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Showing posts with label flood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flood. Show all posts

June 29, 2011

Los Alamos nuclear alert

And as if it was not enough Fukushima's tsunami and Fort Calhoun's flooding a new alert to a nuclear site is taking place in New Mexico.
A raging wildfire is threatening to engulf the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Los Alamos likely contains more nuclear weapons than any other facility in the world.

As if that weren't bad enough, AP notes:
The anti-nuclear watchdog group Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, however, said the fire appeared to be about 3 1/2 miles from a dumpsite where as many as 30,000 55-gallon drums of plutonium-contaminated waste were stored in fabric tents above ground. The group said the drums were awaiting transport to a low-level radiation dump site in southern New Mexico.

Lab spokesman Steve Sandoval declined to confirm that there were any such drums currently on the property.
Later, Los Alamos confirmed the allegation:
Lab officials at first declined to confirm that such drums were on the property, but in a statement early Tuesday, lab spokeswoman Lisa Rosendorf said such drums are stored in a section of the complex known as Area G. She said the drums contain cleanup from Cold War-era waste that the lab sends away in weekly shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
She said the drums were on a paved area with few trees nearby and would be safe even if a fire reached the storage area. Officials have said it is miles from the flames.
The lab has called in a special team to test plutonium and uranium levels in the air as a "precaution".

March 25, 2011

Global nuclear risk map

The recent Fukushima Daiichi crisis has reopened the nuclear debate. Risk analysis and mapping firm Maplecroft has produced a global map of nuclear power stations, revealing the vulnerability to seismic, tsunami and storm surge risk of these facilities and the levels of energy security risks that countries face in the long-term.
The highest concentrations of seismic risk are concentrated around the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’. Japan clearly stands out as having the highest concentration of nuclear facilities in an active seismic area, however Taiwan, South Korea and mainland China also have nuclear plants in areas exposed to either seismic or tsunami and storm surge hazards.
Further risks exist in the potential destructive power of storm surges. The eastern seaboard of the United States and northern coastal Europe are exposed to storm surges from intense low pressure weather systems (either tropical cyclones or severe extra-tropical cyclones). There are nuclear power facilities located in each of these regions and construction of these facilities will need to account for the storm surge potential.