Plus ad woes and household toxics. And as with today’s InSecurityWatch, a long post cuz we wuz under the weather.
We open with the first Ebola story, via the Los Angeles Times:
Spanish priest becomes first European to die in Ebola outbreak
A 75-year-old Spanish priest suffering from the Ebola virus died Tuesday in an isolation ward in Madrid — the first European death from the outbreak that has killed more than 1,000 people in West Africa and the first known death on European soil.
Miguel Pajares died around 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital, Spanish officials announced.
A Roman Catholic missionary, Pajares was airlifted Aug. 7 from Liberia, where he is believed to have contracted the deadly virus at a hospital where he worked. Thousands of Spaniards had joined a social media campaign urging their government to rescue and repatriate him. He was the first Ebola patient evacuated to Europe amid the current, fast-spreading outbreak in Africa, which is already the worst in history.
BBC News closes the borders:
Ivory Coast bans flight from three states
Ivory Coast has banned all passenger flights from three countries hit by Ebola in an attempt to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.
It is the only country, after Saudi Arabia, to impose such a ban, amid mounting concern about the outbreak which has killed nearly 1,000 people.
The ban covers Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, which are worst affected by Ebola, Ivorian officials said.
From the Guardian, another case:
Ebola: Nigeria confirms new case in Lagos
Health minister says nurse who came into contact with American Patrick Sawyer is 10th confirmed Nigeria case
Nigeria has confirmed a new case of Ebola in the financial capital, Lagos, bringing the total number in the country to 10.
The health minister, Onyebuchi Chukwu, said the latest confirmed case was a female nurse who came into contact with a Liberian-American man, Patrick Sawyer, who died of Ebola in a Lagos hospital on 25 July.
Another nurse who had contact with him died last week, while seven other people have been confirmed to have the virus in the city, he added. “The 10th case actually was one of the nurses who also had primary contact with the index case. When he [Sawyer] got ill, we then brought her into isolation,” the minister told a news conference in Abuja. “We just tested her over the weekend. So, that’s what made it 10. So, between Friday and today we had one additional case. That brings it to 10 and the 10 includes the index case.”
SINA English covers a Chinese angle:
Eight Chinese quarantined in Ebola-hit Sierra Leone
Eight Chinese medical workers have been placed in quarantine in Sierra Leone, as health experts grappled on Monday with ethical questions over the use of experimental drugs to combat the killer Ebola virus.
Gripped by panic, west African nations battling the tropical disease ramped up drastic containment measures that have caused transport chaos, price hikes and food shortages.
Chinese ambassador to Sierra Leone Zhao Yanbo told journalists seven doctors and one nurse who treated Ebola patients had been placed under quarantine, but would not be drawn on whether they were displaying symptoms of the disease.
The Guardian covers a U.S. quarantine:
Husband of American Ebola patient arrives for quarantine in Georgia
Three missionaries arrive in US from west Africa for three-week quarantine but do not show signs or symptoms of Ebola
The husband of a woman being treated for Ebola in a Georgia hospital is among three quarantined missionaries who arrived in the US on Sunday night after departing west Africa, where they worked with patients infected with the deadly virus.
David Writebol and the other aid workers do not show signs or symptoms of Ebola, but they will be quarantined for at least three weeks as a safety precaution.
The missionaries are with SIM USA, a Christian mission organization that sends volunteers abroad to provide humanitarian aid and “evangelize the unreached”.
Channel NewsAsia Singapore gives the go-ahead:
WHO approves experimental Ebola drugs
The World Health Organisation authorised on Tuesday (Aug 12) the use of experimental drugs to fight Ebola as the death toll topped 1,000 and a Spanish priest became the first European to succumb to the latest outbreak.
The declaration by the UN’s health agency came after a US company that makes an experimental serum called ZMapp said it had sent all its available supplies to hard-hit west Africa.
“In the special circumstances of this Ebola outbreak it is ethical to offer unregistered interventions as potential treatments or prevention,” WHO assistant director general Marie-Paule Kieny told reporters in Geneva, following a meeting of medical experts on the issue.
But The Hill notes that victory was largely symbolic:
More Ebola drugs may be months away
It will take months to produce even a small batch of a promising new drug to counter Ebola, according to U.S. health officials.
Mapp Biopharmaceutical’s drug ZMapp has shown some promise. The drug has been used to treat two Americans who have contracted Ebola.
But the company said Tuesday it has run out of supplies.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases says it will take months to make more of the drug. Even in that timeframe, the company will only be able to produce less than a hundred treatment courses.
More from Deutsche Welle:
Liberia to receive experimental Ebola drug from the US
The US government has confirmed that it will send doses of an experimental Ebola drug to treat doctors in Liberia. The treatment has been so far used on just three people, however, there is no vaccine for the virus.
US President Barack Obama and the Food and Drug Administration approved the request Monday to send the experimental drugs to Liberia, the West African nation’s government said in a statement.
Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc, which makes the drug ZMapp, released a statement on their website that said, “In responding to the request received this weekend from a West African nation, the available supply of ZMapp is exhausted.”
“Any decision to use ZMapp must be made by the patients’ medical team,” it said, adding that the drug was “provided at no cost in all cases.”
TheLocal.de covers a negative:
German student tests negative for Ebola
Rwandan authorities said on Tuesday that a German man put in isolation with fever had tested negative for the deadly tropical disease Ebola.
“We would like to inform you that the suspected case of Ebola tested negative,” the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
“There’s no Ebola in Rwanda.”
United Press International has a tech angle:
Geo-spatial technology to help combat Ebola outbreaks
A U.S. company reports it is supplying portable geo-spatial mapping devices to Liberia to aid fight against Ebola outbreak
A U.S. geo-spatial technology company is providing Liberia with portable mapping devices to help in the effort to contain and defeat an outbreak of Ebola.
The virus outbreak in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria has killed more than 900 people and appears to be spreading.
Addressing Homes LLC said it is supplying its portable AimObserver devices to Liberia without charge as emergency assistance. The AimObserver uses “Mobile Mapper” technology to produce an instant latitude/longitude location for any dwelling, structure or pathway at any point in the world.
TheLocal.no covers a fright:
Ebola scare forces flight to land in Norway
An airplane travelling over Norway was forced to land in Trondheim after an African passenger having a coughing fit triggered an Ebola fear on Monday.
Around 100 passengers were kept back on a KLM flight from Amsterdam to Værnes for more than two hours – but with little good reason for the fear.
The dreaded Ebola disease is ravaging throughout several countries in West Africa and countries, like Norway, are on guard to prevent the disease spreading further.
Chief physician in the Stjørdal municipality, Leif Vonen, said to NRK: “There was suspicion of an infectious disease and thoughts went quickly to Ebola. But it became clear from the health situation that this was not the case. The person had just an innocent respiratory infection.”
And South China Morning Post bolsters the defense:
Hong Kong officials to discuss improved Ebola security measures
Health and hygiene officials will meet today to discuss how to improve precautions against the spread of infectious diseases in the wake of the city’s first suspected case of the Ebola virus.
Announcing the meeting, Centre for Health Protection Controller Dr Leung Ting-hung defended the handling of the case on Sunday. The Nigerian man at the centre of the brief scare was found not to have the deadly, incurable disease.
A security guard called the ambulance after the 32-year-old, who was staying at Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui, suffered vomiting and diarrhoea, early symptoms of the disease that is spreading through three West African countries.
News On Japan bugs out:
Japan aid agency pulls staff from Ebola-hit nations
Japan’s foreign aid agency said Tuesday it was evacuating two dozen staff from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, as the death toll from the Ebola virus continued to mount.
The move came as eight Chinese medical workers who treated patients suffering from the virus were placed in quarantine in Sierra Leone.
Sierra Leone, as well as Guinea and Liberia, has been at the centre of the outbreak.
And TheLocal.es reassures:
Ebola risk in Spain is ‘almost zero’: WHO
A spokesperson for the World Health Organization said on Monday that the risk of contagion from the Ebola virus in Spain was “almost zero” and described the repatriation of an infected Spanish priest as “correct”.
Speaking to Spanish TV channel Cuatro, WHO spokesperson Gregory Hartl said that “many” Spanish health workers were well-trained to deal with any possible Ebola cases.
He reassured Spaniards that the WHO and Spain’s Ministry of Health, Social Security and Equality were following international protocols to remain in “constant contact”.
On to the weather, first with the Guardian:
Extreme weather becoming more common, study says
Rise in blocking-patterns – hot or wet weather remaining stuck over regions for weeks – causing frequent heatwaves or floods
Extreme weather like the drought currently scorching the western US and the devastating floods in Pakistan in 2010 is becoming much more common, according to new scientific research.
The work shows so-called “blocking patterns”, where hot or wet weather remains stuck over a region for weeks causing heatwaves or floods, have more than doubled in summers over the last decade. The new study may also demonstrate a link between the UK’s recent flood-drenched winter and climate change.
Climate scientists in Germany noticed that since 2000 there have been an “exceptional number of summer weather extremes, some causing massive damage to society”. So they examined the huge meanders in the high-level jet stream winds that dominate the weather at mid-latitudes, by analysing 35 years of wind data amassed from satellites, ships, weather stations and meteorological balloons. They found that blocking patterns, which occur when these meanders slow down, have happened far more frequently.
The Los Angeles Times cites an example close to home:
California’s 1st seven months of 2014 have been its warmest on record
The first seven months of this year have been the warmest on record for California, according to the National Weather Service.
Forecasters averaged high and low temperatures from January to July for the entire state this year and recorded an average temperature of 60.2 degrees, said Paul Iniguez, National Weather Service Hanford’s science and operation officer. “It’s quite a bit warmer than the previous record,” he said.
The temperature beats the record temperature of 59.3 degrees set in 1934 by nearly a full a degree, he said.
USA TODAY covers the other extreme:
Parts of central U.S. had coolest July on record
Summer heat was on holiday in much of the central U.S. last month: Most of the region had a very cool July, with 13 states seeing July temperatures that ranked among the 10 coldest since weather records began in 1895, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reported Tuesday.
Both Indiana and Arkansas had their all-time coldest July on record. Indiana was a whopping 5.3 degrees below average in July, while Arkansas was 4.6 degrees below average.
While the central U.S. shivered in July, the heat continued to scorch the West. Six states sweltered through one of their 10 hottest Julys on record.
The San Francisco Chronicle consequences of another weather extreme, drought:
130,000 acres charred in blazes across California
Several wildfires raged across Northern California on Monday, with many of them touched off by lightning strikes in dry vegetation, including a fast-growing 9,500-acre blaze in Mendocino County.
Forecasters were calling for more lightning Monday and Tuesday, leaving fire crews worried that new blazes would spark up as fast as they could control other ones.
“We’re holding all personnel on just to see what happens when this lightning comes through,” said Capt. John Hotchkiss of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention. “A lot of it will depend on whether we have wetting rain with the lightning.”
At least 130,000 acres were burning statewide as of Monday morning, Cal Fire officials said, fueled by extraordinarily dry conditions.
The Los Angeles Times covers another Golden State extreme:
‘Remarkable’ warming reported in Central California coastal waters
Ocean temperatures along the Central California coast experienced a “remarkable” warming period during the first three weeks of July, leading to unusual encounters with some fish species, scientists reported.
The warmer ocean correlated with weaker winds, which reduced coastal upwelling, allowing warmer water to move inshore, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The warming is related to unusual weather pattern seen in the Sierra Nevada, where recent thunderstorms have pummeled dry forest lands with bursts of rain and lightning, Nate Mantua, Team Leader of Landscape Ecology for Southwest Fisheries Science Center, said in an email.
Bloomberg brings us our first water story, this one with an austerian twist:
L.A. Faces $15 Billion Bill as Pipes Spring Leaks: Cities
Los Angeles is showing its age, and city officials don’t have plans for financing the facelift.
From buckling sidewalks to potholed thoroughfares to storm drains that can’t handle a little rain, the infrastructure that holds the second-largest U.S. city together is suffering from years of deferred maintenance. Bringing pipes that deliver water to 3.9 million people up to snuff could cost $4 billion — more than half the city’s annual operating budget. The bill for repaving streets will be almost that much, according to estimates from a city consultant, and patching or replacing cracked sidewalks will require $640 million.
City Council members recently gave up on a proposal to ask voters for a sales-tax increase to finance street and sidewalk repairs, and Mayor Eric Garcetti has ruled out raising water rates anytime soon to upgrade pipelines.
The San Diego Union-Tribune covers another water woe:
Southwest braces as Lake Mead water levels drop
Once-teeming Lake Mead marinas are idle as a 14-year drought steadily drops water levels to historic lows. Officials from nearby Las Vegas are pushing conservation but also are drilling a new pipeline to keep drawing water from the lake.
Hundreds of miles away, farmers who receive water from the lake behind Hoover Dam are preparing for the worst.
The receding shoreline at one of the main reservoirs in the vast Colorado River water system is raising concerns about the future of a network serving a perennially parched region home to 40 million people and 4 million acres of farmland.
NBC News Digital covers another consequential water woe:
Heartland Water Crisis: Why the Planet Depends on These Kansas Farmers
America’s Breadbasket, a battle of ideas is underway on the most fundamental topics of all: food, water, and the future of the planet.
Last August, in a still-echoing blockbuster study, Dave Steward, Ph.D., and his colleagues at Kansas State University, informed the $15 billion Kansas agricultural economy that it was on a fast track to oblivion. The reason: The precipitous, calamitous withdrawal rates of the Ogallala Aquifer.
The Ogallala is little known outside this part of the world, but it’s the primary source of irrigation not just for all of western Kansas, but the entire Great Plains. This gigantic, soaked subterranean sponge – fossil water created 10 million years ago – touches eight states, stretching from Texas all the way up to South Dakota, across 111.8 million acres and 175,000 square miles.
The Los Angeles Times covers water woes down South:
Brazil’s water crisis amid drought could lead to rationing
A drought in Brazil has led to a water crisis and the country’s largest population center is facing the prospect of rationing.
Brazil’s Public Ministry, a federal regulatory agency, has recommended that Sao Paulo state immediately commence water rationing to avoid a “collapse of reservoirs,” but the state government missed an initial deadline on Wednesday to take action.
Because of scarce rain in 2014, water levels are low, especially at Sao Paulo’s Sistema Cantareira watershed. The Public Ministry says the watershed could soon run dry.
From Reuters, oceanic water woes:
Man-made ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico is the size of Connecticut
Scientists say a man-made “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico is as big as the state of Connecticut.
The zone, which at about 5,000 square miles (13,000 sq km) is the second largest in the world but still smaller than in previous years, is so named because it contains no oxygen, or too little, at the Gulf floor to support bottom-dwelling fish and shrimp.
The primary cause of the annual phenomenon is excess nutrient runoff from farms along the Mississippi River, which empties into the Gulf, said Gene Turner, a researcher at Louisiana State University’s Coastal Ecology Institute.
From BBC News, another kind of water woe:
Mexican mine was slow to report leak, officials say
A private copper mine in north-west Mexico did not immediately alert the authorities that large quantities of a toxic chemical were spilling into a river last week, Mexican officials say.
The authorities in Sonora state said the spill only came to light the next day, after residents downstream noticed the river had turned orange. Some 40,000 cubic metres (10 million gallons) of sulfuric acid have leaked into a tributary of the Sonora river.
The mine is owned by Grupo Mexico. “The company deliberately concealed the accident,” said Cesar Lagarda, an official at the National Water Commission, according to Mexico’s La Jornada newspaper.
After the jump agricultural woes domestic and foreign, toxic spills, household toxins, wildlife woes and a win, fracking fights, nuclear woes, and the latest chapter of Fukushimapocalypse Now!. . .
From the New York Times, another alien invasion:
Invader Batters Rural America, Shrugging Off Herbicides
The Terminator — that relentless, seemingly indestructible villain of the 1980s action movie — is back. And he is living amid the soybeans at Harper Brothers Farms.
About 100 miles northwest of Indianapolis, amid 8,000 lush acres farmed by Dave Harper, his brother Mike and their sons, the Arnold Schwarzenegger of weeds refuses to die. Three growing seasons after surfacing in a single field, it is a daily presence in a quarter of the Harper spread and has a foothold in a third more. Its oval leaves and spindly seed heads blanket roadsides and jut above orderly soybean rows like skyscrapers poking through cloud banks. It shrugs off extreme drought and heat. At up to six inches in diameter, its stalk is thick enough to damage farm equipment.
“You swear that you killed it,” said Scott Harper, Dave Harper’s son and the farm’s 28-year-old resident weed expert. “And then it gets a little green on it, and it comes right back.”
Botanists call the weed palmer amaranth. But perhaps the most fitting, if less known, name is carelessweed. In barely a decade, it has devastated Southern cotton farms and is poised to wreak havoc in the Midwest — all because farmers got careless.
The Los Angeles Times covers smallholder woes on the subcontinent:
Farmer suicides reflect growing desperation in rural India
Since 1995, the first year the government began keeping detailed records, about 300,000 farmers have taken their lives. The 2011 census found that the suicide rate for farmers was 47% higher than the national average.
The suicides are a well-known phenomenon in India, where newspapers regularly carry stories about farmers — almost always men — taking their lives by hanging, drowning or ingesting pesticides. Yet there are few programs to provide farm families with the psychological support that experts say they need to relieve the worries of rural life.
Recently elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi has focused on the “new” India, but far from the country’s rising cities, 600 million people still make their living from agriculture, which for most means backbreaking work on ever-shrinking family plots without the aid of irrigation.
From Quartz, yet another revelation about a “safe” household chemical:
Antibacterial soap may harm your unborn child
Antimicrobial chemicals, intended to kill bacteria and other microorganisms, are commonly found in not just soaps, but all kinds of products—toothpaste, cosmetics, and plastics among them. There is evidence that the chemicals aren’t always effective, and may even be harmful, and their ubiquity means people are often continually exposed to them.
One such chemical, triclosan, has previously been found in many human bodily fluids. New research found traces of triclosan, triclocarban, and butyl paraben in the urine of pregnant women, and the cord blood of newborn infants.
The research looked at the same population of 180 expectant mothers living in Brooklyn, New York, most of Puerto Rican descent. In a study published last week in Environmental Science and Technology, researchers from Arizona State University (ASU) and State University of New York’s (SUNY) Downstate School of Public Health found triclosan in 100% of the women’s urine samples, and triclocarban in 87% of the samples. Of the 33 cord blood samples they looked at, 46% contained triclosan and 23 percent contained triclocarban.
Scientific American covers another:
BPA-Free Plastic Containers May Be Just as Hazardous
Animal studies find that a replacement compound for the estrogen-mimicking chemical bisphenol A may be also be harmful to human health
In 2012 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the sale of baby bottles that contain bisphenol A (BPA), a compound frequently found in plastics. The ban came after manufacturers’ responded to consumer concerns of BPA’s safety after several studies found the chemical mimics estrogen and could harm brain and reproductive development in fetuses, infants and children.* Since then store shelves have been lined with BPA-free bottles for babies and adults alike. Yet, recent research reveals that a common BPA replacement, bisphenol S (BPS), may be just as harmful.
BPA is the starting material for making polycarbonate plastics. Any leftover BPA that is not consumed in the reaction used to make a plastic container can leach into its contents. From there it can enter the body. BPS was a favored replacement because it was thought to be more resistant to leaching. If people consumed less of the chemical, the idea went, it would not cause any or only minimal harm.
Yet BPS is getting out. Nearly 81 percent of Americans have detectable levels of BPS in their urine. And once it enters the body it can affect cells in ways that parallel BPA. A 2013 study by Cheryl Watson at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston found that even picomolar concentrations (less than one part per trillion) of BPS can disrupt a cell’s normal functioning, which could potentially lead to metabolic disorders such as diabetes and obesity, asthma, birth defects or even cancer. “[Manufacturers] put ‘BPA-free’ on the label, which is true. The thing they neglected to tell you is that what they’ve substituted for BPA has not been tested for the same kinds of problems that BPA has been shown to cause. That’s a little bit sneaky,” Watson says.
From Yale Environment 360, another human-caused ecological disaster:
Africa’s Vultures Threatened By An Assault on All Fronts
Vultures are being killed on an unprecedented scale across Africa, with the latest slaughter perpetrated by elephant poachers who poison the scavenging birds so they won’t give away the location of their activities
When they arrived at South Africa’s Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park, André Botha and his companions found that an elephant had died just inside the reserve’s fence. But instead of vultures and other scavengers tussling for their piece of the ecological bonanza, there was only eerie silence. The carcasses of 37 African white-backed vultures lay in the grass around the elephant.
Botha, the co-chair of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) vulture specialist group, knew the whole story with one glance. The elephant carcass had been poisoned to kill the vultures that would come to feed on it. The heads of 29 of the vultures had been cut off to be sold for traditional African medicine. The eight vultures with their heads still intact showed that the poisoned elephant continued to kill after the poacher departed, starting what could have been a significant vulture slaughter if Botha had not intervened.
It is the story, with some variations, of vultures all over Africa. In July 2013, roughly 600 vultures died after scavenging a dead elephant that had been poisoned near Namibia’s Bwabwata National Park. In the savannahs of East Africa and southern Africa, there has been an estimated 50 to 60 percent decline in vultures. In the West African countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, four species of large vultures declined 98 percent outside of protected areas over 35 years, according to Jean-Marc Thiollay of France’s Laboratory of Ecology and Evolution in Paris.
From the Los Angeles Times, another corporate giveaway with potential environmental consequences:
California may waive environmental rules for Tesla battery factory
The state would exempt Tesla Motors Inc. from some of its toughest environmental regulations as part of an incentive package being discussed with the automaker to build a massive battery factory in California, a key state senator said.
“It would help them speed the process,” Sen. Ted Gaines said after a Friday meeting with Tesla officials at the company’s Palo Alto headquarters and assembly line in Fremont, east of San Francisco.
The plan being negotiated in the office of Gov. Jerry Brown could grant the automaker waivers for significant portions of the nearly half-century-old California Environmental Quality Act, Gaines said. The proposal is alarming some environmentalists.
Deutsche Welle sells off the commons:
Mexico opens its territory to foreign fuel bidders
Mexico has opened its oil, gas and electricity industries to foreign and private companies. President Enrique Pena Nieto’s action follows congressional approval of the rules for production and profit-sharing contracts
In the latest opportunity for the fossil fuel industry, President Enrique Pena Nieto said Mexico’s government would let foreign and private investors know by Wednesday which gas and oil fields they might snap up.
The Energy Ministry expects the first round of public tenders to be allotted next year. Officials in Mexico, the world’s 15th-biggest economy, hope to attract tens of billions of dollars in outside investment in deep-water oil drilling and shale gas production. Mexico’s production peaked in 2004 at 3.4 million barrels daily. It now stands at 2.5 million barrels.
The reform ends a decades-long monopoly held by the national oil company, Pemex, and the electricity utility, CFE.
From the Asahi Shimbun, cause for cetacean elation:
ICJ ruling darkens future for Japanese whale meat businesses
Once-prosperous Japanese businesses handling whale meat have been forced to shut down or change their strategies following the International Court of Justice’s effective ban on Japanese research whaling operations in the Antarctic Ocean.
“It’s as if we’re handling something sinister,” said an official in charge of mail order at Hino Shoten Co., a Nagasaki-based company that has been dealing in whale meat since 1908.
Like many other companies, Hino Shoten has been hurt by the decision of Rakuten Inc., operator of Japan’s largest online shopping mall, to cease sales of whale meat.
From Ars Technica, buzz off:
Reckless drone operators annoy animals, people across US national parks
“It’s the responsibility of the drone user to know the drone regulations.”
“We embrace many activities in national parks because they enhance visitor experiences with the iconic natural, historic, and cultural landscapes in our care,” Jonathan Jarvis, the NPS director, said in the statement on June 20. “However, we have serious concerns about the negative impact that flying unmanned aircraft is having in parks, so we are prohibiting their use until we can determine the most appropriate policy that will protect park resources and provide all visitors with a rich experience.”
Jeffrey Olson, an NPS spokesman, told Ars he did not have any numbers on post-ban drone-related incidents, but Olson said he would inquire with the agency’s chief of law enforcement to find out if such data exists. Last week, Ars filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the NPS to learn more about such incidents. But Charis Wilson, an NPS FOIA officer, told Ars that it might be a while before the request is fulfilled.
“We expect to complete our response to you by September 19, 2014,” she said by e-mail. “Your request, however, has been put into our complex processing queue, so we do not expect to complete the processing and release of responsive materials until November 3, 2014.”
Next up, Fukushimapocalypse Now!, first with SimplyInfo:
NHK Admits Fukushima Daiichi Ejected Fuel After Multiple Studies Document It
A rough translation of the NHK article tells something almost unbelievable to see admitted by the state news agency.
“It is a result, in addition to the radioactive cesium, zirconium material of the fuel rods and uranium, and iron of the material of the pressure vessel, material that matches the structure of the nuclear reactor and nuclear fuel has been detected.”
NHK has been one of the less critical news sources in Japan, frequently downplaying or omitting what other news sources have told about the disaster. This has been blamed on the state ties and funding with NHK, something akin to a state media service but more so than what many in the west see in their national broadcasters.
The new study confirming Fukushima reactor fuel in the environment came out on the heels of TEPCO’s new admission about unit 3. They admitted unit 3 had a total melt through, where all the fuel melted and left the reactor vessel to end up in the containment structure. It was also admitted this took place about 5 hours earlier.
Kyodo News prepares to flush:
TEPCO begins pumping up groundwater at Fukushima plant
Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Tuesday began pumping up groundwater at disaster-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on a trial basis in a process necessary to build a facility for dumping such water into the ocean after removing almost all radioactive materials from it.
TEPCO plans to pump up about 500 tons of groundwater from drainages near the plant to store in tanks for a while.
The utility firm will then start experiments around Aug. 20 to check whether the level of radioactive materials in the water can be reduced through a cleanup system.
Jiji Press gives up the ghost:
TEPCO to Scrap Areva Decontamination Device at Fukushima N-Plant
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Monday that it will scrap decontamination equipment made by Areva SA of France that was used for treating water contaminated with radioactive materials at its Fukushima No. 1 plant for some time just after the March 2011 nuclear accident there.
The equipment has been idle due to a series of problems since September 2011, when another device became able to treat the tainted water by itself.
The equipment was mainly used to reduce levels of radioactive cesium in tainted water by absorbing the substance, TEPCO said.
Kyodo News plans the replacement:
Plan filed to build toxic water dumping facility at Fukushima plant
The operator of the disaster-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant filed a plan with regulators on Monday to build a facility for dumping toxic groundwater into the ocean after removing almost all radioactive materials from it, utility officials said.
Under the plan filed with the Secretariat of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, Tokyo Electric Power Co. hopes to lay pipes at the complex to transport the treated groundwater to a seaport within the premises.
But the company, known as TEPCO, says the water will not be dumped into the Pacific unless local consent is obtained.
Jiji Press prepares to fire up:
Hokuriku Electric Applies for Safety Checks on Shika N-Reactor
Hokuriku Electric Power Co. applied Tuesday for regulatory safety checks on the No. 2 reactor at its Shika nuclear power plant in Ishikawa Prefecture, central Japan.
The company seeks to restart the reactor to improve earnings as the suspension of nuclear plants has sent fuel costs for thermal power generation soaring.
Hokuriku Electric was the last of the country’s 10 nuclear plant operators to file for reactor safety checks by the Nuclear Regulation Authority.
And NHK WORLD anticipates a blow:
Anti-tornado facilities at nuclear plant unveiled
The operator of a nuclear plant in central Japan has unveiled anti-tornado facilities that it says could protect its operation from gusts stronger than any ever recorded in the country.
Kansai Electric Power Company on Tuesday showed media the facilities for the 2 reactors at its Takahama plant in Fukui Prefecture.
They are designed to protect seawater pumps that cool the reactors using 4-centimeter-thick steel plates on the sides of the pumps and double metal nets over them to protect against falling objects.
Inadequate preparations from the Mainichi Shimbun:
Municipalities not prepared to accept nuclear evacuees
Only 13 percent of municipalities around Japan that are supposed to accept evacuees in the event of a nuclear disaster have concrete plans in place for such a situation, a survey by the Mainichi Shimbun has found.
This is much lower than the around 60 percent of municipalities within 30 kilometers of nuclear plants that have plans in place for emergency evacuation of their residents.
The survey was conducted in June and July on 362 municipal governments that are specified in the evacuation plans of municipalities around 16 nuclear plants in Japan as locations for their residents to evacuate. Survey responses were received from 333 of the municipalities.
Only 47 of the municipalities responded that they had established plans for taking on the evacuees. Ninety-three said they were in the process of making such procedures, but 179 said they have not and are not making such plans. Many municipalities blamed the delay on the time required to work things out with the prefectural and other municipal governments, but one municipality, Kamo in Niigata Prefecture, complained, “It would be almost impossible to accept a number of evacuees equivalent to 43 percent of our population.”
The Guardian covers nuke woes on Old Blighty:
Nuclear reactors in northern England to be shut down due to faults
Defects found in boiler units lead to four reactors being taken offline, two at Heysham 1 and two at Hartlepool, for eight weeks
Four nuclear reactors at two large power plants in the north of England are to be shut down temporarily, after inspectors discovered a fault with a boiler unit.
EDF Energy said four reactors at its Heysham 1 and Hartlepool plants were to be shut down while investigations continued looking into the defect.
The outages mean a third of Britain’s nuclear capacity will be offline this week, following temporary maintenance work taking place at two of EDF’s other reactors in Scotland and Kent.
The Guardian again, this time with our final item, another fuel, another problem:
Hundreds of activists expected at Blackpool anti-fracking camp
Up to 1,000 people may join a Reclaim the Power camp, which is targeting Cuadrilla-owned shale gas drilling sites
Up to 1,000 anti-fracking activists are expected to arrive outside Blackpool this Thursday to protest against shale gas extraction.
The Reclaim the Power camp, organised by some of the same campaigners who held the weeks-long protest against fracking in West Sussex last summer, is targeting drilling sites owned by Cuadrilla, the UK’s most high-profile shale explorer.
The protests outside the village of Balcombe last year saw lorries stopped from entering a Cuadrilla drilling site, more than 2,000 people marching and the arrest of Green party MP, Caroline Lucas.
