OCEAN EXTINCTION & AMERICAN FUKUSHIMA (Radio Ecoshock)

To have another Fukushima-like nuclear accident doesn't require a massive earthquake followed by a massive tsunami. It can occur under many conditions, including a massive snowfall that leads to flooding massive enough to threaten dams with breaking. A broken dam would lead to a rapid flooding and any nuclear reactor unfortunate enough to happen to be downstream (say, in Nebraska) would be threatened with a sudden inundation of water leading to a potential catastrophe of the sort occurring today in Japan.

At least that's what this weeks cheerful news from Alex Smith (Radio Ecoshock) is warning us over. Oh, and he has a bit about sea level rise, the dieoff of fish in the ocean, the egregiously bad oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ... it's enough to make me quip that "Business Friendly means Bad for People"

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Many of the words below are copied wholesale from Alex Smith's transcript. There was a couple sections where I wrote a summary pulling together threads from several places in the episode.

Professor Chris Reid, Marine Institute, the University of Plymouth in Britain, talking about a report that must be the greatest headline of our times. A new report from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, or IPSO, features 27 top experts on the oceans. They warn the oceans are in a state of dying from multiple causes, all of them human. See: http://www.stateoftheocean.org/

Climate change is not coming. It is here.

Carbon is not only flooding the atmosphere but the deep sea. The oceans, stripped of the big species we eat, poisoned by our waste into expanding dead zone, with corals richness turning into white deserts - but changing chemically, becoming more acid.

Dr. Peter Ward from the University of Washington makes a career studying the five previous mass deaths on planet Earth. His book "Under A Green Sky" set the scientific world on edge, as he proposed the way a change in ocean life could extinguish almost everything that breathes on land. Judging by the geological record, Life, Ward said in a later book, "The Medea Hypothesis" - tends toward mass suicide.

Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has failed to enforce regulations on American nuclear plants since 1999. From multiple sources, lax regulation has left well-known dangerous problems unfixed in U.S. reactors for decades. An American Fukushima nuclear disaster is just waiting to happen. Three sources back that up.

Democracy need not apply. You are not allowed to ask about safety. Neither are the State governments, or Governors. No matter how dangerous, we can argue about the esthetics or economics of nuclear plants, but nobody can present safety issues.

David Lochbaum, nuclear engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, gives a story explaining how it came to be that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stopped regulating the Nuclear Industry. On June 4, 1998 an ultimatum was presented to the NRC by Congress that the Senate threatened to cut the NRC's budget by 40 percent if they did not change their ways on enforcing the regulations.

The message was "either lose your job, or stop doing your job" and the NRC chose to do the latter.

Before this (before 1998) the NRC had a tough attitude of either nuclear plants operate by the rules, or they stop operating.

In the podcast this story was not only told by David Lochbaum, but was confirmed by Vermont Law School, Adjunct Professor Peter Bradford, a former member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the NRC. He was on the NRC at the time and confirmed the change in regulatory attitude.

As a result we have a nuclear industry that has captured the agency which is supposed to be doing regulatory oversight over the industry. Captured as in, the NRC doesn't take a tough regulatory attitude, but a complacent attitude under which the industry does whatever it wants.

Part of the systemic dysfunction is the opacity of regulatory actions. Nobody is allowed to raise safety concerns about nuclear reactors. Safety concerns can only be raised by the NRC staff. States can only raise economic issues or other concerns not related to safety. Such as the leaking Tritium from the Vermont Yankee plant. The Vermont State Legislature voted unanimously to insist this plant be shut down, it's past its end of life date and it's the same design as the ones that blew up in Japan.

Long-time nuclear industry executive Arnie Gundersen on the flooding threat to the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Reactor in late June 2011. It has been surrounded by the flood-waters of the Missouri river. It may be an under-reported nuclear accident.

There was a fire at the reactor last week, and the FAA ordered no fly-overs. Apparently cooling to the heavily stocked spent fuel pool was unavailable for several hours. http://planetsave.com/2011/06/19/electrical-fire-knocks-out-spent-fuel-cooling-pool-at-nebraska-nuclear-plant/

Plant operators declared a Level Four alert, while denying there was any real problem. Photos of the Fort Calhoun reactor show the site entirely flooded by the Missouri River, although operators claim the actual reactor buildings are still protected by sand bags.

Record snow-fall in the Rocky Mountains has forced six dams upstream of Fort Calhoun to open their floodways. I believe two of those dams are just earthen dams, rather than concrete. Gundersen says if any of those dams give way, Fort Calhoun will turn into a major nuclear accident. That is how close it is.

The global warming deniers point at "record snowfall" and then exclaim that's proof that global warming is a hoax.

Instead what's happened is that lots of water has gone into the atmosphere due to global warming, and during the winter it creates huge snowfalls

Links: 

http://www.ecoshock.info/2011/06/ocean-extinction-american-fukushima.html

On the Roof of Peru, Omens in the Ice

On the Roof of Peru, Omens in the Ice: The article concerns itself with Andean glaciers in Peru. They're retreating, like other glaciers around the world. It's a sign of a warming climate. I want to write about this because of a trip I took to the Andes 11 years ago.

In 1995 I was able to take a trip to witness an ancient Quechua ceremony that is performed every year at their Winter Solstice (what is, to us, the summer solstice). The Qu'oyllu'riti festival draws 50,000 or more natives of the Andes, and the year I attended there were only 100 or so foreigners. The festival site is very remote, far up in a valley where there is a glacier at the head of the valley. The story they told me is they're commemorating the site where, shortly after the Spaniards arrived in the 1500's, a small child was seen whom they took as Jesus. There's a story that was told, but later reading about this festival tells me the ceremony has been performed for thousands of years, and this is another instance of Christianity overlaying itself over a native ancient custom.

It is a three day festival where the participants are representatives sent from villiages in the Andes, from Bolivia, and I think even from the Amazon rain forest. Each villiage has performers who perform their version of a common song, each band of performers has their own costuming, and the music they play all follows the same tune but with small differences unique to each group. There are other aspects to the festival, such as fireworks, including a loud cannon that shoots off every minute or so, and a group of people who dress like a certain bear known in the Andes and are charged with keeping peace, order, and the spiritual nature of the event. There is a rather large church of a Catholic style.

But, what is the point of all this, and what about the glaciers? The point of this festival is the glaciers. They see the glaciers as containing the purest of water. The spiritual leaders of this festival go onto the glaciers and do special ceremonies, and this festival is a major initiation time for the Quechua shamanic practitioners. There is special care taken to collect the ice from the glacier, and bring it back to each individuals home villiage for special ceremonies for those who could not leave.

It was clear to me the ecology of that area relied on the glaciers for water throughout the year. They seemed to not get much rain during the summer, and instead had collection of snow and ice on the glaciers that fed the rivers that provided the water they need to live. Oh, and not only is it the water the Andeans need to live, but that same water feeds a large portion of the Amazon basin below them.

The article linked above tells this story with scientific facts. It tells of scientists observating the glaciers retreat, how the nature of the glaciers have changed over the years, and how the local farmers are worried about their future. The article describes how one farmer has shifted his work to growing flowers, and how he is able to earn money that way, but if the water stops running how can he live? He can't drink money.