Summary: On 3rd anniversary of Fukushima, two authors report American reactors are unsafe at any speed. Shocking risk. Plus audio from March 2 XL Pipeline dissent protest in D.C. & letter from youth, via Bobby Wengronowitz. Radio Ecoshock 140312 http://tinyurl.com/lerpc6j Yes, despite a punishing cold winter, thousands of Americans showed up at the White House to fight off the Keystone XL pipeline. They were mostly young, protecting their future against climate change driven by the Tar Sands, the dirtiest fuel on Earth. Over 350 people were arrested. I'll take you there. But first, on the third anniversary of the worst nuclear disaster in the world, I'll talk with the authors of Fukushima, The Story of a Nuclear Disaster". But America is just waiting for it's own nuclear mega-disaster. Despite promises after March 2011, the U.S. industry is still stalling on safety critical fixes to aging reactors. It's just a matter of time. I'm Alex Smith. Welcome back to Radio Ecoshock. Listen to/download this program in CD Quality or Lo-Fi THE FUKUSHIMA STORY BLOWS THE COVER ON AMERICAN REACTOR SAFETY Interview with David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists After the triple melt down of reactors in Fukushima Japan in March 2011, the American Nuclear Regulatory Commission did two things: they assured the public "it can't happen here" - and they promised a flurry of action to make reactors safer in the United States. Now we have the first new book from nuclear experts explaining what happened at Fukushima. And we have a report that American reactors are still unsafe, still waiting for the next major melt-down. Both come from David Lochbaum. He worked in U.S. reactors for 17 years. He was an instructor for the NRC. David is now Director of the Nuclear Safety Project, for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Read David's latest article "Nuclear Disaster American Style" here. Half of reactors in U.S. don't meet fire regulations. This is as dangerous as a risk factor as the tsunami that broke Fukushima. David writes: "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission examined fire hazards during a briefing on July 17, 2008. An NRC senior manager informed the Chairman and Commissioners that “Approximately one-half of the core damage risk at operating reactors results from accident sequences that initiate with fire events.” In other words, the fire hazard roughly equals all other hazards combined. And that analysis assumed the NRC’s fire protection regulations were being met—the risk goes up when the fire regulations are not met. Fire is a large risk for the same reason that flooding caused so much trouble at Fukushima. Fires and floods can disable primary safety systems and their backups. If workers are unable to recover disabled equipment or connect temporary replacements, reactor cores overheat and melt down. The nuclear plant fire hazard is not speculative. In March 1975, a fire at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Alabama disabled all the emergency systems for cooling the Unit 1 reactor and most of those systems for Unit 2. Only heroic worker efforts prevented both cores from melting that day. The NRC did not want another nuclear plant to experience another fire as bad as, or worse than, the one at Browns Ferry. It adopted fire protection regulations in 1980 intended to manage the fire risk to an acceptably low level. In the late 1990s, the NRC’s inspectors discovered that dozens of reactors, including the two at Diablo Canyon, did not satisfy the 1980 fire protection regulations. In 2004, the NRC adopted an alternative set of fire protection regulations. Owners had the choice of satisfying either set of regulations. On December 29, 2005, Diablo Canyon’s owner notified the NRC that it opted to someday implement the measures necessary to achieve compliance with the 2004 regulations. As of today, Diablo Canyon meets neither set of fire protection regulations." Fully one third of American reactors are not protected against flooding from upstream dam breaking. Another
