"In the latest case, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, operator of Monju, was found to have skipped inspections of nearly 10,000 pieces of equipment since 2010, including crucial devices in the safety and emergency systems at the plant, based in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture.

"The company also violated its own safety regulations, according to the NRA.

"'Even when the reactor is offline, things stand in such a state,' an NRA official said after an on-site inspection of the reactor in February. “We cannot possibly approve a restart.” Read more. (Picture shows a still from video footage inside Monju during the 1995 sodium fire).

Pandora's False Promises: Busting the pro-nuclear propaganda.

This report, in the form of handy bullet points but fully referenced throughout, is designed to serve as a central source for many of the facts about nuclear power that are either ignored, obscured or mis-represented by the nuclear deniers.

The different sections cover, among many topics: climate change; the health impacts of Chernobyl and Fukushima; Germany's nuclear exit and France's dependence on it; the flaws and impracticabilities of the "new" reactor designs; and various misleading arguments made by the pro-nuclear propagandists, from base load energy to bananas.

In addition, we have published a two-page summary and a press release.

Please feel free to download, print and circulate these documents widely. Please also consider using these materials when the film is screened in your area.

If you would prefer us to send printed copies, we are happy to do so at cost. Simply send a request by email to: info@beyondnuclear. org. Or call: 301.270.2209.

A North St. Louis County landfill is smouldering, and close by sits at least 8,700 tons of nuclear weapons wastes. West Lake Landfill is an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site that's home to some of the oldest radioactive wastes in the world.  Rolling Stone Magazine has just published an in-depth look at this disaster waiting to happen. Beyond Nuclear board member, Kay Drey, (pictured) has been advocating for more than three decades to get the radioactive wastes removed from the floodplain of the Missouri River.

Writes Steven Hsieh: "Today, West Lake's radioactive waste – all 143,000 cubic yards of it – sits on the outskirts of a former quarry with practically none of the standard safety features found in most municipal landfills. No clay liner blocks toxic leachate – or "garbage juice" – from seeping into area groundwater. No cap keeps toxic gas from dispersing into the air. This unprotected waste sits on a floodplain 1.5 miles away from the Missouri River. Eight miles downstream is a drinking water reservoir that serves 300,000 St. Louisans. Worst of all: The materials dumped in this populous metropolitan area will continue to pose a hazard for hundreds of thousands of years." Read the full article. And watch an interview with Kay Drey by the Missouri Coalition for the Environement.

In June 2012, U.S. Representative Ed Markey, based on revelations provided by courageous Palisades whistleblowers and their attorney Billie Pirner Garde, made public the "crisis in the control room" at Palisades: the leakage of water from the Safety Injection Refueling Water Tank (SIRWT), down the walls and through the ceiling of the control room, precariously near safety-critical electrical circuitry and equipment.

Both Entergy, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) itself, had kept the leak quiet for over a year at that point. Entergy and NRC staff had even kept NRC's Chairman, Greg Jaczko, in the dark about the leak, when he toured Palisades on May 25, 2012, before holding a press conference and meeting with two dozen concerned local residents and environmental group representatives, including Beyond Nuclear.

Once the crisis in the control room came to light, NRC Chairman Jaczko ordered an investigation as to why he had been kept in the dark, even by his own agency staff. NRC Commissioner William Ostendorff strongly opposed the investigation, even to the point of yelling at the chief NRC investigator, who happened to be a woman. (In 2011, Ostendorff, along with three other NRC Commissioners, had urged the White House to fire Jaczko, supposedly for allegedly yelling at female staffpersons -- an allegation with little to no substantiation). Ostendorff is still under investigation himself, for that outburst.

In late March and early April, 2013, Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps, along with grassroots environmental allies, learned from NRC admissions that the SIRWT into and around the control room continued, at a rate of 0.5 to 1 gallon per day -- two years after the SIRWT leaks had begun. But last weekend, the leakage rate shot up to 90 gallons in a single day. 79 gallons of radioactive water spilled into Lake Michigan. 

The four setbacks in three days include: 1) the cancellation of two proposed new reactors at South Texas Project, because they violate U.S. law against foreign ownership of nuclear power plants; 2) Southern California Edison's threat that if NRC does not allow it to restart operations at its crippled San Onofre nuclear power plant, it will permanently shutdown both reactors there; 3) Duke Energy's cancellation of two proposed new atomic reactors at its Shearon Harris nuclear power plant in North Carolina; and 4) Florida's amendment to its previously highly permissive "advance cost recovery" or "Construction Work in Progress" law, via which ratepayers have been gouged to pay for proposed new reactors, when there is no guarantee the proposed new reactors will ever actually get built or generate electricity.

Peter Bradford also added the May 7th shutdown of Dominion's Kewaunee atomic reactor in WI -- despite the 20 years of operating license still left to it -- as another example of the "worst week since Fukushima" for the U.S. nuclear power industry.

Illustration by Jeffrey Smith in the Washington Post's "The Prophets of Oak Ridge" story

Today, a jury in a federal court room in Knoxville, TN convicted Catholic Nun, Sister Megan Rice (age 83), Vietnam vet Michael Walli (age 64), and Catholic Worker Greg Boertje-Obed (age 57) on multiple counts. The three face up to 30 years in prison, for supposedly intending to injure the national security of the United States.

The Washington Post, as well as OREPA (the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance), have provided coverage of the court proceedings. 

The MI, IN, IL, and WI shorelines of Lake Michigan, as seen from outer space (the bottom of the photo is north, the top is south)

Beyond Nuclear shares U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton's (R-MI) outrage at Palisades' latest leak, and joins his call for complete replacement of Palisades' Safety Injection Refueling Water storage tank, which has now been leaking for more than two years, mostly through the ceiling of Palisades' safety-critical control room!

Lake Michigan is the headwaters of the Great Lakes: 20% of the world's surface fresh water; drinking water supply for 40 million people in 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations; and the lifeblood for one of the world's single biggest regional economies.

In addition to Palisades, Point Beach 1 & 2 in WI, and Cook 1 & 2 in southwest MI, also still need to be permanently shut down, and their electricity replaced by efficiency and renewables such as wind and solar, in order to protect the safety, purity, and future of the irreplaceable Great Lakes.

U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI)

Michigan Radio broke the story on Upton's statement.

Of course, Entergy should think long and hard about whether replacing the SIRW storage tank is even worth the bother. Palisades has a large number of big ticket safety repairs that are now many years overdue: the worst embrittled reactor pressure vessel in the U.S.; steam generators that need replacement for the second time in the reactor's history; a badly corroded reactor lid that is six years overdue for replacement; and long-needed fire safety upgrades. That long list of very expensive needed fixes for fatal flaws has been known since 2006, but the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has allowed Palisades to operate full steam ahead, with no fixes in sight.

To that long list must now be added replacement of the SIRW storage tank; addressing repeated failures (2009; 2011; 2012) of the safety-significant component cooling water and service water systems; concerns about corrosion to electrical circuitry and equipment in the safety critical control room, which has been exposed to leaks from the SIRW storage tank, through the ceiling, being captured in buckets and plastic bottles, for over two years now; and a 41-year history of chronic Control Rod Drive Mechanism (CRDM) seal leaks, as well as CRDM through-wall leaks in 2001 and 2012. The list of problems at Palisades grows ever longer, as the potentially catastrophic age-degradation risks mount. The 46-year-old atomic reactor is very deep into its breakdown phase, and should be shutdown, before it melts down.

Upton chairs the powerful U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, with direct oversight of the NRC. Upton's pledge to visit Palisades, along with an NRC Commissioner, would mark the third tour of the problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor in a year by an NRC Commissioner. NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko toured Palisades on May 25, 2012 -- although the already year-long SIRW storage tank leak into Palisades' control room was concealed from him at the time, by both Entergy and NRC staff (it was brought to light by courageous Palisades' whistleblowers, their attorney Billie Pirner Garde of Washington, D.C., and U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA)). On March 26, 2013, NRC Commissioner William Magwood IV also toured Palisades. Both Jackzo and Magwood met with dozens of concerned local residents, and environmental group representatives, including from Beyond Nuclear, during their personal fact-finding trips to Palisades.

Dominion's Kewaunee atomic reactor is 7 miles north of the two-reactor Point Beach nuclear power plant, on the Lake Michigan shore of northern WI near Green Bay. That's about the same distance as between the 6 reactors at Fukushima Daiichi and 4 reactors at Fukushima Daini on Japan's northeast Pacific coast.

Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates, Inc points out that Kewaunee still had an operating license for another 20 years, but Dominion is unable to operate the reactor economically. Gundersen also points out that the 60-year SAFESTOR plan prior to decommissioning means Kewaunee will not be dismantled and cleaned up until about a century after it commenced operations, in 1973.

Duke Energy's announcement in recent weeks regarding the fatally cracked containment at its Crystal River, FL reactor, and today's final SCRAM at Kewaunee, are the first permanent shutdowns of commercial atomic reactors in the U.S. in about 15 years. Kewaunee joins Zion 1 & 2 in IL, and Big Rock Point in MI, on the list of reactors on the Lake Michigan shore permanently shut down. Point Beach 1 & 2 in WI, as well as Cook 1 & 2 and Palisades in MI, are reactors still operating on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Lake Michigan is a headwaters of the Great Lakes, 20% of the world's surface fresh water, and drinking water supply for 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations.