At events today in Westminster, and in Manchester on the 18th – 20th March, Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) and other groups are organising four high profile events highlighting the impacts of the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters and the alternatives of going ‘beyond nuclear’ to renewable energy alternatives. This evening in Portcullis House a number of leading experts and politicians will be speaking at the annual Westminster event commemorating the Fukushima disaster. The keynote speaker will be Professor Alexander Likhotal, the President and Chief Executive of Green Cross International, who will read out a speech on behalf of Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet Union at the time of the Chernobyl disaster. The speech outlines what Gorbachev calls ‘one of the most tragic incidents of our time’. Other speakers at this meeting, chaired by Shadow Foreign Office spokesperson Catherine West MP, include Molly Scott-Cato MEP, Professor Tim Mousseau, Dr Ian Fairlie and Dr Dominic Kelly.
NFLA 17th March 2016 read more »
While fuel melted down in three separate reactors, it is the condition of reactor one that is of particular concern. Last May, Tepco announced that nearly all of the fuel in reactor one had melted, but with radiation levels dangerously high it hasn’t been possible for humans to go in, investigate the interior and locate the fuel. So Tepco brought in the machines. This involved developing purpose-built robots for each of the reactor buildings, a process that itself takes two years. Here the robots are designed to wade through underwater chambers brimming with contaminated water in search of melted fuel rods. But so far this approach has yielded underwhelming results, with the high radiation levels frying the robots’ wiring and leaving them incapable of carrying out their task.
Gizmag 17th March 2016 read more »
Koide Hiroaki has spent his entire career as a nuclear engineer, and has become a central figure in Japan’s movement for the abolition of nuclear power plants. He met with Katsuya Hirano and Hirotaka Kasai to discuss the catastrophic nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima Daaichi in March 2011, and the crimes and cover-ups committed both before and after the event.
Ecologist 17th March 2016 read more »