Claims GE Knew Fukushima Plants Were Unsafe
By James Donahue
September 22, 2017
Former nuclear engineer and whistleblower Arnold Gundersen recently told The EnviroNews USA that engineers for General Electric Company knew the Mark 1 boiling water nuclear reactor they were designing in the 1970’s was flawed but were unable to stop the company from marketing the system to Tokyo Electric Power Company and 34 other buyers throughout the world. A total of 23 Mark 1 plants are currently operating in the United States.
Three of the four nuclear power plants at Fukushima Daiichi went into meltdown in 2011 after they were hit by a major earthquake and tsunami that caused a total power blackout. The loss of the system’s backup power disabled the plant’s ability to cool the reactors. The rods of enriched uranium must be kept cooled by a constant flow of water. The high level of radioactivity and heat from the disaster has prevented workers from repairing the destroyed plants. The toxic radioactive fallout has been infecting the air and waters throughout the Northern Hemisphere ever since.
Gundersen said three engineers resigned in 1976 because they believed the design was not safe but could not stop General Electric officials from marketing it.
He said he joined General Electric right out of college as a mechanical engineer. He was assigned as a field engineer responsible for supervising the construction and startup of power plant equipment throughout the United States. At the time, the company was building large-scale commercial boiling water reactors on a turnkey basis. They built the entire plant and got it operating before turning it over to the electric companies that was buying it.
As he became familiar with the design and operation of these plants, Gundersen said he also discovered potential problems with the design. He said the Mark 1 units in the U.S. and overseas . . . including the Fukushima units . . . “had not taken into account all of the pressures and forces that are called hydrodynamic loads that could be experienced by the pressure suppression units as a result of a major accident. We didn’t really know if the containments would be able to contain the event that they were supposedly designed to contain,” he said.
Gunderson said he became worried about this issue. He said he called his boss late one night and said he felt the buyers needed to be warned that GE could not support the continued operation of the plants. He said his boss told him: “If we have to shut down all of those Mark 1 plants it will probably mean the end of GE’s nuclear business forever”
“That conversation cinched my decision,” Gunderson said. He said he resigned the following week.
Gunderson also noted that the staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, after Fukushima, recommended “some pretty substantial improvements” to the operating Mark 1 plants in the U.S. But he said the politically appointed commissions, “who have no nuclear background, overrode the staff” and refused to make the changes. Thus the Commission is also actively involved in blocking needed safety improvements on the aging and potentially explosive nuke energy plants.
It isn’t that the Commission is blind to the problem. In fact the Commission published its own report in 1982 that noted an 85 percent chance that “if there was a meltdown in a Mark 1 reactor, the containment would explode.” This is exactly what happened at Fukushima.
Based on what he now knows, Gundersen concluded: “I think it would be a good idea to not have reliance on nuclear units. They’re very risky enterprises.”
The situation in Japan appears to be totally out of control.
Officials at TEPCO have just revealed that radiation levels inside the destroyed reactor are higher than when the plant went into a triple meltdown six years ago.
This is suggesting that something very serious is occurring within a structure that is so radioactive that even robots are unable to successfully enter without going into a complete shutdown. Consequently, plant officials are unable to find out what is going on inside the wrecked facility.
What is feared is that the reactor has become so hot that it has burned its way through the containment core and is falling into the rock formations and possibly the ocean waters under the plant. It is somewhat comparable to a runaway atomic bomb that no human manufactured device has ever been designed to bring under control.
Gunderson, who boasts 44 years of nuclear industry experience, has come under attack for his criticism of the nuclear power industry. His biggest critic appears to be Rod Adams, a retired naval engineer officer, who maintains the website Atomic Insights. Adams claims Gunderson is giving out non-factual information about the dangers of nuclear power generating systems.
Gunderson has written numerous nuclear expert reports and served as an expert witness in the investigation of the Three Mile Island accident and has provided data linked to the Fukushima disaster. He currently is chief engineer of Fairewinds Associates, a non-profit organization to educate the public about nuclear power and other energy issues.
By James Donahue
September 22, 2017
Former nuclear engineer and whistleblower Arnold Gundersen recently told The EnviroNews USA that engineers for General Electric Company knew the Mark 1 boiling water nuclear reactor they were designing in the 1970’s was flawed but were unable to stop the company from marketing the system to Tokyo Electric Power Company and 34 other buyers throughout the world. A total of 23 Mark 1 plants are currently operating in the United States.
Three of the four nuclear power plants at Fukushima Daiichi went into meltdown in 2011 after they were hit by a major earthquake and tsunami that caused a total power blackout. The loss of the system’s backup power disabled the plant’s ability to cool the reactors. The rods of enriched uranium must be kept cooled by a constant flow of water. The high level of radioactivity and heat from the disaster has prevented workers from repairing the destroyed plants. The toxic radioactive fallout has been infecting the air and waters throughout the Northern Hemisphere ever since.
Gundersen said three engineers resigned in 1976 because they believed the design was not safe but could not stop General Electric officials from marketing it.
He said he joined General Electric right out of college as a mechanical engineer. He was assigned as a field engineer responsible for supervising the construction and startup of power plant equipment throughout the United States. At the time, the company was building large-scale commercial boiling water reactors on a turnkey basis. They built the entire plant and got it operating before turning it over to the electric companies that was buying it.
As he became familiar with the design and operation of these plants, Gundersen said he also discovered potential problems with the design. He said the Mark 1 units in the U.S. and overseas . . . including the Fukushima units . . . “had not taken into account all of the pressures and forces that are called hydrodynamic loads that could be experienced by the pressure suppression units as a result of a major accident. We didn’t really know if the containments would be able to contain the event that they were supposedly designed to contain,” he said.
Gunderson said he became worried about this issue. He said he called his boss late one night and said he felt the buyers needed to be warned that GE could not support the continued operation of the plants. He said his boss told him: “If we have to shut down all of those Mark 1 plants it will probably mean the end of GE’s nuclear business forever”
“That conversation cinched my decision,” Gunderson said. He said he resigned the following week.
Gunderson also noted that the staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, after Fukushima, recommended “some pretty substantial improvements” to the operating Mark 1 plants in the U.S. But he said the politically appointed commissions, “who have no nuclear background, overrode the staff” and refused to make the changes. Thus the Commission is also actively involved in blocking needed safety improvements on the aging and potentially explosive nuke energy plants.
It isn’t that the Commission is blind to the problem. In fact the Commission published its own report in 1982 that noted an 85 percent chance that “if there was a meltdown in a Mark 1 reactor, the containment would explode.” This is exactly what happened at Fukushima.
Based on what he now knows, Gundersen concluded: “I think it would be a good idea to not have reliance on nuclear units. They’re very risky enterprises.”
The situation in Japan appears to be totally out of control.
Officials at TEPCO have just revealed that radiation levels inside the destroyed reactor are higher than when the plant went into a triple meltdown six years ago.
This is suggesting that something very serious is occurring within a structure that is so radioactive that even robots are unable to successfully enter without going into a complete shutdown. Consequently, plant officials are unable to find out what is going on inside the wrecked facility.
What is feared is that the reactor has become so hot that it has burned its way through the containment core and is falling into the rock formations and possibly the ocean waters under the plant. It is somewhat comparable to a runaway atomic bomb that no human manufactured device has ever been designed to bring under control.
Gunderson, who boasts 44 years of nuclear industry experience, has come under attack for his criticism of the nuclear power industry. His biggest critic appears to be Rod Adams, a retired naval engineer officer, who maintains the website Atomic Insights. Adams claims Gunderson is giving out non-factual information about the dangers of nuclear power generating systems.
Gunderson has written numerous nuclear expert reports and served as an expert witness in the investigation of the Three Mile Island accident and has provided data linked to the Fukushima disaster. He currently is chief engineer of Fairewinds Associates, a non-profit organization to educate the public about nuclear power and other energy issues.