Explosion Rocks Japan Nuclear Plant After Quake

France: The latest "Discovery" of a disturbing "anomaly" in a series of 34 reactors

The news remained discreetly buried in the depths of the site of the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN): Following recent studies, EDF has just "discovered" a disturbing "anomaly" standard on 34 of its reactors. In all reactors of 900 MW in case of major leakage from the primary circuit, the water injection safety circuit may be unable to prevent the meltdown of the reactor core.

The Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) warns: "In an accident situation, for breach of certain sizes of primary pressure, the injection from the high pressure safety system may not be sufficient enough to cool the reactor core" (i) ..

The water injection security system is the only device that allows to delay a nuclear meltdown if there is a major leakage of primary circuit water. Its role is to inject massive quantities of boron water (ii) in this circuit to suppress the nuclear reaction and cool the core.

So EDF has discovered this while the first series of 900 MW reactors have been running for over 30 years (iii), it is unable to assess whether the injected water through the system is uniformly distributed in the three loops of the primary circuit of the reactor; the ASN has admitted ,"it might not allow sufficient cooling of the reactor core" (iv).EDF has let 34 nuclear reactors run for a quarter of a century before to ensure the effectiveness of this primary prevention system against nuclear meltdown.

Why has this discovery occurred so late? It is extremely disturbing that a problem of this magnitude has been ignored for so long by EDF ...

The plants concerned are: Blaye (Gironde), Bugey (Ain), Chinon (Indre-et-Loire) Cruas (Ardèche), Dampierre (Loiret), Fessenheim (Haut-Rhin), Gravelines (Nord), Saint- Laurent des Eaux (Loir-et-Cher), Tricastin (Drôme). Or all of the thirty four 900 MW nuclear reactors, some of which have already reached 30 years of operation. EDF has put all its eggs in one basket, multiplying the risks as they go along....

Under the precautionary principle, the Network "Sortir du nucléaire" demands the closure of the reactors concerned

An accident caused by these "anomalies" would have catastrophic consequences. In a context where security concerns are increasing in recent years (v), this possibility must always be taken into account. Especially considering that 21 reactors run on MOX fuel containing plutonium.

More than ever, the discovery of these failures shows vividly the need for a political energy transition as quickly as possible, to finally get out of the French nuclear risk imposed on the population for decades.In light of these security deficiencies, the Network "Sortir du nucléaire" has requested that the ASN plays its role, in requiring EDF, under the precautionary principle (vi), the closure without delay of the 34 reactors concerned.

Contacts:

Steven Mitchell +33 (0)952 495 022
Sortir du nucléaire +33 (0)478 282 922

NOTES:

i. Link to the opinion of the DSC security flaw:

http://www.asn.fr/index.php/Les-actions-de-l-ASN/Le-controle/Actualites-du-controle/Avis-d-incidents-des-installation-nucleaires/2011/Anomalie-generique-concernant-le-systeme-d-injection-de-securite

ii. The borated water serves to moderate the nuclear reaction in the core.

iii. The first reactor of 900 MW was connected to the grid in April 1977, the Central Fessenheim (Alsace). The last of the 34 900 MW reactor was connected to the power grid in November 1987 at the Central Chinon (Indre-et-Loire).

v. Report "The view of the IRSN on the safety and radiation protection of French nuclear power plants in 2009"

vi. The precautionary principle is constitutional since the integration of the Environmental Charter into the Constitution in 2005

A Beacon for LED Lighting

Read the story that goes along with the picture on the Norwalk Hour website, and see you December 14th at the Ossining Library.

The Tipping Point is Indian Point!

www.mitchellsonline.com

The Aquarium Gets LED Facelift

(Click image to enlarge full size)

Raymond Caddy of Brighten Your Home came by The Aquarium to disconnect the ballast and rewire the fluorescent fixture to accomodate the new UL certified T-8 replacement LED tubes supplies by Robert Van Winkle Jr.

The goal is to show the retrofit installation to many prospective buyers, including other tenants of our landlord's properties.

Feel free to drop in The (other) Aquarium on 10 Knight Street in Norwalk, CT to check out just how amazing the quality of the light coming from these LEDs is, and learn how you too can start saving up to 60% off your office, business or factory space utility bills while enjoying a quality of light and life far superior to the numbing flicker of old fluorescent tubes.

The Aquarium is (usually) open to the public from 1 to 3 in the afternoon, or by appointment. It's located next door to Galaxy Cookies, facing Fat Cat Pie off Wall St. in Norwalk, CT

Green Lighting Book Soon Off The Press

In a few days our long awaited Sword of Damocles will be off the press and in the hands of anti-nuclear warriors all over the land.

Sadly the beautiful cover image of Betcee May shot by photographer Courtney Dailey was rejected by the editors at McGraw-Hill because the Philips EnduraLED Betcee held was shot too wide, and they couldn't tell what kind of bulb it was.

There was no opportunity or time to reshoot, so instead McGraw-Hill went with a close-up of the Pharox, who are big supporters of Global Green USA and design some of the best LED greenhouse lighting in the world.

A lot of hearts were broken, tempers flared, dreams shattered, it would have been amazing to feature the Rock The Reactors muse on the cover of a book so many worked so hard to produce, a book which carries such a strong message, that for the retrofit cost of LEDs, you can easily make up all the replacement power necessary to decommission old and dirty nuclear power plants.

Not all is lost. Rock The Reactors is in talks with the Pharox publicity department and other LED companies about future opportunities for Betcee May, who can easily be reached through her agency, Next Models in Los Angeles, under her fashion name May Lindstrom.

The three authors of the Green Lighting book, project and team leader Green Living Guy Seth Leitman, writer and researcher Brian Clark Howard of the Daily Green, and lighting engineer William J. Brinsky, are planning book signings all over the country.

If you'd like to organize an event at your local bookstore, green store or lighting store, please contact Seth or the publicity department at McGraw-Hill.

For more information on LEDs and an up to date listing of companies selling them, go to the Rock The Reactors website. You can order copies of the book at Amazon or get quantity discounts directly from the publisher.

May Lindstrom On Cover Of Thc Expose

May Lindstrom (alias Rock The Reactors's Betcee May) on the cover of Thc Expose in Los Angeles, a gorgeous new fashion magazine dedicated to the relegalization of industrial hemp for food, fuel and fiber. Hemp and No Nukes go good together!

Green Lighting Book Launch - NYC - July 14

(Photo: Model/green makeup artist May Lindstrom holding Philips’s new EnduraLED 60 bulb for McGraw-Hill’s Green Lighting book in their Green Guru Guide series. Copyright: McGraw-Hill Professional Photographer: Courtney Dailey)

Hiro Ballroom
88th 9th Av. NYC

Bastille Day
July 14, 8pm

Green Lighting Celebration

Meet Seth Leitman and Brian Howard, the authors of Green Lighting, McGraw-Hill’s new book in their Green Guru Guide series at the Rock The Reactors benefit on Bastille Day, July 14, Hiro Ballroom 88th 9th Av. New York City.

Read more on the Huffington Post

Robert Van Winkle Jr.'s Lighting Every Dimension!

Robert Van Winkle Jr. stopped by the Aquarium, home base for Rock The Reactors, to demonstrate LED replacement tubes for T8 fluorescent fixtures. By law, in Connecticut, for buildings to stay up to code, all T8 bulbs must now be replaced by more efficient T5. But there's another way, a better way.

By switching from fluorescent to LEDs, you save half the amount of energy to run your entire lights. Instead of replacing the old ballast, you simply disconnect it and rewire the fixture to run current directly to the LED tubes.

LEDs will last much longer than fluorescents, for the same amount of lumens, guaranteed up to 50.000 hours, and three years free replacement in case one burns out, which is rare but sometimes happens when they are new.

You also have the option to choose the color temperature you like for the room; cool white, warm white, anything in between. The company will tune the tubes to shine the shade you want them to be.

Replacement tubes are still pricey, but they pay for themselves in energy savings, in quality of lighting, maintance costs, and bragging rights.

At the Aquarium, we plan to retrofit all the old fluorescent tubes with LED replacements. We are working with our landlord to make it happen.

No state provides rebates for LED lights yet, which is a crying shame, because there is no better, quicker way to reduce electrical consumption, conserve energy and go green!

Instead there are private loan companies like GREENandSAVE and their spokesperson Project Green Search finalist and NASCAR driver Leilani Munter, who will help home and business owners cushion the cost of LED retrofits.

You can reach Robert of Lighting Every Dimension Ltd. for all the details at 845-476-0260 or lghtevrydmnsn@aol.com

Ed Begley Jr. Throws His Hat into the No New Nukes arena at the NY Go Green Expo

Green Living Guy Interview RTR

Miss Atom 2009

Sherwood Martinelli on Green Living Guy Talk Radio

Interview starts about 3 minutes in after the music...

What happened John Hall?

Wake Up Green America

I'm looking for fresh ideas for a lot of things, and inspiration doesn't come as easily as it used to. We're faced with a lot of dead ends, complex green strategies come to nothing confronted with the immensity of the financial resources at the disposal of the planet thrashers. It's getting harder and harder to stay one step ahead of them, even with social networks.

The Blue Meanies function in their own insulated power universe the best of intentions can't penetrate. Our only weapon is fashion, and guilt... people quit their jobs because they start feeling queasy... that's dangerous in a crap economy, with no golden parachute. In the 60's, you turned on, tuned in and dropped out. Now you try, in vain, to change the world from the inside out.

So 30 years after Earth Day, we're in a great sense, practically back where we started from, not technologically, but politically. The same reactionary mentality rules Washington and the Fortune 500, no better exemplified than by Obama showing his true pro-nuclear colors.

Wake up Green America, it's time to get back to the roots of where the environmental movement began, and that's how absurd nuclear power really is. With the collapse of that industry, will come liberation of all other energy sources, like a ball and chain finally off our feet!

Each year it gets worse, as almost every reactor in the world leaks, it just doesn't stop, does it? You know what happens when the faucet drips? Eventually the sink gets full... climate change will be the least of our worries as the remnants of humanity have to live in radiation shelters!

What I don't get, is how much of a global preoccupation this all was back in the 60's and 70's and how now, everyone has since become so complacent. It's almost as if the same psychological phenomena that takes place in reactor hosting communities, has spread to the entire population at large. The whole planet lives in a state of denial about the deadly poisons we're unleashing for the sake of hanging on to the last threads of the post-industrial civilization.

We're all about to become bedouins!

And the worse part, is that after 30 years, we have developed the alternative means to produce electricity, cheaper, better, cleaner, faster... and yet they STILL want to shuv more nukes down our throats.

These people are monsters and criminals, and much like Jon Stewart demonstrated when he spliced Bush and Obama speeches together, they both say exactly the same words, the same phrases, all that has changed is the tone in their voices.

Who do we have to thank for this... other than the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, who for some weird, strange reason, never minded living in a palacial estate just five miles south from the most dangerous nuclear power plant on earth?

Go figure, we must all be stupid monkeys!

Entergy Is Broke! Long Live Duron!

Entergy is broke, all the tell tale signs are there... The workers at Indian Point are threatening to strike... Entergy is threatening to shut down Vermont Yankee if the Vermont legislature doesn't allow them to operate without sufficient decommissioning funds, because Entergy lost the nest egg playing the market. In turn the state of Vermont is threatening not to issue Entergy a new license because Entergy lied about the extent of a tritium leak which has spread to the Brattleboro water supply... and while all this is going on... Entergy decides to sue the Army Corps of Engineers for $68 million dollars in New Orleans, blaming the Corps for the failure of the levies which flooded their two nuclear power plants during Katrina!

No wonder ConEd decided to sell Indian Point, get itself out from under a jam. Now ConEd can paint itself as a green company, wash their hands of the whole Indian Point debacle, but they're still buying power from Entergy to flow through their grid. So it's still guilt by association!

Now I ask you, what happens if Entergy goes belly up? Who takes over the operation of all their crumbling reactors? And if nobody wants them, why would anyone want a bunch of broken down facilities long past their due date, ready for mothballs, what happens then? Homeland Security steps in? The Navy is the only branch of the Federal Government left which has the man power, the know how and the expertise to tackle such a task. The tax payer is going to flip the bill, or rather, the Bilderbergers keep minting more fresh bills.

We need to get ready not just for the collapse of the cooling tower at Vermont Yankee last year, but the total implosion of the Shaw/Entergy power company, and its consequences on the lives of the residents of reactor hosting communities. It's not about if Entergy keeps operating its reactors, it's about when their operation becomes so obviously, painfully insane do citizens and politicians finally step in to put Entergy out of its misery before another of their regularly scheduled incidents turn into an accident we can't walk away from.

Yes, Haiti... and so many other problems take precedence and seem so timely. But you know what they need most in Haiti right now? Lights! There's a company in India that makes battery solar powered LED lights, for just $130... and a group in Canada which raises money to install them in Haiti, despite so many relief workers getting shot as anarchy rules on the island. Entergy, which everyone in New Orleans keeps called "energy" because they've been trained since childhood to identity the company with power... should have invested in LED companies long ago. Now they probably will need to divest into them, and wouldn't that be a wonderful thing for 2010.

Indian Point - Coup De Grace

For all the gory details...
www.rockthereactors.com

Happy Holidays to Entergy!!! to the tune of Bye Bye Blackbird!

Helen Caldicott speaks at the Copenhagen climate march.

Zombie Nation

"Kernkraft 400", German for "Nuclear Energy 400"

Rat Fink!

The Elements by Theodore Gray

The last chapters on all the radioactive elements are both really instructive and a good laugh. This is a delicious book, many anti-nuclear activists will rejoice including in their library.

http://theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Posters/index.theelements.html

Seth Leitman at Cortlandt Town Center - Tomorrow!

Seth Leitman

(Rock The Reactors co-founder)

Please join Seth Leitman,

author of the Green Guru Guides.

http://www.greenlivingguy.com

Seth will be discussing renewable energies for your home as well as hybrid technology.

Following his discussion, Seth will be signing his books.

Sunday November 29, 2009

12:00 PM

Barnes & Noble

Cortlandt Town Center
3089 E Main Street
Mohegan Lake, NY 10547
914-528-6275

IP Thyroid Cancer Spreads to ABC News...

Great breakthrough into mainstream news, just a shame about that nasty, bitter woman sitting at the table... isn't it?

Andy Neal LED Lights Soon Sold By Catskill Soap Company

(Update August 28th, 2010. Sadly Andy Neal never delivered on his commitment to produce the "Grid" lights for Ed Koster and the Catskill Soap Company, leaving a lot of good people in a lurch, who spent a lot of time and effort developing marketing tools and materials, many orders left unfulfilled. We are currently looking for alternative LED professionals to produce low-wattage battery powered lights for booths at fair and festivals. ~ Remy C.)

Some LED lamps on the market are still less efficient than compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), which have an efficiency of 48 to 60 lumens per watt. This isn't the case with Andy Neal's ANL LTD Illuma design, friend of Rock The Reactors, being installed along the Walkway Over The Hudson in Poughkeepsie, New York celebrating its grand opening October 2nd.

Friday night, after the fireworks display reaches its climax Andy will flip the switch, sending a huge FU to Indian Point, spelling the beginning of the end of Entergy's old plant!

Straight T-5 and T-8 fluorescent tubes are better than CFLs, with efficiencies of 98 to 105 lumens per watt. Although most LED lamps on the market are about equal in performance to CFLs — Cree produces LED downlights rated at 46 to 60 lumens per watt — they cost significantly more than CFLs.

The majority of LED lighting products on the market produce only 10 and 19 lumens per watt — about the same as an incandescent bulb. Testing of LED lights by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2006 and 2007 revealed that most LED manufacturers were exaggerating lumen output. LED devices that were touted as producing 36 to 55 lumens per watt actually produced only 11.6 to 19.3 lumens per watt. Illuma has come a long way since then with 90 lumens per watt.

We want you to test Illuma for yourself. In a few days, Annie Adams's Catskill Soap Company in Bloomingburg, NY and Ed Koster will put "Grid" for sale up on her website and also on eBay.

Grid is ELV (Extra Low Voltage) as far as UL is concerned, no electrical code issues at 12 volts DC. Grid can be connected to any 12 volt battery, including those that can be re-charged by a solar panel. Total power is around 30 watts.

The connectors are industry standard Neutrik 'Speakon' parts, very tough, the cable is also very high spec' it works down to -40C which is basically the artic!

Andy's 12 volts design will retail for $295, manufactured by the Mid-Hudson Workshop for the Disabled and be available in Black or White frames.

It will be marketed to vendors, campers, boaters and anyone who has a backyard. Ed Koster plans on exhibiting at Javits Center Boat Show, display in online catalogs and at Green Drinks in Beacon, NY.

You can reach Ed Koster at:
ek5257@netscape.net
(Please mention Green Nuclear Butterfly!)

Additional photographs can be seen here.