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Man Fleeing Police Kills Woman In Crash
Amplify’d from www.wgal.com
Man Fleeing Police Kills Woman In Crash, Officials Say
Officer Crashed Chasing Suspect
Police in Washington Township said that they received a complaint of reckless driving at 11:56 p.m. Wednesday in the area of the 12751 Washington Township Blvd (Wal-Mart). Police said when officers were at the scene talking to people who had made complaints, they noticed the suspect's vehicle driving quickly.Police said when they tried to stop the vehicle, the driver fled. South on Washington Township Boulevard then onto Old Route 16 and then onto Buchanan Trail East. An officer pursued, but crashed on Beck's Curve, after failing to negotiate a curve. The officer hit a guardrail on the south side of the road and ended the pursuit, according to police. The officer was treated and released from the hospital.After that crash, police said the vehicle continue into Waynesboro where it collided with Clement's minivan at 12:06 a.m. Thursday.Witnesses at the scene said Clement had a green light and Szumigala had a steady red signal.Waynesboro Police and Pennsylvania State Police are investigating the Clement crash.Szumigala was flown to York Hospital. Police did not state his condition.
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Priest child abuse victims go public
Amplify’d from reform-network.net
Received by email from Bob Hoatson.
MEDIA RELEASE
Child abuse victims of two Newark Archdiocesan priests to go public
What
Two men who claim to have been sexually abused, one of whose stories was rejected by the Archdiocese of Newark two years ago, will present their stories and those of two other victims in a lawsuit that has been filed in New Jersey Superior Court. The charges are leveled against at least two priests, religious brothers, an Archdiocese, and a religious order of men.
When
Friday, March 18, 2011 at Noon.
Where
In front of Saint Philomena’s Roman Catholic Church, 386 South Livingston Avenue, Livingston, New Jersey 07039 – (973) 992-0994
Who
The victims’ advocate and pastoral counselor from Road to Recovery, Inc., as well as members of Road to Recovery’s survivors’ group and members of a survivor support group known as SNAP (Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests). The group will hold signs and photos of themselves as youngsters.
Why
Two years ago, a courageous sexual abuse victim of Monsignor John Laferrera and Father Thomas Smith reported his abuse to the Archdiocese of Newark. He was summarily dismissed as being not credible by Archbishop John Myers after a so-called investigation was conducted.
Since then, many men have come forward to corroborate the story of the first victim and two of those victims will speak about their abuse by Monsignor Laferrera and/or Father Smith. The sexual abuse took place at Immaculate Conception Parish in Newark, Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish in Newark, at the New Jersey shore home of one of the abusers, and elsewhere.
Contact
Rev. Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D., Co-founder and President, Road to Recovery, Inc.
862-368-2800
roberthoatson@gmail.com
Read more at reform-network.net
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Woman, baby found drunk on alcopops
Amplify’d from www.couriermail.com.au
Woman, baby found drunk on alcopops in Texas
NewsCore
A HOUSTON woman was facing child endangerment charges today after police allegedly found her and her one-year-old baby both drunk on an alcoholic energy drink.
According to Houston Police, Lashwanda Allen, 32, said she had been drinking Four Loko and fell asleep with her children next to her and the drink beside the bed, KTRK reported.
When she awoke, she told police, her one-year-old daughter was holding an empty can and was stumbling around like she was drunk.
Police said that the incident was reported to them after Ms Allen's roommate found her wandering the halls of her north Houston apartment complex.
When the roommate asked where Ms Allen's two children were, Ms Allen replied that they were inside the apartment and drunk.
According to police, the roommate found Ms Allen's four-month-old daughter hanging upside down from the bed, with sheets wrapped around her waist.
The baby girl was turning blue, police said.
Soon after, police said, a neighbour found Ms Allen's one-year-old daughter in the complex's parking lot.
Ms Allen's roommate called for an ambulance. According to police, the one-year-old was legally intoxicated with a blood alcohol content of .09.
Ms Allen was being held today at Harris County Jail on a $US2000 bond.
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Nuclear Cover Up
Nuclear Cover Up: World's Largest Movable Structure to Seal the Wrecked Chernobyl Reactor
Amplify’d from www.scientificamerican.com
To safely enclose and robotically dismantle the 25-year-old makeshift confinement sarcophagus at Chernobyl, contractors are now erecting a massive steel structure weighing more than 29,000 metric tons
By
Charles Q. Choi
|
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine—Imagine a metal arch taller than the Statue of Liberty. Now picture it sliding a distance of roughly three football fields, making it the largest movable structure ever . Under this steel rainbow engineers are planning to entomb the site of the worst nuclear accident in history, the destroyed reactor at the Chernobyl power plant, using robotic cranes to dismantle the ruins and keep its deadly remains from poisoning the rest of the planet.
After reactor No. 4 exploded at Chernobyl in 1986 due to errors in both design and operation it sent plumes of radioactive dust as far away as Japan and the U.S. To contain the fallout, the Soviet Union constructed a metal and concrete structure commonly known as the sarcophagus over the wreckage.
"It was really quite a remarkable feat, but after 25 years, it's in danger of collapse," civil and environmental engineer Eric Schmieman of Battelle Memorial Institute explains in an interview in Kiev.
The sarcophagus, technically known as the Shelter Object, was made of more than 7,000 metric tons of metal and 400,000 cubic meters of concrete. It was erected as quickly as possible to limit worker exposure to radiation, and was never meant to last forever. In many ways it was designed "like a house of cards," Schmieman says, with pieces of metal essentially leaning against each other and hooked together. "There are no welded joints or bolted joints—it wouldn't take much of a seismic event to knock it down."
At the same time, when the sarcophagus was completed, "there were over 1,000 square meters of openings in the roof where joints didn't match up," Schmieman says. These holes allowed water in, resulting in corrosion that is hastening the structure's decline. Since then, workers have patched many of these holes, but 100 square meters of gaps remain. To help keep radioactive matter from leaking , a dust- suppression system inside relies on sprinklers that periodically spray a watery solution to prevent it from becoming airborne.
Now, to safely enclose the ailing sarcophagus, the French consortium Novarka is working on a replacement: the New Safe Confinement, a steel structure 110 meters high at its tallest point, 164 meters wide, spanning across 257 meters and weighing more than 29,000 metric tons. In comparison, the Statue of Liberty from the ground to the tip of its torch is about 93 meters high, says Schmieman, who helped lead New Safe Confinement's conceptual design .
Because the destroyed reactor is still highly radioactive, to protect workers, the arch will not be constructed over the sarcophagus. R ather, it will be assembled nearby from prefabricated segments each about 25 meters high and weighing an average of 300 metric tons. Once complete, hydraulic jacks will then slide the arch approximately 300 meters on Teflon bearings during the course of a week to enclose the sarcophagus. Walls on either side of the structure, making it resemble an aircraft hangar, will help isolate debris. "All told, it has a design life of 100 years," Schmieman says.
Inside the structure, three robotic cranes capable of lifting up to 50 metric tons each will be equipped with tools to help dismantle the sarcophagus, using drills, manipulator arms and concrete crushers, along with vacuum cleaners that can suck up to 10 metric tons of dust. The cranes will also employ radioactivity monitors as well as cameras to help remotely operate the tools . Once the sarcophagus and its contents are dismantled , it remains to be seen where the most radioactive material will be buried, but there are facilities to store the less radioactive remains.
During the first week of March, I saw deep trenches and large steel piles here meant for the foundation of the arch. Currently, the goal is to finish the New Safe Confinement by 2014, although contractors are giving themselves a year leeway. "Keep in mind, this is a one-of-a-kind structure, and nothing like this has ever been attempted," Schmieman cautions. "Further, Chernobyl is one of the most hazardous working sites in the world, and we frequently discover unexpected radiological hazards in excavation works. The combination of these factors introduces many uncertainties into any schedule."
In addition, some of the money needed to complete the project has yet to be raised. Twenty-nine countries have pledged funds to the Shelter Implementation Plan creating the New Safe Confinement, but so far another $835 million are needed; also, the storage facility designed to hold spent nuclear fuel from reactor Nos. 1 to 3 still requires funding to the tune of $195 million . Fundraising events to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the disaster in April are now underway, according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which is managing these efforts.
"I am fully aware that this is a considerable amount of money which is particularly difficult to raise at a time of universal fiscal constraints," Thomas Mirow, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, said in a statement. "Nevertheless, we must not forget that it is in the best interest of Ukraine and the international community to bring to a successful conclusion the important work we have started in Chernobyl."
The sacrifices made by the clean up workers immediately after the Chernobyl tragedy are driving those at the project to work to a much higher standard, says structural engineer Randy Jorissen , deputy manager for technical direction for the New Safe Confinement. "All they did to limit the extreme disaster, giving their lives for the task—I just hope we learned our lesson and that it never happens again," he says. "It's very satisfying to me to be part of a very significant effort to bring to a conclusion what those heroes started 25 years ago."
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Fukushima Will Be a Wasteland
Amplify’d from www.scientificamerican.com
Fukushima Will Be a Wasteland
Scientific American's David Biello judges Fukushima to have reached Chernobyl proportions. Steve Mirsky reports
The Japan Earthquake and Tsunami
On March 11, a powerful, magnitude 9.0 quake hit northeastern Japan, triggering a tsunami with 10-meter-high waves that reached the U.S. west coast. Here's the science behind the disaster »
March 11, 2011
“We are definitely in uncharted waters, particularly given that the spent fuel pool appears to either not have water or have very little water. It’s completely exposed to the atmosphere.”
David Biello is Scientific American’s energy and environment editor. He appeared earlier today, March 17th, on WNYC radio’s morning program, The Takeaway.
“So if that does indeed begin to melt down, which it seems it may have already done, that radiation would be released directly.”
Even in the best-case scenario from this point onward, is the Fukushima site now a radioactive waste dump for years to come?
“Yes. There’s no question that the contamination is significant. That’s why the workers had to cease their efforts and take cover at various periods. This is going to be like Chernobyl.”
Hear the entire interview at thetakeaway.org, and go to SciAm.com for continuing coverage of the state of the Fukushima nuclear site in Japan.
—Steve Mirsky
[The above text is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
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U.S. Warns of a Large Radiation Release
Amplify’d from www.scientificamerican.com
A top U.S. nuclear regulator has now given a dire assessment of Japan's nuclear crisis, saying that radiation from uncovered spent fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi plant could force emergency workers to abandon their fight to prevent meltdowns there
By
Peter Behr
and
ClimateWire
|
The top U.S. nuclear regulator, Gregory Jaczko, gave a dire assessment of Japan's nuclear crisis yesterday, saying that lethal radiation from uncovered spent fuel above one of the reactors could force emergency workers to abandon their fight to prevent meltdowns of damaged reactor cores at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Jaczko, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said his staff in Tokyo had been told by Japanese utility officials that cooling water that normally covers spent fuel was nearly or totally gone from an uncovered concrete pool above reactor Unit 4. Based upon that assessment, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo advised Americans living within about 50 miles of the plant on Japan's northeast coast to evacuate farther away. Japan has called for an evacuation within about 12 miles of the plant.
His comments to a House committee were disputed but not explicitly denied by Japanese authorities, exposing an apparently major communications issue between the United States and Japan. If Jaczko's information was correct, the plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) may have withheld information about the gravity of the crisis. If not, then a senior U.S. official may have wrongly inflamed fears in a country wracked by tragedy following last Friday's earthquake and tsunami.
"We can't get inside to check, but we've been carefully watching the building's environs, and there has not been any particular problem," Hajime Motojuku, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric, said Thursday morning in Japan, The New York Times reported.
Later Thursday, a spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Yoshitaka Nagayama, said, "Because we have been unable to go the scene, we cannot confirm whether there is water left or not in the spent fuel pool at Reactor No. 4."
Informed of Japanese reaction after his testimony yesterday, Jaczko told reporters, "I understand there is a conflict." He said the conclusions he and the NRC staff reached were based on the best information they had, and that they had chosen "to err on the side of caution." The possibility that fuel in the reactor pools could ignite led to the recommendation on evacuation, he said.
'Nobody knows'
"The problem is that nobody knows," said Thomas Neff, a reactor safety expert affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "If you don't know and you're TEPCO, you probably underplay it. If you're the regulator, you probably see it in a worse light."
"The odds are pretty good that no one has good information," said Peter Bradford, a NRC commissioner at the time of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. "We sure didn't during the first five days" then.
Japan's Self-Defense Forces dumped water from a helicopter on reactor No. 3 and prepared to repeat the operation on unit No. 4, Japanese news services reported. Water cannons would also be used. Jaczko said the water cover in the spent fuel storage pool at No. 3 may soon be gone too, boiled away or evaporated by the heat from the spent-- but still radioactive-- fuel rods.
The condition of the spent fuel pools has been a source of rising anxiety and confusion since the crisis began. The earthquake and tsunami knocked out outside power to the reactor complex and the tidal wave also disabled backup diesel generators, whose fuel tanks were swept away. When auxiliary batteries were exhausted, the plant was without power to continue cooling reactor cores and spent fuel pools. Japanese crews have been trying to flood reactors with seawater and restore outside power to the plant.
"There is an enormous amount of radioactivity left in those pools," Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists said. "[I]t's unclear how long workers can stay in that environment without risking grave bodily injury. If they must be permanently evacuated, it's unclear how the extent of the damage that's now occurred can be contained."
The plant's best hope may be restoration of outside power, which could allow workers to restart cooling operations for the reactors and the cooling pools, provided they have not been too severely damaged. NHK TV in Japan said TEPCO hoped to run power lines into the site from another power plant Thursday. TEPCO wants to finish the installation "as soon as possible after reviewing the procedures in order to keep the workers' radiation exposure to a minimum," NHK reported.
The problem of spent fuel storage
Nuclear reactor operators must store spent fuel removed from reactor cores for several years at least, in large pools at reactor sites until the remaining heat from the uranium fuel cools sufficiently. In the United States, much of the fuel units remained stored underwater in pools but some are removed for storage in large casks.
A report to Congress in 2006 by a National Research Council panel investigating terrorist threats to spent fuel storage concluded that "under some conditions," if a pool were partially or completely drained, that "could lead to a propagating zirconium cladding fire and the release of large quantities of radioactive materials to the environment."
The fuel rods in most cases consist of uranium dioxide pellets encased in zirconium alloy tubes or cladding. Heat from uncovered fuel could ignite the zirconium cladding, and the super-heated metal could then oxidize steam, releasing hydrogen and oxygen. Leaks of hydrogen from damaged reactors at units Nos. 1 and 3 is blamed for explosions at the tops of the outer, secondary containment structures, and an explosion within the No. 2 primary containment structure. Officials said hydrogen released from the spent fuel pool at No. 4 may have caused a fire there.
The National Research Council report said that as pool water levels drops, through a leak or other causes, temperatures of the fuel rods increase, accelerating oxidation of the cladding and the production of hydrogen gas. The reactions can become self-sustaining at high temperatures, if there is sufficient water or oxygen present, causing the cladding tubes to rupture. "The result could be a runaway oxidation reaction" and the release of radioactive fission gases" and some of the radioactive fuel material.
The mix of radioactive particles released into the atmosphere would vary with the length of time expired since the fuel units were moved from reactors to the pools. A particular concern is the spread of Cesium-137, which can enter the body or contaminate agricultural products, Lyman said.
Neff said the consequences of exposed spent fuel at the Fukushima Daiichi plant are not clear. If a pool is completely dry, the oxidized fuel units may be lying on the pool's bottom. "I think the zirconium fire [at unit No. 4] is probably over."
'Doomsday' scenarios
But the resulting radiation could be so high, "it would be almost impossible to get anyone in there," to continue supplying water to the damaged reactors, he said. That could put the cores in a meltdown scenario that could lead to an explosion within the core or a leak of puddle fuel from the bottom of the reactor -- "doomsday" scenarios that create the ultimate test of a reactor's designed defenses, he said.
"There is a possibility if the fuel is in the right configuration, has been out of the reactor long enough, and is sufficiently air cooled that a fuel fire would not start," said one U.S. expert. "If there were a fuel fire, the radiation levels off site would go off the charts -- which they have not," he said.
Tom Clements, southeastern nuclear campaign coordinator of Friends of the Earth, said the fuel in pool No. 4 was hotter than in the plant's other pools because it had more recently been transferred into the pool. "So, it may well have boiled faster, and it had more fuel in it."
The Union of Concerned Scientists and other nuclear power "watchdog" organizations or opponents have called on the NRC to require that spent fuel be moved to storage in dry casks when sufficiently cooled. The National Research Council said that action "might be prudent" for some plants whose vulnerabilities were outlined in a classified part of the report.
Jaczko told the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee that measures to protect both U.S. reactor operations and the spent fuel pools have been taken on a case-by-case basis for each U.S. reactor since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The NRC considers the storage situation to be safe in this country, but will review it once the staff has a full understanding of the details of the Japanese nuclear crisis, he said.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu, also testifying to Congress yesterday, reiterated confidence in the safety of the 104 U.S. nuclear reactors.
"The American people should have full confidence that the United States has rigorous safety regulations in place to ensure that our nuclear power is generated safely and responsibly. Information is still coming in about the events unfolding in Japan, but the administration is committed to learning from Japan's experience as we work to continue to strengthen America's nuclear industry," Chu said.
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How Much Spent Nuclear Fuel
How Much Spent Nuclear Fuel Does the Fukushima Daiichi Facility Hold?
Amplify’d from www.scientificamerican.com
As Japan attempts to cool overheating nuclear fuel with seawater, experts worry that the damaged spent-fuel pools pose the greatest threat
By
Katherine Harmon
|
In an early attempt to refill the vital pools with water Thursday, the Japan Self Defense Forces (JSDF) dispatched a cargo helicopter—specially outfitted with lead plates to help shield crewmembers from direct radiation—to drop seawater on the plant's reactor No. 3. The unit houses MOX (mixed oxide) fuel, which can melt at lower temperatures and could release some of its plutonium, which has a half-life of 24,000 years.
Later that day, the country's National Police Agency attempted to use fire trucks to pump water into No. 3's spent-fuel pools, but owing to high radiation levels, operators were not able to get close enough. Five, more robust pump trucks, sent later by the JSDF were able to move in close enough for 24 minutes to inject some 30 tons of water into the low pools. As of 9:30 P.M. local time, the "effect of this operation [was] still under evaluation," the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum (JAIF) reported.
As of 10 P.M. local time on Thursday, the JAIF listed the following status of the six Fukushima Daiichi reactors:
• Buildings around reactor Nos. 1, 3 and 4 were "severely damaged"; the building housing reactor No. 2 was "slightly damaged";
• Cooling was not working for reactor Nos. 1, or 3;
• Water levels were covering more than half of the fuel in reactor No. 2; reactor Nos. 1 and 3 water levels were covering only about half of the fuel.
• Structural integrity of the spent fuel pools was unknown for reactor Nos. 1 and 2;
• Reactor Nos. 3 and 4 had low water levels; pool temperature was continuing to rise for reactor Nos. 5 and 6.
The spent fuel pools are of significant concern, Marvin Resnikoff, a radioactive waste management consultant, said in a Wednesday press briefing organized by the nonprofit organization Physicians for Social Responsibility. Resnikoff noted that the pools at each reactor are thought to have contained the following amounts of spent fuel, according to The Mainichi Daily News:
• Reactor No. 1 fuel pool: 50 tons of nuclear fuel
• Reactor No. 2 fuel pool: 81 tons
• Reactor No. 3 fuel pool: 88 tons
• Reactor No. 4 fuel pool: 135 tons
• Reactor No. 5 fuel pool: 142 tons
• Reactor No. 6 fuel pool: 151 tons
• Also, a separate ground-level fuel pool contains 1,097 tons of fuel; and some 70 tons of nuclear materials are kept on the grounds in dry storage.
The reactor cores themselves contain less than 100 tons of fuel, Resnikoff noted.
The fuel had been moved from reactor No. 4's core to its spent-fuel pool recently, so "that fuel is relatively fresh and hotter, thermally," Resnikoff explained. "So it's not surprising that when the water [was] no longer circulating that the water was actually boiled off in a zirconium exothermic reaction, that the zirconium burned" (occurring at about 1,800 degrees Celsius).
Scientists are not confident that they will be able to assess just how much radioactive material will have been released as this event unfolds, David Richardson, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Public Health, said in the press briefing. It might not be until people can safely take stock of all of the fuel that is left, and then only "by that we can make a reckoning of what was lost," he said.
As of midday Thursday, the country's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency spokesperson Yoshitaka Nagayama, noted that "because we have been unable to go to the scene, we cannot confirm whether there is water left or not in the spent fuel pool at reactor No. 4," The New York Times reported. As of March 16, there had been at least two fires suspected at that reactor.
If the burning-hot fuel is not covered by adequate water, the heat from the ongoing nuclear reactions can cause the water to boil off. "Water in the pool serves as shielding and cooling, and when that water is gone, that direct gamma radiation is very high," Resnikoff said.
Resnikoff was skeptical at the briefing that helicopters would be an effective way to stave off overheating in the spent-fuel pools. "Part of the roof still remains, and they cannot just dump water into the fuel pools" from the air, he said.
In a congressional testimony yesterday, Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said of the conditions at the plant: "We believe that radiation levels are extremely high."
In any case, the NRC recommended Wednesday that U.S. residents in Japan within 80 kilometers of the facility should evacuate. American military personnel were being kept at least at this distance from the site. The Japanese government had evacuated residents within a 20-kilometer radius (and recommended those 20 to 30 kilometers away to remain indoors).
Yukio Edano, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, said that the U.S.'s "more conservative decision" to move U.S. residents farther away from the plant is "understandable," CNN reported.
Governments, agencies and many in the public have complained about the paucity of data being made available by the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power, the company that owns and operates the facility. But as Resnikoff pointed out, many of the radiation sensors are located on the nuclear plant's site and may well have been damaged during or since the March 11 magnitude 9.0 earthquake. "So it's not surprising that we're not getting the numbers we want."
And whether or not the 50 tons of water dumped on reactor No. 3 was enough to temporarily cool the spent fuel pool, the efforts will need to continue to avoid a significant release of radiation. "This is a several-months problem," Resnikoff said. "The heat values will be high for months—high enough to cause an exothermic reaction. So this is going to be a continual problem."
At least, the threat of radioactive release in Japan seems to be contained to the Fukushima Daiichi facility (Japan has a total of 54 nuclear reactors at various facilities). "Other nuclear power plants in Japan are in normal operations or safely shutdown," the JAIF reported Thursday.
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Status of Japan's 54 Nuclear Reactors
Map Reveals Status of Japan's 54 Nuclear Reactors
Amplify’d from www.scientificamerican.com
Map Reveals Status of Japan's 54 Nuclear Reactors
Breaking news continues to focus on the six compromised reactors at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex. But authorities have shut down eight other reactors in the region that were affected by last week's earthquake. Forty more plants continue to operate across the nation. The map above, released by the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, shows the status of every reactor as of March 17.
The industrial forum is now releasing detailed updates about the crippled reactors once or twice a day.
—Mark Fischetti
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