aftershock and the Unit 4 building collapses, leave. We are well beyond where any science has ever gone at that point and nuclear fuel lying on the ground and getting hot is not a condition that anyone has ever analyzed."
33. Gundersen Gives Testimony to NRC ACRS
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) held a special ACRS meeting Thursday May 26, 2011 on the current status of Fukushima. Arnie Gundersen was invited to speak for 5 minutes concerning the lessons learned from the Fukushima accident as it pertains to the 23 Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors (BWR's) in the US and containment integrity. Mr. Gundersen was the first engineer to brief the NRC on the implication of Main Steam Isolation Valve (MSIV) Leakage in 1974, and he has been studying containment integrity since 1972. The NRC has constantly maintained in all of its calculations and reviews that there is zero probability of a containment leaking. For more than six years, in testimony and in correspondence with the NRC, Mr. Gundersen has disputed the NRC's stand that containment systems simply do not and cannot leak. The events at Fukushima have proven that Gundersen was correct. The explosions at Fukushima show that Mark 1 containments will lose their integrity and release huge amounts of radiation, as Mr. Gundersen has been telling the NRC for many years.
32. The Implications of the Fukushima Accident on the World's Operating Reactors
Arnie Gundersen explains how containment vents were added to the GE Mark 1 BWR as a "band aid" 20 years after the plants built in order to prevent an explosion of the notoriously weak Mark 1 containment system. Obviously the containment vent band aid fix did not work since all three units have lost containment integrity and are leaking radioactivity. Gundersen also discusses seismic design flaws, inadequate evacuation planning, and the taxpayer supported nuclear industry liability fund.
Gundersen says Fukushima's gaseous and liquid releases continue unabated. With a meltdown at Unit 1, Unit 4 leaning and facing possible collapse, several units contaminating ground water, and area school children outside the exclusion zone receiving adult occupational radiation doses, the situation continues to worsen. TEPCO needs a cohesive plan and international support to protect against world-wide contamination.
Fairewinds Associates Chief Nuclear Engineer, Arnie Gundersen discusses the current state of the Fukushima plant in Japan.
Arnie Gundersen analyzes a satellite image of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. Gundersen notes that the service water pumps are gone and therefore the safety system would have failed anyway.
Arnie Gundersen discusses the failure of the Daiichi ventilation stacks and the resulting high radiation ground level release. IAEA data shows background radiation at 1,600 times normal levels in areas as far as 40km from Daiichi and surface radiation at 0.9 MBq/m2 (900,000 disintegrations per second).
A report from the Japanese Nuclear Safety Commission Ex-Secretariat, Dr. Saji, credits the current status of the accident to "luck". Gundersen discusses what could have happened if the wind had been blowing in-land.
Fairewinds' founder Maggie Gundersen interviews environmental scientist and professional engineer Marco Kaltofen about his ongoing analysis of radioactive fallout from Fukushima.
April 27th was the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. Six weeks ago, when Gundersen first appeared on Russia Today, he said that Fukushima would be "Chernobyl on steroids". Japanese authorities are now admitting Chernobyl-level releases as the plant continues to leak radioactive gases and liquids.
Gundersen implores Congress and NRC to think outside the box. Pause licensing of new nukes and 20-year-life extensions until the lessons learned from Fukushima are applied. Fairewinds Associates recommends that regulators look at the feasibility of emergency evacuation plans, containment leakage, and aging management plans for 40-year-old Fukushima model reactors.
(alternate video link)
Workers at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility in Japan have started to pump radioactive water from a leaking reactor into a makeshift storage area—an effort they say is a crucial step toward easing the nuclear crisis. The Tokyo Electric Power Company says it will take six to nine months to achieve a "cold shutdown." Meanwhile in the United States, the owners of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant have filed a federal lawsuit on Monday against a state law that gives the Vermont State Legislature veto power over operation of the reactor when its current license expires next March. We speak with longtime nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen in Burlington, Vermont.
Gundersen analyzes new pressure and temperature data from the Fukushima reactors and containments. TEPCO recently denied that the fuel pool in Unit 4 was experiencing a partial inadvertent criticality, despite the finding of radioactive iodine-131 (an isotope with an eight-day half-life). The utility blamed the iodine on deposition resulting from the explosion of the other buildings. Gundersen takes an in-depth look at TEPCO's Theory. Lastly, he discusses the FDA decision not to monitor fish for radioactivity.
Gundersen discusses why it took so long to increase the accident severity level at Fukushima to a 7. He addresses the current status of the Unit 4 fuel pool. Gundersen also talks about the bad data being released by TEPCO.
Nuclear Engineer, Arnie Gundersen, discusses why TEPCO's announcement of an increased accident severity level should not be a surprise. He also discusses similarities among the Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima nuclear accidents and how Governments are once again limiting public access to accurate radiation dose information. Lastly, Gundersen responds to the overwhelming number of email inquires regarding the Fukushima accident.
Arnie Gundersen discusses inconstancies between what the NRC, TEPCo, and the Nuclear Industry are saying privately and publicly. Documents from the French nuclear firm, Areva, and the NRC reveal what the industry knows about the Fukushima disaster.
Gundersen discusses the radioactive water which is sitting in trenches and leaking into the ocean. He explains how the hydrogen explosion in reactor 2 caused a breeched containment. Gundersen puts into perspective the level of radiation being released into the ocean.
Gundersen discusses the radioactive water which is sitting in trenches and leaking into the ocean. He explains how the hydrogen explosion in reactor 2 caused a breeched containment. Gundersen puts into perspective the level of radiation being released into the ocean.
Recent press reports have discussed the possibility that Fukushima Unit 1 may be having a nuclear chain reaction. New data released by TEPCO indicates that even though Fukushima Unit 1 was shut down during the March 11 earthquake, it appears to have "gone critical" again without human intervention. The detection by TEPCO of short-lived radioactive isotopes substantiates the existence of this inadvertent criticality.
13. Untitled
Gundersen describes the Fukushima plant as stable, but precarious. In this update, he discusses the high levels of radiation (2 Million disintegrations/second being found on the ground as far as 25 miles from the plant site.) He also addresses a New York Times report of hundreds of tons of water being put into the reactors each day. Gundersen points out that all of the water going in to the reactors is being irradiated, leaking out, and polluting the Ocean. He concludes by discussing the differences between the accident scenarios that the nuclear industry previously planned for and what has actually happened.
Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Associates, discusses the recent finding of plutonium in the soil at five locations around the Daiichi power plant. He also addresses the discovery of highly radioactive water found in trenches which appear to be draining into the ocean.
9. Untitled
8 Untitled
Gundersen discusses the failed attempts to cool the spent fuel rod pools by dropping water from helicopters. He also talks about radiation exposure levels faced by the Fukushima workers.
Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Associates, praises the Japanese for scrapping a plan to drop water on to the overheating fuel pools from helicopters. Gundersen explains that it's a risky move. If the the falling water causes the spacing of the gaps between spent fuel rods to shrink, Gundersen says, a new reaction (or criticality) might develop.
Gundersen expresses his belief that authorities should have acknowledged sooner the severity of the accident and revealed more information to the public. He calls the accident one hundred times worse than the worst case scenario imagined a year ago.
Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Energy Associates, explains how damaged fuel has turned to molten in the bottom of the nuclear reactor. Gundersen discusses the similarities and differences between a power plant meltdown and a nuclear bomb. He also talks about evacuation zones and the inadequacy of government estimations and warnings.
Be seeing you.
It looks like everybody is dead;
ReplyDeletethe cycle starts again with new results!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletetangel: are you referring to content in the videos (and if so, where)? or are you speaking performatively, of a not so distant future (i hope not*)? or pehaps metaphorically, i.e. the video links are dead (this is admittedly unlikely, since then videos would be people)?
ReplyDelete(just being playful btw - good to see you)
(*or maybe i hope so, given the ethics of these mthrfckrs - but my faith in reincarnation/recycling does not hold a candle to my gratitude for, enjoyment of, and keen desire to maximize joy in the incarnationn in which i find myself...
find myself typing one handed as usual, sitting here after a magnificent meal; touching base with a Being perhaps half a world away, who is, if i am not mistaken yet another soul firmly planted as not only 'not part of the problem,' but (dare i say 'we' here) as 'part of the solution' (and if i do dare, on whose behalf is that a dare)?
Hi,
ReplyDeleteThe first video is showing a 404.
Thanks for adding me to your blog roll. It may be better if your blogroll feed for my site pulls from only my articles. Many other articles are syndicated so if you just use http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/author/admin/feed/ only the ones I pen will show up.
Really, its up to you but just a suggestion.