{"id":36422,"date":"2011-03-31T09:14:40","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T14:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=36422"},"modified":"2011-03-31T09:14:40","modified_gmt":"2011-03-31T14:14:40","slug":"worth-repeating-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/worth-repeating-14\/","title":{"rendered":"Worth repeating"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even before Three Mile Island, a group of nuclear engineers had proposed that filtered vents be attached to buildings around reactors, which are intended to contain the gases released from overheated fuel. If the pressure inside these containment buildings increased dangerously \u2014 as has happened repeatedly at Fukushima \u2014 the vents would release these gases after the filters greatly reduced their radioactivity.<\/p>\n

France and Germany installed such filters in their plants, but the [United States] Nuclear Regulatory Commission declined to require them. Given the influence of America\u2019s example, had the commission demanded the addition of filtered vents, they would likely have been required worldwide, including in Japan.<\/p>\n

More recently, independent analysts have argued, based on risk analyses done for the commission, it is dangerous for the United States to pack five times more spent fuel into reactor cooling pools than they were designed to hold, and that 80 percent of that spent fuel is cool enough to be stored safely elsewhere. It would also be more expensive, however, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission followed the nuclear utilities\u2019 lead and rejected the proposal.The commission has even fought relentlessly for decades against proposals \u2014 and more recently a Congressional requirement \u2014 to distribute potassium iodide pills beyond the 10-mile emergency zones around American reactors, arguing that the probability of a large release of radioactivity was too low to justify the expense. And yet the American Embassy in Tokyo is handing out potassium iodide pills to Americans 140 miles from the Fukushima plant.
\n
\n–Nuclear physicist Frank von Hippel<\/strong>. He is a Princeton professor and co-chairman of the International Panel on Fissile Materials. From 1993 to 1994 he was responsible for national security issues in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even before Three Mile Island, a group of nuclear engineers had proposed that filtered vents be attached to buildings around reactors, which are intended to contain the gases released from overheated fuel. If the pressure inside these containment buildings increased dangerously \u2014 as has happened repeatedly at Fukushima \u2014 the vents would release these gases … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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\/36422"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}