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Pilgrim Watch's Supplement to Pilgrim Watch Petition for Review of LBP

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Pilgrim Watch's Supplement to Pilgrim Watch Petition for Review of LBP UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION BEFORE THE COMMISSION In the Matter of Docket # 50-293-LR Entergy Corporation Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station License Renewal Application April 6, 2012 PILGRIM WATCH’S SUPPLEMENT TO PILGRIM WATCH PETITION FOR REVIEW OF LBP-12-01 Pilgrim Watch (“PW”) through its pro se representative, Mary Lampert, respectfully submits the attached new information from press reports over the previous month believed by PW to be new, significant and material to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (“Commission”) consideration of PW’s Petitions for Review of LBP- 12-01, currently before the Commission, and relevant to the Commission’s obligation under NEPA. PW requests that it be included in the record. Respectfully submitted, Mary lampert (Signed Electronically) Pilgrim Watch, pro se 148 Washington Street Duxbury, MA 02332 Tel. 781-934-0389 Email: [email protected] April 6, 2012 1 ATTACHMENTS 1. Reports another Radioactive Water Leak at Fukushima Plant, Bloomberg Tsuyoshi Inajima, April 5, 2012 2. Cesium in excess of new gov't limit detected in smelt from Gunma lake, Kyodo News, MAEBASHI, Japan, April 3, 2012 3. Radioactive 'Hotspots' Found Far From Fukushima Disaster International Business Times, Roxanne Palmer, April 2, 2012 3:16 PM EDT 4. Sampling the Pacific for Signs of Fukushima, Science Daily, April 2, 2012 5. Radiation from Japanese disaster tracked 186 miles away, Mother Nature Network, Jesse Emspak, April 3, 2012 6. Cesium up to 100 times levels before disaster found in plankton far off nuke plant, Mainichi Japan, April 3, 2012 7. Fukushima fishermen hopeless after nuke contamination postpones fishing season, Mainichi Japan, March 31, 2012 8. Nuke crisis far from under control as TEPCO's 'inadequate predictions' continue, Mainichi Japan, Ei Okada, Science & Environment News Department, March 16, 212 9. Fukushima water treatment stepping up, World Nuclear News, March 15, 2012 10. Fukushima toxic water could still be leaking into sea, Tokyo Times, March 7, 2012 11. Scientists: Far more cesium released than previously believed, Asahi Shimbun, Akiko Okazaki, February 29, 2012 2 Attachment 1 Reports another Radioactive Water Leak at Fukushima Plant, Bloomberg Tsuyoshi Inajima - Apr 5, 2012 3:59 AM ET Tokyo Electric Power Co. said as much as 12 tons of radioactive water leaked from a pipe at its crippled Fukushima nuclear station, the second such incident in 11 days at the same pipeline, raising further doubts about the stability of the plant. Part of the water may have poured into the sea through a drainage ditch, Osamu Yokokura, a spokesman for the utility, said by phone. The company known as Tepco stopped the leak from a pipe connecting a desalination unit and a tank today, he said. “There will be similar leaks until Tepco improves equipment,” said Kazuhiko Kudo, a research professor of nuclear engineering at Kyushu University, who visited the plant twice last year as a member of a panel under the Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency. “The site had plastic pipes to transfer radioactive water, which Tepco officials said are durable and for industrial use, but it’s not something normally used at nuclear plants,” he said. “Tepco must replace it with metal equipment, such as steel.” Tepco has about 100,000 tons of highly radioactive water accumulated in basements at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear station nearly 13 months after the March 11 quake and tsunami caused meltdowns and the worst radiation leaks since Chernobyl. The tsunami knocked out all power at the station, causing cooling systems for reactors to fail. The utility was forced to set up makeshift pumps to get cooling water to the reactors, with most of it then draining into basements. More Leaks Tepco has been criticized before over its handling of the radioactive water following several leaks into the sea, including the one reported on March 26. Last year, the environment group Greenpeace International said it found seaweed and fish contaminated to more than 50 times the 2,000 becquerel per kilogram legal limit for radioactive iodine-131 off the coast of Fukushima during a survey between May 3 and 9. Mol, Belgium-based Nuclear Research Centre and Herouville- Saint-Clair, France-based Association pour le Controle de la Radioactivite dans l’Ouest confirmed at the time they conducted analysis of the samples supplied by Greenpeace. The radioactive material discharged into the sea from the Fukushima plant is the largest in history, according to a study by the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety. The institute, which is funded by the French government, made the estimate in October last year and said it was 20-times the amount calculated by Tepco. Tepco declined to comment on the report at the time. 3 Strontium Risk The latest leak contains about 16.7 becquerels per cubic centimeter of radioactive cesium 134 and 137 combined, Tepco said in a statement today. It’s still investigating how much strontium and other types of radioactive particles are contained in the water, Yokokura said. Strontium can be absorbed in the body through eating tainted seaweed or fish. It then accumulates in bone and can cause cancer, said Tetsuo Ito, the head of Kinki University’s Atomic Energy Research Institute, in a December interview. On March 26, about 120 tons of radioactive water may have leaked from a pipeline connected to the desalination unit, Yokokura said. Of the leaked water, Tepco believes about 80 liters poured into the sea, he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Tsuyoshi Inajima in Tokyo at [email protected] To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Langan at [email protected] 4 5 Attachment 2 Cesium in excess of new gov't limit detected in smelt from Gunma lake, Kyodo News, MAEBASHI, Japan, April 3, 2012 The Gunma prefectural government said Tuesday that 426 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram had been detected in smelt caught in Akagi Onuma lake in the prefectural city of Maebashi, exceeding a new government-set allowable limit of 100 becquerels. The new limit took effect on Sunday. The previous limit, set tentatively after the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant accident, was 500 becquerels for food. The smelt was caught on Wednesday, according to the prefectural government. http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2012/04/150554.html 6 Attachment 3 Radioactive 'Hotspots' Found Far From Fukushima Disaster International Business Times, Roxanne Palmer, April 2, 2012 3:16 PM EDT Three months after the March 11, 2011, tsunami led to meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northern Japan, scientists detected higher levels of radioactive elements in the ocean up to 600 kilometers (373 miles) off the Japanese coast -- but not at levels that present an immediate threat to human health, according to a new study Using 24 specially equipped drifting buoys, a team led by researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts found radioactive isotopes -- slightly different versions of elements -- derived from the Fukushima Daiichi plant in seawater as well as in various underwater microorganisms and a small sample of fish, according to a paper appearing Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. While much research has been focused on measuring radioactivity near the coastline and in the air and soil of Japan, there is relatively little information about the distribution of radioactive elements farther out, the researchers say. The levels of radioactive isotopes the team found last June were between 10 and 1,000 times higher than previously documented figures. However, the amount of radiation found is not immediately harmful to humans or marine animals and is still lower than the amount of other naturally occurring radioactive isotopes in the ocean, according to Woods Hole researcher Ken O. Buesseler, the lead author of the study. We're not seeing any levels that by themselves that would cause radiation sickness," Buesseler said in a phone interview. However, there could be problems down the line, as fish eat contaminated plankton, or when radioactive elements settle onto the ocean floor and are consumed by shellfish and other creatures in a chain that leads to the supper table. Buesseler says he's most concerned about radioactive bits of the element cesium accumulating in ocean sediments. One of the cesium isotopes measured degrades very slowly, meaning that it will be sticking around for decades. Some of the highest levels of radioactivity were found around 100 km offshore, where radioactive elements are caught in the swirling grip of circular ocean currents called eddies. The ocean currents are mixing them, creating these hotspots," Buesseler said. Currents will bring radioactive elements near U.S. shores in a little more than a year, but by that time they will have dissipated even further, according to Buesseler. Some radioactive fallout has already reached the U.S. by air. A paper published in March in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring finds that radioactive cesium and iodine isotopes were detected in air, water and milk samples taken across the country in March and April 2011, peaking around a week after the tsunami. But even those results provided little cause for alarm. Punam Thakur, a researcher with the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring & Research Center at New Mexico State University and the lead 7 author of the JEM paper, says even the highest levels of radioactive elements she found were 1,500 times smaller than the maximum limit set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Thakur estimates that the U.S. has been hit with about 1 to 2 percent of the radioactive elements released by the Fukushima disaster, though that figure isn't rock-solid, since the Japanese government has not released figures on the total amount of radiation released from the plant.
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