Elevated radioactive iodine detected in Europe

Another string of news on elevated radiation levels detected in Europe that have passed unnoticed to the general public.
Reuters notes that elevated levels of radioactive iodine have been detected in Germany, Sweden, Slovakia, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.
The Stockholm News reports that Denmark and Poland are also experiencing heightened radiation.
NHK notes that Russia has been hit as well.
AP notes that the radioactive releases are ongoing:

An official [from the International Atomic Energy Agency] familiar with the matter, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, said the release appeared to be continuing.

Some scientists have made some unlikely claims about the source of the radiation. For example, as Reuters notes:

Professor Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics at Britain's Royal Berkshire Hospital, said any link with Fukushima was extremely unlikely.

"It is far more likely that the iodine may be as a result of excretion by patients undergoing medical treatment. Whilst such patients are carefully controlled, some release of iodine into the environment may be inevitable but would certainly be well below any limits where health detriment would even begin to be an issue for concern," he said.

(It is unlikely that patients in so many countries would all start excreting more radioactive iodine at the same time.)

The Czechs deny responsibility, but are sending mixed signals. As AP notes:

In Prague, an official at the Czech State Office for Nuclear Safety said he was "100 percent sure" that the radiation had not come from any Czech nuclear power plant — or from any other source on Czech territory.

[However,] speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to the media, the official said tests are under way around the country to try and identify the source.

The Czechs are betting heavily on nuclear power and have plans to dramatically increase production ....

Poland is trying to blame Pakistan for the radiation; but a Pakistan government official denies the allegation.
All of the mainstream commentators dismiss Fukushima as a potential source.
So - while we don't have any idea where the radiation is coming from at this point - it is too early to rule out Fukushima.

Fukushima disaster meltdown amid media silence

Radioactive xenon has been detected at the Fukushima nuclear plant, indicating that nuclear reactions are still occurring and that the worst and totally unreported nuclear disaster is going to haunt Japan for a long time.

BusinessWeek notes that the Japanese government has confirmed the existence of radioactive xenon:

The detection of xenon, which is associated with nuclear fission, was confirmed today by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, the country’s atomic regulator said.

NHK reports:

The operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says it found in the facility’s No.2 reactor radioactive substances that could have resulted from continuous nuclear fission.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, said on Wednesday that it detected xenon-133 and xenon-135 in gas taken from the reactor’s containment vessel on the previous day. The substances were reportedly in concentrations of 6 to more than 10 parts per million becquerels per cubic centimeter.

Xenon-135 was also detected in gas samples collected on Wednesday.

Radioactive xenon is produced during nuclear fission.

The half-life of xenon-133 is 5 days, and that of xenon-135 is 9 hours.

***

The utility also says it wants to take a close look at the situation of the plant’s No.1 and 3 reactors.

Bloomberg writes:

“Given the signs, it’s certain that fission is occurring,” Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at Tepco who regularly talks to the media, told reporters in Tokyo today. There’s been no large-scale or sustained criticality and no increase in radiation, he said.

***

It’s possible there are similar reactions occurring in the No. 1 and No. 3 reactors, the other cores damaged at the station, Matsumoto said.

“Melted fuel in the No. 2 reactor may have undergone a sustained process of nuclear fission or re-criticality,” Tetsuo Ito, the head of Kinki University’s Atomic Energy Research Institute, said by phone. “The nuclear fission should be containable by injecting boron into the reactor to absorb neutrons.”

The New York Times points out:

The unexpected bursts — something akin to flare-ups after a major fire … threaten to increase the amount of dangerous radioactive elements leaking from the complex and complicate cleanup efforts, raising startling questions about how much remains uncertain at the plant….

The plant’s owner admitted for the first time that fuel deep inside three stricken plants was probably continuing to experience bursts of fission.

***

It is impossible to determine exactly what state the fuel is in, given that even an intact reactor can offer only limited gauges in the form of temperature, pressure readings and neutron flow, but not visual observation. That lack of clarity is one of the most resonant lessons of the Fukushima disaster, where those trying to guide the response and assess the danger operated by what amounted to educated guesswork.

In reactors of the design used at Fukushima, that chain reaction is normally stopped when the operator gives a command to insert control rods, which rise up from the bottom of the core and separate the fuel assemblies. But when the cores of three reactors at Fukushima melted, a large part of the fuel presumably formed a jumbled mass in the bottom of the vessel, and without a strict gridlike geometry, the control rods cannot be inserted. Some of the fuel has escaped the vessel, experts believe, and is in spaces underneath, where there is no way to use control rods to interrupt the flow of neutrons.

***

The three reactors — together with spent fuel rods stored at a fourth damaged reactor — have been leaking radioactive material since the initial disaster, and new episodes of fission would only increase their dangers.

“Re-criticality would produce more harmful radioactive material, and because the reactors are damaged, there would be a danger of a leak,” said Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at Kyoto University’s Research Reactor Institute, whose prescient warnings about nuclear safety have won him respect in Japan.

Mr. Koide holds that the nuclear fuel at the three reactors probably melted through containments and into the ground, raising the possibility of contaminated groundwater. If much of the fuel was indeed in the ground early in the crisis, the “feed and bleed” strategy initially taken by Tokyo Electric — where workers pumped cooling water into the reactors, producing hundreds of tons of radioactive runoff — would have prevented fuel still in the reactor from boiling itself dry and melting, but would not have done anything to reduce danger from fuel already in the soil — if it got that far.

***

Tokyo Electric does not deny the possibility that the fuel may have burrowed into the ground, but its officials say that “most” of the fuel likely remains within the reactor, albeit slumped at the bottom in a molten mass.

But even in their most dire assessments, some experts had not expected even bursts of re-criticality to occur, because it was unlikely that the fuel would melt in just the right way — and that another ingredient, water, would be present in just the right amounts — to allow for any nuclear reaction. If episodes of fission at Fukushima were confirmed, Mr. Koide said, “our entire understanding of nuclear safety would be turned on its head.”

Some nuclear experts have debated for months whether nuclear reactions might be continuing, either in the fuel inside the reactors, or in the spent fuel pools at the plant. They have pointed, for example, to the continued reports of short-lived iodine in the spent fuel pool at Reactor No. 3.

A former nuclear engineer with three decades of experience at a major engineering firm … who has worked at all three nuclear power complexes operated by Tokyo Electric … said that tiny fuel pellets could have been carried to different parts of the plant, like the spaces under the reactor during attempts to vent them in the early days. That would explain several cases of lethally high radiation readings found outside the reactor cores.

“If the fuel is still inside the reactor core, that’s one thing,” he said. But if the fuel has been dispersed more widely, then we are far from any stable shutdown.”

Radiation could cause some Tokyo areas to be evacuated

The hidden Fukushima disaster is still an escalating issue and it appears that radiation in some parts of Tokyo is now higher than in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Yesterday, Al Jazeera pointed out:

Experts estimate the radiation leaked from Fukushima nuclear plant will exceed that of Chernobyl.

The need to evacuate parts of the sprawling capital of 35 million may have once seemed an incredible prospect but some experts say the possibility can no longer be ignored

Japan Times reports today, the Japanese government started discussing the potential need to evacuate Japan soon after the quake hit:

In the days immediately after the crisis began at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the government received a report saying 30 million residents in the Tokyo metropolitan area would have to be evacuated in a worst-case scenario, former Prime Minister Naoto Kan revealed in a recent interview.

“It was a crucial moment when I wasn’t sure whether Japan could continue to function as a state,” he said.

After the March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant, Kan instructed several entities to simulate a worst-case scenario. One of those assessments said everyone residing within 200 to 250 km of the plant — an zone that would encompass half to all of Tokyo and cut clear across Honshu to the Sea of Japan — would have to be evacuated.

.

Serious levels of Radiation detected in Tokyo

Serious news from Fukushima and as usual completely ignored by mainstream media and authorities.
Radiation expert Dr. Chris Busby says that huge quantities of radiation - 10¹³ or 10 trillion becquerels per hour - are still being released from Fukushima.
This is down slightly from some of the radiation levels observed in March but given that the Fukushima crisis has continued for months, Fukushima dwarfs Chernobyl in terms of radiation released.

Busby brought sophisticated radiation testing equipment to Japan, and says that the radiation from one sample from Tokyo was higher than existed inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone.




According to wide-spread but unsubstantiated rumors, Fukushima workers say that the ground under the plant has cracked, and radioactive steam is being released from the cracks.



And another interesting piece of news from the prestigious scientific journal Nature notes:

Shortly after a massive tsunami struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on 11 March, an unmanned monitoring station on the outskirts of Takasaki, Japan, logged a rise in radiation levels. Within 72 hours, scientists had analysed samples taken from the air and transmitted their analysis to Vienna, Austria — the headquarters of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), an international body set up to monitor nuclear weapons tests.
It was just the start of a flood of data collected about the accident by the CTBTO's global network of 63 radiation monitoring stations. In the following weeks, the data were shared with governments around the world, but not with academics or the public.

Fukushima radiation and Nebraska evacuation

"A citizens' group in Fukushima Prefecture "Fukushima Network to Protect Children from Radiation" tested the urine samples from 10 children in Fukushima City, age 6 to 16, and announced on June 30 that a small amount of radioactive materials was detected from all samples.
The highest amount of cesium-134 was from an 8-year-old girl, at 1.13 becquerels per liter. The highest amount of cesium-137 was from a 7-year-old boy, at 1.30 becquerels per liter.
The samples were taken in late May, and sent to the French laboratory ACRO (Association pour le Contrôle de la Radioactivité dans l’Ouest) to testing for radiation. ACRO has experience in surveying the radiation exposure in children after the Chernobyl accident. ACRO's president David Boilley said in the press conference, "There is a very high possibility that children in and around Fukushima City have been exposed to internal radiation. Prior to the [Fukushima] accident, these numbers would have been zero."

In the meanwhile in Nebraska, the NRUC said there is nothing to worry about, that is why they imposed a 10 mile evacuation radius around Fort Calhoun. As a reminder Fukushima has a roughly 18 mile evacuation radius zone.

Is the media going to cover those news in any detail aside from a 2 line mention at the end of the newspaper or webpage, I sincerely doubt.

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".

Another downplayed nuclear accident: Fort Calhoun, Nebraska

A new hidden nuclear disaster could be in the making in Nebraska. It seems the situation at the Fort Calhoun, Nebraska nuclear power plant is getting of some concern. Missouri River flood waters have penetrated the last ditch water-filled wall, and have surrounded the  containment buildings and other vital areas of a Nebraska nuclear plant.


As Reuters reports:

"The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said the breach in the 2,000-foot (600 meters) inflatable berm around the Fort Calhoun station occurred around 1:25 a.m. local time. More than 2 feet (60 cm) of water rushed in around containment buildings and electrical transformers at the 478-megawatt facility located 20 miles (30 km) north of Omaha."
Naturally, the severity of the situation is being downplayed by the NRC, very much the way Tepco and Japanese authorities pretended the Fukushima situation was under control, until it was uncovered that there had been plant meltdown within hours of the tsunami: "Reactor shutdown cooling and spent-fuel pool cooling were unaffected, the NRC said. The plant, operated by the Omaha Public Power District, has been off line since April for refueling."





More from Reuters:

Crews activated emergency diesel generators after the breach, but restored normal electrical power by Sunday afternoon, the NRC said.

Buildings at the Fort Calhoun plant are watertight, the agency said. It noted that the cause of the berm breach is under investigation.

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko and other officials planned to visit the site on Monday.

Jaczko will also visit the Cooper Nuclear Station near Brownville, Nebraska, another facility that has been watched closely with Missouri River waters rising from heavy rains and snow melt.

Peak Oil alert gaining momentum

Since 2006, the international oil company TOTAL has consistently voiced warnings about the future inability of the oil industry to meet continued oil demand growth. In 2006, then CEO Thierry Desmarest stated that maximum oil production lies between 100 to 110 million b/d, reached potentially by 2020. Only a year later the new CEO Christophe de Margerie announced that it would be difficult for the industry to produce beyond 100 million b/d.

To summarize, according to TOTAL the world can likely not produce over 95 million barrels per day due to constraints in producing more technically challenging oil fields such as deepwater, heavy oil, and fields located in the arctic. Furthermore, such a production level is only possible if the countries in the Middle-East, especially Saudi-Arabia, Iran, and Iraq, will be able and willing to increase their production.

Ad when it comes to Saudi Arabia being able to increase production well the latest news are not encouraging:

From elEconomista.es (translation in English here)

The electricity company of Saudi Arabia warns that oil in this country could be depleted by 2030 if left unchecked domestic consumption. According to a report of Saudi Electric, domestic consumption is estimated to be between 2.5 and 3.4 million barrels a day.

The report, published in the magazine Al Mashka says that the increase in domestic consumption of oil is one of the main challenges facing the country, mainly because oil accounts for 80% of national income.

Abdel Salam al-Yamani, head of the Saudi Electricity Company also warned of the consequences for citizens to ignore the calls to save electricity and water, and has advised that they depend more on solar energy.

It appears the Saudi governement is well aware of this issue since on the 1st of June announced its intention to build 16 nuclear power plants which is quite ironic for a country supposedly full of oil.

From Reuters

DUBAI, June 1 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia plans to build 16 nuclear power reactors by 2030 which could costs more than $100 billion, a Saudi-based newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing a top official.

The world's top crude exporter, Saudi is struggling to keep up with rapidly rising power demand. It has considered boosting its domestic energy capacity using nuclear reactors.

"After 10 years we will have the first two reactors," Abdul Ghani bin Melaibari, coordinator of scientific collaboration at King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy, told Arab News.

Many have backed away from atomic plans after the accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant but oil-rich Gulf states are among the few countries looking to make major investments in nuclear power plants.

"After that, every year we will establish two, until we have 16 of them by 2030," he said.

Also from The Economist: Oil production fails to keep up with demand

CRUDE-OIL prices shot up on June 8th—Brent crude to a one-month high of $118.59 per barrel—after OPEC representatives meeting in Vienna were unable to reach an agreement on production quotas. Many had expected an increase in quotas as members with spare production capacity, led by Saudi Arabia, pushed to avoid a price spike that may dampen long-term demand. As figures released in BP’s "Statistical Review of World Energy" show, global oil production has struggled to keep up with increased demand recently, particularly from Asia. In China alone consumption has risen by over 4m barrels per day in the past decade, accounting for two-fifths of the global rise. In 2010 consumption exceeded production by over 5m barrels per day for the first year ever, as world oil stocks were run down.

Long-term consumption cannot exceed production. Even in short time frames, consumption can only exceed production if there is sufficient production in storage.
To cover 5 million barrels per day of excess consumption for a year, global oil stocks would have had to drop by 1.825 billion barrels. If that did not happen, we need another explanation.

Possible Explanations

Cheating (under-reporting production) by OPEC
Poor consumption numbers from China or elsewhere
Another source of production not shown
Some combination of the above 

Regardless, it simply is not possible for oil consumption to grow faster than production for years on end.

Fukushima new radioactive alert at reactor 1

The latest news from Japan are clearly confirming that this crisis regardless of the cover up of the media, TEPCO and Japanese government is very far from over.

From  The Japan Times:

Tepco said today (Saturday the 4th) it has detected radiation of up to 4,000 millisieverts per hour at the building housing the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.
The radiation reading, which was taken when Tokyo Electric Power Co. sent a robot into the No. 1 reactor building on Friday, is believed to be the largest detected in the air at the plant so far.
On Friday, Tepco found that steam was spewing from the reactor floor. Nationally televised news Saturday showed blurry video of steady smoke curling up from an opening in the floor.
Tepco has said radioactive water could start overflowing from temporary storage areas on June 20, or possibly sooner if there is heavy rainfall.
Two of the 370 tanks were due to arrive Saturday from a manufacturer in nearby Tochigi Prefecture, Tepco said. Two hundred of them can store 100 tons, and 170 can store 120 tons.
The tanks will continue arriving through August and will store a total of 40,000 tons of radioactive water, according to Tepco.
Nuclear fuel rods are believed to have melted almost completely and sunk to the bottom of three reactors' containers, although falling short of a complete meltdown, in which case the fuel would have melted entirely through the container bottoms.
Tepco has promised to bring the plant under control by January, but doubts are growing whether this projection is overly optimistic. The plan calls for a reprocessing system for the radioactive water by June 15, with hopes of reusing the water as coolant in the reactors.

Fukushima radiation levels skyrocketing amid media silence

The latest radiation chart issued is confirming officially that melted down Reactor 1 has just hit the highest ever reading since the crisis began, or 204 sieverts/hour.
This crisis is now many times more serious than Chernobyl and the media even with an official reading that skyrocketed this week does not really care about this.