Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Authoritarian Green Glow In The Dark - 2

In the first post of this series we pointed out the damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant caused by earthquake and tsunami.

But we also dabbled into another hypothesis by some other scientists.

They hypothesize that anthropogenic global warming induced global climate change is a source of some earthquake and volcanic triggering caused by pressure placed on hair-trigger Earthquake zones around the globe.

In the post today we will discuss the same climate change that is causing the melting of glaciers worldwide, as well as melting the vast ice sheets at the Earth's north and south poles.

This accelerated melting of the ice is putting more and more moisture into the Earth's atmosphere, and as a consequence is eventually causing the rise of ocean levels as that melted ice turns into water vapor, then rain, then ultimately flows through the river systems to reach the sea.

The increased moisture in the atmosphere in turn leads to increases in rain in some areas, then flooding as the water finds its way to the oceans.

Because the ice caps kept river banks to a narrower path (not as much water flowing) before the advent of industrial age, we built structures closer to the center of waterways, rivers, and we even regularly built structures well within those flood plains.

We built those structures, including some nuclear plants, during a time when water was captured in polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers, resulting in less moisture in the atmosphere, so the water flow was concentrated in a narrower area of the vast drainage systems within the nation.

River banks were further from the structures we built then, including some nuclear power plants.

Now the global warming induced climate change is endangering those structures, including nuclear power plants in the USA.

The photo at the top of this post is of the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska, which is in danger due to the flooding of the Missouri River:
A fire in Nebraska's Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant briefly knocked out the cooling process for spent nuclear fuel rods, ProPublica reports.

The fire occurred on June 7th, and knocked out cooling for approximately 90 minutes. After 88 hours, the cooling pool would boil dry and highly radioactive materials would be exposed.

On June 6th, the Federal Administration Aviation (FAA) issued a directive banning aircraft from entering the airspace within a two-mile radius of the plant.

"No pilots may operate an aircraft in the areas covered by this NOTAM," referring to the "notice to airmen," effective immediately.

Since last week, the plant has been under a "notification of unusual event" classification, [because] of the rising Missouri River. That is the lowest level of emergency alert.
(Business Insider). To add to the danger, for the past few days tornadoes, strong winds, and even more rain have been blasting the area where the nuclear power plant sits alongside the swelling waters of the Missouri River.

One congress member has stated that the propaganda media has ordered a news blackout concerning the near meltdown triggering events that have already happened at Fort Calhoun.

If so, my guess is that the blackout was ordered because Fort Calhoun is only a few miles from downtown Omaha, Nebraska (million people in that area).

That floods are a danger to nuclear power plants is officially indicated because the plant was in "cold mode", that is, it had been shut down some time ago before the flood, for scheduled maintenance.

When the time came to restart the reactors the decision was made not to restart them because they anticipated these floods, which meant danger.

Thus, floods are a danger to nuclear power plants, just as tsunamis are.

For visual proof of that, the Toxins of Power blog has a video of Fort Calhoun (bottom of post) together with some expert discussion of the flood danger.

The AP is reporting that 2/3 - 3/4 of the nuclear plants have chronic leaks which contaminate the water table, soil, and potentially the air around them.

See here, here, here, and here.

Floods could carry that contamination far away from those plants.

The rise in sea level can only happen, as a function of melting polar ice fields, when the water that was once ice is no longer in the atmosphere, but has finally reached the ocean.

As long as evaporation keeps the water in the atmospheric cycle, out of the ocean waters, that climate change factor will still be isolated to floods, excess rain, and other moisture related disturbances on land.

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