Free Republic

Japan will start releasing treated radioactive water from the tsunami-hit Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday, despite opposition from its neighbours. The decision comes weeks after the UN’s nuclear watchdog approved the plan. Some 1.34 million tonnes of water – enough to fill 500 Olympic-size pools – have accumulated since the 2011 tsunami destroyed the plant. The water will be released over 30 years after being filtered and diluted. Authorities will request for the plant’s operator to “promptly prepare” for the disposal to start on 24 August if weather and sea conditions are appropriate, Japan’s Prime Minister...

Images captured by a robotic probe inside one of the three melted reactors at Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant showed exposed steel bars in the main supporting structure and parts of its thick external concrete wall missing, triggering concerns about its earthquake resistance in case of another major disaster. An underwater remotely operated vehicle named ROV-A2 was sent inside the Unit 1 pedestal, a supporting structure right under the core. It came back with images seen for the first time since an earthquake and tsunami crippled the plant 12 years ago. The area inside the pedestal is where traces...

Minnesota regulators said Thursday they're monitoring the cleanup of a leak of 400,000 gallons of radioactive water from Xcel Energy's Monticello nuclear power plant, and the company said there's no danger to the public. The leak was first detected in November of last year. "Xcel Energy took swift action to contain the leak to the plant site, which poses no health and safety risk to the local community or the environment," the Minneapolis-based utility said in a statement. While Xcel reported the leak of water containing tritium to state and federal authorities in late November, the spill had not been...

Update(10:11amET): The potential is rising for greater fallout from the war across Europe, as intense fighting is being reported centered in the Chernobyl area. Ukrainian authorities are sounding the alarm over potentially disastrous scenarios which could ensue in areas of the Chernobyl containment zone, which includes an expansive region surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant where radioactive contamination is highest, since the April 1986 disaster. Russian troops are reportedly entering the area from Belarus, according to Interfax: Advisor to Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Gerashchenko said that Russian troops from the territory of Belarus entered the zone of...

A shipment of radioactive material being transported between facilities in Ohio and Michigan has gone missing, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). In a "Current Event Notification" report published on Thursday, the NRC said it had received an email from the Ohio Bureau of Radiation Protection stating that a shipment of Iridium-192 had not arrived at its destination in Michigan. The report said the carrier believed the package had been delayed at their facility but later said it could not be located."Category 2 sources, if not safely managed or securely protected, could cause permanent injury to a person...

Japan's government announced on Tuesday (April 13) that it will dump more than a million tons of contaminated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean, beginning in two years. Roughly 1.25 million tons (1.13 million metric tons) of water have accumulated around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan since 2011, after a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami devastated the region. The twin disasters killed nearly 20,000 people, according to NPR, and caused meltdowns in three of the plant's six reactors, triggering the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

The Japanese government decided on Tuesday to release treated radioactive water accumulating at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea, having assessed there will be no negative impact on human health or the environment despite concerns from local fishermen and neighbouring countries. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga met members of his Cabinet including industry minister Hiroshi Kajiyama to formalise the decision, which comes a decade after a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered a triple meltdown in March 2011. The decision came despite China saying it had “deep concerns” over the plan. On Monday China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao...

An industrial radiography equipment, with a high risk to health if the radioactive source is extracted from its container, was violently stolen around 05:00 hours on the entrance road to the municipality of Teoloyucan, State of Mexico. This Sunday, the National Commission for Nuclear Safety and Safeguards (CNSNS) reported to the National Civil Protection Coordination (CNPC) on the extraction. For this reason, the CNPC issued an alert directed to the Civil Protection Units of the State of Mexico, Mexico City, Hidalgo, Querétaro, Michoacán, Guerrero, Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala.

Some residents in Manatee County, Florida, were evacuated from their homes over Easter weekend as officials cited fears that a wastewater pond could collapse "at any time." Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for the area on Saturday. County officials said the pond, located at the former Piney Point phosphate processing plant, has a "significant leak," according to CBS affiliate WTSP-TV. The Manatee County Public Safety Department told people near the plant to evacuate due to an "imminent uncontrolled release of wastewater." "A portion of the containment wall at the leak site shifted laterally," said Manatee Director...

The Japanese government is planning on releasing millions of gallons of contaminated water into the ocean starting in 2022, according to international news reports. “170 tons of new radioactive wastewater is generated each day [at Fukushima] and is stored in 1,000 specially designed tanks,” Forbes reports. The government would begin to release the contaminated water into the ocean when the tanks being used to store it reach capacity. The final decision about whether or not to implement the plan is expected to be announced by November. The water is being treated to “reduce radioactivity,

Radiation sensors in Stockholm have detected higher-than-usual but still harmless levels of isotopes produced by nuclear fission, probably from somewhere on or near the Baltic Sea, a body running a worldwide network of the sensors said on Friday. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) oversees a network of hundreds of monitoring stations that use seismic, hydroacoustic and other technology to check for a nuclear weapon test anywhere in the world. That technology can, however, be put to other uses as well. One of its stations scanning the air for radionuclides - telltale radioactive particles that can be carried long distances...

This is getting to be repetitive, granted, but the corrupt news media is lying to all of us yet again. – All day on Wednesday, your fake, corrupt national news media told you that the Tuesday night elections in Kentucky and Mississippi were a “referendum on Donald Trump,” and that he suffered a terrible result. But the truth of the actual election outcomes paints an entirely different – and almost entirely “red” – picture. This wonderful table shows you exactly what the results were in the statewide elections in those two states: No photo description available. So, despite the claims...

Capitalizing on this year's renewed interest in the worst nuclear accident in history, booze makers have introduced Atomik, the world's first vodka made from distilled grains from Chernobyl's exclusion zone. Atomik may sound misguided at first, but the distillers have good intentions. Gennady Laptev, a scientist at the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute and a cofounder of the Chernobyl Spirit Company, says making use of the abandoned land at the disaster site will aid in reviving the economy for struggling cities in the surrounding area.

Upon information and belief, the Defendant CITY OF NEW ORLEANS was informed in 2013 of the presence of radioactive materials in the subsurface soil located at or near Lowerline Street and Edinburg Streets in New Orleans, Louisiana. This discovery was made while scanning for security threats in preparation of hosting the 2013 Superbowl in New Orleans, Louisiana. Despite having knowledge of the presence of hazardous radioactive materials in the subsurface soil located at or near Lowerline Street and Edinburg Streets in New Orleans, Louisiana, the City took no action to warn and/or to protect Plaintiffs, other residents or other business...

Russian President Vladimir Putin disclosed on Thursday for the first time that a secret military submarine hit by a fatal fire three days ago was nuclear-powered, prompting Russia's defense minister to assure him its reactor had been safely contained. Russian officials have faced accusations of trying to cover up the full details of the accident that killed 14 sailors as they were carrying out what the defense ministry called a survey of the sea floor near the Arctic. Moscow's slow release of information about the incident has drawn comparisons with the opaque way the Soviet Union handled the 1986 Chernobyl...

In the midst of the shock over bombs sent to former Democrat presidents and CNN and all, the Daily Beast boasted this misleading brief: "Former GOP Candidate Arrested for Attempting to Kill With ‘Radioactive Material’." snip Full stop. In Madison, Ryan is known as a lefty pro-pot protester nicknamed "Segway Boy" for taunting Republicans in 2011 when the national media was freaking out over Gov. Scott Walker's "anti-union" legislation and Diane Sawyer compared Walker to an Egyptian dictator. He ran for Paul Ryan's seat several times because perhaps low-information voters might think "oh, another Ryan."

19 stunning photos show what the radioactive area inside the Chernobyl nuclear plant looks like 32 years after the explosionThe Chernobyl nuclear power plant was the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. As many as 150,000 people in the area were permanently relocated, and an estimated 4,000 clean-up workers got radiation poisoning. Experts say that more than 70,000 people experienced severe poisoning from the accident on April 26, 1986.On April 26, 1986, a radioactive release many times as large as the that of the Hiroshima bomb occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet...

The operator of Fukushima's crippled nuclear power plant has released fresh images of the wreckage inside a damaged reactor, showing broken metal parts and debris that could be melted fuel. Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) inserted a special camera into one of the plant's three melted-down reactors on Friday, a company spokesman said, as part of its efforts to dismantle the disaster-hit facility in northeastern Japan. Images captured by the camera and released late Friday show rubble spread over the bottom of the unit, including part of a fuel container and rock-like fragments that could contain melted nuclear fuel.

Russia's meteorological service has reported “extremely high pollution” of a radioactive isotope in the Urals near a facility that previously suffered the third worst nuclear catastrophe in history. The news bolsters international reports that a ruthenium-106 leak originating in the Urals sent a radioactive cloud over Europe. Greenpeace Russia has said it will ask the prosecutor general to investigate the possible cover-up of a nuclear accident. Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear company, said in a statement to The Telegraph on Tuesday there had been "no unreported accidents" and the ruthenium-106 emission was "not linked to any Rosatom site". Its Mayak facility,...

European authorities are providing new details about a cloud of mysterious radioactive material that appeared over the continent last month. Monitors in Italy were among first to detect the radioactive isotope ruthenium-106 on Oct. 3, according to a fresh report by France's Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety Institute, known as IRSN. In total, 28 European countries saw the radioactive cloud, the report says. The multinational Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation, which runs a network designed to monitor for nuclear weapons tests, also confirmed to NPR that it had detected the cloud. Based on the detection from monitoring stations and meteorological data, the...