Friday, February 3, 2012

Mainichi: Indictment of contractors exposes illicit work at nuke plants


http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20120203p2a00m0na018000c.html

Feb 3 [excerpted] "Many documents showing illegal labor were found, one after another, during our search. They proved many years of shady deals," says a senior officer with the Fukuoka Prefectural Police. The case sheds light on not just one firm or one nuclear power plant but the nuclear power industry as a whole...

...illegal labor supports nuclear power businesses. Fake contracts and unlicensed dispatches of workers are peppered with acts of siphoning off pay. These practices have put laborers in an unstable position and invited crime syndicates' involvement..."

read the entire article at the link above

Perhaps this level of corruption also exists in US nuclear power plants.
Substandard work and parts have been discovered at the San Diego county San Onofre nuclear power plant. I found this article at Ex-SKF http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/from the Orange County Register


San Onofre: 100s of troubled tubes, gas leak. Feb. 2, 2012 Updated: Feb. 3, 2012 7:17 a.m.
http://www.ocregister.com/news/unit-338565-reactor-plant.html

[excerpted] "As workers began inspecting a leaky tube in one of the San Onofre nuclear plant's reactors Thursday, federal regulators said more than 800 tubes in a second, offline reactor showed wear and thinning, although they are only two years old..."

..."Two of the tubes have thinning so extensive that they need to be plugged and taken out of service. Sixty nine other tubes have thinning greater than 20 percent of the wall thickness, and a larger number have thinning greater than 10 percent of wall thickness."

Majia here: I find it terrifying that our most dangerous industrial plants may be running on substandard parts that are leaking radiation and may even be susceptible to catastrophic failure

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.