MONUMENTAL DISASTER ALERT: Radiation Leak Reported At The Indian Point Nuclear Facility In New York - "ALARMING LEVELS OF RADIOACTIVITY"; 65,000 PERCENT Above Normal; Governor Cuomo Is "Deeply Concerned,... Significant Failure"; Officials Worried About PUBLIC HEALTH; Extent And Duration Of Release "UNCLEAR"; Radiation Experts Being Sent In!

 Indian Point Nuclear Plant.

February 10, 2016 - NEW YORK, UNITED STATES - A leak at the Indian Point nuclear facility in New York has sent contaminant into the area groundwater, causing radioactivity levels 65,000% higher than normal, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Saturday… The groundwater beneath the nuclear plant… flows into the Hudson River at a point about 25 miles north of New York City… [T]he NRC plans to send an expert in health physics and radiation protection to the site… - CNN.


Gov. Cuomo said the plant’s operator, Entergy, reported “alarming levels” of radioactivity at three monitoring wells, with one well’s radioactivity increasing nearly 65,000%… Other state officials also blasted the controversial nuclear facility’s most recent mishap. Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee (D-Suffern) said she was concerned not only for the surrounding community but also for the “impact this radioactive water may have on public health and our environment,” Jaffee added. - NY Daily News.


“Tonight on News 12 — a radioactive leak at Indian Point sparking a full investigation by the State over concerns of contamination… Officials discover alarming levels of radioactivity at several monitoring wells… with one’s radioactivity increasing by nearly 65,000%… Officials say… there is no immediate threat to the public.” - News 12 transcript.


It was unclear how much water spilled, but samples showed the water had a radioactivity level of more than 8 million picocuries per liter… The levels are the highest regulators have seen at Indian Point… Contaminated groundwater would likely slowly make its way to the Hudson River, [an NRC spokesman] said… Tritium [is] a radioactive form of hydrogen that poses the greatest risk of causing cancer when it ends up in drinking water. - AP.


“Yesterday I learned that radioactive tritium-contaminated water leaked… The company reported alarming levels of radioactivity at three monitoring wells, with one well’s radioactivity increasing nearly 65,000 percent.” - Gov. Andrew Cuomo.


“I am deeply concerned… Indian Point has experienced significant failure in its operation and maintenance… levels of radioactivity reported this week are significantly higher than in past incidents… Our first concern is for the health and safety of the residents… I am directing you to fully investigate this incident… to determine the extent of the release, its likely duration, its causes, its potential impacts to the environment and public health, and how the release can be contained.” - Gov. Cuomo’s letter to Commissioner Zucker (Dept. of Health) & Acting Commissioner Seggos (Dept. of Environmental Conservation).


“I am concerned about the alarming increase in radioactive water leaking… My primary concern is the potential impact this… may have on public health and our environment.” - Ellen Jaffee, New York Assembly member.


“[The NRC] says that exposure to high levels of tritium may cause cancer in humans or genetic defects.” - CBS 6 Albany transcript.


Watch broadcasts here: News 12 | News 10 | CBS 6 | CBS NY


- ENE News.

MONUMENTAL DISASTER ALERT: Officials Declare An EMERGENCY ALERT As Fire And EXPLOSION Is Reported At Brunswick Nuclear Plant In North Carolina - Fire And Explosion Occurred After "UNEXPECTED POWER DECREASE" In Reactor; "Emergency Response Facilities Staffed"; "ABNORMAL EVENT With Potential To Impact Plant Equipment Or PUBLIC HEALTH AND SAFETY"!

Officials at the Brunswick Nuclear Plant declared an Emergency Alert.

February 10, 2016 - NORTH CAROLINA, UNITED STATES - Facility: BRUNSWICK [Nuclear Plant in N.C.]… Emergency Class: ALERT… EMERGENCY DECLARED… RPS [Reactor Protection System] ACTUATION – CRITICAL… MANUAL SCRAM AND ALERT DECLARATION DUE TO ELECTRICAL FAULT RESULTING IN FIRE/EXPLOSION…

Unit 1 declared an Alert… due to an explosion/fire in the Balance of Plant 4 kV switchgear bus area. Prior to the Alert declaration, the operators initiated a manual SCRAM due to an unexpected power decrease from 88% to 40%. The licensee has visually verified that there is no ongoing fire and is investigating the initial cause of the event…

[T]he licensee reported the following… “a manual reactor scram was initiated due to loss of both recirculation system variable speed drives as a result of an electrical fault. At this time, a Startup Auxiliary Transformer (SAT) experienced a lockout fault; interrupting offsite power to emergency buses 1 and 2.

Emergency Diesel Generators (EDGs) 1, 2, 3, and 4 automatically started”… The licensee has notified… DHS, FEMA, USDA, HHS, DOE, DHS NICC, EPA… FDA… and Nuclear SSA…- U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.



Electrical damage sets off alert at Brunswick Nuclear Plant… An Alert is the second in increasing significance of four nuclear emergency classifications... - WWAY.


WATCH: Electrical damage sets off alert at Brunswick Nuclear Plant

[Unit 1] remains in shutdown mode, while officials work through “detailed process/procedures to fully understand this event and make the needed repairs”… An alert… is used when abnormal events have the potential to impact plant equipment or public health and safety… No estimated timeline has been given for getting Unit 1 back into service.. - WECT.


Duke Energy notified the emergency management agencies… of damaged electrical equipment at the Brunswick Nuclear Plant…. - North Carolina Department of Public Safety.


Alert declared and exited at Brunswick… federal, state and local officials were notified, and Brunswick plant emergency response facilities were staffed…. - Duke Energy.


- ENE News.

DOOMSDAY: Disaster Preparedness - Europe Announces Disaster Communication Plans For Nuclear Emergency?!

November 30, 2013 - EUROPE - A project backed by 43 organisations is preparing Europe to react and communicate effectively in case of a nuclear emergency, drawing on the lessons of the Fukushima accident. 

The project, known as PREPARE, brings together national nuclear emergency centres, universities and safety authorities from 20 European countries, including Germany, Italy, Belgium, Norway and Ukraine and has €4 million ($5.4 million) in funding from the EU Framework Program for Research (FP7).

Project work - expected to be finalised in early 2016 - will focus on what to do in case of long-lasting radiation releases, as seen during the Fukushima accident. Researchers will develop a system to collect and exchange information quickly and reliably during a rapidly-evolving emergency situation, and develop procedures and policies for dealing with potentially contaminated goods. Employees of nuclear emergency centres, safety authorities, agriculture ministries will be trained to use the tools and methods resulting from PREPARE.

"Before Fukushima, emergency plans were designed in general for releases of a few days, but at Fukushima we saw releases for up to one month and then also smaller releases," said Johan Camps, head of the Crisis Management and Decision unit at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre told World Nuclear News.

One PREPARE tool will be used to evaluate an accident in its entirety, according to the project coordinator Wolfgang Raskob, of the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology in Germany. "We are planning to set up a database with historic events and calculation scenarios and then compare the incoming information with the information in the database."

Actions on food and other consumer goods coming from an area affected by a nuclear emergency have previously been inconsistent across Europe. Taking the example of Fukushima, Raskob noted that each European country had different rules and limits. One of the aims of the project is to recommend a procedure to set contamination limits to be used at European level when dealing with goods coming from the affected area, he explained.

Fourteen of the European Union's 28 member states use nuclear power, as do non-EU neighbours Russia,
Switzerland and Ukraine. The entire continent as far east as the Ural mountains includes 50 countries
and a total of 179 nuclear power reactors 

Improvements to the monitoring of terrestrial and aquatic systems following a nuclear accident are also envisaged, as are better plans for informing the public during an emergency.

Media angle

"We took Fukushima as a case study and looked at how it was communicated among the experts, but also from the experts to the public and to how the media reported it,"  Tanja Perko, researcher at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, told WNN.

Perko noted big differences between European countries in the way the media reported about Fukushima. Some media focused on the safety of their own nuclear plants, others dealt with the issue of incoming contaminated goods, while some reported mainly on the developments in Japan. "We saw the word 'referendum' in more than 60% of the media articles we analysed from Italy," Perko explained, pointing out the potentially powerful link between media coverage and political events. - World Nuclear News.

EARTH CHANGES: JAPAN QUAKE - Tsunami Waves Reach Hawaii!

Following the massive 8.9 earthquake that devastated Japan with a most deadly tsunami, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre has issued a strong alert for Hawaii, the entire United States West Coast and several countries along the Pacific Ocean.

Tsunami waves swamped Hawaii beaches and brushed the U.S. western coast Friday but didn't immediately cause major damage after devastating Japan and sparking evacuations throughout the Pacific. Water rushed up on roadways and into hotel lobbies on the Big Island and low-lying areas in Maui were flooded as 7-foot waves crashed ashore. Smaller waves hit the U.S. Western Coast and beaches were closed as fishermen fired up their boats and left harbors to ride out the swell. Scientists warned that the first tsunami waves are not always the strongest, and officials said people in Hawaii and along the West Coast should watch for strong currents and heed calls for evacuations. The tsunami warning was downgraded to an advisory in Hawaii, and Gov. Neil Abercrombie said the islands were "fortunate almost beyond words." "All of us had that feeling that Hawaii was just the most blessed place on the face of the Earth today," he said. The tsunami, spawned by an 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan, slammed the eastern coast of Japan, sweeping away boats, cars, homes and people as widespread fires burned out of control. It raced across the Pacific at 500 mph — as fast as a jetliner — before hitting Hawaii and the West Coast. Sirens sounded for hours before dawn up and roadways and beaches were mostly empty as the tsunami struck. By midmorning, waves were crashing against the 30-foot bluffs in Crescent City, Calif., where a tsunami killed 11 people in 1964. - MSNBC. 

"We're preparing for the worst and we're praying for the best," said John Cummings, spokesman for the Honolulu emergency management department. "Tsunami waves, because of their long length, wrap around our islands very efficiently." More waves are expected to strike the Pacific Coast of the US between the morning to afternoon on  Friday. The coasts of Oregon, California, Washington, Alaska, and Canada's western coastline, are all areas of main concern in the Western part of the world.

Here is a video of the tsunami reaching the shores of Hawaii:

RED ALERT: Great Japan Earthquake Causes Nuclear Emergency?!

As Japan comes to grips with the apocalyptic Earth changes of a massive earthquake and tsunami that created destruction across the country, flashing scenes of chaos around the world, another abnormality occurred as a direct result of the weather anomalies that is also causing major global concern.

The Japanese government has declared a nuclear emergency, as the cooling system failed, at a nuclear power plant.

Japan's massive earthquake caused a power outage that disabled a nuclear reactor's cooling system, triggering evacuation orders for about 3,000 residents as the government declared its first-ever state of emergency at a nuclear plant. Japan's nuclear safety agency said pressure inside one of six boiling water reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant had risen to 1.5 times the level considered normal. To reduce the pressure, slightly radioactive vapor may be released. The agency said the radioactive element in the vapor would not affect the environment or human health. After the quake triggered a power outage, a backup generator also failed and the cooling system was unable to supply water to cool the 460-megawatt No. 1 reactor, though at least one backup cooling system is being used. The reactor core remains hot even after a shutdown. The agency said plant workers are scrambling to restore cooling water supply at the plant but there is no prospect for immediate success. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the 40-year-old plant was not leaking radiation. The plant is in Onahama city, about 270 kilometers northeast of Tokyo. If the outage in the cooling system persists, eventually radiation could leak out into the environment, and, in the worst case, could cause a reactor meltdown, a nuclear safety agency official said on condition of anonymity, citing sensitivity of the issue. - Globe and Mail. 

Speaking of meltdown, the powerful earthquake in northeast Japan, also caused flames to rise from an oil refinery in Ichihara, in the state of Chiba. Here's a look at the massive fire:



UPDATE: 3,000 ordered to evacuate near quake-hit Fukushima nuclear plant! 

According to the Mainichi Daily News, Japan has has instructed about 3,000 residentsto evacuate all areas near the Fukushima Prefecture nuclear power reactor.

The evacuation advisory was issued for people living within a 3-kilometer radius of the plant, while those living within a 10-kilometer radius were requested to stay home, top government spokesman Yukio Edano said, adding the measure was precautionary.Edano said one of the reactors cannot be cooled down. He added that no radiation has leaked from the reactor and the incident poses no danger to the environment at the moment.Prime Minister Naoto Kan declared the emergency even though no radiation leak has been detected after the magnitude 8.8 quake so that authorities can easily implement emergency relief measures, Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano told a press conference.In Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency is scrambling for details from contacts with Japan's industry ministry, while saying in a statement that at least four nuclear power plants "closest to the quake have been safely shut down" after the 2:46 p.m. quake.According to the ministry, a total of 11 nuclear reactors were automatically shut down at the Onagawa plant, Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 plants and Tokai No. 2 plant after the biggest-magnitude quake in the country's modern history.