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The THTR Circulars from 2008

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THTR Circular No. 123, October 2008


Content:

It is now time to act:
Childhood cancer around nuclear power plants

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The Asse II mine reveals:
Highly radioactive THTR fuel elements come up again!

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Insider study shows:
Inherent incidents and radioactivity emissions from the HTR line!

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Nuclear power plants = huge profits for shareholders

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It is now time to act:

Childhood cancer around nuclear power plants

The chairman of the nuclear-critical doctors' organization IPPNW, Dr. med. Angelika Claussen, called on Wednesday at a press conference in Berlin to draw the necessary conclusions from the childhood cancer study and to ensure the necessary risk prevention. "It is now time to act, because we have already lost a lot of time," said Claussen. "If Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel now wants to put the children's cancer study on hold for an even longer official channel, then Chancellor Angela Merkel should make urgently necessary risk prevention and thus the protection of citizens a top priority."

Claussen pointed out that there had been serious indications of increased cancer rates in the vicinity of nuclear power plants for over ten years. Reliable evidence of this has been available for eight years and the final certainty has now been provided by the current childhood cancer study launched by the IPPNW in 2007. "One might argue about the details of this study, but one thing has now been proven for sure," said Claussen: "The closer a child lives to a nuclear power plant, the greater the risk of developing cancer or leukemia for the child - and that at 25 Meters exactly. "

Professor Eberhard Greiser, Institute for Public Health and Nursing Research at the University of Bremen, said in Berlin that the number of additional cancer cases was not the central question of the study. In this respect, it is dubious if the head of the study, Professor Maria Blettner, repeatedly only refers to a small number of cases in the "5 km zone" and at best tells half the truth. Greiser emphasized: "If you are already talking about numbers, then in the entire study area we are actually dealing with 29 to 121 additional cancer cases in the entire study area. That is 275% - 8% of all cancers in children up to 18 years in the study area - So within a 5 km radius - around the nuclear power plants. So we are talking about a significant rate of cancer cases in small children. "

Dr. rer. nat. Sebastian Pflugbeil, President of the Society for Radiation Protection, pointed out in this context that an additional case-control study was carried out to determine whether the main result of the Mainz children's cancer study, a significant distance dependency of the risks, also through a large number other possible influencing factors (confounders) such as pesticides can be explained. "Such a confounder has not been found," says Pflugbeil. "The researchers from the Mainz Children's Cancer Registry found that only the distance to the nuclear power plants provided significant results. If one assumes that the radioactive exposure decreases with distance, as does the observed risk, then the conclusion is that the cause of the increased Cancer rates are to be looked for in the radioactive emissions from the nuclear power plants. "

Professor Dr. med. Greiser and Professor Dr. med. Wolfgang Hoffmann, University of Greifswald, Department of Supply Epidemiology and Community Health, confirmed the correct computational execution of the study, but also commented critically on the conclusions of the study discussion. Hoffmann made it clear: "A causal contribution to radioactive emissions from nuclear power plants can definitely not be ruled out on the basis of these study results."

Professors Greiser and Hoffmann and Dr. Pflugbeil are members of the pluralistic expert committee of the Federal Office for Radiation Protection, which advised the child cancer study of the German Childhood Cancer Register in Mainz. On December 10, 2007, this committee unanimously stated in its statement on the results of the study that the radioactive releases from German nuclear power plants cannot be ruled out as the cause of the increased number of childhood cancer cases.

According to physics professor Schmitz-Feuerhake - formerly University of Bremen - nuclear facilities release more radioactivity than is officially stated. The operators would carry out continuous measurements on the exhaust chimney and in the wastewater. "But there are examples of unauthorized releases. This is reflected, among other things, in the fact that significantly more dicentric chromosomes were found in the blood of children in the vicinity of the Krümmel nuclear power plant and the GKSS nuclear research center as part of an extensive study than in the non-exposed children. Dicentric chromosomes are a specific indicator of radiation damage. "

The authorities' argument that the dose is too small to produce the observed effect is not valid. The population dose cannot be measured directly, but has to be simulated using model calculations from the measured emissions. The uncertainties in determining the dose could amount to several powers of ten, especially in the case of small children.

For Dr. med. Claussen now has to implement the principle of risk prevention required by European and constitutional law. The doctor drew a comparison from her practice: "If so many serious side effects became known to a drug, then this drug would be immediately withdrawn from the market until the causes of the side effects were completely clarified. This is a self-evident precautionary principle to protect patients . Why does this not apply to the operation of the nuclear power plants? "

Source: IPPNW press release, www.ippnw.de

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The Asse II mine reveals:

Highly radioactive THTR fuel elements come up again!

TopUp to the top of the page - www.reaktorpleite.de -

Between 1967 and 1978, 124.494 packages of low-level and 1.293 packages of medium-level radioactive waste were stored in the Asse II mine near Wolfenbüttel in the former salt mine. This is what the official version of April 18, 2002 says in the "updated radionuclide inventory". With a view to Gorleben, this experiment was intended to prove how well salt mines would be suitable for storing nuclear waste for thousands of years.

For years, water and lye ingress have turned Asse into an atomic toilet with an upward flush. An entire region now lives in fear of the radioactive remains of past decades. Asse is to be flooded soon. The fear of the citizens' initiatives: The flooding turns the salt dome into a sponge and mobilizes the radioactive substances even more. On July 5, 2008, a thousand people demonstrated against this.

According to official information, 102 tons of uranium, 87 tons of thorium and 11,6 kg of plutonium are in the Asse mine. Thorium is a clear indication that radioactive substances from the THTR Jülich were also stored. The pebble bed reactor of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Versuchsreaktor (AVR) had an output of 15 MW and was in operation from 1966 (first criticality) to 1988. "By the end of 1985, over 255.000 fuel elements were used in the AVR" (1), according to the operator. She wrote the following about the disposal of used radioactive fuel elements:

“In 1973 a program was set up for the test storage of AVR fuel elements in the Asse salt mine, which together with the JUPITER reprocessing test facility offered sufficient capacity for AVR disposal at the time. However, the provisional closure of the Asse and the reorientation of the JUPITER project required a revision of the disposal concept ”(2).

Although only low-level and medium-level radioactive waste may be stored in Asse, something else happened: From 1967 to 1982, only 93% enriched uranium-235 was used at THTR Jülich: “In the AVR, the working group has therefore been gradually replacing highly enriched thorium-containing fuel elements since 1982 low-enriched fuel assemblies. In 1985 they made up 43% of the fuel elements contained in the reactor cycle ”(3). It is needless to speculate whether between 1967 and 1978 one hundred thousand of these highly radioactive fuel elements were stored or more. It shouldn't have happened.

The Greens of Lower Saxony published the on their homepage "Accompanying list for the experimental storage of medium-level radioactive waste in the Asse salt mine", Sender: Nuclear Research Facility Jülich. Date: December 15, 12. The waste materials U, Th (Thorium!) And SP are named. Type of radioactive waste: "Fuel element balls in a tin can"! - So it was stored safely in this way for millennia. This is a bad joke!

In the August 2008 edition of the monthly magazine “Konkret”, Detlef zum Winkel was the first to point out that highly radioactive nuclear waste from the THTR Jülich was stored in Asse and commented: “To classify such waste under the generic term low to medium level radioactive has been misleading for decades Public that can hardly be surpassed when it comes to audacity. Clarifying this would have been one of the tasks of the MP who represents the constituency in which Asse is located in the Bundestag: Sigmar Gabriel, today also Environment Minister in Berlin. "

And there is another highly explosive connection to the Winkel in “Konkret”: “Asse hides the legacies of the beginnings of the German nuclear program. Since the stuff shines for so long and is so difficult to hide, it could solve many riddles and secrets from the time when our Ahmadinejad was still called Franz Josef Strauss. In Karlsruhe and elsewhere it was - by chance! - worked on the same projects that Iran currently wants, uranium enrichment and heavy water reactor. "
The aces brings it to light. With this in mind: good luck!

Notes:
1. "Long-term experience with the AVR experimental nuclear power plant", BBC + HRB, 1987, page 7
2. The pebble bed reactor of the experimental reactor working group ", Ed .: AVR, BBC, HRB; May 1987, page 19
3. See under 1., page 6. This article also provides a significant insight into the operational practice of the AVR: “In the first few years of operation, there were particularly maintenance-required components in areas within the reactor containment that were only incompletely shielded from direct radiation. This explains the relatively high doses in the first 3 years of operation. After these components were replaced by better ones ... ", did they come to Asse?
In a letter to the editor in WA on August 29, 8, reference was made to the connection Asse - THTR. On September 2008, 5, the WA also reported on this as part of a topic page: "What came from NRW?" 

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Insider study shows:

Inherent incidents and radioactivity emissions from the HTR line!

TopUp to the top of the page - www.reaktorpleite.de -

A new study (1) by the scientist Rainer Moormann on the operation of the thorium high-temperature reactor (THTR) AVR in Jülich, which was shut down in 1988, not only calls into question the entire previous official safety architecture of this reactor line, but also shakes the statements of the international atomic community about the advantages of the new generation IV reactors in their foundations.

Remarkably, this criticism comes from a scientist who has been doing regular research on the HTR line at Forschungszentrum Jülich for many years and has published on this. With an unprecedented degree of openness, this “safety-related reassessment” for the first time reveals significant problems in the operation and the current dismantling of the general test reactor (AVR) in Jülich and addresses considerable radioactive contamination. Here are the results in detail:

1. Many security problems in the AVR have so far been concealed.
"This work mainly deals with some inadequately published but safety-relevant problems of the AVR operation."

2. The dismantling brings it to light: There was significantly higher contamination within the facility than predicted. Radioactive graphite dust is "mobile".
“The AVR cooling circuit is heavily contaminated with metallic fission products (Sr-90, Cs-137), which is causing considerable problems with the current dismantling. The extent of the contamination is not exactly known, but the evaluation of fission product deposition experiments suggests that this contamination reached a few percent of a core inventory at the end of operation and is thus orders of magnitude higher than forecast and also considerably higher than the contamination in large LWR. A significant proportion of this contamination is bound to graphite dust and is therefore partially mobile in pressure relief accidents, which must be taken into account in safety assessments of future reactors. "

3. Inadmissibly high core temperatures are the cause of high releases.
“It emerged that the contamination of the AVR cooling circuit was not primarily caused by inadequate fuel element quality, as was previously assumed, but by inadmissibly high core temperatures, which accelerated the releases considerably. The impermissibly high core temperatures were only discovered 1 year before the final AVR end of operation, as a pebble cluster core has not yet been instrumentable. The maximum core temperatures in the AVR are still unknown, but they were more than 200 K above calculated values. (...) At the moment, reliable advance calculations of core temperatures in pebbles are not possible. "

4. The steam generator was damaged during operation.
“In addition, azimuthal temperature differences of up to 200 K were measured at the core edge, which are presumably due to a performance imbalance. Strands of hot gas with temperatures above 1100 ° C, which could have damaged the steam generator, were occasionally measured above the core. "

5. AVR operation was unsafe and unreliable. As a result, these negative safety properties can also be expected in future Generation IV reactors.
"There was therefore no safe and reliable AVR operation at gas outlet temperatures suitable for process heat, as assumed as the basis of the pebble-bed VHTR development in the Generation IV project."

6. HTR spherical fuel assemblies cannot prevent radioactivity from escaping. A myth is exposed as a lie.
“The AVR contamination problems are also related to the fact that intact HTR fuel assemblies cannot be viewed as an almost complete barrier for metallic fission products as they are for noble gases. Metals diffuse in the fuel core, in the coatings and in the graphite. A breakthrough through these barriers takes place in long-term normal operation when certain temperature limits specific to the fission product are exceeded. There is an unsolved weak point in HTR that does not exist in other reactors. "

7. There is an uncontrolled (!) Distribution of radioactive nuclides over the entire cooling circuit.
“Another HTR weak point that contributed to the AVR contamination is due to the fact that the nuclides released from the fuel elements in the HTR are distributed in an uncontrolled manner over the entire cooling circuit. Because of the high deposition rates of chemically reactive fission products in HTR cooling circuits, the activity released from the fuel elements cannot be removed using a cleaning system, as is standard in the LWR. "
Comment: So now we know why the operators of the THTR Hamm resisted our request for a nuclide register so violently after its shutdown. An additional disaster would have become obvious and public!

8. Water ingress took place. These must be eliminated in the future by additional devices.
"In the event of water ingress, the penetration of liquid water into the pebble, as happened in an AVR accident, must be structurally excluded in order to prevent a possible positive void coefficient of reactivity with reactivity excursion."

9. A gas-tight containment (safety container) is completely missing, but is absolutely necessary.
“Criteria for a maximally tolerable accumulated activity in the HTR cooling circuit were developed on the basis of German regulations for design accidents and on the basis of requirements from maintenance and dismantling. The application of these criteria to pebble bed reactors leads to the conclusion that gas-tight containment is necessary even if no excessive core temperatures are assumed. "

10. In his study, the author discusses whether, in the interests of safety, one should generally refrain from hot gas temperatures in the future.
In other words: The Very-High-Temperature Reactor (VHTR), which is particularly favored in Generation IV, creates a particularly large number of problems that have yet to be solved. A “very extensive R&D program” would be indispensable for this before further steps should be initiated.

11. The further development of the pebble bed reactor will be very expensive and therefore economic risks should be precisely estimated beforehand. Is the huge effort even worth it?
“An extensively instrumented experimental pebble bed reactor would be indispensable for solving these problems. Before an R&D program of this size is started, a feasibility study including a cost estimate should be carried out in order to quantify the economic risk of this development. "

12. All previous HTR safety studies have been inadequate and far too optimistic in their conclusions.
“With regard to beyond-design-basis accidents, safety problems in the event of air ingress / core fire have not yet been adequately resolved. A comparative safety study of pebble bed HTR, block HTR and generation III LWR would be helpful to get a more reliable statement on the safety of current pebble bed HTR concepts: From today's perspective, earlier safety studies for pebble bed reactors must be viewed as too optimistic. "

After the publication of this critical study within the framework of the Jülich Research Center, there can only be one demand: No more euro for HTR and Generation IV research; no construction of the PBMR in South Africa, which would have exactly the mentioned problems!

Notes:
1. Rainer Moormann: "A safety-related reassessment of the operation of the AVR pebble bed reactor and conclusions for future reactors". Reports from Forschungszentrum Jülich, 4275. ISSN 0944-2952.

The study as a PDF file from the server of the central library of Forschungszentrum Jülich

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Nuclear power plants = huge profits for shareholders

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Cheap electricity from nuclear power plants? Especially for poor people, as Laurenz Meyer suggested with demagogic intent to lure a few particularly stupid?

Florian Opitz's multiple award-winning documentary film “The Big Sale” showed on September 23, 9 in ARTE the reality in Africa's only country with nuclear power. Because in South Africa there are two nuclear power plants in Koeberg near Cape Town and the costs for the THTR (called PBMR) planned right next to it have already increased tenfold in 10 years. In 1999 the state energy supply company ESKOM was privatized and increased the prices for electricity by up to 300 percent. Many households in the slums ran into financial difficulties. ESKOM switched off the electricity for up to 20.000 households per month.

The poor population and the opponents of privatization resorted to self-help and illegally reconnected the disconnected households to the power grid. ESKOM persecutes them mercilessly with the help of the state. In the very moving film, the activist Bongani Lubisi has his say, who dies four months after the end of the film under unexplained circumstances.

After further chilling examples of privatization in England, the Philippines and Bolivia, the Nobel Prize winner for economics Joseph E. Stiglitz characterizes the inhumane system as follows: “I once compared certain aspects of economic policy with modern warfare. Modern warfare seeks to dehumanize, remove compassion. You throw bombs from 15.000 meters, but you can't see where they land, you can't see any damage. It's almost like a computer game. "
Info: www.dergrosseausverkauf.de

Dear readers!
In addition to the sensational Moormann study on the THTR in Jülich, the still current 198-page analysis of the HTR line of the Öko-Institut from 1986 can now be viewed on our website. The media still report very extensively on the THTR, for example:

  •  “Nuclear energy and its opponents. A history of the anti-nuclear movement ”on Deutschlandradio on August 6, 8.
  •  “Where is the outcry from the opponents of nuclear power?” In “DerWesten” (WAZ-WR-WP) on September 10, 9.
  •  “25 Years of the Hamm-Uentrop Reactor” in “That's how it was” on the WDR on September 13, 9.
  •  “Expensive ruins. Failed major nuclear projects ”on Deutschlandradio on September 14, 9.

When Chancellor Merkel came to Hamm-Uentrop to lay the foundation stone for the new coal-fired power plants on August 29, only two members of our BI and the Greens (and Greenpeace) demonstrated from Hamm. Nevertheless, we received extensive media coverage. However, the low participation in protests from the environmental movement was extremely embarrassing! - We just can't be everywhere and do everything. When it comes to cancer studies, too, a lot of initiative is required from new people. - We are not a service company so that others can sit back and say: “Do it!” It doesn't work that way.

PS: Come to Gorleben on November 8th! Get in touch with us about the ride-sharing opportunities from Hamm!

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