8/24/2011 (Video) Why did the Virginia nuke plant, built on fault line, have its quake sensors removed?

Source: RT News
Date: 8/24/2011
by: Thom Hartman


[Editor's Note: I extracted the Thom Hartman interview segment with Beyond Nuclear's Paul Gunter concerning the North Anna Nuclear Generating Station which is run by Dominion Generation (the company stock is listed as Dominion Resources). Some disturbing points are brought up. This nuclear power plant actually had its seismic sensors removed in the 1990's due to budget cuts. The Lake Anna Dam, which was constructed on the North Anna River to create Lake Anna, an artificial reservoir to cool the North Anna nuclear plant, was recently inspected for earthquake damage and passed inspection. However, as Mr. Gunter notes, America's crumbling infrastructure has low D- ratings on many of its dams with regards to upkeep, including this one. Also, due to the nuclear power plant being very close to the epicenter of the 5.8 magnitude quake, Gunter feels that damage to the nuclear plant's is likely, such as cracked pipes which in the case of the Dresden nuclear power plant in Illinois, leaked radioactive tritium.

Link to original Thom Hartman interview which includes other segments: http://youtu.be/pRs5RKXoZ6I

Good article that speculates that the North Anna Nuclear Generating Station has been damaged and is possibly leaking radiation: http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/us-quake-nuclear-meltdown-wa...]

8/17/2011 Christopher Busby: Chernobyl-like radiation found in Tokyo

Source: RT News
Date: 8/17/2011


Workers at Japan's Fukushima plant say the ground under the facility is cracking and radioactive steam is escaping through the fissures. They also say pipes and at least one reactor were seriously damaged before the tsunami hit the area in March. RT talks to Christopher Busby of the European Committee on Radiation Risks.

7/22/2011 Inside the Innards of a Nuclear Reactor: Tiny Robots May Monitor Underground Pipes for Radioactive Leaks

Source: Science Daily
Date: 7/22/2011

A spherical robot equipped with a camera may navigate underground pipes of a nuclear reactor by propelling itself with an internal network of valves and pumps. (Credit: Harry Asada/d'Arbeloff Laboratory)

ScienceDaily (July 22, 2011) — As workers continue to grapple with the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant in Japan, the crisis has shone a spotlight on nuclear reactors around the world. In June, The Associated Press released results from a yearlong investigation, revealing evidence of "unrelenting wear" in many of the oldest-running facilities in the United States.

That study found that three-quarters of the country's nuclear reactor sites have leaked radioactive tritium from buried piping that transports water to cool reactor vessels, often contaminating groundwater. According to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the industry has limited methods to monitor underground pipes for leaks.

"We have 104 reactors in this country," says Harry Asada, the Ford Professor of Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of MIT's d'Arbeloff Laboratory for Information Systems and Technology. "Fifty-two of them are 30 years or older, and we need immediate solutions to assure the safe operations of these reactors."

Asada says one of the major challenges for safety inspectors is identifying corrosion in a reactor's underground pipes. Currently, plant inspectors use indirect methods to monitor buried piping: generating a voltage gradient to identify areas where pipe coatings may have corroded, and using ultrasonic waves to screen lengths of pipe for cracks. The only direct monitoring requires digging out the pipes and visually inspecting them -- a costly and time-intensive operation.

Now Asada and his colleagues at the d'Arbeloff Laboratory are working on a direct monitoring alternative: small, egg-sized robots designed to dive into nuclear reactors and swim through underground pipes, checking for signs of corrosion. The underwater patrollers, equipped with cameras, are able to withstand a reactor's extreme, radioactive environment, transmitting images in real-time from within.

The group presented details of its latest prototype at the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
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Read full article here

Radioactive tritium leaks found at 48 US nuke sites

Source: AP via MSNBC
Date: ???
by: JEFF DONN

'You got pipes that have been buried underground for 30 or 40 years, and they've never been inspected', whistleblower says

BRACEVILLE, Ill. — Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping, an Associated Press investigation shows.
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Read full article here

Addition: Local news report on Braidwood, IL nuclear plant which had pipes leaking tritium.