{"id":35726,"date":"2011-03-14T16:30:41","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T21:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=35726"},"modified":"2011-03-14T16:53:55","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T21:53:55","slug":"tokyo-electric-to-build-us-nuclear-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/tokyo-electric-to-build-us-nuclear-plants\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo Electric to Build US Nuclear Plants"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Greg Palast<\/strong><\/p>\n

The no-BS info on Japan’s disastrous nuclear operators<\/h3>\n

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I need to speak to you, not as a reporter, but in my former capacity as lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations.<\/p>\n

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I don’t know the law in Japan, so I can’t tell you if Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) can plead insanity to the homicides about to happen.<\/p>\n

But what will Obama plead?\u00a0The Administration, just months ago, asked Congress to provide a $4 billion loan guarantee for two new nuclear reactors to be built and operated on the Gulf Coast of Texas \u2014 by Tokyo Electric Power and local partners.\u00a0As if the Gulf hasn’t suffered enough.<\/p>\n

Here are the facts about Tokyo Electric and the industry you haven’t heard on CNN:<\/p>\n

The failure of emergency systems at Japan’s nuclear plants comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked in the field.<\/p>\n

Nuclear plants the world over must be certified for what is called “SQ” or “Seismic Qualification.”\u00a0That is, the owners swear that all components are designed for the maximum conceivable shaking event, be it from an earthquake or an exploding Christmas card from Al Qaeda.<\/p>\n

The most inexpensive way to meet your SQ is to lie.\u00a0The industry does it all the time. The government team I worked with caught them once, in 1988, at the Shoreham plant in New York.\u00a0Correcting the SQ problem at Shoreham would have cost a cool billion, so engineers were told to change the tests from ‘failed’ to ‘passed.’<\/p>\n

The company that put in the false safety report?\u00a0Stone & Webster, now the nuclear unit of Shaw Construction which will work with Tokyo Electric to build the Texas plant, Lord help us.<\/p>\n

There’s more.<\/p>\n

Last night I heard CNN reporters repeat the official line that the tsunami disabled the pumps needed to cool the reactors, implying that water unexpectedly got into the diesel generators that run the pumps.<\/p>\n

These safety back-up systems are the ‘EDGs’ in nuke-speak: Emergency Diesel Generators.\u00a0That they didn’t work in an emergency is like a fire department telling us they couldn’t save a building because “it was on fire.”<\/p>\n

What dim bulbs designed this system?\u00a0One of the reactors dancing with death at Fukushima Station 1 was built by Toshiba.\u00a0 Toshiba was also an architect of the emergency diesel system.<\/p>\n

Now be afraid. Obama’s $4 billion bail-out-in-the-making is called the South Texas Project.\u00a0 It’s been sold as a red-white-and-blue way to make power domestically with a reactor from Westinghouse, a great American brand.\u00a0However, the reactor will be made substantially in Japan by the company that bought the US brand name, Westinghouse \u2014 Toshiba.<\/p>\n

I once had a Toshiba computer.\u00a0I only had to send it in once for warranty work.\u00a0However, it’s kind of hard to mail back a reactor with the warranty slip inside the box if the fuel rods are melted and sinking halfway to the earth’s core.<\/p>\n

TEPCO and Toshiba don’t know what my son learned in 8th grade science class: tsunamis follow Pacific Rim earthquakes. So these companies are real stupid, eh?\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 More likely is that the diesels and related systems wouldn’t have worked on a fine, dry afternoon.<\/p>\n

Back in the day, when we checked the emergency back-up diesels in America, a mind-blowing number flunked.\u00a0 At the New York nuke, for example, the builders swore under oath that their three diesel engines were ready for an emergency. They’d been tested.\u00a0 The tests were faked, the diesels run for just a short time at low speed.\u00a0 When the diesels were put through a real test under emergency-like conditions, the crankshaft on the first one snapped in about an hour, then the second and third.\u00a0 We nicknamed the diesels, “Snap, Crackle and Pop.”<\/p>\n

(Note:\u00a0 Moments after I wrote that sentence, word came that two of three diesels failed at the Tokai Station as well.)<\/p>\n

In the US, we supposedly fixed our diesels after much complaining by the industry. But in Japan, no one tells Tokyo Electric to do anything the Emperor of Electricity doesn’t want to do.<\/p>\n

I get lots of confidential notes from nuclear industry insiders.\u00a0One engineer, a big name in the field, is especially concerned that Obama waved the come-hither check to Toshiba and Tokyo Electric to lure them to America.\u00a0The US has a long history of whistleblowers willing to put themselves on the line to save the public. In our racketeering case in New York, the government only found out about the seismic test fraud because two courageous engineers, Gordon Dick and John Daly, gave our team the documentary evidence.<\/p>\n

In Japan, it’s simply not done.\u00a0 The culture does not allow the salary-men, who work all their their lives for one company, to drop the dime.<\/p>\n

Not that US law is a wondrous shield:\u00a0both engineers in the New York case were fired and blacklisted by the industry.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the government (local, state, federal) brought civil racketeering charges against the builders. The jury didn’t buy the corporation’s excuses and, in the end, the plant was, thankfully, dismantled.<\/p>\n

Am I on some kind of xenophobic anti-Nippon crusade?\u00a0 No.\u00a0In fact, I’m far more frightened by the American operators in the South Texas nuclear project, especially Shaw. Stone & Webster, now the Shaw nuclear division, was also the firm that conspired to fake the EDG tests in New York. (The company’s other exploits have been exposed by their former consultant, John Perkins, in his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.)<\/p>\n

If the planet wants to shiver, consider this:\u00a0Toshiba and Shaw have recently signed a deal to become world-wide partners in the construction of nuclear stations.<\/p>\n

The other characters involved at the South Texas Plant that Obama is backing should also give you the willies.\u00a0 But as I’m in the middle of investigating the American partners, I’ll save that for another day.<\/p>\n

So, if we turned to America’s own nuclear contractors, would we be safe?\u00a0 Well, two of the melting Japanese reactors, including the one whose building blew sky high, were built by General Electric of the Good Old US of A.<\/p>\n

After Texas, you’re next.\u00a0The Obama Administration is planning a total of $56 billion in loans for nuclear reactors all over America.<\/p>\n

And now, the homicides:<\/p>\n

CNN is only interested in body counts, how many workers burnt by radiation, swept away or lost in the explosion.\u00a0 These plants are now releasing radioactive steam into the atmosphere. Be skeptical about the statements that the “levels are not dangerous.”\u00a0 These are the same people who said these meltdowns could never happen.\u00a0 Over years, not days, there may be a thousand people, two thousand, ten thousand who will suffer from cancers induced by this radiation.<\/p>\n

In my New York investigation, I had the unhappy job of totaling up post-meltdown “morbidity” rates for the county government.\u00a0\u00a0 It would be irresponsible for me to estimate the number of cancer deaths that will occur from these releases without further information; but it is just plain criminal for the Tokyo Electric shoguns to say that these releases are not dangerous.\u00a0 Indeed, the fact that residents near the Japanese nuclear plants were not issued iodine pills to keep at the ready shows TEPCO doesn’t care who lives and who dies whether in Japan or the USA. The carcinogenic isotopes that are released at Fukushima are already floating to Seattle with effects we simply cannot measure.<\/p>\n

Heaven help us.\u00a0 Because Obama won’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Greg Palast The no-BS info on Japan’s disastrous nuclear operators . I need to speak to you, not as a reporter, but in my former capacity as lead investigator in several government nuclear plant fraud and racketeering investigations. I don’t know the law in Japan, so I can’t tell you if Tokyo Electric Power … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35726"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}