Nuclear fallout? / Media blackout?

The mainstream media have cooled off the story for sure, no more 24 hour monitoring etc, etc,

As mentioned during this thread there are many news agencies reporting regularly, but I suspect that you, like many millions more, just never watch them.

ed2hands wrote: »

You're implying it but not saying it.

But if it was said, it'd probably earn him/her a week's holiday from the forum, so I guess innuendo is all you're gonna get.

Talk E wrote: »

I see Data's still making friends. Remember that episode he smiled?, only time in 6,000+ episodes. :pac:

Anywho dudes. Not sure if this was mentioned as I have been in holidaying in Turkey for the past week. I hear there is another media blackout of a meltdown at Fort Calhoun in Nebraska.

i heard it on boards first!!.A boardsie rang a friend ,got no reply and then googled,to his horror, where his friend lived!!!as you do when somebody doesnt answer the phone:pac:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056303590

http://investmentwatchblog.com/media-blackout-as-goes-japan-so-goes-usa-arnie-gunderson-on-fort-calhoun-plant-3-parts/

http://enenews.com/

Lab_Mouse wrote: »

i heard it on boards first!!.A boardsie rang a friend ,got no reply and then googled,to his horror, where his friend lived!!!as you do when somebody doesnt answer the phone:pac:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056303590

I take it that this is total bull? The text kind of suggests it's more propagandistic lying of the type the the 'honest' 'Christian values' American right spews forth almost continuously.

Few links I received from a friend on the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant coverup.:)



NO FLY-ZONE OVER FORT CALHOUN NUCLEAR POWER PLANT

http://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_1_6523.html




Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant (Omaha, NE) Suffers a Major Accident, News Blackout ordered

It definitely is a fact our Government is doing everything in their power to destroy the Country from top to bottom, forwards and backwards. This is awful news and not a peep about this in the state run news media anywhere. This is Treason at the Highest Level.
The Nation Newspaper Sunday, June 19, 2011
US orders news blackout over crippled Nebraska Nuclear Plant: report Submitted 1 day 9 hrs ago.

A shocking report prepared by Russia’s Federal Atomic Energy Agency (FAAE) on information provided to them by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) states that the Obama regime has ordered a “total and complete” news blackout relating to any information regarding the near catastrophic meltdown of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant located in Nebraska.

According to this report, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant suffered a “catastrophic loss of cooling” to one of its idle spent fuel rod pools on 7 June after this plant was deluged with water caused by the historic flooding of the Missouri River which resulted in a fire causing the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to issue a “no-fly ban” over the area.

Located about 20 minutes outside downtown Omaha, the largest city in Nebraska, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant is owned by Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) who on their website denies their plant is at a “Level 4” emergency by stating: “This terminology is not accurate, and is not how emergencies at nuclear power plants are classified.”

Russian atomic scientists in this FAAE report, however, say that this OPPD statement is an “outright falsehood” as all nuclear plants in the world operate under the guidelines of the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) which clearly states the “events” occurring at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant do, indeed, put it in the “Level 4” emergency category of an “accident with local consequences” thus making this one of the worst nuclear accidents in US history.

Though this report confirms independent readings in the United States of “negligible release of nuclear gasses” related to this accident it warns that by the Obama regimes censoring of this event for “political purposes” it risks a “serious blowback” from the American public should they gain knowledge of this being hidden from them.

http://www.dailypaul.com/168252/fort-calhoun-nuclear-power-plant-omaha-ne-suffers-a-major-accident-news-blackout-ordered

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2011/20110608en.html#en46932
the fire brigade came through all that floodwater and didn't find a fire......yeah right, !!!!




Smoke triggers nuclear plant alarm (Bullsh!t Story)

Smoke in an electrical cabinet triggered an alert Tuesday at the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant north of Omaha.
No flames were observed and there was no damage to the plant’s nuclear reactor.

The plant shut down April 9 for refueling and has not been restarted because of Missouri River flooding.
David Bannister, the plant’s chief nuclear officer, said the smoke was caused by an overheated electrical breaker in a secondary building away from the reactor.

A fire alarm sounded at 9:30 a.m. and non-essential workers were evacuated from the building.

Following a safety review and a check of air quality, the alert was terminated at 1:15 p.m. and the evacuated workers were allowed to return. The incident is under investigation.

The Fort Calhoun plant had not gone on alert since July 1992, when electrical problems and a valve failure led to a spill of 20,000 gallons of reactor coolant water into the containment building basement.

http://www.omaha.com/article/20110607/NEWS01/110609814/0#smoke-triggers-nuclear-plant-alarm

More Bullsh!t - Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON—A nuclear power plant north of Omaha, Neb., on Tuesday briefly lost the ability to cool a pool of used nuclear fuel after a fire at the site, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.
The NRC said the plant recovered cooling ability without activating backup systems and "temperatures in the pool remained at safe levels." The public was not in danger because the plant has been shut down since early April for a refueling outage, the agency said.
Spent fuel pools in the U.S. have received increased scrutiny after a recent crisis in Japan involving potentially overheated nuclear fuel and the release of dangerous radiation.
The agency declared an alert, the second of four emergency classes, at 9:40 a.m., 10 minutes after "an indication of fire" in a building at the plant. The NRC didn't disclose the cause of the fire. Automatic fire control systems activated and the fire was out by 10:20 a.m., the agency said. The plant is operated by the Omaha Public Power District.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304778304576374011963022284.html

Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant Flooded in Nebraska …why isn’t this news & why did FAA declare no fly zone around plant??




The Federal Aviation Administration issued a temporary flight restriction over the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant until further notice due to “Hazards”. This would normally be a precautionary measure after an electrical fire disabled cooling for the spent fuel rod pool as outlined below. The question is why is this still in effect?

http://randysright.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/fort-calhoun-nuclear-power-plant-flooded-in-nebraska-why-isnt-this-news-why-did-faa-declare-no-fly-zone-around-plant/

Sand Bags and Nuclear Power Plants Don’t Mix

The levee breach today near Hamburg, Iowa is only the beginning of the story. What do you need to know concerning the flooding of the Missouri River?
The Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant sustained a fire last week and is now under emergency status “due to imminent flooding from the Missouri River”. On June 7, an electrical fire at the plant resulted in the plant’s evacuation and the NRC has confirmed a loss of cooling for the reactor’s spent fuel pool as a result. The following account outlines this nuclear plant surrounded by sandbags and the hazards facing it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jEEgpoKw0E

http://ncrenegade.com/editorial/sand-bags-and-nuclear-power-plants-dont-mix/

Something else I found interesting.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant?

The dry-storage bunker is half-submerged OUTSIDE the AquaDam condom. It's the smaller brown building adjacent to the white tank at the right of this picture. Click image to enlarge. OPDD Photo.

Earlier this month, workers at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant surrounded the reactor and other key parts of the facility with a massive water berm called an “AquaDam”.

Fort Calhoun had a foot-deep pool next to the reactor for spent fuel rods. The pool was so full in 2009 that they were sealing the fuel rods up in dry casks and sticking them in an on-site ‘mausoleum’.

This, of course, is why there is a no-fly zone around the plant — someone might realize that wherever the fuel casks and underground fuel pools are, they are NOT inside the condom.

Hat tip and a bow to Arthur Hu for finding the dry-storage bunker, half-submerged OUTSIDE the condom. It’s the smaller brown building adjacent to the white tank.

No one really knows what their condition is – or even if the spent fuel is still on-site. No one in the major media is asking the question, and the operators aren’t saying.


So who made the dry storage cask containers at Fort Calhoun?


That would be Transnuclear, Inc.


And who owns Transnuclear? Areva.


And what else is Aveva doing?
Selling water purification tanks and systems to TEPCO for Fukushima.


What else does Areva do? Anything it wants, since it’s a giant multinational behemoth.

http://hawaiinewsdaily.com/2011/06/guess-whos-coming-to-dinner-at-the-fort-calhoun-nuclear-plant/

You don't hear this being shouted from the rooftops do you?....

Nuclear plant rules eased



By JEFF DONN | The Associated Press
Published: June 20, 2011


Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.
Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews.
The result? Rising fears the accommodations by the NRC are significantly undermining safety — and inching reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize the future of nuclear power in the United States.
Failed cables. Busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals, rusty underground pipes — all of these and thousands of other problems tied to aging were uncovered in the yearlong investigation. All of them could escalate dangers in the event of an accident.
Yet despite the many problems linked to aging, not a single official body in government or industry has studied the overall frequency and potential impact on safety of such breakdowns in recent years, even as the NRC has extended the licenses of dozens of reactors.
Industry and government officials defend their actions and insist that no chances are being taken.
But records show a recurring pattern: Reactor parts or systems fall out of compliance with the rules. Studies are conducted by the industry and government, and all agree that existing standards are "unnecessarily conservative."
Regulations are loosened, and the reactors are back in compliance.
The continuing crisis at the stricken, decades-old Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility in Japan has focused attention on the safety of plants elsewhere in the world; it prompted the NRC to look at U.S. reactors, and a report is due in July.
But the factor of aging goes far beyond the issues posed by the disaster at Fukushima.
Commercial nuclear reactors in the United States were designed and licensed for 40 years. When the first ones were being built in the 1960s and 1970s, it was expected that they would be replaced with improved models long before those licenses expired.
But that never happened. The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, massive cost overruns, crushing debt and high interest rates ended new construction proposals for several decades.
Instead, 66 of the 104 operating units have been relicensed for 20 more years, mostly with scant public attention. Renewal applications are under review for 16 other reactors.
By the standards in place when they were built, these reactors are old and getting older. As of today, 82 reactors are more than 25 years old.
Last year, the NRC weakened the safety margin for acceptable radiation damage to reactor vessels — for a second time. The standard is based on a measurement known as a reactor vessel's "reference temperature," which predicts when it will become dangerously brittle and vulnerable to failure. Over the years, many plants have violated or come close to violating the standard.
As a result, the minimum standard was relaxed first by raising the reference temperature 50 percent, and then 78 percent above the original — even though a broken vessel could spill its radioactive contents into the environment.
"We've seen the pattern," said nuclear safety scientist Dana Powers, who works for Sandia National Laboratories and also sits on an NRC advisory committee. "They're … trying to get more and more out of these plants."
* * * * *The AP collected and analyzed government and industry documents, including some never-before released. Tens of thousands of pages of government and industry studies were examined, along with test results, inspection reports and regulatory policy statements filed over four decades. Interviews were conducted with scores of managers, regulators, engineers, scientists, whistleblowers, activists, and residents near the reactors, located at 65 sites, mostly in the East and Midwest.
AP reporting teams also toured some of the oldest reactors.
Several nuclear engineers and former regulators used nearly identical terminology to describe how industry and government research has frequently justified loosening safety standards to keep aging reactors within operating rules. They call the approach "sharpening the pencil" or "pencil engineering" — the fudging of calculations and assumptions to yield answers that enable plants with deteriorating conditions to remain in compliance.
"Many utilities are doing that sort of thing," said engineer Richard T. Lahey Jr., who used to design nuclear safety systems for General Electric Co., which makes boiling water reactors. "I think we need nuclear power, but we can't compromise on safety. I think the vulnerability is on these older plants."
Added Paul Blanch, an engineer who left the industry over safety issues but later returned to work on solving them: "It's a philosophical position that (federal regulators) take that's driven by the industry and by the economics: What do we need to do to let those plants continue to operate? They somehow sharpen their pencil to either modify their interpretation of the regulations, or they modify their assumptions in the risk assessment."
* * * * *Industry and government officials say that aging is well under control. "I see an effort on the part of this agency to always make sure that we're doing the right things for safety. I'm not sure that I see a pattern of staff simply doing things because there's an interest to reduce requirements — that's certainly not the case," NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said.
Neil Wilmshurst, director of plant technology for the industry's Electric Power Research Institute, acknowledged that the industry and NRC often collaborate on research that supports rule changes. But he maintained that there's "no kind of misplaced alliance … to get the right answer."
Yet agency staff, plant operators, and consultants paint a different picture in little-known reports, where evidence of industry-wide problems is striking.
The AP reviewed 226 preliminary notifications — alerts on emerging safety problems — issued by the NRC since 2005. Wear and tear in the form of clogged lines, cracked parts, leaky seals, rust and other deterioration contributed to at least 26 alerts over the past six years. Other notifications lack detail, but aging also was a probable factor in 113 additional alerts. That would constitute as much as 62 percent in all.
Confronted with worn parts needing maintenance, the industry repeatedly requested — and regulators often allowed — inspections and repairs to be delayed for months until scheduled refueling outages. Again and again, problems worsened before being fixed. A 2008 NRC report blamed 70 percent of potentially serious safety problems on "degraded conditions." Some involve human factors, but many stem from equipment wear such as cracked nozzles, loose paint, electrical problems or offline cooling parts.
In the Tampa Bay area, Progress Energy officials may decide within weeks whether to permanently shut down the Crystal River 3 nuclear plant in Citrus County — the only one on Florida's west coast — built in the 1970s. As of the end of 2010, the company spent $150 million to fix problems that sidelined the plant since September 2009, when inspectors found "delamination" — slightly different than cracking — in the concrete building surrounding the reactor. The company thought it fixed the separation in the concrete but discovered a second area of separation this winter.


http://www2.tbo.com/news/news/2011/jun/20/MENEWSO1-nuclear-plant-rules-eased-ar-238576/