There's stories floating all over the internet today about radiation level spikes in Indiana. Here's one alarming news report of 7,139 counts per minute (CPM) rad levels around the South Bend area:

http://digitaljournal.com/article/326246

Nuclear Cover-Up: Explosions, Military Helicopters Filmed Near Blacked Out Radiation Zone

Anthony Gucciardi
NaturalSociety
June 8, 2012

Eyewitnesses on the ground near the media-blacked-out elevated radiation zone near the border of Indiana and Michigan, where radiation levels hundreds of times higher than normal were quickly removed from public viewing by the EPA, are now sending in a large number of photos and videos documenting massive explosions accompanied by unmarked helicopters, A-10 Thunderbolts, and military personnel. These reports come after a Department of Homeland Security hazmat fleet was sent out to the location after ‘years’ of inactivity.

Those on the ground report that the explosions are ‘loud and deep’, sounding like fireworks with a kick. The explosions are oftentimes followed up with a squadron of helicopters or other aircraft, oftentimes black and unmarked. One Michigan resident reports the following, and is then backed by dozens of organic comments which confirm the findings:

“EXPLOSIONS EVERYWHERE! Also, Large helicopter heading away from Local Air Force base flying toward scene of explosions! These explosions are seriously consistant, loud booms for the last hour or more.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFcCJll_0Yo

Two thoughts:

1) It was a malfunctioning sensor

2) (Conspiracy theorists say:) It's a coverup!


http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/326246

1) It was a malfunctioning sensor (At 2 separate sites?)

2) (Conspiracy theorists say:) It's a coverup! (Well, there you have it!)

Nuclear Event in USA on Wednesday, 13 June, 2012 at 05:40 (05:40 AM) UTC.

The Palisades nuclear power plant is shut down. Officials at the plant removed it from service due to what is being described as a "small leak" in the plant's safety injection and refueling water tank. That tank holds as much as 300-thousand gallons of water that is used remove heat from the reactor's core in the event of a coolant accident and to increase "shutdown safety margin." It's not known how long the troubled facility will remain out of service. Palisades has been ranked by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as one of the four worst nuclear plants in the nation.

http://ki4u.com/freeairfiltertest.htm

Nuclear Cover-Up Threatens Great Lakes Region

A CounterPunch Special Report on NRC Collusion With Utilities to Conceal Grave Safety Problems at Davis Besse and Palisades Reactors

by MICHAEL LEONARDI
August 20, 2012

According to recent reports from the nuclear watchdog Beyond Nuclear and several Great Lakes environmental organizations, the NRC is up to its usual practices as an industry captured agency. Collusion and flagrant cover-ups at the Davis Besse nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Erie and at the Palisades nuclear plant on the shores of Lake Michigan have drawn the ire of Congressmen Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Ed Markey of Massachusetts who have called on the NRC’s investigator general to investigate NRC region 3 practices and motivations of the NRC in allowing these plants to operate with grave safety concerns.

With respect to Davis Besse it seems like a flashback to the 2002 hole in the reactor head incident documented here, as part of the history of this Nuclear Nightmare between Toledo and Cleveland on the western Lake Erie basin. In 2003 the NRC’s commissioner resigned after the General Accounting Office found the agency guilty of collusion with plant operator First Energy in their attempts to cover-up the seriousness of corrosion issues that brought Davis Besse within 3/16ths of an inch of a core containment breach and catastrophic release of radioactivity. Then congressman Dennis Kucinich led the call of the Inspector General’s office as he is once again after First Energy and the NRC have colluded to downplay the seriousness of widespread cracking that has been discovered over the past year throughout the concrete shield building that houses the Davis Besse reactor.

According to some alarming revelations found in NRC documents revealed through a Freedom of Information Act filing by Kevin Kamps at Beyond Nuclear found here, NRC investigators have serious reservations as to whether the Davis Besse shield building could withstand even minor seismic activity and admit that even before the widespread cracking was discovered that the shield building was never designed “for containment accident pressure and temperature.”

This means that, even when brand new and un-cracked, Davis Besse’s shield building was not capable of preventing catastrophic radioactivity releases during a reactor core meltdown. An inner steel containment vessel, a mere 1.5 inches thick when brand new, would thus be the last line of defense. However, the environmental intervenors have un-earthed NRC and First Energy documents showing that the steel containment vessel has suffered significant corrosion over the past several decades due to infiltrating and standing chemically “aggressive” groundwater in the “sand bed” region surrounding the bottom of the containment vessel (which has also degraded the shield building’s underground “moisture barrier”), as well as due to an acidic borated water leak from the refueling channel near the top of the containment vessel.

The coalition of environmental and citizens groups fighting the relicensing of Davis Besse has pointed to a 1982 study, “Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences” (CRAC-2), commissioned by NRC, to show how bad the casualties and property damage would be downwind and downstream of a catastrophic radioactivity release which escapes Davis Besse’s corroded inner steel containment vessel and cracked outer shield building. CRAC-2 lists the following consequences at Davis-Besse: 1,400 Peak Early Fatalities; 73,000 Peak Early Injuries; 10,000 Peak Cancer Deaths; $84 billion in property damage. However, CRAC-2 was based on 1970 U.S. Census data. As reported by Jeff Donn at the Associated Press in summer 2011, populations around U.S. nuclear power plants have “soared” in the past 42 years, meaning those casualty figures near Davis Besse would likely now be much worse. And, when adjusted for inflation from 1982-dollar figures, property damage would today surmount $187 billion in 2010-dollar figures.

According to the environmental coalition’s attorney Terry Lodge, “What we have established from NRC’s own documents is that there are two Nuclear Regulatory Commissions: some hard-working, intelligent people who set out to find out the truth of these very dangerous technical problems and their causes, and a political class in the agency that is dedicated to pulling the plug on any investigation that threatens utility profits, above all else. The search for truth about the shield building had to be cut off because it went too close to the cash cow.”

Michael Keegan of Don’t Waste Michigan in Monroe stated: “These multiple crackings, complete with concrete degradation of the shield containment building, are but a metaphor for the entire dilapidated Davis Besse atomic reactor. This reactor is running on borrowed time, propped up on stilts by a captured regulator that is now under investigation for doing so.”

Kevin Kamps, of national watchdog Beyond Nuclear in Takoma Park, Maryland stated: “NRC staff and management, both at its national headquarters in Rockville, Maryland, as well as its Region 3 office outside Chicago, worked long hours, during evenings, on weekends, and even through the Thanksgiving holiday, in order to rubber stamp reactor restart approval at Davis Besse in a great big hurry, despite countless unanswered questions and unresolved concerns about the shield building cracking.”

As regards to the chronically leaking Palisade’s nuclear reactor located on the shores of Lake Michigan in southwest Michigan, the NRC’s investigator general is conducting an investigation into why recently resigned NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko was kept in the dark, along with the public, about a leak of Safety Injection Refueling Water from a storage tank into buckets in the control room when he was on a visit to the facility before meeting with nuclear watchdogs and environmentalists back in May of this year. This investigation was called for by congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts after it was revealed that ongoing safety issues were covered-up by the Entergy owned Palisades even while a tour of the plant was in act. Palisades has a terrible record of leaks, mishaps and accidents, some of which were outlined in this 2010 report “Headaches at Palisades: Broken Seals & Failed Heals,” by the Union of Concerned Scientist’s David Lochbaum. Most recently on the 12th of August Palisades was shut down for a leak of radioactive and acidic primary coolant, escaping from safety-critical control rod drive mechanisms attached to its degraded lid, atop what is considered by the NRC itself to be most embrittled reactor pressure vessel in the U.S..

Palisades’ operator Entergy is also in the habit of periodically releasing radioactive steam into the area due to reoccurring electrical accidents most recently in September of 2011. This steam may be a contributing factor to the fact that the area around South Haven is considered a cancer cluster by medical researchers from the state of Michigan Health department.

Jaczko was the subject of what Senator Reid of Nevada called a witch hunt by politically motivated commissioners angered at the fact that Jaczko had helped to mothball the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository and resigned in June. A December 2011 article by Andrew Cockburn, provides an overview of the politically motivated actions at an NRC that has clearly distinguished itself to be nothing more than a regulatory agency under complete control by an industry always willing to put profit margins above any considerations of health, public safety of property values. As Kevin Kamps was quoted as saying in this article in regards to Jaczko “He’s not ‘our guy’ by any means, he has voted to re-license plants that should probably be shut down, but he does care about safety, in ways that the others do not.” It was also well put by CounterPunch contributor Karl Grossman, when he said “Jaczko was insufficiently pro nuclear.”

One of the NRC commissioners responsible forcing out Jaczko was Commissioner William Ostendorff. Ostendorff reportedly threw a temper tantrum at the NRC calling on the NRC’s Investigator General to halt her investigation into the cover-up at Palisades calling it a waste of taxpayer dollars. Now Ostebdorff finds himself under investigation for impeding an investigation. Ostendorff is an explicit representation of how the NRC operates as a captured agency through orchestrated industry deception.

The story of the NRC and nuclear regulation in the United States is one of corruption and collusion at the whim of industry dictates. Congressmen Dennis Kucinich, along with congressman Markey of Massachusetts, Senators Barbara Boxer, Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden are some of the few voices of credibility in the wilderness of congressional complacency and acquiescence to the profit driven desires of an industry driven by the vast mythology of the “peaceful atom” that has been perpetrated by decades of propaganda from the likes of the industry front group the Nuclear Energy Institute. The corporations like Exelon, GE, First Energy, Entergy and their political escorts that prop them up from the white house and throughout the halls of congress continue to allow the operation of 104 reactors across the United States.

Obama has surrounded himself with nuclear industry advisors and cabinet members as part of his nuclear powered white house. Meanwhile congress people like republican representative Fred Upton, who’s district includes Palisades and democratic representative Marcy Kaptur who resides over the district that includes Davis Besse give carte blanche to the NRC, Entergy and First Energy putting what they define as “good jobs” and “economic partnership” over any concerns of health and safety for their constituents or for the entire Great Lakes ecosystem.

In regards to the cases of Palisade’s and Davis Besse, Dennis Kucinich stated “I can’t say the cases are related, but the similarities between these two investigations are troubling. In Michigan, an effort to determine why a radioactive leak was kept from the Chairman of NRC may have been undermined. In Ohio, we witnessed agency officials give public statements that varied dramatically from what engineers had told my staff. I cannot determine what caused this change in the answers of these Region III engineers, but I am concerned that it was in response to political pressure. I hope that the Inspector General is able to restore confidence in the NRC’s ability to provide effective oversight of our nation’s nuclear power plants.” This is a confidence that for many citizens that have been following culture of collusion and corruption at the NRC since its inception has never existed.

Jaczko has now been hunted out and replaced by Allison Macfarlane who has so far decided to keep her head in the sand when it comes to the political motivations of the NRC and its cosiness with the nuclear industry that it purports to regulate. The commissioners responsible for Jaczko’s demise remain. When asked about the perception of the NRC being a captured agency at a recent press conference Macfarlane feigned ignorance, or maybe it is that she is truly ignorant that this perception exists. If she wants to “restore confidence” as Kucinich puts it or “build public confidence in the agency by improving communication and increasing transparency” as she put it, she better get on top of the ongoing investigations of her own Inspector General very quickly. The reality that the NRC is now regulating based on deception and lies does not bode well for her attempts to build public confidence.

Senator Harry Reid recently referred to NRC commissioner Bill Magwood as a “treacherous, miserable liar,” referring to questions regarding Magwood’s support for a nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain. This repository was considered to be geologically inadequate by former chairman Jaczko and the new chair Allison Macfarlane until she jumped into the political playing field and said she would keep an open mind about the Yucca Mountain repository during her senate confirmation hearing.

Macfarlane is a geologist and expert on radioactive waste chosen at a time when the unsolvable problem of high level radioactive waste has come to the forefront once again and threatens to block any future relicensing of nuclear plants. As another in the long line of myth perpetrators Macfarlane wants to assure the American people that a safe geological storage site to keep high level radioactive waste safe and sound for over 100,000 years is surely possible if congress has the political will to make it happen. So far there has been no solution to high level radioactive waste discovered anywhere by anyone in the world, until even a myth of a solution comes from the lips of Macfarlane wouldn’t it be prudent to shut down our 104 behemoth’s of poison and stop producing it?

Michael Leonardi is a writer and activist with Occupy Toledo, he currently lives with his family 25 miles from Fermi 2 and 25 miles from Davis Besse.

hey, nice to read this eventually... i'm guessing ND didn't report this, even the POSSIBILITY of a leak? thx for posting this.

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste&ec=su_coalash/

Heard on WEFM there is another leak at this place. They said it's non-radioactive, the hole is the the size of a pin and is leaking water at about a cup an hour. [sarcasm]That's not bad[\sarcasm]

When we all glow in the dark, maybe they'll realize there's something seriously wrong there........

No sheeit, we'll all wind up looking like Mickey Rooney from the movie: 'The Atomic Kid'

Do any of you ever go to Chicago?

Chicagoans all pretty much lump Indiana into one big area -- Gary and steel mills. Michigan City is considered Michigan. All of Indiana is a ribbon of freeway you have to drive through to get to Michigan wineries and resorts.

So whenever something like this happens, people say "how are you faring with that nuke leak?"

"What nuke leak?"

"At that nuke plant in your town?"

"It's not a nuke. It's coal fired."

"But it has a cooling tower."

"yes but it's a steam generation plant fueled by coal."


We should have a billboard on 94 that says "Welcome to Michigan City. No it's not a nuke plant."

OMG, that's funny because people say that to me all the time, too.

LOL I swear that's why the North End languishes. It makes no sense that everything north of 11th St. isn't a resort community. Everyone THINKS it's nuclear because of that damn cooling tower, which you can see plain as day from Chicago's lakefront on a clear day.

Years ago there was a laser light show in the summer. Does anyone remember that? You pulled in by Mt. Baldy and watched lasers on the cooling tower set to music. It was pretty popular.

I remember people from Chicago or out of the area expressing concern that the lasers might eat through the concrete -- causing a meltdown.

I think our Tim had something to do with that.....
somewhere in here is a conversation about it. I'll do a search in the archives and see if I can find it for you...

All Chicagoans have to do, is simply get stuck at a railroad crossing along 12....and watch all those COAL cars pass by to get a friggin clue.

Chicagoans + Get a clue = Oxymoron

The worst was when I worked out at Lighthouse Place. I'd get asked about it once a week. Eventually I just started making up stories.

I remember when they built that thing. I lived just a couple blocks from there and would sit in my back yard and watch them construct it. I was only like 4 or 5.

I used to run through the empty fields on the way to baseball practice over at Pullman field. It was amazing to see it turn into a world class mall.

Showing my age here, but I remember when the car shops burned down and that spot became an empty field

I bought a cool piece of City history the other day related to this discussion. I found a 100th anniversary coin made for Barker Haskell. I'll take pictures and post them in the next day. It is very cool.

My bad, it was CCR who was talking about the laser light show..... Here is the thread.

http://www.citybythelake.org/forums/index....;hl=laser+light

The Zion Nuclear Power Station sits closed along the shore of Lake Michigan in Zion, Illinois. The plant was shut down in 1998. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Looks whats happening.....just across our shores:

Illinois Swims in Atomic Waste With Dump Unbuilt: BGOV Barometer

By Kasia Klimasinska - Oct 4, 2012

Illinois utility customers have paid the U.S. government $1.9 billion to store spent nuclear fuel and the state is still sitting on the nation’s biggest pile of atomic waste. Now a court wants the Obama administration to justify collecting more money for storage that doesn’t exist.

The BGOV Barometer shows the location of 69,644 tons of radioactive nuclear waste accumulating at power plants, with more than a tenth of it in Illinois. Duke Energy Corp. (DUK)’s Oconee plant west of Greenville, South Carolina, has the most spent fuel, according to Bloomberg calculations based on data from the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Nuclear Energy Institute.

The U.S. Department of Energy is approaching a Jan. 18 deadline a U.S. Court of Appeals set for it to justify continuing to collect $750 million a year towards a permanent depository when none is being developed. In 30 years, the government has collected more than $30 billion in payments and interest for a waste storage facility, according to the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.

“We’re paying for something and there is no plan,” Rob Thormeyer, a spokesman for Washington-based NARUC, said in an interview.

President Barack Obama in February 2009 withdrew support for a nuclear waste facility at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas, leaving the U.S. without a plan for a permanent repository. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on June 8 that the NRC’s rules on permanent storage of nuclear waste failed to fully evaluate risks and new standards must be drafted.

Evaluating Fee

The Energy Department is “conducting an evaluation of the adequacy of the Nuclear Waste Fund fee that complies with the D.C. Circuit’s decision and with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act,” Jen Stutsman, spokeswoman for the department, said in an e-mail.

The court case is part of a battle environmentalists, the nuclear power industry and state regulators are fighting to force the federal government to select a dump site.

“The federal government, whether it’s administration or Congress by itself, or they’re working together, should end the status quo,” David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a phone interview.

With no permanent storage site, enough spent fuel to cover a football field about 17 meters deep remains in storage at U.S. power plants, the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimates. Illinois, the state with the most waste, has six of the nation’s 65 operating nuclear power plants and gets 48 percent of its electricity from nuclear sources, compared with a national average of 20 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Environmental Impact

The appeals court, deciding a lawsuit brought by New York state, said NRC’s argument that permanent storage will be available in the future when it’s needed didn’t account for how a lack of storage would affect the environment now. NRC also failed to fully assess the dangers of storing spent fuel onsite for 60 years after a nuclear plant’s license expires, the court said.

Obama in May nominated Allison Macfarlane, a geologist who wrote a book about Yucca Mountain and high-level nuclear waste, to head the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Under her leadership, the agency suspended final decisions on licenses for new power plants, until it completes a reassessment of risks related to storing spent atomic fuel.

Macfarlane “can’t control the money,” Lochbaum said. “So somebody else will have to set the policy and provide the funding, and that’s the administration and/or Congress.”