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Biden Does NOT need a BILL to close the border
He only needs a PEN. Thats all he needed to open it.
Thats all he needed to close it. Thats all Trump needed.
Maybe this is just Proof Trump is better than Biden.

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Seadog
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« on: 03 18, 11, 04:42:59:PM » Reply

Nuclear power report: 14 'near misses' at US plants due to 'lax oversight'
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission failed to resolve known safety problems, leading to 14 'near-misses' in US nuclear power plants in 2009 and 2010, according to a new report from a nuclear watchdog group.
 
Similarly, at the Braidwood nuclear plant in Illinois on Aug. 16, both reactors shut down, the report said. First, an electrical problem caused an automatic shut-down in one reactor. Then, a poorly designed safety system dumped water onto the floor of the turbine building – which then rained down to lower floors, shorting out other electrical equipment and causing the other reactor to automatically shut down. "Previous events had also dumped lots of water onto the floor," Dr. Lochbaum noted, but "management did not fix the design glitch. They only sent workers out to mop up the puddles."
 
So where was the NRC in all this?
 
After the near-miss at HB Robinson, the NRC sent a team to the site to investigate. They found a huge number of problems, including errors in design and procurement of safety equipment, maintenance, operations, and training over many years.
"There is simply no excuse for the fact that the company and the NRC had not detected and corrected at least some of these problems before this event," the study said. None of the 14 near-misses would have happened had earlier warning flags been heeded instead of being ignored or discounted – suggesting a wider problem, the report says.
 
"Our findings match those of the agency’s internal assessments, as well as of independent agents such as the NRC’s Office of the Inspector General, and the federal Government Accountability Office," the UCS report concludes. "These evaluators consistently find that NRC enforcement of existing regulations is inadequate." Study after study shows "the NRC has the regulations it needs but fails to enforce them."
Response from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
The NRC said it is aware of the UCS report, but is focused on responding to events in Japan and will review the report in detail after that crisis has abated.
"The NRC remains confident that our Reactor Oversight Program, which includes both on-site and region-based inspectors, is effectively ensuring US nuclear power plants are meeting the NRC's strict requirements and are operating safely," said Scott Burnell, NRC spokesman, in an e-mailed statement.
 
 President Obama on Thursday called for a comprehensive review of US nuclear plant safety in light of events in Japan. Specifically, it is to include an NRC study on whether US reactors could withstand once-in-a-lifetime events like the earthquake and tsunami that knocked out power to the cooling system of Japan’s Fukushima I nuclear complex, creating a meltdown threat.
 
“Our nuclear power plants have undergone exhaustive study and have been declared safe for any number of extreme contingencies. But when we see a crisis like the one in Japan, we have a responsibility to learn from this event and to draw from those lessons to ensure the safety and security of our people,” Obama said.
 
But Lochbaum, who spent years working in US nuclear plants – including some of the 23 US plants that use the same reactor designs as the Fukushima I plant that threatens to melt down – wrote that the NRC must improve to give teeth to such mandates.
 
"The positive examples [in the study] show that the NRC can be an effective regulator," he writes. "The negative examples show that the agency still has some homework to do to become the regulator of nuclear power the public expects and deserves. The 14 near-misses last year shows the NRC reforms are urgently needed."
 
csmonitor
 
.com/USA/2011/0318/Nuclear-power-report-14-near-misses-at-US-plants-due-to-lax-oversight/(page)/2
Seadog
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« Reply #1 on: 03 18, 11, 04:51:56:PM » Reply

Before anyone thinks about France:
 
their nukes are owned  by the Électricité de France (EDF) which is 85% owned by the Feench government.
 
 
Japan's are - like ours - mostly privately owned.
 
and guess what?
 
Bungling, cover-ups define Japanese nuclear power
(AP) –
1 day ago







TOKYO (AP) — Behind Japan's escalating nuclear crisis sits a scandal-ridden energy industry in a comfy relationship with government regulators often willing to overlook safety lapses.
Leaks of radioactive steam and workers contaminated with radiation are just part of the disturbing catalog of accidents that have occurred over the years and been belatedly reported to the public, if at all.
 
 
In one case, workers hand-mixed uranium in stainless steel buckets, instead of processing by machine, so the fuel could be reused, exposing hundreds of workers to radiation. Two later died.
 
 
"Everything is a secret," said Kei Sugaoka, a former nuclear power plant engineer in Japan who now lives in California. "There's not enough transparency in the industry."
Sugaoka worked at the same utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant where workers are racing to prevent a full meltdown following Friday's 9.0 magnitude quake and tsunami.
 
 
In 1989 Sugaoka received an order that horrified him: edit out footage showing cracks in plant steam pipes in video being submitted to regulators. Sugaoka alerted his superiors in the Tokyo Electric Power Co., but nothing happened — for years. He decided to go public in 2000. Three Tepco executives lost their jobs.
 
 
The legacy of scandals and cover-ups over Japan's half-century reliance on nuclear power has strained its credibility with the public. That mistrust has been renewed this past week with the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. No evidence has emerged of officials hiding information in this catastrophe. But the vagueness and scarcity of details offered by the government and Tepco — and news that seems to grow worse each day — are fueling public anger and frustration.
 
 
"We don't know what is true. That makes us worried," said Taku Harada, chief executive of the Tokyo-based Internet startup Orinoco. Harada said his many American friends are being urged to leave the capital while the Japanese government says the area is safe, probably to avoid triggering panic.
 
 
The difference is unsettling, he said. He has rented an office in Osaka 250 miles (400 kilometers) to the southwest to give his 12 employees the option of leaving Tokyo.
"We still don't know the long-term effects of radiation," he said. "That's a big question."
Tokyo Electric Power Co. official Takeshi Makigami says experts are doing their utmost to get the reactors under control.
 
 
"We are doing all that is possible," he told reporters.
Worried that over-dependence on imported oil could undermine Japan's humming economy, the government threw its support into nuclear power, and the industry boomed in profile and influence. The country has 54 nuclear plants, which provide 30 percent of the nation's energy needs, is building two more and studying proposals for 12 more plants.
 
 
The United States, Japan's close ally, has also raised questions about the coziness between Japanese regulators and industry and implicitly questioned Tokyo's forthrightness over the Fukushima crisis. The director of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. ambassador this week issued bleaker assessments about the dangers at the plant than the Japanese government or Tepco.
 
Seadog
Guest
« Reply #2 on: 03 18, 11, 04:54:16:PM » Reply

Competence and transparency issues aside, some say it's just too dangerous to build nuclear plants in an earthquake-prone nation like Japan, where land can liquefy during a major temblor.
"You're building on a heap of tofu," said Philip White of Tokyo-based Citizens' Nuclear Information Center, a group of scientists and activists who have opposed nuclear power since 1975.
"There is absolutely no reason to trust them," he said of those that run Japan's nuclear power plants.


Japan is haunted by memories of past nuclear accidents.


—In 1999, fuel-reprocessing workers were reported to be using stainless steel buckets to hand-mix uranium in flagrant violation of safety standards at the Tokaimura plant. Two workers later died in what was the deadliest accident in the Japanese industry's history.


— At least 37 workers were exposed to low doses of radiation at a 1997 fire and explosion at a nuclear reprocessing plant operated in Tokaimura, northeast of Tokyo. The operator, Donen, later acknowledged it had initially suppressed information about the fire.


— Hundreds of people were exposed to radiation and thousands evacuated in the more serious 1999 Tokaimura accident involving JCO Co. The government assigned the accident a level 4 rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale ranging from 1 to 7, with 7 being most serious.


— In 2007, a powerful earthquake ripped into Japan's northwest coast, killing at least eight people and causing malfunctions at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, including radioactive water spills, burst pipes and fires. Radiation did not leak from the facility.
Tepco has safety violations that stretch back decades. In 1978, control rods at one Fukushima reactor dislodged but the accident was not reported because utilities were not required to notify the government of such accidents. In 2006, Tepco reported a negligible amount of radioactive steam seeped from the Fukushima plant — and blew beyond the compound.
Now with the public on edge over safety, Tatsumi Tanaka, head of Risk Hedge and a crisis management expert, believes the government would find it difficult to approve new plants in the immediate future.


Tanaka says that, true to Japan's dismal nuclear power record, officials bungled the latest crisis, failing to set up a special crisis team and appoint credible outside experts.
Tokyo Electric Power Co., regulators and the government spokesman have been holding nationally televised news conferences, sometimes several a day, on the latest developments at the Fukushima plant.


But the reactors have been volatile, changing by the hour, with multiple explosions, fires and leaks of radiation. The utility, regulators and government spokesmen often send conflicting information, adding to the confusion and the perception they aren't being forthright, Tanaka says.


"They are only making people's fears worse," he said. "They need to study at the onset what are the possible scenarios that might happen in about five stages and then figure out what the response should be."
<!-- google_ad_section_end(name=article) -->
Associated Press writers Joji Sakurai and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.



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