Japan Nuclear Accident: ‘Abnormalities’ in Butterflies Traced to Fukushima Plant

Japanese scientists say “abnormalities” detected in the country’s butterflies may be a result of radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year. In a study published in Scientific Reports, an online journal, researchers say “artificial radionuclides” from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant caused “physiological and genetic damage” to pale grass blue butterflies.
Scientists first began tracking common butterflies around the nuclear plant two months after the disaster. They collected 121 insects, and found 12 percent of them had unusually small wings. That number jumped more than 5 percent when butterflies collected from the plant site had offspring of their own.
In another group of butterflies collected six months after the disaster, scientists found 28 percent had “abnormal” traits. That number nearly doubled among the second generation born.
“At the time of the accident, the populations of this species were overwintering as larvae and were externally exposed to artificial radiation,” the researchers wrote in their study. “It is possible that they ate contaminated leaves during the spring and were thus also exposed to internal radiation.”
It has been 17 months after the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, and its effects on human health have largely been considered minimal, with no radiation-related deaths or illnesses reported so far. But traces of radioactive cesium exceeding government safety levels have been detected in seafood off the Fukushima coast, limiting the catch for fisherman there.
Tiny amounts of cesium of 137 and cesium 134 were detected in more than a dozen bluefin tuna caught near San Diego in August last year. The levels were 10 times higher than tuna found in previous years, but well below those the Japanese and US governments considered harmful to human health.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/08/japan-nuclear-accident-abnormalities-in-butterflies-traced-to-fukushima-plant/

The Nun Who Broke Into the Nuclear Sanctum

Shawn Poynter for The New York Times

Sister Megan Rice, 82, is one of three people arrested in a break-in at a nuclear complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Published: August 10, 2012

She has been arrested 40 or 50 times for acts of civil disobedience and once served six months in prison. In the Nevada desert, she and other peace activists knelt down to block a truck rumbling across the government’s nuclear test site, prompting the authorities to take her into custody.

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National Nuclear Security Administration/Department of Energy

Sister Rice is one of three people arrested in a break-in at a the Oak Ridge nuclear reservation.

She gained so much attention that the Energy Department, which maintains the nation’s nuclear arsenal, helped pay for an oral history in which she described her upbringing and the development of her antinuclear views.

Now, Sister Megan Rice, 82, a Roman Catholic nun of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, and two male accomplices have carried out what nuclear experts call the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex, making their way to the inner sanctum of the site where the United States keeps crucial nuclear bomb parts and fuel.

“Deadly force is authorized,” signs there read. “Halt!” Images of skulls emphasize the lethal danger.

With flashlights and bolt cutters, the three pacifists defied barbed wire as well as armed guards, video cameras and motion sensors at the Oak Ridge nuclear reservation in Tennessee early on July 28, a Saturday. They splashed blood on the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility — a new windowless, half-billion-dollar plant encircled by enormous guard towers — and hung banners outside its walls.

“Swords into plowshares,” read one, quoting the Book of Isaiah. “Spears into pruning hooks.” The plant holds the nation’s main supply of highly enriched uranium, enough for thousands of nuclear weapons.

The actions of Sister Rice, a New York native who grew up on a prosperous block in Morningside Heights, and her companions, ages 57 and 63, are a huge embarrassment for President Obama. Since 2010, he has led a campaign to eliminate or lock down nuclear materials as a way to fight atomic terrorism. Now, the three — two of whom, including Sister Rice, are free and are awaiting trial in October — have made nuclear theft seem only a little more challenging than a romp in the Tennessee woods.

In interviews this week, Sister Rice discussed her life — somewhat reluctantly at times — and kept emphasizing what she called “the issue.”

“It’s the criminality of this 70-year industry,” she said. “We spend more on nuclear arms than on the departments of education, health, transportation, disaster relief and a number of other government agencies that I can’t remember.”

Federal prosecutors, needless to say, take a different view. “This is a matter of national security,” William C. Killian, a United States attorney, told reporters outside a Knoxville courtroom. “It is a significant case.”

Sister Rice is no geopolitical strategist. But her bold acts and articulate fervor highlight how the antinuclear movement has evolved since the end of the cold war. They also illustrate the fierce independence of Catholic nuns, who met this week in St. Louis to decide how to respond to a Vatican appraisal that cast them as rebellious dissenters.

“We’re free as larks,” Sister Rice said of herself and her older religious friends. “We have no responsibilities — no children, no grandchildren, no jobs.”

“So the lot fell on us,” she said of fighting nuclear arms. “We can do it. But we all do share the responsibility equally.”

Megan Gillespie Rice was born in Manhattan on Jan. 31, 1930, the youngest of three girls in a Catholic family. Her father was an obstetrician who taught at New York University and treated patients at Bellevue Hospital. Her mother received a doctorate from Columbia University in history, writing her dissertation on Catholic views about slavery.

In the oral history, by the University of Nevada, Sister Rice portrayed her mother as strongly in favor of interracial marriage. “I just can’t wait,” she quoted her mother as saying, “until everybody in the world is tan!”

Sister Rice went to Catholic schools in Manhattan, became a nun at 18 and received degrees in biology from Villanova and Boston College, where her studies included class work at Harvard Medical School on how to use radioactive tracers. From 1962 to 2004, with occasional breaks, she served her order as a schoolteacher in Nigeria and Ghana.

“We slept in a classroom — no electricity, no water,” she said of her early days in rural Africa.

While visiting Manhattan in the early 1980s, she joined in antinuclear protests. She began visiting the Nevada test site for demonstrations and prayer vigils. Her mother accompanied her at times.

Around 1990, Sister Rice and other nuns set out on foot in the desert toward the site’s operational headquarters to distribute antinuclear leaflets. But guards, she recalled, “came up with their guns and treated us as though we were terrible criminals.”

In 1998, she was arrested in a protest at the School of the Americas, an Army school at Fort Benning, in Georgia. It taught generations of Latin American soldiers to fight leftist insurgencies; some went on to commit human rights abuses. The school has since been closed.

Sister Rice served six months in federal prison. “It was a great eye-opener,” she said. “When you’ve had a prison experience, it minimizes your needs very much.”

Malaria and typhoid fever began to impede her work in Africa and brought her back to the United States permanently. Around 2005, her order gave her permission to join the Nevada Desert Experience, an activist group based in Las Vegas that organizes spiritual events near the atomic test site in support of nuclear abolition.

“She’s the kind of person who would risk her life to protect others,” Jim Haber, the group’s coordinator, said in an interview.

Late last month, Sister Rice set her sights on the Oak Ridge nuclear reservation, which covers more than 50 square miles, including wooded hills. Her aim was to draw attention to its nuclear work. After the break-in, the protesters released an “indictment” accusing the United States of crimes against humanity.

On Thursday in Knoxville, federal prosecutors shot back with an indictment of their own. They charged Sister Rice, Michael R. Walli, 63, of Washington, and Gregory I. Boertje-Obed, 57, of Duluth, Minn., with trespassing on government property (a misdemeanor) as well as its destruction and depredation (both felonies). The charges carry penalties of up to 16 years in prison and fines of up to $600,000. All pleaded not guilty.

A trial in Federal District Court in Knoxville is set for Oct. 10. If found guilty, the three defendants might be allowed to serve their sentences for the various charges concurrently, shortening their imprisonments to five years.

“She’s a pretty sympathetic character,” Ralph Hutchison, coordinator of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, said of the nun. “Sixteen years would be signing her death warrant.”

Sister Rice plans to leave Knoxville on Saturday for the Catholic Worker residence in Washington and commute to the trial from there.

She called her life privileged. “I’ve sort of fallen heir to it,” she told the interviewer from the University of Nevada. “I’m grateful.”

US Nuclear Regulators Freeze 19 Power Plant Licensing Decisions ...

Mat McDermott
Energy / Fossil Fuels
August 8, 2012

Montgomery County Planning Commission/CC BY-SA 2.0
A US Court of Appeals ruling saying that spent nuclear fuel stored at nuclear power plants "poses a dangerous, long-term health and environmental risk" has prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to halt all pending licensing decisions, ENS reports.
Affected are 9 construction and operating licenses, 8 license renewals, 1 operating license, and 1 early site permit.
The NRC order says:

We are now considering all available options for resolving the waste confidence issue, which could include generic or site-specific NRC actions or some combination of both. We have not yet determined a course of action. [...] This determination extends just to final license issuance; all licensing reviews and proceedings should continue to move forward.

The court ruling that brought a halt to US licensing decisions for nuclear power plants stems from an action brought about the New York State Attorney General over the relicensing of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, 38 miles north of New York City and up for relicensing in 2013. One of the three reactors at Indian Point is already permanently shut down, with the remaining two reaching the end of their initial 40-year operating licenses.
Analysis of the impact of an accident at Indian Point shows that if an event on the scale of the Fukushima disaster were to occur, it would be 10-100 times more costly than the $60 billion estimated price tag for that nuclear disaster, in addition to forcing the evacuation of millions of people in the most densely populated part of the United States.
The same analysis shows that should Indian Point be shut down the region would not need to bring extra electricity generation online to replace it until 2020, due to surplus power capacity in surrounding regions.

New charges filed in nuclear weapons plant breach

ERIK SCHELZIG, Associated Press

Updated 4:22 p.m., Thursday, August 9, 2012

• 
  Y-12 protesters Sister Megan Rice, center, and Michael Walli, in the background waving, are greeted by supporters as they arrive for a federal court appearance Thursday, Aug. 9, 2012 in Knoxville, Tenn. Along with a third defendant third, Greg Boertje-Obed, the pair were indicted on charges stemming from their alleged July 2 infiltration of the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Photo: Knoxville News Sentinel, Michael Patrick / AP

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A federal grand jury toughened the charges against three anti-war protesters who authorities say cut their way through three security fences and spray-painted slogans on the walls of a nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee.
An indictment released Thursday in Knoxville charges an 82-year-old Roman Catholic nun with Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, a gardener and a housepainter with "depredation" of the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge. The charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
The indictment against Megan Rice of Las Vegas, Michael Walli of Washington and Greg Boertje-Obed of Duluth, Minn., includes two charges announced previously: trespassing, a misdemeanor, and malicious destruction of property, a felony.
The sprawling Y-12 complex of 800 acres and 500 buildings stores the nation's supply of weapons-grade uranium, makes nuclear warhead parts and provides nuclear fuel for the Navy and research reactors worldwide.
According to an affidavit filed with the court, the protesters walked nearly a half-mile into the high-security property before dawn on July 28, past signs warning that deadly force could be used on intruders. They made it to a building called the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, where the uranium is stored.
On the way, federal court documents say, the three used bolt cutters to clear three security fences and set off many alarms.
They painted the exterior of the building with the phrases "woe to the empire of blood" and "the fruit of justice is peace" and sprayed it with blood, according to an investigator's affidavit.
"We come to the Y-12 facility because our very humanity rejects the designs of nuclearism, empire and war," a letter found at the site and signed by the three defendants read. "Our faith in love and nonviolence encourages us to believe that our activity here is necessary."
The Department of Energy, which oversees the site, has not responded to messages seeking comment on the new charge or about security procedures at Y-12.
The Y-12 website says the facility's main mission is "to ensure the U.S. nuclear arsenal is safe, secure, and reliable."
"Portions of every weapon in the U.S. nuclear stockpile were manufactured at Y-12, and we employ only the most advanced and failsafe technologies to protect the stockpile," according to the site.
Since the intrusion, the contractors that operate Y-12 for the government have added security training and replaced the top security managers.
Oak Ridge was created as a secret city in World War II to house Y-12 and other plants that enriched uranium for the first nuclear bomb used in war. The Y-12 complex has been the annual target of peace protests tied to the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Every year since 1998, a few protesters have provoked arrest by blocking the road leading into the site or by stepping across a blue line that marks the property boundary.
Walli was arrested two years ago for trespassing at Y-12 and sentenced to eight months in federal prison, according to news reports.
Because of the new indictment, a court hearing scheduled for Thursday was canceled.
The three defendants have pleaded not guilty, and Rice and Walli have been released pending the Oct. 10 trial. Boertje-Obed, who is representing himself, was still in custody and couldn't be reached for comment.
An attorney for Rice didn't return calls seeking comment and Walli's defense lawyer declined to comment, citing court rules.

New security leaders at Tenn nuclear weapons plant; protesters broke into high-security area

By Associated Press, Published: August 8

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The security contractor at a Tennessee plant that stores the nation’s supply of weapons-grade uranium has replaced its general manager almost two weeks after three protesters, including an 82-year-old nun, got into a high-security area.
Security firm WSI Oak Ridge confirmed to the Knoxville News Sentinel (http://bit.ly/MqW3ex) Wednesday that Steven C. Hafner is taking over the position from Lee Brooks.

Protesters on July 28 were found hanging banners in the dark, singing and offering to break bread with the security guards at Y-12 Oak Ridge National Security Complex in Knoxville. An affidavit said that before security guards apprehended them, they spray-painted the building with protest slogans and threw blood on it. They were arrested and officials say all nuclear materials are safe.

Afterward, security contractor WSI said it was looking at its procedures and it removed Brooks and Y-12 Protective Force director Gary Brandon from their posts. WSI named John Garrity to replace Brandon. Brooks and Brandon are awaiting reassignments by G4S Government Solutions, the parent company of WSI.
The newspaper reported that the halt to nuclear operations at the plant was still in effect. The plant originally said the stand-down was expected to be lifted by this week and that security personnel would undergo training and refresher instruction.
A spokeswoman for Y-12 did not immediately return a phone call to The Associated Press on Wednesday seeking comment.
The Y-12 plant also makes nuclear warhead parts and provides nuclear fuel for the Navy and research reactors worldwide. The National Nuclear Security Administration’s Production Office is responsible for oversight of the security contractors. Last month, WSI-Oak Ridge said it planned to cut as many as 51 jobs, including about 34 security police officer positions at the complex.
The plant produced the material used in the first nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. At annual protests tied to the anniversary, a few protesters have staged deliberate acts of civil disobedience to provoke their arrests including blocking the road into the plant or defying trespassing signs by deliberately crossing a blue line that marks the beginning of federal property.
But on July 28, three protesters went much further, officials said. An affidavit was filed in federal court this week by the Department of Energy’s inspector general. The News Sentinel reported that the affidavit alleges that Megan Rice, a Roman Catholic nun, Michael Walli, 63, and Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, climbed a ridge before dawn, set off alarms as they used bolt cutters to get through three wire fences and made it to the exterior of the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility.
They have been charged with federal charges of trespassing, a misdemeanor, and willful and malicious destruction of property, a felony.
Federal energy officials and the two U.S. senators from Tennessee said the latest breach troublesome.
At previous protests, arrests peaked in 1989, when 29 people were charged with trespassing at the plant gates. Ten more were arrested in 1990. Then the arrests stopped, because the local district attorney declined to press state charges.
Arrests resumed in 1998 and over the next 10 years, less than two dozen were taken in annually and charged in state court with trespassing. The harshest punishments were fines or jail sentences of up to 10 days.
On New Year’s Day 2002, a few months after the 9/11 attacks raised terrorism worries, a dozen protesters made it onto the property carrying 14-foot flags and lighted candles. The activists told The Associated Press that they stopped three times for prayers and spent about a half-hour on the grounds before they were noticed and detained.
Department of Energy officials said the group in 2002 wasn’t a serious threat because they never reached sensitive areas.
The complex upgraded security, adding guards, building concrete barriers and adding intrusion detectors to meet standards described as three times tougher than before 9/11.
In 2002, authorities for the first time charged four protesters who crossed the blue line with federal trespassing, still a misdemeanor. They were convicted and sentenced to two months in prison.
At the largest rally ever at the plant, on the 60th anniversary of the bombing in 2005, more than 1,100 turned out and 15 were arrested on state charges. Arrests have dwindled since then.