Articles by Robert Alvarez
We found 5 results.
Contaminated Nuclear Weapons Sites
Robert Alvarez – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
22 Feb 2016
West Lake Story: An Underground Fire, Radioactive Waste, and Governmental Failure
→ read full articleThe WIPP-Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Problem, and What It Means for Defense Nuclear Waste Disposal
Robert Alvarez – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
31 Mar 2014
“It’s a surprise when there are no surprises,” a cleanup worker told me a few years ago at the Hanford site in Washington state, once the world’s largest producer of plutonium for nuclear weapons and now home to a massive effort to stop leaking nuclear waste tanks from poisoning the Columbia River.
→ read full articleNuclear Tuna and NPR’s Trivialization
Robert Alvarez – Institute for Policy Studies,
4 Jun 2012
Yesterday [30 May 2012], National Public Radio (NPR) ran a story asserting that cesium-137 from the Fukushima nuclear accident found in Bluefish tuna on the west coast of the U.S. is harmless. It’s not harmless. The Fukushima nuclear accident released about as much cesium-137 as a thermonuclear weapon with the explosive force of 11 million tons of TNT. In the spring of 1954, after the United States exploded nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, the Japanese government had to confiscate about 4 million pounds of contaminated fish.
→ read full articleThe Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Is Far From Over
Robert Alvarez - Reader Supported News,
23 Apr 2012
Spent reactor fuel, containing roughly 85 times more long-lived radioactivity than released at Chernobyl, still sits in pools vulnerable to earthquakes.
→ read full articleOn the Brink of Meltdown: The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant
Robert Alvarez – Institute for Policy Studies,
14 Mar 2011
In the aftermath of the largest earthquake to occur in Japan in recorded history, 5,800 residents living within five miles of six reactors at the Fukushima nuclear station have been advised to evacuate and people living within 15 miles of the plant are advised to remain indoors. Plant operators haven’t been able to cool down the core of one reactor containing enormous amounts of radioactivity because of failed back-up diesel generators required for the emergency cooling.
→ read full article