The March 2011 Japanese earthquake

The lesson of Fukushima:

Nuclear: Suicide, User Manual

March 14, 2011 - May 31, 2011

April 25, 2013:

The videos by Jesse Ventura, which I had directed my readers toward (11 September, FEMA internment camps, Bilderberg, HAARP project, etc.), became immediately inaccessible.

Link.

April 8, 2013

Reader's reaction dated April 26, 2013. Anti-suicide barriers in the Paris metro

April 21, 2012:

The book by J.P. Biberian on Cold Fusion

As noted by a reader, there is a website, Next Up, which systematically translates into French the announcements published by the major Japanese daily newspaper (8 million readers), Asahi Shimbun, which in principle offers guarantees of "maximum seriousness."

Access to daily Asahi Shimbun announcements, translated into French

Kokopelli's blog

July 21, 2011:

Fukushima is no longer current news.

The lesson has not been learned at all.

The inexorable descent of the corium

How the Japanese reactors were built. A harrowing testimony

Media coverage of an event is only temporary. One may question the relative brevity of this follow-up. Who is responsible for this disinterest? Should we blame journalists from official press for not doing their job? What about public behavior? We are constantly told that the population is weary, seeing its employment and material problems skyrocket. This is understandable.

If you click on this link, discussing what is happening in the city of Fukushima itself, you will see it's far from trivial.

http://www.techniques-ingenieur.fr/actualite/environnement-securite-energie-thematique_191/fukushima-des-repercussions-mondiales-en-silence-article_63357/?utm_source=ABO&utm_medium=alerte&utm_campaign=tiThematic_thematique_191_CampaignPROD&utm_content=ENV14072011

It is simply representative of what could happen in Europe at any moment, as the engineer Bernard Laponche pointed out in an article published in Télérama.

Germany has chosen to move toward phasing out nuclear energy. In contrast, the British Parliament has just voted to continue nuclear programs. This attitude always reflects the obsessive idea of energy independence. The North Sea's oil resources are nearing exhaustion.

England simply forgets that it lies 1,200–2,000 kilometers from an energy Eldorado: Iceland, which has vast geothermal, wind, and hydroelectric resources. Transmitting electrical power is absolutely no problem. All that is needed is to establish a submarine connection via high-voltage direct current (HVDC). This method is far from being new.

Search "HVDC" on Wikipedia (High Voltage Direct Current) and you'll access masses of information that the British seem completely unaware of.

In English.

In French.

The red lines on the following graph represent existing HVDC connections. The dashed lines show planned connections. Know that, using this method, line losses—whether submarine or terrestrial—are only 3% per thousand kilometers.

No one in England has suggested promoting the establishment of a submarine link with Iceland, whose hydroelectric, wind, and geothermal potential could satisfy the needs of several European countries, addressing concerns from nations fearful of becoming dependent on politically less stable countries and regions via the DESERTEC project (Wikipedia).

.

Existing or planned high-voltage direct current links.

From these encyclopedic data, you will learn that this method is very old. Indeed, any island without a local power generator can only be powered by direct current; otherwise, all the power would be dissipated through induction in the surrounding liquid medium.

Total power transmitted worldwide exceeds 100,000 MW across 142 installations. HVDC becomes essential when connections exceed 1,000 km—exactly the case for vast countries like China (6,400 MW transmitted at 500 kV). See this PDF on technical aspects (in English).

This technique is developing exponentially worldwide.

One is tempted to think people only react when it touches their skin. I agree with Bernard Laponche when he writes that Europe will inevitably face a major nuclear accident one day, simply due to the aging of its power plants. Chernobyl was not a sufficient warning. Apparently, Fukushima "was not heard by the British" ("no panic"). We must recognize that if the storm of 1999 in Gironde (unpredictable) had been slightly stronger, it wouldn't have been just two out of four backup cooling pump installations at the Blayais nuclear plant that would have failed, but all four. We would have had our Fukushima moment in France, even though we don't live in a seismically active country.

In the months preceding this, we witnessed a spectacular rise in water levels in the Missouri River, which overflowed its banks, flooding vast agricultural regions. A glance at the Missouri River basin is enough to grasp the situation. This was not due to torrential rains, but to an exceptional snowfall in northern regions near the Canadian border.

With summer arriving and snow melting, the regulating dams (barrages) could no longer contain such a massive influx of water. Hence, floods struck the nuclear facilities at Fort Calhoun and Cooper. The first has already led to significant evacuations of nearby populations. Below is the Fort Calhoun facility before the flood. Like many similar installations (especially in Japan), it sits right at water level. No one had planned to build a simple 5-meter-high circumvallation wall around the sensitive parts of the plant, which would have protected it from even the strongest floods.

Below is the Fort Calhoun nuclear plant before the flood:

And after the water rose:

First American measure: banning flights over the nuclear site and navigation on the Missouri River "for safety reasons."

Ancient Egyptians surrounded their temples with simple walls of sun-dried bricks, coated with bitumen or limestone, to protect them from Nile floods. But no, at Fort Calhoun they devised a surreal protection system: a water-filled tube designed to contain rising waters up to a few meters.

:

The water continued to rise

and this barrier proved insufficient. Residents had to be evacuated beyond a 16-kilometer radius. High-voltage installations had to be protected by sandbags.

The rubber dam was not enough!

Image showing the rubber protection barrier being submerged

When photos are worth a thousand words

One might have expected to see these images on the covers of our major magazines. But no. The sex life of Dominique Strauss-Kahn has become the sensational story.

My interpretation of this affair.

From Japan:

The powerful company Hitachi, despite concerns raised in its own country about building new nuclear plants, continues its export policy and aims to place 38 new reactors by 2050 in Asian countries.

Source:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20110721a1.html

http://fukushima.over-blog.fr/article-fukushima-apres-le-melt-through-le-melt-out-le-corium-attaque-les-nappes-phreatiques-79905647.html

According to Mr. Hiroaki Koide from Kyoto University, the situation at the Fukushima plant is desperate:

"I believe the corium—a molten mixture based on uranium—has damaged the reactor vessel bottoms and is seeping through the concrete, spreading into the ground. The reactor core fuel doesn't melt below 2,800 degrees (current temperature cannot be measured due to radioactivity).

There are roughly 100 tons of corium. The pressure vessels and metals used in the containment structure melt at 1,500 degrees. It's therefore likely that the corium fell to the bottom of the vessels, part of it attacked the ground, and another part mixed with contaminated water, causing wall erosion.

The fuel is leaking outside the reactors and releasing intense radioactivity into the environment. Mr. Koide describes this catastrophic situation as 'melt-out.'

If the corium reaches the groundwater, cooling efforts won't stop the spread of radioactivity. We must stop this underground infiltration to prevent ocean contamination. Shouldn't we consider building an underground containment structure around the plant? This would protect the groundwater and contaminated soil from the corium."

As we said earlier, nothing was built to handle a reactor meltdown—neither at the containment level nor at the vessel level. It was an assured failure from the start. That's why we must prepare for the "melt-down" phase, because it's only a matter of time before the corium escapes the vessels, breaches the outer containment, and seeps into the plant's subsoil."

I would add that no one knows the state of cracking in the 8-meter-thick concrete foundations on which the reactors are built. A magnitude 9 earthquake cracks... anything.

In contrast, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) praises TEPCO's progress in its "roadmap" to regain control of the situation by 2012.

Source:

http://fr.news.yahoo.com/laiea-salue-les-progr%C3%A8s-enregistr%C3%A9s-%C3%A0-fukushima-144452224.html

TEPCO publicly admits the failure of ventilation in reactor number 1, whose valves remained open.

Source:

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110722p2a00m0na001000c.html

Business leaders from the Kansai region presented an "urgent petition" urging the government on Thursday to resume nuclear reactors to ensure stable energy supply.

Source:

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20110722a1.html

etc....

To the east, nothing new...

We often wonder how the Japanese are reacting since May. There is a constant in Japanese behavior: it's considered inappropriate to expose one's sorrows before others. Reserve is expected. These people have a great capacity to internalize suffering. This has enabled them to endure numerous dramatic situations—whether the aftermath of World War II or recurring natural disasters. They endure, remain silent, rebuild like ants. But the Fukushima disaster is fundamentally different. It is a prolonged poisoning that has likely only just begun and is a direct consequence of the negligence in energy production across the country.

Mazarin used to say, "Time is a great master." This is true on the scale of years or decades. But with this tragedy, the timescale far exceeds human lifespans. The corium contains long-lived radionuclides. At Chernobyl, the Russians feared above all that the corium—already having melted through two concrete basements—would reach the groundwater, contaminate the Pripyat River, and beyond the Dnieper and the Black Sea. They urgently sacrificed hundreds of miners to dig a tunnel beneath the reactor and pour a 30-meter-by-30-meter concrete slab underneath it. At Fukushima, nothing similar was done, nor even considered. They merely kept about twenty employees in place, periodically replaced, whose task was to try cooling the reactors with water hoses. What if the 100 tons of corium at Fukushima reach the groundwater and contaminate the nearby Pacific coast with long-lived elements?

How will the Japanese manage this despair, with what fatalism and absence of revolt?

My readers might think, "He's been very sparing with articles lately. Was he on vacation?" No, not at all. Writing these articles takes me a lot of time. I need screenshots, editing, informative commentary, and extensive online archival research. Dozens of hours pass.

Meanwhile, I recall that on my homepage, bottom right, I've placed an ad offering for sale the album "Amber and Glass." Sixty-four pages in color. I believe the book is good, useful. It has been sold since August 2010, benefiting the association Science and Culture for All, at €8.50 including shipping. It's reasonable, democratic. If three copies were sold daily on average, the venture would be viable. What venture? Relaunching the publication of these comics from Anselme Lanturlu’s Adventures.

But no. One sale per day: it would take a year to cover the cost of a new print run. As I write this, I don't even feel like adding a link to the order page for the album.

I'm disappointed by the lack of response. It gives me the impression that among my readers, who so often thank me with emotional messages ("Thank you for existing!"), many simply sit down in the morning with their coffee, turn on their computer, and wonder, "So, what has this courageous, active man, despite his 74 years, come up with this time?"

In November 2010, I raised a public outcry, threatening to shut down my site until sales picked up. We reached ten sales per day. Then, very quickly, the momentum faded. I won't resort to such editorial terrorism to sell books. I have a good dozen titles in various genres in my files, some fully completed, but I think that if only one is sold per day, I have no desire to print them.

Ah: Eurocopter has reprinted copies in French and English of Passion Verticale. In passing, these people were kind enough to give us several copies bearing the Science and Culture for All header, which will be sold in their benefit. Initially, I had thought to request this special print run in a smaller format and sold at a very tight price, like the other album. But ultimately, to bring money into the association's coffers, I abandoned this idea. The superbly printed albums, with hard covers, can be purchased for €30 including shipping. I will include an original, signed drawing with each shipment. Soon, I'll post the announcement on my homepage. To those who find this price too high, I'll direct them to the Savoir sans Frontières website where they can download the black-and-white version for free.

As for my site: I'm going to slow down.

Does this mean I'll be pruning my roses and taking long naps? No, but I'll probably redirect my remaining energy elsewhere.

I've invested a great deal since the Fukushima disaster. I've explained to my readers things I myself often discovered, concerning this terrible event. The deeper I delved, the more I realized the gravity and depth of Japan's nuclear tragedy—and thus the danger posed by irresponsible nuclear "elites" (whom my friend Albert Souzan calls "nuclear pathologists") to our planet. It became increasingly clear that we are governed and managed by incompetent fools.

Beyond criticism—which is always easy—we must envision a different mode of development. My investigation revealed an impressive range of overlooked, possibly hidden solutions: simple, realistic, proven, non-speculative. I'm sorry for all the fanatics of superfluous yields, but it seems that with many more prosaic approaches, yet opening access to inexhaustible energy reserves, we already have plenty to do and practical solutions ready for immediate implementation.

At the same time, on June 6, I attended the international conference in Biarritz dedicated to Z-machines, where the most prominent figures in this new field were present. My friend, the Englishman Malcolm Haines, gave the first presentation at 8:30 a.m. The day before, we had met and discussed at length. Malcolm had just published, two days earlier, a 64-page paper in the prestigious journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion—a near-monograph on the subject.

The billions of degrees measured in 2006 at Sandia have been confirmed. No criticism, nothing. After this presentation—which we recorded, image and sound, despite the French organizers' refusal, and which will serve as evidence—I questioned Valentin Smirnov, Russia's top expert in this field and director of the High Temperature Institute Kurtchatov in Moscow. Naturally, I first asked him about what Haines had just confirmed. Another day I'll detail everything I learned at this conference. It's quite easy at such conferences, when you're not presenting a paper, to be passed off as an elderly academic haunting the event "to stay connected with the scientific community." An eccentric who, with a comfortable pension, prefers spending money on conferences rather than golf or senior cruises (while these conference participations are funded by my readers). Anonymity is achieved by pinning your badge inside your unbuttoned shirt, turned backward. One thinks of the absent-minded retiree who pinned their badge around their neck before buttoning their shirt. Such a man goes unnoticed. So we chat, we chat...

I'll simply mention the end of my conversation with Smirnov, very courteous, during the coffee break. You know that Russians have always been absolute masters in MHD. In 1954, Andrei Sakharov generated 100 million amperes using the magneto-cumulative generator he invented.

Refer to the dossier I posted on my site

.

I provoked the Russian without mercy.

• In Korea, in September 2010, I heard your colleague Grabowski present your results on your Angara V Z-machine. Honestly, with that heap of rust and its 5 million amperes, you look pitiful compared to the American machine's 26 million!

The Russian Z-machine Angara V

Smirnov immediately bristled (revealing something Haines didn't know):

• In Russia, we are completing construction of a Z-machine whose intensity will reach 50 million amperes, with a rise time of 150 nanoseconds.

Shortly afterward, I questioned a researcher from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (California). Rumors circulated that the Russians were developing something where the primary energy source was explosive. This LLL scientist believed (as the Russians told him) that the formula was less expensive than using capacitor banks.

But how do the Russians achieve such short rise times?

We must trust them. If they're putting so much effort into it, "there must be something." Anyway, at Biarritz, even much more modest experiments reported fusion neutrons.

I returned home by plane with Smirnov, who, if the flight attendant had offered him a parachute, would have jumped immediately. I learned that experiments based on a liner made of two conical sections (see my 2006 articles) had proven disappointing. It was impossible to make the two jets created by the hollow charge effect collide. The best target (Smirnov himself had invented the wire-lined liner) is a spheroidal liner with a double wire cage, invented by his student Zakharov ("just like at Sandia," Smirnov said).

Among his remarks, note this one:

• It was hard to secure funding. Fortunately, the military helped us.

(...)

The race for pure fusion bombs, which will replace conventional thermonuclear weapons using plutonium triggers, is thus underway between Russians and Americans. Anyone below 5–10 million amperes is immediately out of the game. Indeed, heating via compression allows temperatures to rise as the square of the electric current intensity. The Chinese, building a machine producing ten million amperes, have underestimated the challenge.

The French (the Sphinx facility in Gramat, a military installation in Lot) failed to understand that the brevity of the rise time was key (the Sphinx discharge, lacking an "adequate compression," occurs in 800 nanoseconds). A discharge with a rise time of 100 nanoseconds is equivalent to a 10 megahertz HF current. Thus, the 70,000 amperes passing through wires as fine as a hair do not flow through the metal's core but only on its periphery, due to the "skin effect." If the discharge is too slow, the wires sublime and plasma instabilities hinder focusing.

So the young researchers in Gramat use a conical liner to create jets. In short, they're doing astrophysics.

By betting from the start on a primary source of 150 kilograms of explosive, the Russians may be doubling the Americans, as Andrei Sakharov did with the thermonuclear device by opting immediately for the "dry bomb," using solid lithium hydride.

If you don't know, it was Sakharov who designed the Tsar Bomba (50 megatons). A FFF bomb—fission-fusion-fission. At full power, it could have developed 100 megatons, but it was "restrained" by replacing its uranium-238 casing with lead. After this magnificent outdoor physics experiment, Sakharov (as he recounts in his memoirs) calculated the number of cancers it would cause. He decided then to abandon military nuclear programs in 1967, dedicating himself henceforth to cosmology. It was there that he first proposed a cosmological model composed of two entities with anti-parallel time arrows. I only discovered this in 1983, reading the book dedicated to his scientific works (published in France by Éditions Anthropos, Paris).

Having a presumption is one thing. Being confronted with discourse that passes for proof is another. This conference, supposedly "civil," had strong odors of defense secrecy. Malcolm thinks, as I do, that temperatures reached with ZR could approach 8 billion degrees. With their 50 megaamperes, the Russians could reach 20 billion degrees. The physics of ultra-dense, ultra-hot plasmas is emerging. But, as we can see, the priority objective will be developing new weapons—pure fusion thermonuclear bombs potentially miniaturizable through nanotechnologies. With mixtures like Boron-11 + Hydrogen-1, we could even achieve "green bombs" with no neutron emissions.

It took me time to recover from this Biarritz conference—I admit, touching once again the unfathomable stupidity of humanity (as in Brighton in January 2001).

With retired friends, we will quickly compose a book—a 180-page monograph—whose format will resemble the books I previously offered for sale on my site. We'll make €10 profit per book, net. The books will be sold to benefit Science and Culture for All. The menu includes four parts.

• Nuclear: Suicide, User Manual

• A dead end called ITER

• Solutions based on renewable energies, at the scale of planetary needs.

• Ultra-dense, ultra-hot plasma physics: weapons first, energy later.

Policymakers can profit from the information contained to possibly include it in their electoral programs. With the collected funds, we'll travel and report on already operational installations worldwide—in Spain, the USA, Canada, China, etc. Image-makers will join us and produce video documentaries different from the incomprehensible nonsense that was Arte's report on fusion.

NEWS

GUIDE

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June 1, 2011:

Surreal:

The International Atomic Energy Agency praises TEPCO's handling of the crisis

May 31, 2011.

An interesting response by Jeremy Rifkin to Nicolas Sarloky's claims on the Next Up website. But his solution is incomplete.

Germany debates its plan to exit nuclear energy.

Angela Merkel

The decision is made!

May 15, 2011:

Michio Kaku extremely pessimistic about the situation's evolution

Professor Michio Kaku believes the Fukushima site remains extremely vulnerable to another seismic shock. He says plant technicians continue to water the reactors, but there are leaks and a mass of contaminated water is flooding the basements, which must be pumped out. When storage tanks fill up, the Japanese release the water into the ocean. The cover measures TEPCO is considering aim only to prevent radioactive dust from escaping into the atmosphere and contaminating nearby land. TEPCO leaders are incompetent and thought only of saving their investment.

Kaku is extremely critical and says public trust in the Japanese government is plummeting. He adds that the Japanese are deluding themselves when they ask, "When will we be able to return to our homes?" A "dead zone" will remain. He concludes by saying it took 14 years to open the containment vessel at Three Mile Island, where part of the core had melted, but where the corium hadn't left the reactor's containment—unlike in Japan. He estimates it will take at least thirty years for the Japanese to clean up the Fukushima site.

Things don't seem to be improving in the Land of the Rising Sun. The building housing one of the reactors, number 1, is tilting and appears to be sinking into the ground.

No bold, "Russian-style" measures commensurate with the situation were taken in the days or weeks following the disaster. Immediate access clearance (which TEPCO only now begins to consider!) was needed. Then clearing debris to be able to... do something. The Japanese are no strangers to handling heavy loads with overhead cranes, in their ports and steel industry. Implementing such means to clean the site and remove debris covering the reactors was not done—due to parsimony, incompetence, and indecision. As Kaku notes in his interview, in Japan no one knows who "manages" this crisis. In fact, no one does. Political authorities are incompetent. The prime minister is a puppet who "renounced his salary"—the only thing he could think of doing. Nuclear experts, called upon to go on-site and take charge, have declined.

The Danaïdes' barrel

To bring heavy machinery into action or build them, requisitions would be needed, billions of dollars spent, a real plan established, and the situation taken in hand. But at TEPCO, no one seems to have a plan. We observe and water...

As Kaku reminds us, what is stored at Fukushima is a true bomb, especially due to combustible "spent" or unused fuel elements in the pools. If one pool collapses, these elements, thrown against each other, could go critical.

Some reactor vessels, if not all, behave like

Danaïdes' barrels.

This may be the most accurate image.

On-site, dozens of technicians are doing anything but effective work, while company leaders resign or collapse face-first.

Since nothing has been done except cooling with water hoses—which is merely a temporary fix—the situation is deteriorating unfavorably in the various reactors. There is increasing speculation that the explosion at reactor number 3 was not simply due to hydrogen, but possibly to a "prompt criticality," an early chain reaction within a cluster of fuel rods stored in the nearby pool. Reports suggest fragments of fuel rods have been found far from the plant.

May 14, 2011

Latest information:

TEPCO disclosures: Reactor No. 1—its stainless steel 304L pressure vessel is cracked and penetrated due to collapse and melting of fuel rods; massive highly radioactive leaks; cooling impossible; water level below minus 5 meters; the reactor core is now exposed to air (...), its future is problematic, and uncertain for reactors No. 2, 3, and 4 as well.

TEPCO's stabilization plan timeline has been completely overturned; emergency studies are underway to construct concrete sarcophagi attached to the rock at less than 50 meters below ground, using zeolite to absorb radioactive materials.

Latest information, pending confirmation: The reactor No. 4 building appears to be tilting or sinking; emergency reinforcement work is reportedly underway (this U.S. report is also visually supported, supposedly not an optical illusion—if confirmed, it could signal serious developments).

Reminder: Confirmation of this information is still pending.

General Electric advertisement, at the time of selling its reactors to TEPCO!

May 13, 2011.

Source:

The Mainichi Daily News

TOKYO (Kyodo) — Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, revealed Thursday that holes had been created by melted nuclear fuel at the bottom of the No. 1 reactor's pressure vessel.

The company said it has found multiple holes adding up to several centimeters in welded piping. Earlier in the day, it said the amount of water inside the troubled reactor was unexpectedly low — not enough to cover the nuclear fuel — hinting that a large part of the fuel melted after being fully exposed.

TEPCO revealed Thursday (May 12, 2011) that holes had been discovered at the bottom of Reactor No. 1’s pressure vessel due to fuel melting within it.

The company said it found several holes at the welded joints of the pumping systems. Earlier that day, it was revealed that the water level inside the damaged reactor was unusually low—lower than suspected. This meant the water no longer covered the fuel rods, implying a significant portion may have melted after being left uncovered.

My comment:

This situation is a sign of great instability and hardly suggests a quick return to normalcy. In the "shut-down" core, the decay of about fifty radionuclides produces heat. This heat generation tends to decrease over time. That is how, eventually, the pressure vessel at Three Mile Island was opened years after the incident, allowing visual inspection—and confirmation that 45% of the core had melted. Until this "calm" returns, cooling must be maintained. The evolution of the situation depends on the effectiveness of cooling. At Fukushima, this remains problematic.

May 12, 2011:

It is no secret that the unfolding drama in Japan at Fukushima has been entirely ignored by major French media outlets, with only rare exceptions. We should mention the special May 2011 issue of Science et Vie, well illustrated and thoroughly documented. Beyond that, when I check my "Yahoo News," I find football and gossip about current celebrities. This is shameful. Why such silence? One might suspect a blackout orchestrated by the nuclear lobby. That’s possible. But it also reflects the superficiality and emptiness of official media, where newsrooms live "in the moment." For these outlets, this earthquake and nuclear disaster are merely a passing event. They make the front page and then move on. Yet it is obvious this issue has taken on chronic proportions and risks dragging on for years.

In the Science et Vie issue, I read about TEPCO’s criminal dishonesty: for decades, the company concealed cracks by painting over them and falsified inspection reports of its power plants. Elsewhere, we discover collusion between Japanese nuclear elites and the underworld, the infamous Yakuza, tasked with recruiting unemployed "cleaners" to scrub reactor pools. One might also imagine that for decades, these same Yakuza have silenced those who tried to expose such conditions, while plant operators, eager to line their pockets, bought silence from others. In that case, what we should witness is not mere apologies from leaders, but a proper ritual seppuku. Traditional values are fading.

Are our journalists really so incapable of understanding this? Possibly. They reflect the deafness and evasion of the average citizen, confronted with distressing situations they refuse to face.

I came across a fragment of an old video showing that idiot Giscard d'Estaing declaring, at the time the Chernobyl cloud passed over, "this has no health implications." True enough—he was the main architect of France’s nuclearization, which he considered a source of pride and the highlight of his seven-year term. This statement shows one can be both a product of a prestigious school and a complete fool. Let us recall that we owe much of the European Constitution to this "egghead."

There is a constant phenomenon among those in power and wealth: they confuse their own interests with the general good, convincing themselves of it. It’s rare for them to end their lives in poverty.

People are increasingly realizing their future is managed by two entities:

• The powers of money
• Incompetent, disconnected politicians. In short, incompetent fools.

Revisit the moment when Nathalie Kusciusko-Morizet was interviewed on France 2’s "Complément d'enquête" in April 2011, where she uttered this astonishing statement:

• Nothing has been planned for the dismantling of solar farms.

I had to replay this clip to make sure I hadn’t imagined it. What could she possibly mean by "dismantling solar farms"? This woman is utterly incompetent. One might expect her to mention "dismantling hydroelectric dams," while we’re at it. She’s a minister-parrot, entrusted with ecological affairs, reciting rehearsed lines and spouting empty phrases like "...better transparency in the nuclear sector." I’ve detailed this broadcast so you can spot the nonsense constantly poured down from the "highest echelons of power."

I did my part by informing my readers during these weeks when the Fukushima crisis began, trying to provide some general knowledge about the nuclear world. Then I spent considerable time analyzing the excellent "Complément d'Enquête" broadcast on France 2. If you haven’t read this page, I strongly recommend you do. Many discovered with surprise that our country, through MOX fuel, had 20 of its reactors operating not on uranium, but on plutonium. Along the way, they learned that La Hague facility, under the guise of a "spent fuel reprocessing center," is not a landfill, but a chemical plant recovering plutonium—fundamental to MOX production. MOX is simply a mixture of 7% fissile plutonium diluted in 93% non-fissile uranium-238. Currently, 60 tons of this extremely dangerous substance, plutonium, are stored at La Hague. If France were to go to war, this center, along with all its reactors and storage pools, would be prime targets—stockpiling enough material to kill the entire European population. Indeed, MOX is also (and primarily) the fuel for fast breeder reactors like Creys Malville (shut down, and no one knows how to dismantle it).

In online debates on forums like Agoravox, some argue we shouldn’t descend into paranoia, imagining terrorists someday launching sophisticated attacks against our power plants—using planes bypassing all defenses, firing ultra-sophisticated guided missiles capable of penetrating meters of concrete and thick steel vessels.

To hold such views is to confine oneself within "French insularity." France, like many other countries—including South Korea—is willing to sell reactors to anyone. To nations installing them in seismically active zones. Or to others who might someday become targets of well-organized opposition. Meanwhile, we also sell them the most advanced weapons.

Nuclear targets are fundamentally different from conventional ones. Take a large munitions depot or hydrocarbon storage tanks. Suddenly, they’re hit or attacked. There’s destruction, fire, and a massive blaze. Then, it all "settles down." The dead are mourned, buried, and forgotten. Fires eventually die out. We rebuild what was destroyed.

In the case of a nuclear target, the scenario is entirely different and fundamentally distinct.

The "fire" cannot be controlled because it’s... inaccessible. Beneath its deteriorating sarcophagus, the Chernobyl fire will smolder for tens of thousands of years, threatening to contaminate the groundwater. Nuclear damage can spread across thousands of square kilometers and prove irreversible. Vast agricultural lands may become unusable for thousands or even tens of thousands of years. Areas of similar size could remain uninhabitable for comparable durations. Millions of people’s health could be affected, with no distance limit.

But our nuclear barons couldn’t care less. Profit blinds them.

Now I turn my remaining energy to arguing against ITER, whose immediate abandonment is imperative. In parallel, an urgent "Plan B" must be constructed. We should applaud ecologists and greens for their foresight and sometimes courage. Conversely, we must highlight the cowardice of scientists, fearful—given the power of the nuclear lobby in France—that any protest or even simple analysis might harm their careers as compliant civil servants.

This Plan B simply requires massive investment in renewable energy using 19th-century technologies: drilling holes to harness geothermal energy, capturing solar energy with reflective steel mirrors to generate pressurized steam and produce dozens, and eventually thousands of megawatts (see the Spanish Andasol project). A fully operational, finalized project producing 50 megawatts contradicts the absurd claims of Claude Allègre ("we don’t know how to store energy!"—a refrain repeated by Areva’s director).

Our science and technology have been misdirected for decades—chasing a "Theory of Everything" or enriching large corporations, serving the military-industrial complex, pharmaceutical companies, etc. Meanwhile, political power has colluded in assassinating or attempting to assassinate worthy enterprises (like Kokopelli, which maintains a blog on Fukushima events). All this is lamentable, utterly contemptible.

Nothing new in the East. Nothing new in the Land of the Rising Sun. A camera captured steam and smoke emissions from Reactor No. 3. The media did not report it.

May 8, 2011: Fire reignites at Reactor No. 3

Another video shows a worrying glow captured at night by a surveillance webcam overhead. A few dozen workers are busy around the plant, improvising, cooling with water hoses. The Emperor is comforting refugees in a stadium. It seems companies and the government are concealing the severity of the situation to avoid panic. Nearby residents naively ask, "When will we be able to return home?"

Pathetic.

Japan’s energy crisis

:

The main TV network reported on May 11, 2011:

60% of Japan’s nuclear power capacity is offline.

Immediate economic impact on Japan

April 23, 2011:

Make the effort to watch the excellent "Complément d'Enquête" broadcast.

It’s long, but it contains everything you need to know—and perhaps even everything.

Complément d'enquête

Nuclear disaster: The Fukushima catastrophe reveals daily lies from TEPCO, whose engineers struggle to regain control of the reactors. What real risks do the Japanese face? What about France and its 58 reactors?

Broadcast on Monday, April 18, 2011, at 10:10 PM on France 2

http://www.pluzz.fr/complement-d-enquete-2011-04-18-22h10.html

This broadcast is lengthy. My exhausting task is to create a digest of such documents, highlighting key points for faster reading. I must include dozens of screenshots, edit them with Photoshop, build a webpage, and add text. This requires dozens of hours of work. I must do it, but I am thoroughly exhausted. I turned 74 recently and am beginning to feel the weight of years.

The beginning of this task

It’s downloadable (572 MB), according to a reader, at:

http://depositfiles.com/files/onwpxsugv

It won’t remain online forever—especially since it will disturb many.

Congratulations to the France 2 team that conducted this investigation and produced this excellent-quality documentary.

Posted April 30, 2011

:

The European Union has authorized the import of radioactive food products from Japan.

In this

video

from April 26, in English, Ami Gundersen analyzes the (spectacular) footage of Reactor No. 3’s explosion and questions whether it could be solely attributed to hydrogen-oxygen gas. He suggests the primary explosion’s shockwave may have compressed fuel rods in the adjacent pool, triggering a criticality excursion and a mini-nuclear explosion.

Not impossible.

Nature issues another reminder

On April 28, 2011, an exceptionally powerful tornado devastated Alabama, USA.

A F4 tornado, one kilometer wide, with winds exceeding 300 km/h.

220 dead, 1,700 injured

Half of Madison County was nearly erased from the map.

http://www.waff.com

The electrical supply to the pumping systems at Browns Ferry nuclear plant was destroyed. The system had to switch to backup generators.

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Browns_Ferry_hit_by_major_storms_2804112.html

After Fukushima, as Frédéric Requin points out, this event once again raises the question of nuclear installations’ vulnerability to exceptional, catastrophic natural phenomena (hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and now tornadoes). What if this tornado had passed over the spent fuel storage pool? Its roof would have been ripped off, water sucked away, radioactive spent fuel rods carried aloft and dispersed tens of kilometers away. And perhaps, if the diesel fuel tanks were accessible, the tornado could have emptied them, disabling the backup system entirely. We’d have a Fukushima-bis...

"Disaster films" are... reality. Since "zero risk" doesn’t exist, we must choose technological solutions that, in case of natural disasters, do not lead to irreversible, catastrophic human, health, and ecological consequences.

If we install thousands of hectares of parabolic solar collectors (like Spain’s Andasol plant, 100 hectares producing 50 megawatts), and a tornado passes through such an installation, we can quantify the financial damage, lament the material losses, and begin reconstruction.

But the debris from metal mirrors won’t poison the region for hundreds of thousands of years.

In this simple aspect, nuclear energy is sheer nonsense.

The Spanish Andasol solar power plant: 100 hectares producing 50 megawatts

Scale of the parabolic collectors at the Andasol plant.

What must be realized immediately in France.

We must move beyond "do-it-yourself tinkering."

This is solar energy.

This ignorant man Allègre said on a TV show, "we don’t know how to store energy." Completely false! The Andasol installation is fully equipped. These tubes produce gas at 400°C under pressure, driving a turbine and generator. Day/night storage is achieved in large tanks of molten salts with high heat capacity, at 400°C (harmless). This isn’t an "experimental setup"—it’s a fully operational system.

These installations terrify the French nuclear lobby. When Madame Kosiusko-Morisset spoke of solar energy on "Complément d'Enquête," she only mentioned photovoltaics, emphasizing the cost of importing Asian-made cells and the "cost of dismantling such installations." Either she’s unaware of facilities like Andasol, or she deliberately ignores them—worse still.

On Japan’s NHK channel, Sunday, April 23.

Thus, there was

fusion of these three cores

A political program is needed. No candidate has one. It’s simple: "on the right" or "on the left," these people only think about continuing or adjusting (which is simply impossible) the existing system. Traditional ecologists suffer from myopia. They know what a megawatt means (a thousand kilowatts), but can’t go further. They ride bicycles or canoes.

A nuclear reactor produces 400–600–900–1,000 megawatts and beyond.

A country like France needs tens of thousands of megawatts.

A political program focused on solving the "energy crisis" offers multiple stabilizing facets:

• It absorbs "floating capital," represents a fight against financial speculation (which has nothing to do with real economy).

• It creates jobs by the tens of thousands.

• It develops an entire technico-scientific sector with an interesting aspect: it doesn’t involve the military.

Unless we imagine, like at Syracuse’s siege, burning enemy ships’ sails from afar using parabolic mirrors—just as Archimedes did.

• It secures future generations instead of leaving them a country and planet that are unlivable. A project that cares for your own health. Haven’t you realized that since we let amateur sorcerers meddle everywhere, human health is deteriorating? The food industry puts anything into products, selects plant species "most resistant," "most profitable," but they lose the cancer-fighting substances nature originally provided.

It’s like the film “L’Aile et la Cuisse” with Louis de Funès—such a mega-project requires a policy of major public works, manageable only by states, not private companies. These projects can’t fit into market-driven, profit-oriented policies.

• Finally, all so-called "poor" countries can follow suit. All these technologies are within their reach. They can develop their own power plants for their own needs, rather than entering a new phase of helio-hydro-aero-neo-colonialism.

Dictators and petty rulers easily seize centralized national wealth—oil, gas, mineral riches. It’s far harder to lock up the sun, wind, or ocean currents in a Swiss bank.

By aiming high and thinking long-term, it’s possible over time not only to replace nuclear energy but also fossil fuel energy with a whole palette of renewables (imagine artificial oil made from algae!). It’s grand, vast. Solar thermal, perfectly operational in Spain and the USA, produces one megawatt per hectare. But it’s infinitely scalable.

There is no lack of land—neither in Spain nor elsewhere.

A small note: Regarding the Spanish Andasol project, I sent you to a more detailed page that a friend recently tried to post on Wikipedia by simply translating the English version.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andasol_Solar_Power_Station

But immediately (within less than 24 hours), Wikipedia France administrators—poor little jerks protected by their sacred "pseudonyms"—erased his page (check the history) and restored the previous one. Why? Because this friend was "on the blacklist of Wikipedia France." You know I’ve been personally banned for life for over five years after revealing the identity of a former École Normale Supérieure student, Yacine Dolivet, who was writing a thesis on superstrings and annoyed me by spouting nonsense about General Relativity, which he didn’t understand. By the way, has anyone heard from this fool lately? Last I knew, he was in a bank. Maybe he’s a "trader"...

If you want to do something useful: Ensure the simple translation of the English page becomes the standard on Wikipedia France, plagued by legions of administrators who are idle, mediocre, and arrogant. There are no words strong enough to condemn such idiotic nuisance, rooted in a mix of incompetence and vanity.

Wikipedia is a

fantastically useful project

that fortunately functions despite this parasitism by mediocre, insecure, idle people who hinder those who could genuinely contribute to its development.

Back to this mega-ecology project:

Budget? At the planetary level: equivalent to that of a third world war... but peaceful.

Renewable energies are ill-suited for speculation, capital flight, or blocking essential materials. How do you speculate on the sun, wind, or tides? How do you stop ocean currents, veil the sun, or halt the wind?

How do you create scarcity

to speculate on such "products"?

Think: If we succeed in establishing, at the required cost, viable installations harnessing all these energies surrounding us, the geopolitical landscape will be utterly transformed. Why fight over a product suddenly rendered worthless?

We are living through the first ecological war in history. It has already begun.

The war of rational people against profit-driven individuals, marketeers, planet-destroyers, with their latest absurd idea—the "shit gas," as Fillon so aptly put it, through yet another slip of the tongue. A war against liars, sellers of false promises (Sarkozy), the unimaginative (Hulot), clowns (the Bodganoffs), philosopher-performers (Bernard-Henri Lévy, creator of disposable thought), political tightrope walkers (Strauss-Kahn, "sewn in gold"), bought scientists (Allègre), servants of the military-industrial lobby (many physicists and nuclear specialists), former goat herders turned builders of Babel-like towers or air-conditioned ski slopes.

Yes, these solutions are expensive. We must inject money—lots of money—without worrying about "return on investment." Let that concern the fools, the selfish, the soulless, the dreamless, the imagination-less, all those Bling-Bling-obsessed people who take their bladder for a lantern.

For the presidential election, we need to find a candidate—or a candidate—who embraces this grand project (Eva Joly?). Hulot pretends to be an ecologist, yet he was sponsored by every polluter and planet-destroyer (Total, EDF, etc.). He’s backed by Jean-Marc Jancovici, a young polytechnician who praises the "carbon tax" alongside him (but where would the money go? History doesn’t say). A man who has never worked, never produced anything but wind (non-windy), a "professional consultant" who recites the text written for him with full conviction as an actor, avoiding questions that bother him.

Jancovici is to economics what Bernard-Henri Lévy is to philosophy.

Moreover, it’s not proven that greenhouse gas emissions are the planet’s main problem, nor that they are the confirmed cause of a warming that needs careful analysis. All this is murky and hides sordid interests. Who does Jancovici serve? Himself, like so many others. Look at the enormous profits Hulot made selling his ideas, his "brand." I suspect he won’t go through with his candidacy—partly because he’d be incapable of managing a country on any level. They’ll withdraw at the last moment, "selling their votes" or securing "assurances" (promises that will obviously not be kept). Then they’ll return to collect their huge salaries and dividends, convincing themselves that, during a brief campaign, they served the French interest and defended the ecological cause.

What’s terrible is the slow evolution of the masses. In Japan, 38% of Japanese still believe nuclear energy is the solution. Hulot proposes a referendum. He knows that if one were held after a strong media campaign, the French—like their usual sheep-like selves—would overwhelmingly support continuing this dangerous program. All you’d need to say is:

• If you oppose nuclear energy, you’ll have to light candles; our economy will collapse, unemployment will spread.

And worse still:

• The sky will fall on our heads.

I’ll have to confront small fools like Jean-Marc Jancovici or big fools like Claude Allègre, dismantling their arguments one by one, methodically. Jancovici predicts a major crisis. Certainly, if we stay within his absurd system, instability won’t come from economic upheavals or shortages of this or that, but from financial turbulence driven by those Ubu-like fathers who wield their crooks and finance sticks.

What I reproach Jancovici and Hulot for? (Allègre isn’t even worth mentioning)

Their lack of imagination and epic vision.

Sign the CRIIRAD petition calling for citizens to be informed about the radioactivity in their environment

http://petitions.criirad.org/?Petition-pour-une-transparence

Source:

http://www.cartoradiations.fr

The CIA analyzes France’s nuclear policy regarding plutonium proliferation

April 18, 2011: The former "leftist" minister Claude Allègre now serves the power.

• We must stop walking on our heads

The firefighter of the atom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8rBBCKnboU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJQAC4NswgA

What I heard from this man supposedly "knowing everything" made me furious.

• The impression given by anti-nuclear activists, who have carried out courageous actions for years while we watched them, is unfairly labeled as leftist.

There are solutions to quickly replace nuclear and fossil fuel energy with alternative sources. We simply need to invest the necessary funds. Allègre, who claims for example that we don't know how to store energy, is merely ignorant—devoid of even basic knowledge in engineering and physics. He imagines a country covered in ugly wind turbines and solar panels. He rightly mocks the champions of degrowth. If I had been on that panel as a scientist and engineer, I would have quickly silenced him.

Indeed, it's enough to go to a steel mill and observe a Bessemer furnace, where iron is melted using electric resistance, to realize we will never produce such vast quantities of electricity, even when combining the output from numerous individual homes.

Anti-nuclear activists showed great courage by confronting the nuclear monster under a torrent of tear gas, without any public support, as usual.

But what's missing in these groups is a solid alternative plan—lacking engineers and physicists. Hulot surrounded himself with "environmental specialists," champions of fighting greenhouse gas emissions, ardent supporters of the "carbon tax," like the Polytechnicien Jean-Marc Jancovici. Both remain highly questionable. Hulot has never hidden his support from major groups like EDF, ORÉAL, etc.

It remains perfectly true that household electricity consumption and our approach to transportation could be revised to substantially reduce electricity bills. But:

• This degrowth is poorly perceived by the public ("we’ll have to light candles!")
• There is no sufficiently ambitious substitute project for nuclear power. Only countries like Spain and the USA have managed to implement real large-scale solar power stations. You can easily find them online. Germany’s efforts make Sarkozy’s boastful claims about being a leader in nuclear energy and promising to invest and become a leader in renewable energies (Sarkozy’s electoral campaign) look ridiculous.

The Spanish Andasol solar power plant: 50 megawatts, with energy storage in molten salt.

Capable of meeting the needs of a city of 200,000 inhabitants. Scalable, as can be seen.

Why aren’t we financing such projects?

The energy needs of countries like ours amount to tens of thousands of megawatts—period. I’m talking about current needs. In France, we must account for 78,000 megawatts, of which 62,400 MW are currently covered by nuclear power. If we consider developing alternative energy sources, we must aim for production at this scale—not merely savings from low-energy bulbs and well-insulated homes. Although such savings are far from negligible, they are true. Significant progress can be made in better managing household energy consumption.

But industrial needs and transportation demands are unavoidable. We won’t run TGVs by placing photovoltaic cells on their roofs.

What this ignorant man Allègre, who pretends to be a scientist, fails to understand is that we could easily envision electricity production units capable of matching nuclear and oil-fired power plants. The United States is currently finalizing construction of 320-megawatt solar power stations.

• Ah, but how, some may ask?

• By investing the necessary funds, and using large-scale installations.

The DESERTEC project illustrated what could be achieved by placing such installations on land around the Mediterranean basin, supplying not only that region but also all of Europe. The key problem—the long-distance transport of electricity over thousands of kilometers—has been solved for a long time. I’ll explain this in detail in the May 2011 Nexus article. But you can also find this information online.

That said, the DESERTEC project immediately ran into problems with relations with "solar energy-producing countries" located in the Maghreb, which lack political stability "bulletproof."

I read that Angela Merkel announced Germany had decided to completely abandon nuclear power to fully push toward renewable energies.

That’s the way forward, regardless of cost.

Because we’re playing with the health of future generations. I heard Allègre advocating for spreading small nuclear reactors. That’s sheer madness! No one talks about waste management! A journalist pointed out this increases risks. But our former socialist minister doesn’t care.

Regarding renewable energies, we are living in a situation comparable to war—a war against greed, recklessness, irresponsibility, and incompetence (the Fukushima disaster is a perfect example, whose people will continue suffering for years). We must consider all possible solutions and implement them. We could equip southern-facing mountain slopes. Floating renewable energy stations (solar + wind + hydro) are also viable solutions.

Considering solar energy, the issue of land use arises. We can produce several megawatts per hectare under our latitudes. France’s needs (78,000 megawatts) thus equate to a square with sides measuring around ten or several dozen kilometers.

On a national scale, this is ultimately minuscule.

One thing we know for certain is that electricity can be transported over long distances. In France, the power grid is meshed so that the distance between production units and consumption centers doesn’t exceed 200 kilometers. Beyond 500 km, losses due to inductive effects make alternating current transmission uneconomical. The Canadians faced this problem. In the 1970s, two opposing trends emerged regarding energy development.

• One favored nuclear energy.
• The other suggested exploiting vast potential for hydroelectric resources in northern regions, using massive dams on fast-flowing rivers with minimal elevation changes but reliable water supply.

These installations would flood large areas initially considered hunting grounds for indigenous tribes. If we had prioritized preserving these lands by choosing nuclear power, all these populations—including Canadian tribes—would now live under the constant threat of nuclear disasters and face problems of radioactive waste accumulation and decommissioning of short-lived plants (30 years).

Just a side note: A pressurized water nuclear reactor (currently the safest type) is built around a 20 cm thick steel vessel. Pressure inside this vessel reaches 155 bars in French installations. This steel ages relatively quickly due to neutron bombardment, which disrupts its crystalline structure and reduces mechanical strength.

Its lifespan doesn’t exceed thirty years.

As one of my retired neighbors, who spent his entire career at Cadarache working on nuclear submarine reactors, once told me:

• Submarine reactors also operate under pressurized water. Initially, they ran at 150 bars. But toward the end of their life, engineers found it safer to reduce pressure to 40 bars.

Hydraulic installations don’t age. We don’t periodically decommission hydroelectric dams. They’re built to last indefinitely.

In Canada, in this conflict between nuclear advocates and proponents of hydroelectric power, the central issue was the enormous cost of production and transmission infrastructure. There were also climatic challenges (one Canadian hydroelectric plant is entirely underground).

The most powerful production units had to be located 1,400 km north of major consumption centers.

Fortunately, the hydroelectric faction won, leading to the creation of Hydro-Québec, a state-owned company.

Check the internet. The figures are staggering. Quebec has become the world’s largest producer of hydroelectric power (its geography allowed this). It operates 59 hydroelectric plants producing 36,429 megawatts. The Churchill Falls dam produces 5,428 megawatts. The Saint James Bay complex alone produces 16,000 megawatts.

The remaining issue was electricity transmission—and this is where I want to focus. As I’ll explain in the May 2011 Nexus article, beyond 500–1,000 km, transmitting electricity as alternating current through overhead lines becomes uneconomical due to "inductive losses." If transmission occurs underwater (e.g., crossing the St. Lawrence River), this constraint drops to 50–100 km.

The Canadians therefore opted for direct current transmission, developing massive high-power rectifier installations operating at very high voltage. I provide two images.


Manitoba rectifier unit operating at 150,000 volts

An image illustrating the scale of Canadian rectifier units

This alternating current (up to 750,000 volts), once rectified, is then transmitted as high-voltage direct current, over thousands of megawatts.

Line losses then drop to just 3% per thousand kilometers!

At the destination, this direct current is converted back to alternating current using inverters, then voltage is reduced via transformers, etc.

Thanks to this equipment, Canada became immediately energy-independent, avoiding the poisoned trap of nuclear power. Of course, we don’t have such abundant hydroelectric resources in France.

But what’s crucial to remember is that it’s perfectly possible to generate electricity in one place and transport it thousands of kilometers.

Allègre, who isn’t an engineer, probably doesn’t know this. We’re stunned when we hear this man, who must have some knowledge in geology and hydrology, favorably view shale gas exploitation!

This "shit gas," as Fillon so aptly named it.

Currently, humanity as a whole could solve all its problems—food and health are no secret. The same applies to energy. After careful reflection, I believe that by choosing renewable sources—solar, geothermal, marine, wind, biochemical—we would completely transform the planet’s social, political, and economic organization.

Knowledge equals power.

The world of "high technology" dominates and enslaves peoples. By wanting to deploy small nuclear reactors everywhere, these great powers aren’t just running a grave risk for the entire world. They can only deepen the dependency of poor nations on rich ones—and that’s precisely their aim. Not to improve people’s well-being.

Renewable energy is accessible to all countries. The vast majority of required technologies are based on knowledge from fifty or even a hundred years ago. All nations could "play this game" and become independent.

We live in an era obsessed with "return on investment" and short-term profits. Expectations are measured in years. These other projects don’t allow for such short-term returns. They can’t align with the greed driving today’s world, which draws strength only from our weakness and our inability to set other goals. These projects must be state-led, genuinely globalist in the best sense. They cannot be financed through predatory loans. This is precisely the kind of societal project our presidential candidates completely lack.

If such grand projects were initiated, they would generate massive employment—not profits. Thus, the profit-driven world rejects them, denies them, and people like Allègre become their advocates and accomplices, donning the robes of scientists and supposed intellectuals.

They have an easy time discrediting "classic anti-nuclear activists," who aren’t particularly knowledgeable in physics or engineering. That said, these people courageously fought against what was being implemented, in complete public indifference. If they lacked competitive projects, they were the first to recognize the scale of the danger.

I cited France’s electricity consumption needs. But I’ll go even further. By completely transforming our techno-science, turning it toward serving us rather than allowing others to use it as an instrument of power and enslavement, we could replace not only nuclear power but also oil—ending all greed and spectacular waste, like the kind we’ve directly witnessed in Dubai, the "Tower of Babel" city.

All this using relatively simple, proven technologies accessible to all peoples on Earth.

It’s all a matter of scale, investment amounts, and goals pursued.

There are historical moments when people spend staggering sums to design and create products simply meant to be destroyed—consumed violently. In such situations, they’re also ready to sacrifice countless human lives. These situations are called wars.

When you hate, you don’t count.

Imagine engineers proposing solutions for the Normandy landings. Imagine financiers’ reaction:

• Can you imagine how much this would cost? Building massive floating concrete structures to create artificial ports. Have you calculated the cost of bridges, access roads, and everything needed to handle, assemble, and maneuver these structures? No, the Normandy landings project is a ruinous madness!

The Principality of Monaco has built a floating pier—connected to the mainland only by a hinge. Here are the figures provided by Xavier Lafont, who in our group first proposed floating solar, wind, and tidal installations on barges:

Cost: 150 million euros
Height: 19 m
Total length: 352 m
Weight: 163,000 tons
Base width: 44.0 m
Width above water: 28.0 m
Draft: 16 meters
Lifespan: a century.

Image source: http://fr.structurae.de/structures/data/index.cfm?id=s0004215

The floating breakwater at Monaco’s Quai Rainier III

These dimensions and design show that floating installations can withstand violent Mediterranean storms.

Which concrete specialist could provide more modest figures for less luxurious, modular, mass-produced floating structures capable of being assembled into massive concrete ice floes?

April 16, 2011: Since March 11, 2011—46 days now—we’ve been witnessing TEPCO’s efforts to "contain the situation" at Fukushima. We’ve seen stunning drone footage of the site and realized that reactors are now just heaps of concrete and scrap metal.

Throughout this time, what has actually happened? At a glance, not much. We’ve seen a few dozen workers frantically spraying water from fire trucks onto reactor components...

We learned the government had requested nuclear experts to visit the site—and no one came!

To assess the situation, we’re reduced to speculation. It wasn’t just the tsunami. The powerful earthquake fractured concrete slabs. We’ve seen the cracks on the surface. IRSN told us the reactors rest on an 8-meter-thick slab. But earthquakes don’t care about that—they crack anything, regardless of thickness. Slabs, spent fuel pools, etc.

No one knows the extent of concrete structural fractures caused by the quake, or how extensive leaks might be.

Spraying water to prevent temperatures in the vessels and pools from rising can only be a temporary measure. How to encase them in a sarcophagus? By spraying tens of thousands of tons of concrete using high-pressure cannons—those spectacular Putzmeister machines made in the USA, whose photos we’ve shown below? But what would be the integrity of such a concrete layer without reinforcement? And even if reinforced, what about this sarcophagus during the next earthquake? Would we see new cracks, requiring further sealing?!

When typhoon season arrives, what will the Japanese do? Reports suggest TEPCO is considering "covering the reactors with tarps."

First observation: The site needs cleaning. Yet, 46 days after the disaster, nothing has been done in this regard.

Even access roads haven’t been widened. Japan’s atomic experts seem paralyzed.

It’s true that "responsible" officials can no longer find workers willing to go to such hostile and dangerous places. So they keep raising the "tolerable" exposure levels.

The CEO of TEPCO, courageously, resigns...

As for the Japanese population, they’re enduring a multi-catastrophe of unprecedented scale. 27,000 dead, housing shortages, supply issues, medical care problems. For those who’ve witnessed their cities destroyed and loved ones die, the nuclear risk—on which foreign nations focus—must seem secondary. People first worry about what they can see. No massive anti-nuclear protests in Japan so far.

Allègre recently said in an interview: "Were there any deaths from this nuclear disaster? No. Nuclear energy is inevitable. One day your homes will be equipped with small nuclear reactors."

This man is an idiot.

Let’s return to the state of the reactors. When the Russians experienced Chernobyl, the period of confusion lasted only a few days. Massive resources—material and human—were deployed immediately. Risks were rapidly assessed by a group of about twenty high-level physicists who moved into Pripyat, just 3 km from the reactor.

Human sacrifices were immense, damages considerable. Responsibility was undeniable, leading years later to the suicide of Russian nuclear manager Valeri Legasov, who realized Chernobyl resulted from irresponsible bureaucratic management of Russian nuclear sites. He sent a report to Pravda before taking his life.

After Chernobyl’s spectacular explosion, a thin plume of smoke—indicating graphite combustion—rose from the ruins of reactor number four. Refer to this excellent Wikipedia report on the events, very complete:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophe_de_Tchernobyl

This smoke dispersed deadly poisons into the atmosphere. The core glowed red in a 10-meter-diameter crater. It could continue burning an enormous graphite mass indefinitely. It had to be filled and covered with tens of tons of solid materials—sand, cement, boron, lead. Over a thousand young helicopter pilots and crew members lost their lives. But it was the only way to stop the continuous emission of deadly radionuclides.

The Russians are great physicists. They quickly grasped the danger. If they hadn’t acted, if they’d remained stunned like today’s Japanese nuclear officials, Europe would have become uninhabitable.

It seems the first step should be emptying these damned pools of their used or fresh fuel assemblies. This could be done by rapidly extracting them and immediately submerging them in water-filled containers for transport to a storage site that neutralizes their effects.

But what about the reactor components, now covered in debris and steel beams—remnants of the lightweight roof structure—and concrete fragments from reactor number three, following an explosion whose details remain unknown?

If there were no radioactivity, an army of workers would already be cutting through these beams with torches. But radioactivity forbids any approach.

Thus, we need to deploy resources commensurate with the problem. Tackle it "Russian-style," minus the human sacrifice aspect seen there. First, clear debris around the reactors themselves using remotely operated bulldozers. Such equipment exists. The only thing missing is the decision to bring them in.

After such work, we’d achieve this:

Reactor number three after clearing an area to allow intervention on the site

Then we’d need to design a powerful, mobile gantry. Such equipment likely already exists in shipyards. Moreover, we wouldn’t need just one gantry—we’d need as many as there are reactors to clear:

We’d equip this gantry with a powerful lifting mechanism and a remotely operated arm capable of cutting with a torch from a distance. Cameras zooming in on the work area could be relocated to protect them from radioactivity. But if these cameras are housed in lead enclosures and the view is achieved via mirrors, wouldn’t that solve their durability issue?

By combining the actions of the remote-controlled cutting torch, the mobile crane, and manipulator clamps, it would be possible to move components blocking access to sensitive reactor parts onto flatbed trucks, transporting them to a clearance zone. If radioactivity is high just above the debris, cameras could be mounted on arms at a distance, observing the scene via mirror reflection while remaining protected by lead enclosures.

We’d also need to adapt access routes accordingly.

Have you seen such work underway at the site? I haven’t—just a few dozen firefighters and water-spraying vehicles.

When it came to dumping 11,000 tons of radioactive waste into the sea, polluting neighboring countries’ waters, it would have been wiser to transfer this water into a simple container or a scrap ship, which Japan’s navy could have sunk thousands of miles offshore without opening its tanks. The radioactive water would then have dispersed gradually as corrosion took effect over several decades. Instead, the Japanese simply released it nearby, "apologizing to coastal residents and fishermen."

Below is a view of such a gantry—easy to imagine and build:

Once the upper parts of the reactors are cleared of debris, operators could extract fuel assemblies from the pools, transporting them in trucks carrying large basins where these 4-meter-long objects could be immediately submerged.

A steady stream of trucks could transport these assemblies to a large pool—water being the best way to neutralize their effects.

Eventually, if we must place reactors under sarcophagi, we should consider flexible structures capable of withstanding the worst seismic shocks, deploying protective lead shields around these beasts.

Have you seen TEPCO’s leaders proposing similar projects? No. We simply see individuals prostrate, silent, heads down.

46 days later: no significant measures, no plan—just the scandalous spectacle of abysmal incompetence.

You’re looking at the face of catastrophe liberalism. As long as it’s about collecting dividends—falsifying safety documents if needed—to maximize profit, they’re present. When facing a disaster of this magnitude, there’s no one left. What would be the "return on investment" of such a rescue operation? Who would pay?

Safety isn’t a profitable niche

(a phrase I heard from an engineer at Beuchat in Marseille, who manufactures diving equipment, after I presented a prototype safety and rescue system for syncopal freedivers following my son’s death in 1990). Seeing these Japanese workers in blue suits, I swear I hear that phrase again.

We know the work related to the Chernobyl disaster cost the Russians staggering sums. In 1986, at the time of the disaster, until the completion of the steel-and-concrete sarcophagus: 100 billion dollars.

Since that disaster (including rebuilding Pripyat, home to 45,000 people):

several hundred billion dollars. Some even speak of a thousand billion dollars, with some estimating this burden accelerated the fall of the Soviet Empire.

Currently, the Russians are trying to raise funds to shelter the already-cracked concrete sarcophagus under a new steel-and-lead one. Cost: 1.5 billion euros.

At Fukushima, there are six reactors to handle.

The cost would be in the billions of dollars.

Have you heard "responsible" officials mention such a budget? No. TEPCO is considering covering the reactors with tarps.

The truth is, they simply don’t want to pay.

As you know, the site wasn’t even insured!

Where are the funds allocated in Japan for such an operation? Where are the engineers working on this project?

I fear there’s no one left in charge at Japan’s nuclear industry

Oh, how I approve!

The Japanese built a fast-neutron breeder reactor, which they promptly caused to leak sodium—igniting immediately upon contact with air:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrale_nucl%C3%A9aire_de_Tsuruga

December 8, 1995, Monju reactor: intense vibrations in the secondary cooling circuit caused a thermometric probe to rupture, allowing several hundred kilograms of sodium to leak. The sodium ignited upon contact with air, causing a fierce fire, which didn’t immediately trigger alarms or emergency shutdowns. The reactor was manually shut down 90 minutes after the leak began.

April 15, 2011:

Referring to Dominique Leglu’s blog (Editor-in-Chief of Science et Avenir), a serious new problem has emerged with reactor number four, whose vessel wasn’t loaded, but whose pool contained not only used fuel assemblies but also fresh ones—potentially capable of going critical if accidentally grouped. Analysis of effluents from this installation suggests a possible onset of criticality in the storage area.

April 14, 2011:

At the moment my friend Richard Touitou (former engineer in the petrochemical sector) and I are working on projects for giant offshore solar energy production units (a subject that will appear in a 16-page article to be published in the May issue of the Nexus magazine), I discover with shock and dismay the existence of a project:

FLEXBLUE

This is not a hoax, something I initially thought it might be.

I leave it to you to discover this new madness, born from the minds of deranged polytechnicians working at

DCNS

:

DCNS designs and develops naval military systems in all areas (surface vessels, conventional and nuclear submarines, combat systems, torpedoes…), both for maintenance (operational readiness: MCO) and for new construction.

You will read about it. We have been outmaneuvered, surpassed, left behind. The military have found a way to supply countries lacking in electricity—specifically coastal regions—with low-power nuclear reactors (25 to 60 megawatts) submerged near their coasts, using technology developed for nuclear submarine propulsion. The safety level of these units is the same as that of third-generation reactors. Nuclear fuel is isolated from the sea by three successive containment barriers:

• Zirconium tubes containing uranium oxide pellets
• Steel pressure vessel containing the core
• Hull of this submerged unit

Example source:

http://www.europe1.fr/France/Flex-Blue-centrale-nucleaire-du-futur-380077/

The French Flexblue submerged reactor project

DCNS, in partnership with Areva, EDF, and the CEA, is developing an unprecedented underwater nuclear reactor project.

Will the future of French nuclear energy pass through the creation of mini-reactors placed on the ocean floor? That’s what DCNS believes, having unveiled the Flex Blue project on Wednesday. Its principle? A cylindrical reactor 100 meters long and 15 meters wide submerged at a depth of 100 meters and connected to the mainland via an electrical cable.

The result of two years of work, Flex Blue was developed by DCNS, which designs France’s nuclear submarines, in partnership with Areva, EDF, and the CEA.

For islands and coastal cities

The envisioned underwater reactor will have a power output of 50 to 250 megawatts and be capable of supplying electricity to between 100,000 and one million people. It is intended to supply islands, remote regions, and certain developing countries.

For the French nuclear industry, Flex Blue thus represents an alternative to the more powerful, expensive, and rejected third-generation EPR reactor. Transportable by ship, the mini-reactor will be built in the shipyards of Cherbourg, where maintenance and uranium refueling operations will also take place. At a cost of several hundred million euros, it offers several advantages over a conventional reactor: mass production, faster construction (two years), and avoidance of costly civil engineering works.

"The project holds water"

"The project holds water on paper," judges Bruno Tertrais, researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research, interviewed by Europe1.fr. According to this nuclear specialist, "there is a market for small reactors in countries that cannot afford conventional power plants." A view shared by DCNS, which anticipates a potential market of 200 units over the next 20 years for such reactors.

There remains the question of safety for a reactor submerged in the ocean. On this subject, experts are reassuring. "The underwater location of these mini-reactors makes sabotage or terrorist attack impossible," declares Bruno Tertrais. As for the risk of marine pollution, it is ruled out precisely because of the reactor’s submersion. "Water is the best barrier against radiation," argue DCNS officials.

This enthusiasm is not shared by Greenpeace. According to the environmental organization, the project presents nothing concrete, either technically or in terms of safety. Evidence of their skepticism: during the project presentation, Greenpeace members believed it was an April Fool’s joke.

These systems will operate completely automatically. Don’t worry about misuse: these 100-meter-long, 15-meter-diameter units will be protected by a thick mesh.

The underwater nuclear power plant Flexblue, protected from amorous attacks by sperm whales by a thick mesh

Question:

This nuclear reactor will be cooled by seawater. How has the circulation system been designed? How can we prevent marine creatures from mistaking the inlets and grilles for hotels?

If cooling is envisaged over the entire surface, how can we prevent algae from attaching to the walls and reducing heat transfer?

Try to imagine a sudden drop in cooling, a core meltdown, criticality occurring at 100 meters depth.

James Bond territory...

Finally, how can we consider that these numerous units, submerged at depths accessible to any amateur diver, do not represent insurmountable risks?

Captain Nemo must be turning in his grave.

How can anyone be so foolish as to imagine something like this—just to make money, to "capture market share"? I can't comprehend it...

April 17, 2011:

Don’t believe the French are the only ones contemplating such madness. Projects exist everywhere. In New Mexico, Sandia Laboratories are no exception. You may consult this dossier, in English. This movement has a name:

TerraPowerCompany

The Russians are equally mad, having already deployed in June 2011 the first fully autonomous offshore nuclear installation, described as "ecological" because when removed, it leaves no trace in the environment.

But what about the waste?

Let’s add that in case of war, such installations would be bombs planted at home, completely vulnerable. They would also be ideal targets for terrorism. It feels like a bad James Bond movie.

In this festival of madness, you’ll find the indispensable Bill Gates, advocating for the spread of

Personal Nuclear Power Plants

. Normal. First came big computers, then personal computers. Gates believes the concept should be extended to nuclear energy...

No, you’re not dreaming. We’re being prepared for a nightmare.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation lists as one of its "Guiding Principles" that "science and technology have great potential to improve lives around the world."

One of Bill and Melinda Gates’ core principles is that science and technology must improve human life everywhere in the world...

April 13, 2011:

We were able to read below the interview given by Thierry Charles, Director of the French Institute for Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), to journalist Antoine Bouthier on April 12, 2011, on behalf of Le Monde.

Open your eyes, read or reread. Despite the spectacular damage we’ve seen in high-resolution drone photos taken by a small private Japanese company, all of this is recoverable. The situation is under control. In a few weeks or months, a good cleanup and restoration will be sufficient for residents to return. I’m not making this up—read or reread:

"The worst is over...

We found highly radioactive puddles beneath the plant, possibly due to small leaks under the vessels...

The fuel had partially melted, and there was a loss of cooling, easily manageable...

Engineers are proceeding slowly, and they’re right to take their time. Especially since they’ve managed to supply water to the reactors without problems...

Before restarting the system,

all electrical circuits, pumps, and water inside the vessels—possibly containing debris and salt crusts—must be checked...

Iodine-131 is a radionuclide with a relatively short half-life, decreasing by a factor of two each week.

In three months, its level will be completely negligible,

and residents could theoretically return...

Once the cooling system is restored, when there’s no longer a need to continuously add water to the vessels, the work will far from be finished. They’ll have to clean the entire site, remove the fuel, and shield the plant from the wind...

Now compare this with the content of this Le Monde article:

Source:

http://www.independentwho.info/Presse_ecrite/11_03_26_LeMonde.fr_FR.pdf

Tokyo, as seen by the newspaper’s correspondents:

Underinformed by authorities, increasingly aware of the risk of a catastrophe they are largely unable to assess in severity, the Japanese are now even more anxious as revelations emerge from press reports and expert testimonies broadcast on private TV channels or blogs: the nauseating background of this tragedy—the power of what, out of politeness, is called the "nuclear lobby."

A wealthy and powerful circle whose heart beats at the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), which controls nuclear policy, with ramifications including the Federation of Electric Power Companies (FEPC), the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), industrial groups building power plants—Toshiba and Hitachi foremost among them—and plant operators.

This lobby, where former senior officials from nuclear-related ministries and agencies "jump ship" into electric companies, has mastered the art of information control.

It funds major advertising campaigns in the press and on television to ensure the public that nuclear energy is perfectly safe.

The arrival in power in 2009 of a new majority did not change the situation, as Japan’s Democratic Party (DPJ) relies on the powerful labor confederation Rengo, whose main component is the branch representing energy workers, deeply attached to nuclear power. This large-scale collusion between high administration, oversight agencies, plant builders, and operators not only silences opposition but also eliminates any questioning of nuclear energy.

Yet there is no lack of evidence—backed by documents—of negligence, omissions, and outright falsifications.

These actions had already led, in 2002, to the exposure of ten Japanese electric companies for concealing incidents since the 1970s, when nuclear power began in the archipelago. Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), owner and operator of the Fukushima plants, was the first targeted.

Now are added testimonies—yet to be verified and contextualized—from former Tepco employees. But for now, these raw revelations send chills down the spine. If they reflect reality, it appears that operators—Tepco, certainly, but also their counterparts—prioritized short-term profitability over long-term safety imperatives, or at best failed to sufficiently account for risks in a country with high seismic activity and tsunami threats.

The Fukushima plants were designed to withstand a 5.5-meter wave based on a reference event from Chile in 1956...

The reactors survived the earthquake and shut down automatically, but the cooling system,

insufficiently protected,

stopped working. Two Toshiba engineers involved in designing the Fukushima plant, cited by the Tokyo Shimbun, estimate that an "unusually low" risk was used as the basis for calculations.

Reluctantly, the economy minister admitted that "once the crisis is under control, we will have to examine Tepco’s management."

Of course, but meanwhile, how many victims will be counted?

An anonymous former Toshiba engineer is more direct: "This is not a natural disaster Japan is facing, but one caused by humans."

A long article in the Wall Street Journal reiterates data presented by Hidekatsu Yoshi, Communist MP and former nuclear engineer, who demonstrated in a 2010 book based on NISA documents that the Fukushima plant was the one with the most incidents in all of Japan, including about fifteen accidents between 2005 and 2009, and that its employees had been the most exposed to radiation over the past decade. The reliance on often inexperienced subcontractors for plant maintenance is also highlighted—those who are now paying a heavy price in the fight against the disaster.

Tepco’s delayed response is also criticized.

"Tepco took the danger into account slowly," said a senior official at Kyodo news agency. In the first two days after the earthquake and tsunami, concern for protecting equipment seemed to outweigh concern for public safety.

The eight Areva employees—France’s global leader in nuclear energy—who were present on-site during the quake quickly grasped the danger and were among the first to evacuate.

Yet Areva had never expressed any concern about risks posed by Tepco’s plants.

Philippe Mesmer and Philippe Pons

You can compare these two accounts. It is also easy to access vast amounts of information from official Japanese reports. Detailing them would be tedious. But you may refer to them if you think I’m offering a "biased" interpretation. These documents are easy to find.

Everyone can see the cacophony surrounding the Fukushima disaster. While reassuring statements are made (including those from IRSN, which oddly echo Professor Pellerin’s 1986 remarks about the Chernobyl cloud), claiming “doses not exceeding... etc,” we read that Japan’s Nuclear Safety Authority has raised the event to Level 7 on the INES scale—quantitatively comparable to Chernobyl.

The exclusion zone has been expanded from 20 to 30 km around the plant. Radiation levels near the facility are making work increasingly difficult. A strategy based on robot use should have been implemented immediately. Singularly negligent, in a country seen as a leader in this field.

It is difficult to analyze the behavior of the Japanese population. The general rule is the absence of individual reactions, the impossibility of identifying an individual or group as responsible. The Japanese are expected to "unite as one body." For years we’ve been conditioned to employee submission; as if social members preferred to ignore the pathological behavior of "their head." It’s time to recognize a reality: Japan’s nuclear plan was driven by profit, not by meeting the people’s needs in the most absurd way possible.

Document on the subject, in English

All incompetence has converged, all irregularities have occurred, all lies have been told. The Japanese people seem incapable of identifying oligarchic responsibility, preferring to live under a climate of collective guilt.

Everywhere, an absence of revolt.

In Tokyo, an anti-nuclear demonstration gathered... a thousand people.

Fatalism and resignation: these two words summarize the Japanese behavior.

http://www.liberation.fr/economie/01012331339-a-iwaki-sous-la-menace-de-l-atome

Japan’s nuclear power plant fleet, even if one wished to prolong its use due to lack of alternatives, is impossible to improve. We don’t even know how to dismantle installations (not just there, but also here). We don’t know what to do with decades of accumulated waste stored in these "pools." The world’s third-largest economy, singing the creed of liberalism and short-term return on investment, is facing a major crisis. The cost of "reconstruction" masks the deeper economic choices. The unthinkable has happened, despite our refusal to think it possible, and nothing had been prepared—such as deploying armored robots (it would only require shielding sensitive components, mainly electronics, with lead).

The behavior of Japanese politicians, industrialists, and beyond, evokes that of a human discovering they have a serious illness and choosing instead to ignore it, lie to themselves, think "things will eventually sort themselves out," and in any case, take no drastic measures commensurate with the gravity of the situation.

Currently, we don’t know if reactor number 3, loaded with MOX—this magnificent French invention that equips twenty of our reactors and contains 7% plutonium—won’t start releasing this substance of unparalleled danger.

April 14, 2011:

An article by Christophe Perrais in Agoravox

MOX and the Money of MOX

April 13, 2011: an infographic released by Le Monde that allows understanding what happened at Fukushima in three minutes.

http://www.lemonde.fr/japon/infographie/2011/04/13/comprendre-l-accident-de-fukushima-en-3-minutes_1506740_1492975.html#xtor=EPR-32280246-[info_japon_i]-20110415

It's not bad, with a caveat: in reactor 3, the explosion didn’t just blow off the upper floor. It’s likely much worse. In fact, we don’t know exactly what happened on-site or the full extent of the damage. We’ve heard officials from EDF insist that the damage in Japan was essentially due to the tsunami. They forget the irreplaceable effects of the earthquake, visible along the coastline.

It wasn’t the tsunami that caused this crack, which propagated all the way to a tank containing pipes and electrical connections!

The Japanese, unable to inspect the site, cannot assess damage, fissures (synonyms for leaks) that may have affected all structures at the plant.

April 13:

The Japanese network reports that temperature in the pool of reactor number 4, containing tons of "used fuel," is rising and now reaches 90°C. These elements remain under two meters of water (instead of five, normally). If this level drops and these elements are no longer cooled, they would release massive amounts of radioactive debris into the atmosphere.

This temperature rise indicates "activation" of the fuel assemblies.

Source:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_35.html

April 13:

Tepco attempts to reassure the public by saying "most of these assemblies (which were heated when they ceased being covered by water in their pools)" "have not been damaged."

Source:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/13_37.html

The truth is, they have no idea of the extent of such damage.

Beyond numerous aftershocks, in certain regions of Japan severely affected by the earthquake and its aftershocks, with deep soil rearrangements causing groundwater pressure buildup, which rises to trigger liquefaction and soil fracturing—causing great alarm among the population.

Video:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liqu%C3%A9faction_du_sol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi-ka8fhrhQ&feature=related.

I noticed that Nicolas Hulot decided to run for president and was seeking a nomination from Europe Ecologie.

A media figurehead, Hulot could change the game. But only if ecologists in general understand that it is impossible to "launch renewable energy projects that are profitable,

in terms of return on investment."

The scale of such projects far exceeds private capacity and its short-term profit imperative.

Such enterprises could only take the form of GRAND PROJECTS, requiring massive state funding, thereby ensuring immediate full employment given the tasks involved.

It’s not about gradually replacing nuclear power over a few decades, but about envisioning replacement of nuclear and fossil fuels

within less than ten years—five, perhaps. For all countries, needs are in the tens of thousands of megawatts. The solutions discussed in the upcoming 16-page Nexus article include, among other things, equipping mountain slopes and lakes, and developing a massive offshore solar project on barges that, when assembled, would form concrete "icebergs" spanning tens to eventually hundreds of square kilometers.

Projects where, in the short term, cost comparisons per kilowatt-hour would be pointless. In fact, if we consider budgets, this operation—not national but planetary—would represent a mobilization of capital, human resources, and raw materials equivalent to the cost of a... third world war.

An "Ecological War," the first ever waged by humanity against its greed and stupidity.

The real question is:

How much do we value a human life?

To be continued—I must now focus on finalizing the article to be published in Nexus’s May issue.

April 11, 2011:

Readers may have been surprised to see this page change titles week after week. Initially I had titled it "We must get out of this nuclear." At that time, I still harbored the illusion that solutions might emerge from cutting-edge technologies like aneutronic fusion Bore-11 + Hydrogen-1. A fusion pathway suggested by the fantastic breakthrough of 2006, accidentally achieved at Sandia Laboratories in New Mexico by Chris Deeney’s team. A work analyzed by the Englishman Malcolm Haines, a pioneer in plasma physics. The paper was published in 2006 in Physical Review Letters, titled "Over two billion degrees." I immediately latched onto this news and published a meticulous analysis of the article a few months later.

In September 2008, I attended the Vilnius conference on High-Power Pulsed Systems and had long conversations with Keith Matzen, head of the Z-machine where this result was achieved, using 18 million amperes, which became "ZR" (Z "refurbished") from early 2008. There, to my surprise, Matzen, supported by his deputy Mac Kee, declared that this publication didn’t hold up, that Haines had made a mistake analyzing the spectra, etc.

Why hadn’t Matzen published a correction? "To avoid hurting old Haines."

Who believes such a story?

When questioned, Gerold Yonas, scientific director of Sandia Laboratories (whom I had known personally since 1976, during visits), replied, "This matter concerns me. I’ll ask Matzen to publish a correction."

It never came.

In October 2008, Sytgar, who was supposed to present ZR results at the Jeju conference in Korea—where I was again present—disappeared. Excuse: "his father was very ill." But after checking with the secretariat, he hadn’t even registered for the conference. Strange, for someone among 18 signatories who was supposed to present results at the most important international conference on Z-machines.

After Sytgar whispered to the chairman that he wasn’t present, and the chairman adjourned the session, Oliver from Sandia stormed toward me and declared I must stop spreading nonsense—that Haines had been wrong, end of story. When questioned, Oliver said Sandia "would publish a correction in 2011."

I’ll bet anything this correction will never come. Because Haines was not wrong in his decoding of the experimental data or in his calculations. It’s impossible to deny these two aspects; it’s impossible to provide scientific arguments that could dismantle this assertion.

So?

Then the Americans are disinforming, because this result should never have been published. If it offers fantastic hope for humanity—a non-polluting fusion producing only helium as "ash"—it’s also the key to new "pure fusion bombs," where fusion reactions can be initiated using an MHD compressor rather than a nuclear bomb A, which cannot be miniaturized due to critical mass issues, imposing a lower limit of several hundred tons of TNT.

These compressors were invented by the Russians in the 1950s. I explain all this on my website (&&& I’ll add the links, but can’t do so right now, having burned a hard drive).

During my trip to Brighton in January 2001, having met Americans working on "black programs," I was horrified to see that the only thing that interested them about UFOs was the possibility—based on new concepts—to design new weapons: hypersonic MHD torpedoes, hypersonic aircraft with "MHD-controlled" air intakes.

At the time, the shock was already significant. But with this aneutronic fusion affair and its immediate orientation toward military applications, the circle was complete. These bombs can be miniaturized. They are therefore... usable. Moreover, by opting for a Bore-Hydrogen formula, one obtains a... "green bomb."

Enough to completely disgust me with this subject. It’s done.

I’ll go even further. Today’s scientists have no conscience at all. They’re bought for a handful of bread. I recall an issue of Courrier du CNRS where Charpentier, then head of the "Physical Sciences for Engineers" department, wrote, "The army does not have enough research contracts to satisfy researchers’ demands."

We discover genetic manipulation techniques? After a brief moratorium, we now have GMOs. Researchers develop medicines in the form of "new molecules," patented, of course. The World Health Organization launches a vaccination campaign to... make people sick. The agri-food industry mixes additives into our food, degrading our health. Agricultural research turns a blind eye to the vile motives of fertilizer and sterile seed sellers.

The polytechnician engineers from France’s "Corps des Mines" created an atomic empire in France. You’ll read the internal report released by AREVA, analyzing "the impact of the Fukushima event on the nuclear market."

Soon, nuclear waste in construction materials, packaging.

And on the scientific front? Nothing, for decades. Theoretical physicists knit winter socks from superstrings. In CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, Higgs boson hunters return empty-handed. At Cadarache, nuclear technocrats promise us "the Sun in a test tube," having launched a 1.5 trillion euro project in the midst of technological fog, but guaranteeing them careers in a land of plenty, where they can later say, "well, we were wrong."

They might even apologize, like Japanese technocrats, to a population paying the price for their recklessness and irresponsibility.

The press? It’s controlled or blind, deaf. It devotes articles to "escort girls," prostitutes elevated by its media to celebrity status. Why not make these women who sell their bodies ministers, since we already have ministers who are, in fact, prostitutes?

Philosophy? Bernard-Henri Lévy invents disposable thinking. At a time when metaphysics is in crisis, café philosophy thrives.

With a few engineer and technician friends, we are preparing a report on the exploitation of renewable energies. Progress is going well. At the same time, it is clear that we must stop this nuclear industry, which has become a murderous madness. "Civil" nuclear energy is merely the foot in the stirrup for military nuclear programs, for the concentration of power in the hands of oligarchies utterly disconnected from their peoples. France has always been ready to sell this know-how to anyone. There are other ways to produce energy, free from military applications—unless one considers imitating Archimedes, who allegedly burned enemy ships' sails by focusing the Sun's rays upon them. This decision to turn the page on nuclear power must be demanded and taken. Only the people, not their corrupt and servile representatives, can make this demand, provided they are given a "Plan B," a way out—which has little in common with the feeble projects of our declining ecologists, none of whom can even conceive of projects that Jules Verne himself would not have scorned.

We must demand the immediate halt to the "reprocessing of nuclear waste" at the La Hague plant, which in reality aims to recover leftover uranium and plutonium present in spent fuel assemblies. We must immediately stop the production of MOX, the fuel for power plants that contains 7% of the most dangerous substance ever created by man: plutonium. The French already use it in twenty of their fifty-eight nuclear reactors. We must halt this extravagance, which is as costly as it is grotesque—the ITER project, a "cathedral for engineers" or a "social plan," depending on which side of the coin you choose to focus on.

There are other ways to create jobs on a massive scale. We must stop parading around with nuclear missiles brandished as a strike force. We must finally bury these absurd projects, such as so-called fourth-generation reactors. Breeder reactors using sodium or molten lead are suicidal ventures.

We must invest money, energy, and creativity in things that improve the living conditions of the human biped, rather than continually degrading them. We must put in

a great deal of money, a great deal of energy, and a great deal of creativity.

But on this last point, after assessment, it is certainly not ideas that are lacking.

We must denounce luxury, advocate sobriety and frugality in life, and not gape at the richest and most powerful, worship the golden calf, or be numbed by empty talk. We must condemn these vain fools who drive luxurious cars, build 800-meter-tall towers of Babel, construct ski slopes in the middle of deserts, refrigerated with black gold.

How can we be surprised that so many disadvantaged and disoriented people turn to ideologies centuries old, when all we can offer them is the spectacle of our violence, injustice, and chaos?

April 4, 2011: Jonhatan Bellocine begins translating this page into English

Updated March 20, 2011

Updated March 27, 2011. Reports from IRSN dated March 25

April 3, 2011: Death by subcontracting

The accidents could only have been due to human error.

That's what they told us. What liars!

April 9: Kurosawa's prophetic film

April 9, 2011: The dizzying cynicism of AREVA

April 9, 2011: Translation into French of the same report.

I am attempting to organize volunteer translation workshops for pages like this one.

April 12, 2011:

Source:

http://www.lemonde.fr/japon/article/2011/04/11/fukushima-il-faudra-des-mois-avant-de-retablir-la-situation_1506093_1492975.html#xtor=AL-32280308

An interview with Thierry Charles, director of the French Institute for Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), conducted by journalist Antoine Bouthier for Le Monde:

Since March 11, Japan has been mired in an unprecedented nuclear crisis.

The Institute for Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) now estimates that "the worst is over," but that it will still take "weeks, perhaps months" before the situation stabilizes at the power plant.

When did you realize just how serious this accident was?

We began to worry as soon as the first explosion occurred [24 hours after the earthquake]. Initially, we were considering a scenario similar to Three Mile Island.

The fuel had partially melted, and there was a loss of cooling, easily manageable (...).

But when we saw the explosion, we knew hydrogen was present in the reactor vessel, and that the consequences could be very serious.

How do you assess the situation now?

For the past ten days, the situation has been more or less stabilized.

Engineers have managed to continuously cool the reactors using fresh water.

We have found highly radioactive puddles beneath the plant, possibly due to small leaks under the vessels (?...).

But there is an eight-meter-thick concrete layer beneath the reactor, itself built on rock. There is now very little chance that the molten core will begin to sink into the ground.

A simple observation: there is a phenomenon capable of cracking or breaking any thickness of concrete.

That phenomenon is called an earthquake.

Moreover, the containment building is filled with nitrogen—this is good. It will prevent hydrogen formation and minimize explosion risks.

The worst is over,

but this is only the beginning of the conquest. The situation will be fully under control once the cooling system is restored.

Engineers are moving slowly, and rightly so. Especially since they have managed to supply water to the reactors without problems (?...).

Before restarting the system (???),

all electrical circuits, pumps, and water in the vessels must be checked—water that may contain debris and salt crusts. This could take weeks, even months.

Why was the exclusion zone expanded?

It has been extended to 30 km. This corresponds to the post-accident zone where radioactive deposits have been observed on the ground. We believe this is a reasonable measure. Iodine-131 is a radionuclide with a relatively short half-life, decaying by a factor of two each week.

In three months, its level will be completely negligible, and residents could theoretically return.

(Thus, pollution is linked only to radionuclides with short half-lives.)

What do you think of Tepco's management?

We must put ourselves in their shoes. They had just suffered a massive natural disaster, potentially losing family members, when they were suddenly faced with an unprecedented nuclear situation involving multiple damaged reactors simultaneously.

Their main mistake was betting everything on cooling the reactor cores and neglecting the spent fuel pools at the beginning of the crisis.

With hindsight, we can analyze how they should have ideally responded (...).

How will the authorities shut down the plant?

Once the cooling system is restored, and there is no longer a need to continuously add water to the vessels, the work will far from be finished. They will need to clean the entire site, remove the fuel, and shield the plant from the wind.

When you look at photos of the site, where several reactors are nothing but tangled masses of steel and concrete, I would be happy if Mr. Thierry Charles explained how the Japanese plan to "clean the site" and "remove the fuel from the cores and pools." How will they access it??

They still need to think through the right strategy, which will differ from Chernobyl, where they had to build a sarcophagus.

So, putting it under a sarcophagus is not mandatory?

Here, the reactor is not open to the sky. Moreover, we are not immune to another seismic shock. We cannot rule out sudden jolts or new radioactive releases into the atmosphere.

Antoine Bouthier

Simple comment:

Here are photographs of the high-capacity concrete pump, rented from Americans (Putzmeister company), being loaded onto a giant Antonov 22 cargo plane on the west coast of the United States, to be transported to Japan.

Source:

http://www.11alive.com/rss/article/186581/3/Massive-pumps-heading-to-damaged-reactors-in-Japan

Translation:

ATLANTA (Associated Press) – A massive cargo plane landed in Atlanta Friday to load one of the world’s largest concrete pumps, modified to project water onto the damaged nuclear installations at the Japanese site struck by the earthquake and tsunami.

Weighing 95 tons, this machine was designed in Wisconsin by Putzmeister and rests on 26 wheels. Its arm can operate at a height of 60 meters, allowing work in hard-to-reach areas of the Fukushima Dai-ichi site in Japan.

Eventually, this pump could also be used to create a concrete sarcophagus.

After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, Putzmeister sent 11 pumps to Ukraine to pour concrete onto the damaged facility.

Regarding this shipment mentioned above, Dave Adamas of Putzmeister said the entire company hopes this equipment might help resolve the problems there.

...

A representative from Putzmeister contacted the Japanese company TPCO after seeing that the Japanese were trying to cool the damaged installations using helicopters and fire trucks.

The company diverted a smaller Putzmeister pump, originally destined for Vietnam. A dozen workers used it to spray 150 tons of seawater onto the storage pool of one reactor in just three hours, demonstrating the value of this system using a long pole.

Moving such a large Putzmeister system prompted Japan to rent a Russian Antonov N-124 cargo plane—the largest in the world.

... It is expected that this pump, along with another retrieved from Los Angeles International Airport, will depart the U.S. on Saturday. Putzmeister plans to send smaller installations from Germany, with costs covered by the Japanese.

(We recall that TEPCO had not deemed it necessary to secure the Fukushima site.)

The giant Putzmeister concrete cannon, loaded into a Russian Antonov 22

These concrete pumps have become extremely common worldwide and allow workers to pour concrete in often inaccessible locations. At the moment I write these lines, a pump of this kind is operating a few hundred meters from my home (Pertuis).

A concrete pump at work in Pertuis, April 11, 2011, Cemex company

Injection hose diameter of this "mini-pump": 12 cm. Discharge occurs via buckets of 8 cubic meters.

Close-up on the orifice where the bucket discharges its load

The vehicle loaded onto the Antonov has an analog feed window.

The giant machine, loaded aboard the Russian cargo plane, does not appear at first glance suitable for spraying water. To do so, the rear of the vehicle would need to be completely modified, it seems to me. I believe the discharge hose diameter is 25 cm, and the flow rate 60 liters per second. To be verified.

Given these images, a question arises: Are the Japanese preparing to bury the reactors under tens of thousands of cubic meters of concrete?

The problem is not simple. At Chernobyl, the core, suddenly going critical (due to "xenon poisoning"), transformed a large amount of cooling water into hydrogen and oxygen. Above a thousand degrees, this mixture, resulting from water molecule dissociation, cannot recombine into steam molecules. When temperatures drop, ultra-rapid recombination becomes possible, turning this "stoichiometric" mixture into a powerful explosive. The process thus involves taking water, imparting energy to it for a "certain time" (minutes? tens of minutes?), turning it into a powerful explosive that then releases this energy in a thousandth of a second. At Chernobyl, the explosive force was sufficient to launch the 12-ton reinforced concrete slab covering the reactor dozens of meters into the air. It spun around and fell at a 45-degree angle, pulverizing a large mass of solid graphite used as a moderator.

The Fukushima reactors were all covered by a similar slab. What about the slab on reactor number 3?

The core began burning the graphite in the air, and the 25 firefighters who tried, unsuccessfully, to extinguish the fire with their hoses were irradiated and all died within days. They faced what they thought was just a regular blaze, without any protective equipment.

As the graphite burned, it carried radioactive elements high into the atmosphere. The graphite itself had become highly radioactive. The Russians' priority was therefore to stop this fire at all costs. To do so, they had to seal the 10-meter-diameter hole through which the reactor core could be seen, continuing to burn the graphite. This could not be done with concrete pumps. The Russians sacrificed 600 helicopter crews, who dumped thousands of tons of sand, boron, and even lead (which then contributed to air pollution) from 200 meters above this gaping hole. All these pilots and mechanics died from the radiation doses they received. But in the urgency, there was no other solution.

When the core was finally covered, its temperature rose, and the Russians faced a new problem. The core was attacking the concrete and risked coming into contact with another large body of water accumulated in the basement, resulting from the desperate efforts of the unfortunate firefighters. This water could also transform into an explosive and launch the molten core debris not just hundreds of meters, but tens of kilometers or more. Discussions still continue about what might have happened then. But all specialists agree that a second explosion could have rendered much of Europe uninhabitable!

The Russians sacrificed another hundred men, firefighters, to drain this water. But after approaching it via tunnels and creating an opening with a torch, they discovered that the molten core (corium), after invading this chamber, had sufficient temperature to attack the next layer of concrete—the final barrier against the groundwater, connected to the Pripyat River, a tributary of the Dnieper, which flows into the closed Black Sea....

Miners flown in by plane dug a 140-meter tunnel through soft soil at a rate of 13 meters per day, under 50°C temperatures. Then, beneath the reactor, they built a 30-by-30-meter slab to halt the descent of the molten core.

Finally, engineers designed an immense and costly sarcophagus, a mixture of heavy steel beams, concrete, and lead, with an estimated lifespan of 30 years. Efforts are currently underway to raise substantial funds to cover this sarcophagus with a fully metallic vault structure, whose lifespan could then reach a century.

If the Japanese decide on "sarcophagization," how would they proceed? They would need to completely bury the reactors under a massive concrete block (50,000 cubic meters?). How would they reinforce this concrete and prevent it from cracking due to thermal stresses? All I found was a figure regarding the flow rate of these giant pumps: 200 cubic meters per hour.

I will continue this text by reproducing the official Japanese commission report dated April 4, which admits that no one knows the water level inside the vessels; the temperature of the steel containment structures; or the condition of these various containment barriers. Indicators (from analysis of the saltwater used for cooling and its isotopic abundances) suggest that corium has spread into the volumes beneath the vessels of certain reactors. In what quantity? Where? No one knows.

Mr. Thierry Charles, director of the French Institute for Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety, displaying a calm and rational optimism, not overwhelmed by emotion, seems to have access to information that Japanese officials do not possess. If this is true, it would be urgent for him to share it with them.

April 8, 2011-A: An eerie glow at the heart of reactor number 3 at Fukushima:

This satellite photo of the site was taken on April 4, 2011.

In blue, the numbers of the different reactors. The size of the shadows indicates the photo was taken around midday.

Close-up on reactor number 3:

Do you see the glow indicated by the arrow? A Chernobyl-II in preparation???

Subsidiary question:

Can you spot the armored construction vehicles, and the crowd of technicians and engineers massing around the four damaged reactors?

G

April 8, 2011-B:

A few days ago, we already noted that the neighboring Fukushima plants—Onagawa and Tokai, also located right at the water's edge with notoriously inadequate seismic protection—had been hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. On March 13, the Tokai plant, after a failure in its cooling system, had to switch to its backup system (source). Less than a month after the magnitude 9 earthquake of March 11, 2011, a new magnitude 7.4 quake has just occurred, again along the fault line in northeastern Japan. The Onagawa plant was affected, and leaks were detected at the spent fuel storage pools. We recall that these pools contain all the residual, highly contaminated waste from previous reactor loadings. Even though backup systems maintain the water level to prevent overheating, the spread of water containing spent fuel elements represents a source of nuclear pollution for the Pacific Ocean and coastal areas.

There is a way to mitigate earthquake effects on compact buildings, not tall towers. This involves extensive land preparation work, layering the ground like a "mille-feuille" with alternating layers of different materials, thus providing strong attenuation of horizontal movements.

April 8, 2011-C:

Here are some images that provide a bit more insight into what is happening at Fukushima. In the days following the earthquake, engineers quickly noticed a significant crack that had appeared in a basin located directly adjacent to the harbor water connected to reactor number 2.

This is where radioactive water is leaking into the sea.

View of the crack caused by the earthquake. Behind it, the well.

Aerial view of the cracked well. Arrival of electrical conduits.

The well, encased in concrete, hoping to seal the leaks.

By clicking this link, you can download the English version of the report issued on April 6, 2011, by METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry: Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), titled "Nuclear Emergency in Japan."

Official Japanese government report dated April 6, 2011

Page 17

We can observe that the water circuit passing through the turbine rooms of the various units—constituting the steam cooling circuit circulating through the turbines and then through the reactor cores after condensation—continues quietly along the seashore:

Apparently, .

Official Japanese report dated April 4, 2011: cause of damage

The Japanese had not anticipated that the wave could exceed ten meters. It is likely that the diesel installations were simply submerged during the inundation.

The Japanese have called upon Americans, who provided a barge to bring fresh water to the site:

The American barge filled with fresh water, being towed

The arrival of the U.S. tugboat towing the fresh water barge to supply fire trucks: March 31, 2011

The Japanese have also called upon the Russians, requesting their specialized floating unit capable of treating liquid effluents by chemically extracting radioactive components. Treatment capacity: 35 cubic meters per day, 7,000 per year.

April 7, 2011:

Things are becoming clearer. While

AREVA is distributing a PDF

where the only cause of reactor explosions refers to hydrogen explosion in the upper control room (which was indeed the case for unit number 1), even the Japanese, despite censorship and awkward silences from their irresponsible officials, are beginning to realize that the explosions in reactors 1 and 3 were fundamentally different—the second possibly attributable to a start of criticality, or at least an explosion originating from internal levels.

Two explosions with entirely different origins

To grasp the scale, the diameter of the vessel containing the core is 5.5 meters.

The yellow steel containment dome measures 10.5 meters in diameter.

The explosion at reactor 3 contradicts AREVA's report.

A reader living in Japan has alerted me to a website (unfortunately in English) that documents the unimaginable negligence of Japanese nuclear authorities in managing the reactor fleet over the past three decades (to the point that TEPCO could not find an insurer willing to cover Fukushima's installations!).

Thirty years of concealment and lies!

http://fukushimaleaks.wordpress.com

April 5, 2011:

The situation in Japan continues to deteriorate daily. There are significant leaks of highly radioactive water into the Pacific, and attempts to seal them have failed. Radioactive water is freely flowing into the sea from unit number 2. The Japanese have called upon the Russians, who have previously dealt with liquid leak issues from sunken submarine reactors in the Baltic Sea. As soon as Toshiba engineers contacted me (my dossier is being read in Japan), I had recommended such a contact, whose necessity was obvious to me.

Aerial photographs help convey the scale of the problem. The "pools" contain all the reactor loads accumulated over decades, at an annual refueling rate (...). The earthquake cracked some of these pools, which are now leaking, and attempts to seal them using improvised and inadequate means have proven ineffective. We cannot drain these pools to seal them, as the temperature of the fuel assemblies would immediately skyrocket. That said, I recall that in the underground river of Port-Miou (which empties into the calanque of the same name east of Marseille), where I had dived, they once tried to block the seawater intrusion using special low-density concrete that could be poured underwater. I was asked to sketch this dam on-site, accompanied by Bernard Zappoli, then a young student in Marseille (see the Cnes-Toulouse scandal with his polytechnician accomplice Alain Esterle). Zappoli, who had wanted to dive with me, came out terrified from that underwater spelunking excursion.

Starting Monday, April 4, Japanese authorities began releasing approximately 11,500 tons of highly contaminated water stored in a large tank, "apologizing to nearby residents." All things considered, knowing that this water must eventually be disposed of, it would have been better to transport it out to sea in barges, which should have been sunk far from shore, as they themselves would become radioactive. In fact, there was no need to tow barges. 11,500 tons doesn't even reach the tonnage of oil carried by a small tanker. It would have sufficed to pump this water into an old tanker, which could then be driven far out to sea by a crew operating from a lead-shielded bridge. Then, after evacuating the crew via helicopter, the ship would have been sunk. The contaminated water would first have been contained within the ship's hull, gradually released as it deteriorated.

The fact that Japanese engineers managing this crisis did not consider this demonstrates their lack of foresight, incompetence, and inability to handle the situation. It seems all their "actions" are conditioned by the public impact they might have—both on their own population and globally. It is Japan's image as a nation of high technology that is at stake. Bringing a tanker close to the site to pump contaminated water would have made a very bad impression, especially if it were announced later that the ship would be sunk and its crew escorted to its final voyage protected by lead plates.

The situation is extremely dire. The Japanese meteorological service is under pressure not to release information if winds are blowing toward major cities, "to avoid triggering panic among the population."

Although the government announced that "the reactors will be dismantled," a single glance at photos taken by a small drone (see below) suffices to realize that such a "dismantling" is an impossible project.

It is also impossible to extract the hundreds of fuel assemblies from the storage pools. To do so, one would first need to clear the tops of the reactor wreckage covered by steel beams. If there were no radioactivity, teams could cut them apart on-site with torches. But this is impossible. No robot capable of operating remotely has been designed, and time is too short to create such devices.

The only solution is the sarcophagus. In an emergency, solid materials must be poured over the three reactors to stop radioactive emissions. These emissions are signaled "by faint smoke," as was the case with the Chernobyl reactor after the spectacular core explosion. But one must not be deceived by the appearance of these fumes.

In several videos, parts of buildings are seen ruptured, emitting glows.

Glowing emissions indicating radioactivity from reactor components

One should not be surprised that materials emitting radioactivity produce visible light phenomena. In the past, radioactive substances were even applied to watch hands so their owners could read the time at night. If nighttime photos of the site were taken by drone or helicopter, the resulting images might well provoke panic among the population. They would recall the sinister glows rising from the crater of the ruptured Chernobyl reactor, reaching up into the clouds, visible at night.

The appearance of Chernobyl's reactor number 4 at night, before the crater was filled

Let's return to the issue of placing the reactors under sarcophagus (which would not solve the problems related to potential corium spreading beneath the reactor). At Chernobyl, the graphite was burning, and the hole through which radioactive dust particles escaped was about ten meters in diameter. The Russians therefore sent young pilots of heavy Hind helicopters, along with their crews, to dump thousands of cubic meters of sand, cement, lead, and boron into this gaping maw. Only when this devil's chimney was sealed did the nuclear pollution cease. Carrying out a similar operation at Fukushima would require burying the reactors under tens or even hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of solid material before gas emissions and solid particle releases stopped.

Indeed, the Japanese have brought on-site a cement spreader:

Constructing a concrete slab for a building using a spreader

The spreader in action (with water)

But if one attempted to place the reactors under a sarcophagus using such a device, the initial concrete pour would be far too slow. The flow rate would be entirely insufficient (this inability to address the problem was evident when the Japanese sent helicopters to drop water-filled bags onto the reactors). Therefore, the Americans would have sent, by sea, a similar device capable of delivering a much higher flow rate, adding that "this journey would be one-way, as the equipment, after use, would become far too radioactive to be brought back to the USA."

Another update, relayed by one of my contacts. A crisis meeting was held on April 4, 2011, in Aix-en-Provence, bringing together teams from AREVA and ITER, as well as representatives from foreign groups, including Germans. One participant carried a folder bearing the code name:

Godzilla

Nuclear Dock

In the "Complément d'enquête" broadcast (see above), the head of nuclear power production at EDF stated:

• The older our reactors get, the safer they become...

April 1, 2011

Although I am extremely busy with writing, in urgency and before finalizing a second article for the May issue of Nexus (the first, ten pages long, is already in layout), I feel obliged to continue informing my readers about the unfolding disaster at Fukushima. This morning, at dawn, I can reproduce a minimal text, which I will expand later today with personal updates and images. Here is this text, which I fully endorse and which aligns with the alarming information I receive from my contacts in Japan. If the author agrees to be cited (I always ask beforehand, and I will do so), I will include their name.

Japanese authorities, anticipating the worst without informing the public, have been stockpiling a gel, dispersed by aircraft, intended to stick radioactive particles to the ground before cleanup by "liquidators," as was done at Chernobyl. It is not impossible that, in case of criticality and a major release, they may need to use this substance.

F

Source:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/suicide-squads-paid-huge-sums-amid-fresh-fears-for-nuclear-site-2256741.html

It is confirmed: fuel rod melting is underway, and the situation is truly out of control.

According to an expert's warning yesterday, the radioactive core in a reactor at the Fukushima plant appears to have melted through the bottom of its containment vessel. Concerns have been raised about radioactive gases that could soon be released into the atmosphere.

Richard Lahey, who formerly headed reactor safety at General Electric, said workers have now lost their battle. The core has melted through the bottom of its vessel in reactor No. 2, and part of this substance is now on the floor.

Workers are being paid very well to try to end this nightmare, exposed to extremely high levels of radiation, but it seems their suicidal bravery may prove futile and fatal!

The plant operator hopes to stop ongoing contamination; otherwise, 130,000 people will be forced to evacuate their homes.

As of today, milk is contaminated, vegetables and drinking water as well. Seawater around the plant is also contaminated, not to mention tides that will disperse radioactive elements. Authorities have detected plutonium levels in soil outside the plant. Tunnels connecting reactors 1, 2, and 3 are filled with contaminated water at significant levels.

Japan's Nuclear Safety Agency claims plutonium levels are not dangerous for human health [really?], but confirms the situation is extremely grave and that partial melting is underway in at least one reactor.

Engineers continue trying to repair the cooling system, but they are forced to work surrounded by radiation and without electricity.

Florent B.

Friday, April 1, 2001, 2:47 a.m.

Source:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/03/30/japan.daini

/ C

e n'est plus une centrale, mais deux centrales nucléaires de Fukushima qui fument!

Smoke was spotted at another nuclear power plant in northern Japan on Wednesday, according to Tokyo Electric Power. The company stated that smoke was detected in the turbine building No. 2 of the reactor around 6 p.m. This nuclear plant is located about 10 km from the Fukushima plant. An evacuation order has been issued for residents living within a 10-km radius of this plant. Since then, authorities have not issued further comments on the situation.

Florent B.

April 1, 2011

Iodine-131 has been detected in milk samples from France and the United States, according to simultaneous reports from the French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Analysis results confirm that this radioactive isotope originates from releases at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Finally, here are high-resolution photos taken on March 20, 2011, by a drone belonging to the private company AIR PHOTO SERVICE. I have not resized the images for screen display, and you may need to use your "scroll bars" for some of them. They show the damage sustained by the reactors at the site and require no commentary. Logically, these photos should have occupied double pages in our major "news magazines." Remember the motto of Paris-Match: "The weight of words, the shock of photos." But I'm not sure you'll find such images elsewhere except online. In that case, your opinion will be shaped accordingly.

These holes were very likely made during the collapse of the concrete slab covering the reactor

I am currently writing a second article for the May issue of Nexus, which has opened its columns to me. I will begin with a series of articles illustrating the special issue of Le Point dedicated to nuclear energy.

What you will read in this special issue will astonish you. I summarize:

Pages 58 to 95: generalities.

Pages 76 to 77: two pages by Claude Allègre, who assures us that fearing seismic risks in France is "walking on one's head."

Pages 96 to 103: a course on different types of reactors, present and "future."

Page 106: an interview with Robert Klapish, former director of research at CERN.

Robert Klapisch, former director of research at CERN

Everything is fine in the best possible nuclear world

It's so absurd, irresponsible, and utterly lacking in imagination that I leave it to you to discover by flipping through your local newsstand and turning to this page.

Page 108: Pascal Colombani, former general administrator of the CEA, "demonstrates" that we need nuclear energy but that risks are high. He concludes by saying the Fukushima disaster "will force us to show more imagination."

Page 100: "France, addicted to nuclear energy"

The only alternative is to... reopen our coal mines and reconfigure our port facilities to receive foreign coal.

Page 112: "Is there life after the atom?"

Reading this issue, you will realize—if you haven't already—that we are governed by fools and managed by dangerous madmen or unconscious irresponsible people.

Solutions exist, and I will present them in the upcoming May issue of Nexus. We simply need a bit more imagination than classic environmentalists with their "de-growth" and rooftop solar panels, and instead base ourselves on what actually works—proven technologies, not speculation or "something that might work by 2030..."

We need a plan commensurate with the need and urgency, and I will present it.

Meanwhile, news reaches us indicating that the two neighboring sites near Fukushima have also suffered damage. I will also publish photos of the three power plants before the disaster, showing that all three, located at sea level behind a port facility, were backed by significant hills nearby. And no one talks about this. It would have sufficed for the private company responsible for installing these reactors to position them a few tens of meters higher to protect them from tsunamis, frequent and intense in this region of Japan. Why wasn't this done?

To preserve shareholder profits and ensure a good return on investment.

April 1, 2011

Refer to the PDF containing AREVA's analysis of events.

Let’s examine certain diagrams in an attempt to understand. This one represents the "maneuvering bridge" of the reactor. We see the powerful overhead crane capable of removing the thick concrete slab covering the reactor for refueling operations. The railings give us scale. After removing the slab, and once the two steel reactor vessels have been depressurized, the entire area is flooded, then the two steel caps are extracted using the overhead crane and placed aside. Finally, through the narrow corridor connecting the reactor vessel room and the pool, the fuel assemblies removed from the core are moved while submerged—this entire operation being carried out underwater.

Apart from the overhead crane, this room is almost empty. Ventilation ducts are visible in the background. The structure consists of relatively thin steel sheets fastened to a light truss framework. In the AREVA PDF, it is explained that when the temperature of the steam inside the reactor vessel exceeded 1000°C and the top of the reactor began emerging from the water, the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods (containing the fuel pellets) decomposed the water. Why zirconium? Because this metal is transparent to neutrons and thus does not interfere with fusion reactions.

Pressure inside the 20 cm thick containment vessel housing the core began to rise. At the same time, hydrogen was released from the decomposition of water molecules. Technicians then directed this hydrogen into this maneuvering room. The oxygen was fixed by oxidation through the zirconium rods. This released the fuel pellets, mixing them with water and gas, creating radioactive contaminants.

In this maneuvering room, a hydrogen-oxygen mixture formed. Then, as clearly seen in the explosion of reactor No. 1, an explosion occurred. The shockwave blew off the steel plates, but the bracing framework remained intact.

AREVA’s explanation:

This explanation is compatible with the images we have of reactor No. 1, but

completely incompatible

with those of other reactors, such as No. 3 and No. 4, where something of an entirely different level of severity occurred, affecting areas below the maneuvering floor. Re-examine this image of the explosion at reactor No. 3. Something completely different happened there.

Unless AREVA produces a new report,

its current report utterly discredits its claims

A photo of one of the Fukushima reactors. The worker standing at the top provides scale.

Vessel diameter: 5.5 meters. Steel cap diameter in foreground: 10.5 meters

Increase in radioactivity due to releases from the Fukushima plant. Le Figaro:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2011/03/30/01003-20110330ARTFIG00754-la-radioactivite-au-large-de-fukushima-augmente-encore.php

It's not just one plant affected, but three.

The southeast coast of Japan is particularly vulnerable to tsunamis, bordered by a vast continental shelf descending gently, which amplifies the waves. In this region, two tsunamis reaching magnitude 7 have occurred since 1960. This did not prevent Japanese nuclear operators from systematically installing their plants right at sea level, simply building a port to bring in materials, etc. Look at this map:

Two power plants surrounding Fukushima

Vulnerability: maximum

120 km northeast of Fukushima:

Onagawa nuclear plant, feet in the water.

It took the tsunami head-on. Waves 15 meters high.

A small fire was eventually brought under control. Notice the hills just behind.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2011/03/30/01003-20110330ARTFIG00759-200-japonais-refugies-dans-la-centrale-nucleaire-d-onagawa.php

Onagawa has three boiling water reactors, the oldest dating from 1980. The village of Onagawa was completely destroyed. As all attention was focused on the Fukushima plant, the private company Tohoku Electric Power blamed the radiation around Onagawa on releases from Fukushima. But the population now hesitates to believe what they are told. After all, with so many dead and homeless, nuclear power is just another misfortune.

Now let's move further south:

Tokaï nuclear plant, also at sea level, backed by hills.

Third private operator: the Japanese company JAPC. One 1000 MW boiling water reactor, commissioned in... 1978, 33 years ago.

The backup pump was able to be activated.

Apparently, I am the only one (I haven't seen this reported anywhere in the press) to say that it would have been more prudent, in a tsunami-prone region, to install reactors tens of meters above sea level rather than right at the water's edge. I haven't surveyed all Japanese nuclear plants, but regarding Fukushima, this plant also has nearby hills.

What no one says: At Fukushima, it would have sufficed, at least, to place the diesel generators and fuel tanks on the surrounding hills

to protect them from the strongest tsunamis and allow them to power the electric pumps

The Japanese are not the only ones guilty of stupidity. If ITER ever stumbles, I’ll tell you a good one. The reactor will release its contents into nature through a chimney, including deuterium and tritium (radioactive, half-life: 12 years).

In Paris, the polytechnicians who designed ITER, or the Germans, or others, said to themselves, "Hydrogen, light or heavy, rises."

Vaison is next to ITER, which I've passed dozens of times. This region, beloved by glider pilots, is prone to wave phenomena—oscillatory movements very frequent here when the wind is strong, like the mistral, for example.

Wave regime (meteorology and gliding)

Waves are a glider pilot's delight. The diagram shows where a glider should position itself to take advantage of them. At the crest of gas waves: lens-shaped clouds. Below, a rotor that presses air down to the ground. Air possibly charged with... tritium.

And what lies downstream from ITER under such wave conditions?

The Sainte-Croix Lake, Marseille's freshwater reserve.

There is no meteorological service planned within the ITER teams. And if one were needed, it would require a representative from each participating nation.

One day, residents of the PACA region might hear on their media: "Very low levels of tritium have been found in the lake water, but at a rate that poses no health risk to people drinking this water..."

To be continued...

March 29, 2011

An extremely serious situation.

On March 28, 2011, André Claude Lacoste, President of the ASN (Nuclear Safety Authority), held a press conference.

André Claude Lacoste, President of the Nuclear Safety Authority

http://www.asn.fr

By visiting the ASN website (a government agency that is difficult to suspect of militant anti-nuclear bias), you can read the statement issued by this body. Below is an audio clip sent by a reader, reproducing excerpts from

his speech on March 28, 2011.

As you can see,

the situation at Fukushima is of extreme gravity

and is taking a very dire turn, even globally. The situation was initially managed in a surreal manner. While such a nuclear accident requires rapid intervention, the Japanese Prime Minister demanded that nothing be done until he could personally survey the site to assess the situation—despite knowing nothing about nuclear energy.

Furthermore, the Japanese politely declined offers of assistance from various countries, out of pride and foolish vanity, "to avoid losing face in the eyes of the world." They refused specialized robots. Today, technicians working on-site must act quickly due to the high ambient radiation levels. Lacoste mentioned two minutes. We thus find ourselves in a situation reminiscent of what happened at Chernobyl in 1986. Re-watch the film "The Battle of Chernobyl" to recall the extreme gravity of a nuclear accident...

http://cequevousdevezsavoir.com/2011/03/19/la-bataille-de-tchernobyl

I watched a video showing the Fukushima site filmed from a helicopter. It's impressive. We see plumes of smoke rising from various locations. The Japanese have not provided any figures regarding radiation levels at these hotspots. One must remember that shortly after the disaster, they had announced it was a level 4 incident. But the ASN forced them to revise this upward to level 6 (7 for Chernobyl). The probability that the vessels containing the reactor cores have been breached and are leaking molten fuel is high. It seems the Japanese do not control what's happening there. True, in addition to this nuclear disaster, they must manage the extensive consequences of an earthquake and tsunami. But who had the foolish and criminal idea to install reactors right at the water’s edge in a region where tsunamis of magnitude 7 have occurred recently (1962 and 2008, I believe)? Check Google Earth and enable the option showing seismic events.

E

AFukushima has experienced core meltdowns, possibly very severe. At Three Mile Island, USA, 45% of the core had melted, and the "corium" had gathered at the bottom of the vessel, which miraculously held.

Three Mile Island reactor, after dismantling, one year later

Vessel diameter: 5 meters

The shape of this vessel is such that when molten elements fall to the bottom, the geometry causes them to gather, increasing the risk of criticality with the percentage of core that has melted.

This is why the Japanese are desperately trying to cool these vessels. It's like putting a plaster on a wooden leg—retreating to jump further. But if they don't do it, the entire fuel load will melt and collect at the bottom of the vessel. Then the risk of criticality becomes great. If criticality is reached, the entire corium will flow beneath the vessel into a room filled with water used for cooling. This corium will be hot enough to rapidly dissociate water molecules (from 1000°C), creating a massive explosive gas cloud—a stoichiometric hydrogen-oxygen mixture. The explosion would shatter the reactor, as happened at Chernobyl, where the 12-ton concrete lid was blasted tens of meters away.

(What happened during the spectacular explosion of reactor No. 3, with its gray smoke and concrete fragments the size of bunkers hurled hundreds of meters into the air?)

If such an explosion occurs—and the risk exists—it would result in a massive release of radioactive elements. One must grasp the amount of fissile material in a reactor, always measured in tons (similar to my Japanese reactors), whereas a bomb contains only a few kilograms. The spectacular nature of a military nuclear explosion comes from its brevity. A certain amount of energy is released in an extremely short time—one-thousandth of a second. The shockwave devastates everything in its path. The heat from the fireball causes fires and burns living beings. Radiation is also intense. But pollution, i.e., the amount of radioactive debris falling to the ground, remains relatively low because the immense heat creates an updraft that carries debris high into the atmosphere, where winds disperse them.

In the case of a nuclear reactor explosion, the release aspect is much more significant because there is no updraft to carry debris upward. If you watch the film "The Battle of Chernobyl," you'll see that tens of thousands of men and women were irradiated by releases that appeared as barely visible smoke plumes. This was due to the burning of graphite, sustained by the intense heat from the molten core.

I would be curious to know the radioactive content of these small plumes of smoke or vapor rising from the breached power plants. There are a thousand ways to find out—simply dragging a sensor under a helicopter, or sending a remote-controlled drone.

None of this gives me a good feeling.

AT Chernobyl, the Russians quickly took energetic and dramatic measures to control the situation. After a few hours of lethargy and disbelief in Moscow, engineers dispatched to the site grasped the gravity and acted accordingly. Within 30 hours of the disaster's onset, the 45,000 residents of Pripyat, located just 3 km from the plant, were evacuated in orderly fashion within 3.5 hours using a thousand buses.

The Russians sacrificed between 600 and 1,000 helicopter pilots to drop bags of sand and boron into the monster's maw (a ten-meter-diameter hole requiring low-altitude approach, just 100 meters above). The helicopter crews had to release their loads. All were fatally irradiated.

Only when a massive amount of sand, concrete, boron, and lead had been dumped did emissions cease. But not the radioactivity emitted by the countless debris. Lead vapors also caused numerous health issues in the population (a simple note: our polytechnicians, to replace the dangerous molten sodium (5,000 tons) used as coolant in fast breeder reactors—these "fourth-generation reactors"—suggest cooling a ton of plutonium core with an equivalent amount of molten lead).

Where are the Japanese now? It is impossible for them to recover their plant units. What will happen? If the vessels leak, radioactive elements will spread throughout the already severely damaged buildings. Heat will cause a non-spectacular but progressively increasing release of radioelements over distance.

These diverse and varied radioisotopes have already circled the Earth. Ultimately, it seems the only solution will be placing the reactors under a sarcophagus, given that the reactors are already inaccessible due to high radioactivity. Taking this decision would be an admission of failure for the Japanese—not failure in facing the situation, but failure of their technology, energy policy, and way of life. The entire country coexists with 54 nuclear reactors, whose maintenance and design have already drawn numerous criticisms. Condemning the Fukushima reactors would trigger a crisis of confidence among the Japanese people, who possess no alternative energy resources. The economic, social, and human stakes are immense.

It is possible that Japanese authorities, who have often displayed incompetence and lack of determination, will allow things to deteriorate to the point where:

• The situation risks becoming a nightmare locally.

• Nuclear pollution reaches a scale damaging to the entire planet.

Regardless, for me, the conclusion is clear. We must abandon nuclear energy and urgently develop viable alternative energies. It is feasible.

It is a matter of human survival.

I will publish a 10-page article on this subject in the next Nexus issue, already in progress (it will be available in newsstands in May). I am finishing a follow-up piece to be published in the same issue, identifying

genuine solutions.

That is, implementing energy sources for replacement

on a truly global scale.

It’s not about placing solar panels and wind turbines on rooftops and using low-consumption bulbs, but rather, for example, harnessing solar energy where it is abundant and transmitting it over long distances via high-voltage direct current. This is not speculation, but the application of technologies already in place for a long time in various countries. In Canada, electricity from dams in the north is transmitted over 1,400 km. Siemens is finishing construction for China of a link connecting the Three Gorges Dam to coastal regions via a high-voltage direct current connection. Power: 5,000 MW. A submarine cable already transmits 1,000 megawatts from France to England. But the record belongs to the Denmark-Norway link, with 450 km of submarine cable. You will read all this in my article. We must quickly tap into the vast abundance of replacement energy that nature provides. Abandoning nuclear energy is imperative. The sooner, the better.

It's not too late, but it's time.

The CRIIRAD detected iodine-131 in the Drôme-Ardèche region, in rainwater. Here is the address of the video showing Météo-France's animation regarding the dispersion of the radioactive air mass.

http://www.irsn.fr/FR/popup/Pages/irsn-meteo-france_19mars.aspx

This sequence is eloquent and shows that the radioactive air mass has already covered the entire Northern Hemisphere.

The air mass carrying radioactive dust has already covered the entire Northern Hemisphere

CRIIRAD's analysis report and commentary dated March 29, 2011

People are being reassured about pollution from radioactive elements. They are shown figures described as very moderate, even insignificant. But the main risk lies in inhaling or ingesting dust, followed by its fixation in the body.

That is the major risk.

: carrying this radioactive element within oneself, in one's body.

One can die while living in an area where ambient radioactivity seems low, simply because one has inhaled a microscopic dusty particle at the wrong time.

March 14, 2011

For several days now, the world has been stunned, discovering the extent of the damage caused in Japan by the earthquake, and especially the tsunami that formed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, some 140 kilometers off the northeastern coast of Japan.

An impressive video showing the tsunami

If you want to have an overview of these damages, watch this Chinese video.

The damage caused in Japan by the tsunami

These images are extremely impressive. Here are some samples:

The arrival of the tsunami

An enormous whirlpool formed by the retreat of the liquid mass. Notice a boat near the center, which seems tiny

Fire in a hydrocarbon storage park

Another fire

(

gas storage )

Urban fire, city of Sandaï

Filmed from a helicopter, the tsunami crashes onto Sandaï airport

A part of Sandaï airport, devastated by the tsunami

Without comment.....

It is said that "governing is foreseeing." In this matter, it is foreseeing the consequences, which one could call "secondary" or "collateral" of such a natural disaster. Japan, overpopulated, has 58 nuclear reactors to meet its electricity needs. A nuclear reactor is a steel vessel, very resistant, in which are found bars of a fissile material. Technically, these are tubes called "pencils" in which fissile elements, mixtures of oxides, are stacked, which have the appearance of aspirin tablets.

Compared to an atomic bomb, which behaves like an explosive, a reactor resembles a pile of embers. In these bars, the decomposition of uranium 235, or even a certain percentage of plutonium 239, releases heat and causes the emission of neutrons which, striking other atoms of uranium 238, cause secondary reactions.

To better understand the operation of a reactor, download my comic strip "

Energétiquement vôtre

" on the Savoir sans Frontières website

http://www.savoir-sans-frontieres.com

(nearly 400 albums from the series of Anselme Lanturlu adventures, freely downloadable, in 36 languages, without media echo, all presses combined).

A "coolant fluid" must continuously circulate in this vessel, this core of the reactor, to evacuate the heat, the heat released by the fission reactions, otherwise the worst can happen.

I am not omniscient.

Considering that I have the duty to clarify information, I try to spread it. I inform myself, often in a hurry, when it is not in a rush, when it comes to current events. I do this while managing numerous activities that I must handle simultaneously (I have two new books to write and MHD research to conduct, complex calculations to make).

I take this opportunity to ask dozens of readers who regularly ask me to be on "their discussion list" to refrain from doing so. I don't have time for casual exchanges, like on a blog. High school students ask me for their TPE (same thing: I absolutely don't have time to take care of them). Others expect me to answer questions like "could you explain relativity in simple terms?" or "what do you think of the hollow earth theory?" Unless it's to tell me "I am personally very doubtful about ... could you provide arguments to convince the skeptic that I am?" Some, having come across sites or videos that caught their interest, just forward me their addresses, without explanation. If these are not accompanied by a few lines of explanation, I don't have the time to explore each of these contents.

Sometimes, readers ask me a question to which I answer briefly, this answer being simply "I don't know." It happens that the interlocutor insists, not understanding why "a scientist like me does not take the time to answer properly and with arguments." Sometimes the exchange ends with an email accompanied by violent insults.

That being said, what I receive continuously, daily, is an irreplaceable documentation, and it is thanks to these contributions and clarifications from specialists that I can be better equipped to try to inform you. Some, who have followed me for a long time, know how to provide me with these information, with a few lines of presentation, or even an image, saying "I think this is important," and I appreciate it. Others know how to cut a video document to extract key elements.

When I build a new page, you will see that I don't just indicate a URL of an article or a video. I make many screenshots, I compose my own text and it is common that the assembly of a simple page, where elementary tasks accumulate, represents 6 to 12 hours of work.

In what follows, I will correct what I posted yesterday, quickly, regarding the Japanese reactors, and that readers have immediately corrected. No, it is not

pressurized water reactors

, but

boiling water reactors

.

I give these details in what follows.

D

Let's look at the diagram of pressurized water reactors, an American solution, mainly implemented in France

At atmospheric pressure, water boils at 100°C. At a lower temperature, 85°C, at the top of Mont Blanc. And inversely, if this water is at a pressure higher than one bar, it can be above 100°C.

If the heat is not continuously evacuated, these metal bars can melt (this is the "core meltdown") and the result of this melting can accumulate at the bottom of the vessel, forming what must be avoided above all: that this material is confined, which would drastically increase the energy release, due to "a criticality entry".

Indeed, a nuclear reactor is a place where chain reactions occur, which must be carefully controlled. These bars of fissile material are like hams, in the reactor vessel. Around them circulates a fluid that collects the heat (water at 150 bars, in the case of pressurized water reactors, the PWR:

pressurized water reactors

). This water enters the vessel at a temperature of 295°C and exits at 330°C. The flow is considerable: 60,000 cubic meters per hour, or

sixteen cubic meters per second

. In this formula, it is decided to isolate this primary circuit from the secondary circuit, coupled with the first by a heat exchanger, and which will be sent to the gas turbine, driving an electric generator.

In purple: the primary circuit filled with pressurized water, circulating in the reactor core enclosure. In blue and red, the secondary circuit. In the heat exchanger, located in the reactor containment enclosure, this water (dark blue in liquid state) turns into vapor, in red. This vapor then drives a two-stage gas turbine: high and low pressure. The vapor, expanded and cooled, then passes through a

condenser

, where it is liquefied

A system producing energy has a hot source and a cold source. The hot source is the "pencils" of the reactor core, bathed in pressurized water, within which fission reactions, exo-energetic, take place. The cold source is the atmospheric air (for reactors that use this final cooling system). The first two systems, operating in closed loops, are coupled with a third, in contact with the atmospheric air, thanks to huge cooling towers that can be seen, flanking French power plants.

Water is made to flow along the inner wall of these towers, open at the bottom to allow air to circulate. This water thus transfers the heat collected in the condenser to the air rising in the tower. Along the way, part of the water is vaporized (500 liters per second). Therefore, it is necessary to have a water supply nearby (river or sea). It is this vaporized water that makes the towers have a plume of vapor when the reactor is operating.

70% of the heat produced is thus released into the atmosphere (or into the river, the sea, if the cold source is of this nature). The efficiency of a reactor does not exceed 30%.

There are 58 pressurized water reactors in France.

List of French reactors.

Let's move on to

boiling water reactors

, of the type that equip Japanese power plants.

Like you, I discover and try to explain. The scheme is as follows:

Boiling water reactors (BWR) of Japanese power plants

Or "BWR": Boiling water reactors

See also

:

http://www.laradioactivite.com/fr/site/pages/Reacteurs_REB.htm

Or this interesting English pdf

The comparison with the previous diagram is immediate. There is now only one closed circuit. It is the water that is sent into the reactor core which is vaporized and then directed directly to the two-stage gas turbine. On the left (1), the core, in its steel enclosure. In (2) the fuel elements. In (3) the control rods which in this setup must be raised and cannot, in case of emergency, fall by gravity.

Liquid water (blue) is a better heat conductor than water vapor (red, at the top of the core).

At the turbine exit, the water returning to the liquid state, in the condenser, is shown in purple. There is no cooling tower. It is

seawater

, in gray, that is sent into the condenser.

How is the activity of a nuclear reactor controlled?

Using

control rods

(for example, made of cadmium) which absorb neutrons, but without this phenomenon leading to new exo-energetic nuclear reactions. When these rods are completely lowered (or raised, in the case of Japanese setups), the reactor's activity is reduced by a factor of ten, compared to its nominal power. In French reactors, the time for the rods to descend in an emergency, by gravity, is one second. Twenty seconds in the Chernobyl reactor. The control rods of Japanese reactors are raised and operated electrically by lead screws (see

the English pdf

: I am not inventing anything).

On the contrary, it is the raising (or lowering in the Japanese setup) of these rods that will cause the reactor to start, when it is put into operation. One will then say "

that the reactor diverges

".

If any failure is observed in the heat evacuation system in the reactor core, where the rods are located, it is necessary either to implement a backup pumping system, or to drastically reduce the power produced by lowering the control rods (or raising them, in the case of Japanese setups).

Electricity production is carried out using

alternators

, driven by gas turbines. The steam circulating in these turbines must be transformed into liquid water at the exit, in a

condenser

. These condensers are the tall towers that can be seen, flanking the area where the nuclear reactor is located in France. The water vapor condenses there and is recovered in the lower part of the tower. Part of the water evaporates, the loss being 500 liters per second.

Such structures are not found without the Japanese reactors. Why? Because they use seawater for this cooling. For reasons of economy and profitability, the Japanese

have installed their reactors near the ocean, which is a great mistake, in a country whose coasts can be hit by tsunamis

.

The location of Japanese nuclear power plants, on the coast (...)

I imagine that the engineers have studied these installations with regard to a certain number of risks. All Japanese nuclear reactors are built according to seismic safety standards. These correspond to a value of 7 on the Richter scale and represent a possibility of horizontal acceleration of a "g". The technique consists of placing the building on the equivalent of "cylinder-blocks", but much larger.

For information, the seismic shock felt by Japan reached the

magnitude

8.9.

Click on the link. You will see, at the bottom of the page, that an earthquake of magnitude 8.9 can cause damage hundreds of kilometers away from the epicenter. This is what happened, the epicenter being located at the border between two plates, 140 km away.

Roughly,

magnitude is the logarithmic measure of the power of an earthquake

( which must be corrected by taking into account the duration of the shocks and the type of waves used).

By designing their installations for a magnitude of 7, the Japanese have underestimated the power of future earthquakes by a factor of eighty (10^1.9).

Surprising fact: this road has fractured along its median line.

An explanation from a reader: it is common for roads to be "built" in two stages, half by half, their median line constituting an initial fracture

I briefly recall the "sufficient reason" of seismic shocks. On a board at the beginning of the page, the tectonic plates are represented, which can be compared to ice floes floating on the surface of a river. These can overlap. In the case of this Japanese earthquake, it is the meeting of the Okhotsk and Pacific plates. The epicenter is located at a depth of 10,000 meters. One of the two plates passes under the other (subduction phenomenon). These plates are not "lubricated" and this sliding can only occur in jerks. These jerks are the source of earthquakes. When this rearrangement occurs under water, the lifting of one of the plates lifts a vast mass of liquid. This lifting, for someone sailing just above this event, would be imperceptible. It can be measured in tens of centimeters. But if hundreds of square kilometers of ocean are lifted by 10 cm, or more, this represents a considerable potential energy, which will be dissipated with the departure of surface waves of long wavelength, propagating at very high speed (on the order of a hundred kilometers per hour). When this tsunami reaches near a coast, if the uplift of the seabed occurs gradually, the wavelength decreases, while the amplitude of the level change increases. Thus, a wave that represented a 10 cm variation, barely perceptible, of a wave having a width (we talk about wavelength) of ten kilometers will become, near the coast, a wave of ten meters high and with a wavelength of hundreds of meters. Closest, the wave can

break

.

This earthquake would have caused a displacement of the entire plate carrying Japan by 2.4 meters. This figure should be multiplied by ten at the subduction zone, near the epicenter. Maps and GPS coordinates to be reviewed. This movement had an impact on the entire Earth, causing a displacement of the entire Earth's crust by 25 cm, which leads to a shortening of the day. This earthquake is one of the five most powerful recorded on Earth since seismic recordings have been made.

What caused the malfunction in the entire Fukushima reactor site did not come from the earthquake, but from the fantastic tsunami, with its ten-meter-high wave (which had never happened in Japan for hundreds of years). There is no way to protect against such an impact. Those who know the sea know what storms can produce. They can burst dams, twist large sections of iron. About fifty years ago, a man wanted to build near Marseille an attraction he called "telecable". The principle was that of a submarine cable car. But instead of suspending baskets on a cable, one would have attached air-filled gondolas to a cable running on pylons anchored on the seabed. The goal was to bring our underwater tourists close to "the Farillon arch", at the end of the island Maïre, a superb underwater decor, which I know well. The starting base of the cable car was to be located to the east of "Cap Croisette".

.

The small port of Cap Croisette in 1958, a few hundred meters from the planned starting point of the cable car.

The sailors warned the engineer:

• You know, in our region, we have an east wind called the Labé. And when it gets out of hand, some winter days, the waves are really powerful.

The engineer ignored this. The first pylons were installed, and were carried away like straws the following winter, by the first Labé storm that came.

I cite this anecdote to evoke the fantastic power of the sea (water is 800 times denser than air). A reader informs me of effects of the tsunami that have not been mentioned in the media. The wave may have caused movements of sediments that could have blocked the "crevices" submerged, through which seawater for cooling would be drawn. The backup systems that would have been planned, such as water stored in large cisterns, could have been disabled by the impact of the wave. The same goes for backup systems operating with generators.

On the above powerpoint, you could see the damage the tsunami had caused, impressive. If the Japanese engineers had designed their installations considering a seismic risk, they obviously had not considered that the plant could be hit by a wave of this intensity. Even if the most visible buildings could have withstood it, what about the rest of the installation, the pump room, the control room, the power supply system for the pumps? It is enough that one of these elements is damaged for the act of stopping the reactor, or cooling the core by a backup system, to be unable to be implemented. Adding to this, a worsening fact, that in the Japanese system, the control rods cannot fall by gravity, but must be raised!

Japanese reactors are designed to react to seismicity. The ground shaking preceded the arrival of the tsunami. The epicenter being 140 km from the coast and the propagation time being 20 minutes, the wave traveled this distance at a speed of 300 km/h. The safety systems of the reactors, designed to withstand seismic shocks of strength 7, have they functioned correctly, under the effect of a shock reaching strength 9? The containment enclosure supposed to ensure containment has it been damaged, cracked?

The Japanese authorities tell us that these safety systems have functioned.

Currently (March 14, 2011), we do not know the nature and extent of the damage suffered by the Japanese reactors. The situation seems to be worsening hour by hour. A failure in the cooling system can cause the fuel rods, instead of being bathed in hot water, to be surrounded by steam, whose temperature will increase. This will then combine with the metal forming the envelopes of the "pencils". This oxidation, taking oxygen, will release large amounts of hydrogen and disperse radioactive elements in the steam. It was mentioned in the previous days about sending hydrogen to cool the core. It seems that this is false. When this hydrogen began to invade the single circuit of the boiling water reactor, the engineers had to allow it to escape, to prevent the core itself from exploding (...), if this has not already happened. By combining with the oxygen in the air, this caused the explosion, which seems to have blown off the roof of one of the buildings, that of reactor number 1.

I am talking about the first explosion, that of Saturday, the day after the tsunami.

Japanese engineers have resorted to trying to control the temperature rise of the core (of the three reactors) by injecting ... seawater directly, which amounted to making these units unusable, due to corrosion.

What is still working in these installations? It's hard to say, and it's possible that the Japanese engineers don't know either. We saw that the control rods had to be raised. Can they still be raised now? If the answer is no, it will be impossible to lower the reactor's activity level. Moreover, the seawater sent into the core comes out carrying radioactivity, which is returned to the Pacific waters...

The major mistake was:

• Building these reactors on the coast

• Underestimating the magnitude of future earthquakes (9 instead of 7), that is, underestimating the destructive power by a factor of 100.

If the facilities of the Japanese nuclear power plant have been devastated like the neighborhoods of the city of Sandaï, or its airport, hello to the damages!

There is no way to protect against a tsunami of such power. One cannot imagine mounting a nuclear reactor and all its installations on ... stilts. The solution would have been to house these installations above sea level, at a sufficient altitude. Fifteen meters would have been enough: a simple hill. But Japan is not lacking in this: 71% of the country is in the form of mountains. However, in this case, using seawater as a coolant would have resulted in a loss of efficiency by spending power to pump this water, with the high flow required (sixteen cubic meters per second).

Foresee...

A Japanese seismologist had vainly, in 2006, emphasized the need to review the provisions regarding the resistance of nuclear power plants to earthquakes.

Chronicle of an announced catastrophe

Professor Ishibashi Katsuhiko

Seismologist, Professor at the Urban Safety Research Center at Kobe University

Anyway, in a country sensitive to tsunamis, building all the power plants on the coast was total irresponsibility.

Segment C reprise

End of segment C+, added on April 12, 20100

April 12, 2011

: A reader, Turiya, provides this clarification, regarding the statements made by this Japanese seismologist, in an article from 2007, which I had already mentioned in this appendix page, titled "Chronique d'une catastrophe avancée". Here is her comment:

In your dossier, you write:

«

The safety systems of the reactors, designed to withstand seismic shocks of force 7, have they functioned correctly, under the effect of a shock approaching force 9? The enclosure…

»

But in the 2007 article by Ishibashi Katsuhiko, he says that nuclear power plants are designed to withstand earthquakes of lower magnitude (he says that the new regulations require only 450

gal

, (which should correspond to a magnitude of 4 ± ?) and that they should significantly raise their standards:

Japanese standards regarding seismic magnitudes

« So the guidelines should require that a nuclear power plant, no matter where it is located, should be designed to withstand at least the ground acceleration caused by an earthquake of about a 7.3 magnitude, roughly 1000 gal.

In fact, however, the new guidelines require only about 450 gal. This figure should be raised substantially, and all existing nuclear power plants should be examined rigorously according to the revised criteria. ”

So, finally, what magnitude were the Japanese power plants supposed to be able to withstand?

My answer (

April 12, 2011

) :

I don't actually know

! A French engineer told me that French power plants were designed to withstand earthquakes of magnitude 7 (which should be verified), and he added "this corresponds to a horizontal acceleration of one g, and this is the general standard" (which should also be verified).

So I therefore deduced that it must be the same for Japanese power plants, completely arbitrarily! A reader may be able to enlighten us on this point &&&

You also write: "Anyway, in a country sensitive to tsunamis, building all the power plants on the coast was total irresponsibility."

In my opinion, and this has always been the case, building nuclear power plants in general is total irresponsibility…)

Turiya

Ama asked, this reader directed me to the content of the article published in 2007 by Professor Ishibashi, professor of seismology at Kobe University.

I am therefore able to insert a link to this document.

Source:

http://www.japanfocus.org/-Ishibashi-Katsuhiko/2495

The article by Professor Ishibashi

Katsuhiko

( in pdf and in English)

If this reader, or a reader, could translate the entire text into French, it would be welcome.

Start of segment C+, added on April 12, 2011

The satellite photos, comparative, showing the site, before and after:


March 16, 2011

: There have been several explosions. The first blew off the upper part of the building housing reactor number 1. This seems to be due to the accumulation of hydrogen produced by the decomposition of the water bathing the core elements, the oxygen having oxidized the metal cladding of the "pencils", in zirconium. The Japanese could not allow the pressure to rise in the closed, internal circuit of the reactor, or even in the containment enclosure. They therefore let the hydrogen rise and invade the room above the reactor. When mixed with air, everything exploded, blowing off the roof of this room. This explosion caused the departure of a shock wave, followed by the condensation of the water vapor produced, which is clearly visible on the video.

The explosion of number 3 seems more problematic:

The film shows that large fragments of concrete were thrown hundreds of meters into the air.

The reactor number 3 under construction, in 1970

:

At the bottom, in the foreground, the steel dome closing the containment enclosure. The men give the scale

The core container, in its pear-shaped containment enclosure.

C

The opinion of a reader

:

Here is the diagram of the Fukushima reactors, there is no containment enclosure in the sense that the term is understood in France. The Japanese General Electric BWR, whether signed GE, Hitachi or Toshiba, are built by KAJIMA (the Japanese Bouygues) on the same model, which resembles the Soviet VVR or even the Chernobyl RBMK: a big pile of concrete with a thin steel shed on top.

At the top of the concrete block, there are pools for storing the fuel elements in MOX, the new and old, about 20 years of operation, which is a lot of megacuries. One can also place in the pools the cover of the vessel, the bolts, and everything that emits radioactivity. A huge overhead crane is anchored on the concrete, and is used notably for handling the large concrete slabs that seal the vessel well.

Of course, if the core is no longer cooled, the fuel rods melt, react with water, and produce hydrogen. If the reactor vessel is breached, the hydrogen escapes beneath the floor slab and accumulates in the building. Voluntary releases should naturally occur through the plant's chimney. If hydrogen has accumulated beneath the building, it is clearly against the engineers' intentions, because steam pipes were ruptured or even the reactor vessel itself.

The first explosion on Saturday, that of reactor number 1, was clearly a hydrogen detonation: few debris, a visible shockwave, little dust, and some metal sheets flying around—this was definitely an explosion beneath the building.

On reactor 3, the accident was much more severe: I believe the core melted, penetrated the steel reactor vessel's bottom, and accumulated at the base of the concrete reactor pit.

Over time, as it dripped to the bottom, the corium formed a critical mass. (We call "corium" the molten core material—a mixture of uranium oxide, plutonium oxide, fission products, steel, and zirconium.) This is known as a "criticality accident" or "nuclear excursion" (in effect, a small nuclear explosion).

I think the explosion's power shattered the reactor pit, and we can clearly see massive chunks of concrete flying through the air in the videos. Note that the reactor building is 46 meters high, giving us an idea of the scale of these concrete fragments: the size of a small bunker from the Atlantic Wall!

Pause the video and measure with a ruler the maximum height of the dust and debris cloud: 300 meters! Look at the concrete pieces and estimate their size, again using a ruler. Do you still believe the containment structure is intact?

Compared to Chernobyl, the problem is that MOX fuel contains roughly TEN TIMES MORE PLUTONIUM. MOX is manufactured in France at the MELOX plant in Chusclan. Its construction was decided by Mr. Jospin.

The Japanese built their own MOX plant, but as far as I recall, it appears to have been temporarily closed (to be verified) after three workers accidentally mixed fissile materials in a bucket too large, irreversibly damaging their cells due to neutron exposure. It's difficult to say whether the fuel in Fukushima reactor 3 was produced in France or Japan. We can trust Mr. Besson to enlighten us on this point.

Let's not boast: in the same scenario, confronted with such an explosion, the containment concrete of French nuclear plants would not have fared any better.

On the other hand, in French EPR reactors, a "pancake tile" system made of refractory concrete is supposed to spread the corium to prevent criticality and cool it into a nice radioactive pancake.

Other images of this type of BWR (Boiling Water Reactor) design.

American-designed. A quarter of the global reactor fleet. Power output: from 570 to 1,300 megawatts.

In blue, the "pool" where fuel rods removed from the reactor—now "shut down"—were stored, including a batch of "pencils," awaiting replacement.

According to a reader, shutting down a reactor is not immediate, even if control rod insertion stops exothermic fission reactions. These fissions produce elements with a certain half-life that continue to generate heat as they decay.

This is why cooling must continue for a reactor "shut down."

The reader estimates the thermal power released at 60 megawatts. Thus, even if one of these reactors were "shut down," the failure of the cooling system due to the tsunami impact created a risk of core meltdown. Cooling the core had to be maintained at all costs. Yes, but how?

Description at:

http://www.laradioactivite.com/fr/site/pages/Reacteurs_REB.htm

A dossier in English on safety measures associated with this reactor type.

The steam temperature is about 300°C and the pressure 70 to 80 atmospheres. Control rods, inserted from below, are pushed down by hydraulic pistons and thus cannot fall vertically by gravity. In these reactors, the liquid water level must be continuously monitored. This is achieved using a toroidal-shaped reservoir located at the base of the system.

Between the first cylindrical containment vessel surrounding the core and the second bottle-shaped confinement structure, there is (in yellow) an inert gas (argon). A precaution in case rising temperatures cause water dissociation, producing hydrogen—oxygen released from water combining with zirconium cladding around fuel rods. Thus, any produced hydrogen, diluted in a chemically inert gas, could not trigger an explosion (...).

Days and months will pass. The time for assessment will come. It's sad to say, but the fact that this disaster occurred in Japan might influence the global development and reorientation of nuclear energy (see below). Chernobyl happened 25 years ago. And Ukraine is far away, vast. It doesn't matter that a region the size of Provence had to be evacuated for decades and thousands died at the time, followed by consequences from radiation exposure.

If this Japanese nuclear accident had occurred in India, China, or an Eastern country, would anyone care—even if hundreds of thousands died and vast areas were poisoned?

India, China, Eastern countries—far away. And everyone knows these people just... do anything. It's well known. For the world to finally recognize the danger of civilian nuclear energy (let’s not even talk about military nuclear!), what would it take? Wish for the Japanese to experience a Chernobyl-bis, with a quarter of their densely populated territory becoming uninhabitable for decades, with westward winds requiring immediate evacuation of Tokyo (250 km away) and surrounding populations—30 million people? That fishing in Japanese waters would become problematic due to marine fallout in coastal zones?

In six months, "everything will be back to normal." "Japan will heal its wounds," they'll say.

Which media raised the key issue: the danger of siting nuclear power plants on the coast, as all are, making them vulnerable to tsunamis? But if these locations were mistakes, what about the cost of relocating them onto a simple hill? What about the cost of modifying buildings so they withstand not earthquakes of magnitude 7, but those reaching 9?!

There is no zero risk...

Behind this reality lies the negligence of those managing human destiny, the irresponsibility of scientists, the incompetence of politicians and decision-makers, the greed of financial powers, and short-sightedness. Facing this, the angelic impracticality of environmentalists who imagine solar energy or "economies" and "de-growth" will solve everything. Let me tell you something: two months ago, the room adjacent to my house—containing the aquagym pool that allowed me to get out of my wheelchair and help myself—burned down due to a short circuit. On the walls: plastic cladding over thirty years old. The CES in Pailleron, located in Paris’s 19th arrondissement, where twenty children died within minutes; the 5 à 7 nightclub in Saint-Laurent-du-Pont, Isère, with 180 fatalities—does that ring a bell?

This cladding is not fireproof at all. But its behavior during a fire is terrifying. Exposed to just radiant heat, this material decomposes into black particles, forming a toxic mixture rapidly fatal to anyone unable to escape quickly. However, when mixed with air, this dust can ignite suddenly. In just ten minutes, flames two meters high emerged from my ground-floor room. I managed to extinguish the rapidly intensifying fire using the garden hose and spraying fine droplets above the flames; otherwise, the house would have been lost. The rapid vaporization cooled the blaze, which vanished in one minute. I lost some strands of hair.

Advice: If your home or apartment contains thermal or acoustic insulation panels like this, replace them immediately with modern, non-combustible materials.

The room has been restored. In the process, I built a one-and-a-half-square-meter solar panel, mounted vertically on the south wall, embedded and disguised as a false window. My pool, insulated like a camping cooler—with an 8 cm layer of polyurethane, double-layered with polyester resin and gel coat, and covered with similar panels—maintains a constant temperature of 32°C using only 175 watts. I can thus maintain this temperature with my solar collector (a wooden box, a 1.5 mm steel plate, a copper serpent, double-glazed glass 4-6-4, and a pump). But does that mean I could heat my entire house, cook meals, etc., using this?

When our well-meaning environmentalists call for "new energies," industrialists smile. How would you power industrial plants, run TGVs, produce aluminum, etc.?

See further below.

That said, all countries heavily invested in nuclear power plants are now asking questions. In France, three-quarters of consumed electricity comes from nuclear sources. We're no less negligent in this regard. If the Japanese reactors involved are 40 years old, Fessenheim’s reactor, at 33 years old, lacks a double containment structure. It wouldn't survive an earthquake. When Super-Phoenix was built, the roof of the pump hall collapsed on December 8, 1990—under the weight of snow!

No one had considered this possibility. Yes, in Isère, it sometimes snows.

In France, we have this absurdity called ITER—a mere "social plan" and dream vacation for thousands of engineers and technicians, aware and complicit, who, before retiring, might admit, "Yes, it was a mistake..."

But what's extraordinary is that two renowned scientists—Balibar and our late Nobel laureate Charpak—while denouncing this ruinous project, costing a pharaonic 1,500 billion euros, were simultaneously advocating for the revival of the most dangerous civilian nuclear project ever imagined by humanity: the fast breeder reactor.

Georges Charpak, Nobel laureate, deceased September 29, 2010

Just before his death, Charpak, alongside Balibar, advocated for the installation of fast breeder reactors.

Superphénix, a fast breeder reactor at Creys Malville

(Financial black hole, shut down in 1998, currently being dismantled)

On December 8, 1990, the roof of the reactor pump hall—poorly calculated—collapsed under the weight of snow. The designers had forgotten that in Isère, it sometimes snows.

To understand the general principle, refer to my comic strip where all this is explained. Fission reactions produce neutrons. If this occurs in an aqueous environment (pressurized water reactor), the water acts as a moderator, slowing down these neutrons.

If we arrange for these neutrons not to be slowed, they can trigger the transmutation of non-fissile uranium-238 into fissile plutonium-239 (which does not exist naturally). This is how military reactors produce the explosive material for fission bombs. A fast breeder reactor uses a fertile blanket of U-238, which gradually transforms into Pu-239 over time.

This scheme can be adapted to civilian reactors, with considerable risks of misuse. The coolant fluid can no longer be pressurized water, which slows neutrons. Instead, we must use a system where heat from fission is extracted by circulating molten sodium at 550°C (boiling at 880°C). Sodium does not slow down neutrons. But when released, it spontaneously ignites in air.

In such reactors—called fast breeders—we use plutonium fission. In a fast breeder like Superphénix (which is supposed to rise from its ashes), annual consumption is nearly one ton of plutonium (compared to 27 tons of uranium at equivalent power). The neutrons emitted by these fission reactions could transform the blanket into Pu-239.

Uranium-238 is the waste product from nuclear reprocessing carried out at La Hague. It's essentially the "ash" from uranium-based operation, where isotope U-235 is consumed. It's no coincidence that France has become the world leader in "reprocessing," recovering this fraction of "ash" for reuse in fast breeder reactors. A long-term policy aiming to "ensure our energy independence"—unfortunately... suicidal.

Fast breeder reactor.

In yellow: 5,000 tons of molten sodium heated to 550°C.

Spontaneously ignites upon contact with air and explodes when contacting water (in case of a sodium fire, the last people to call are... firefighters!).

In the core, in red: fuel elements made of plutonium. Surrounding them, in pink: fertile elements—uranium-238—which neutron bombardment transforms into plutonium-239. On the right: heat exchanger system, gas turbine, and contact with the "cold source."

From this angle, one could say the fast breeder operates by "burning the ashes" from uranium-235 reactors. Since France is very rich in such "ashes," due to its uranium-powered reactors and its reprocessing services for neighboring countries, it would thus achieve complete independence in fissile fuel.

The catch is the extreme danger of operating such a reactor. The core operates at 550°C instead of 300°C. Using molten sodium as coolant poses a major fire risk if it contacts air. Add to this the extreme radiotoxicity of plutonium. A tenth of a milligram of inhaled plutonium, settling in the lungs, is enough to cause cancer with 100% probability. Do the math. A fast breeder carrying a ton of plutonium contains enough poison to kill ten billion humans.

Even a minor significant incident at a fast breeder could result in ten million victims.

Not ten million irradiated people—but ten million dead.

Recommending a shift in French nuclear policy toward fast breeder reactors and complete irresponsibility. That such a recommendation comes from an incompetent politician might be understandable. It's astonishing that it came from a Nobel laureate in physics, who was just days away from death.

But in France, a reactor of this type is once again under study.

Just a note: France, like other countries—especially Japan—uses MOX fuel (a mixture) in 20 of its reactors. MOX consists of two components: 6 to 7% plutonium diluted in 93% non-fissile uranium-238. Wherever there's plutonium, the situation is never calm (for example, in Japan...).

March 24, 2011:

What is MOX?

Natural uranium exists as an oxide. Two isotopes are present—U-238, at 99.3%, non-fissile but fertile—U-235, at 0.7%, fissile.

To use natural ore directly as fuel, you need the most efficient neutron moderator: heavy water, a molecule composed of deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen). Hence the famous "heavy water battle," during which a commando destroyed an isotope separation plant in Norway, which had a stockpile of heavy water that Nazis could have used. The same happened with Joliot-Curie’s efforts to secure French heavy water during the 1940 French collapse. Such reactors exist in Canada, called CANDU (Canada Deuterium Uranium). These cannot use heavy water as coolant. Thus, there are automatically two separate systems: one extracting thermal energy and another filled with heavy water moderator.

Hence the term "Light Water Reactors" (pressurized or boiling water), in contrast to these (rare) reactors containing heavy water.

Outside reactors using heavy water as moderator, uranium ore must first be enriched. Starting from the oxide, it is converted into gaseous uranium hexafluoride (UF6), which is enriched via centrifugation to 3–6% U-235. Then, by assembling masses of around a hundred tons, this charge can "diverge," i.e., become a site for chain reactions producing energy.

Using low-enriched nuclear fuel requires a larger reactor. Over the years, nuclear engineers have improved core design. In a cylindrical core, fission reaction rates are higher in elements near the center. Engineers have played with swapping central assemblies with peripheral ones. They've also used non-uniform distributions of moderator elements, reducing reactivity at the center to achieve uniform fuel depletion. Neutron reflectors are also used—these techniques allow working with lower enrichment levels, thus at lower cost.

Military reactors, like those in submarines and aircraft carriers, require greater compactness and use uranium enriched to a higher level.

Let’s say 3–20% U-235 is still civilian uranium.

20–90% is military-grade uranium. With high percentages, uranium bomb production becomes possible.

But generally, A-bombs are made from plutonium, which requires a smaller critical mass. Uranium produced by allowing fast neutrons to escape and bombard a fertile blanket of U-238 via the reaction:

U-238 + neutron → Pu-239

Thus, there is no clear boundary separating civilian from military nuclear energy. Reducing moderation in a civilian reactor can make it plutonium-producing, eventually yielding plutonium for fission bombs. See my comic strip "Energétiquement vôtre," downloadable free of charge on the Savoir sans Frontières website.

Incidentally, during normal operation of a civilian reactor, a small amount of plutonium is produced because the moderator reduces but cannot eliminate fast neutrons. This plutonium, mixed with uranium, thus becomes part of the "waste" from civilian operations.

Back to fuel. Uranium enrichment in France is carried out at the Tricastin center. Consuming electricity from three nuclear plants on-site (the largest "client" of EDF in France), this center enriches natural uranium ore, which contains only 0.7% U-235. Isotopic enrichment is mainly achieved through cascades of centrifuges. At the end of the process, we obtain:

• Enriched uranium with 3–6% U-235
• The residue being "depleted" uranium, containing 0.2–0.3% U-235, used to make penetrator tips for shells.

See Jean-Luc Piova’s dossier on this subject.

Take the most common reactors—the French fleet of PWRs (Pressurized Water Reactors). They are loaded with fuel containing 3% U-235. During reactor operation—lasting about a year—the fuel composition evolves over time. Plutonium-239 and various non-extractable fission waste are produced. The U-235 percentage decreases. When it drops to 1%, the fuel becomes unusable. The fissile material density is then too low. Replacement is required. Meanwhile, a certain amount of plutonium has been produced by neutron capture. But this plutonium isn't suitable for energy production via fission in this regime—where neutrons are slowed by water, which serves both as coolant and moderator (i.e., neutron speed reducer). Neutrons emitted at 20 km/s must slow down to 2 km/s to induce fission in U-235.

At the end of operation, two options: either store the spent fuel load "as is," despite containing 1% U-235 and 1% plutonium.

Or reprocess it at a reprocessing plant (La Hague), where radioactive waste is separated and stored in glass blocks, while Pu-239 is chemically recovered to produce MOX fuel:

93% uranium-238         7% plutonium

which is then used to run reactors via plutonium fission—recovered from waste.

Below: the wonderful world of electricity, AREVA document:

For decades, the French have chosen to pursue "fourth-generation reactors"—in other words, fast breeder reactors like Superphénix. Texts from the CEA state that the question is not whether we will adopt such a model, but when we will decide to replace the uranium reactor fleet with fast breeders, which will then be "deployed" across France.

But Superphénix, a prototype of these fourth-generation reactors, gave us a scare in 1990. The roof of the turbine hall collapsed under the weight of snow!

By luck, on that day, the reactor was shut down.

Otherwise, we’d have had a serious disaster.

This triggered widespread protests, and the reactor was shut down. As Balibar and the late Charpak noted, this idea remained alive, and they simply wanted "the project to resume."

"Atom barons" (polytechnicians, from the "Corps des Mines," 100% of them, forming part of this vast French mafia) found "the solution": replace dangerous molten sodium coolant with molten lead.

I have material to make a dossier on Chernobyl, recalling everything that happened. Using molten lead doesn't eliminate the inherent danger of the ton of plutonium contained in these fast breeder reactors. If only that were the case, a nuclear catastrophe would then scatter vaporized lead, later condensing into particles over a vast territory. Lead's boiling point is 1750°C—quickly reached in a nuclear accident (as at Chernobyl).

In addition to plutonium contamination (lifetime of 24,000 years), you'd have lead contamination (plumbism). Add that earthworms quickly bury surface soil up to 20 cm deep. Decontamination would then be impossible.

To complete this apocalyptic picture, note that "depleted uranium" (0.3% U-235 instead of 0.7% in natural ore) is reused to make shells combining high density and high penetration power. After impact, the uranium vaporizes, forming fine particles that can be inhaled by the "enemy," polluting their soil and causing genetic mutations in their descendants—creating monsters (Iraq)—to "punish" them.

See Jean-Luc Piova’s dossier on this.

Until fast breeder deployment, our nuclear industry found an intermediate solution by creating MOX, using output from the La Hague plant. We can thus create (and sell) a new nuclear fuel: a mix of U-238, U-235, and 6–7% plutonium. All functioning in conventional reactors—pressurized or boiling water (like Fukushima reactor number 3). One small detail:

The core now contains plutonium,

and if a nuclear accident occurs now, it won't be iodine, cesium, or a palette of radioactive contaminants with varying lifetimes being released into nature—but plutonium.

Plutonium has a lifetime of 24,000 years—effectively infinite.

If a region is ever polluted with plutonium, that pollution will be irreversible.

March 25, 2011:

Two remarks about reactors using water as coolant. There is always continuous radiolysis—i.e., water molecule dissociation due to radiation. This radiolysis can add to the dissociation of water molecules at around 1,000°C. At Chernobyl, cooling circuits were blocked at low power due to "xenon-135 poisoning." This chemically inert gas is a fission product. Under normal conditions, it is degraded by neutron flux into cesium, I believe. But if the reactor is at very low power, neutron flux drops, and xenon transmutation can no longer occur. Bubbles form, blocking water circulation, and cooling stops. Temperature rise deforms the guide tubes for control rods, slowing their descent (20 seconds). The rods could not be inserted. Everything then happened very quickly. Water was dissociated into a stoichiometrically explosive gas mixture. When enough of this mixture accumulated, it exploded, launching the 1,200-ton concrete lid upward. Falling at 45 degrees, it fractured the reactor—i.e., the graphite moderator block and fuel assemblies. With no cooling circulation, temperature continued to rise. The entire core melted, forming a magma mass at the reactor base, without any containment structure. This mass continued releasing heat, sustaining graphite combustion. Smoke carried all radioactive pollutants away. At the same time, the radiation emitted by the core was so intense it ionized the air above the reactor, creating a visible beam of light at night.

I obtained complete plans of the Japanese reactor and am studying them. The reactor vessel bottom, obviously concave, is very well suited for collecting molten material. Moreover, control rods are pushed upward by electrically driven lead screws. Thus, the reactor’s lower part is structured like a sieve. Readers insist: "But why weren't the rods placed on top, as in other reactors?" It's impossible in a boiling water reactor. The upper section is immersed in steam, and space is occupied by systems for drying the steam. I'm currently translating the plant plans, with legends in English.

Did this "shutdown" system work for reactor number 3? We're surprised by the explosion's violence. Could there have been radiolysis of a large water mass, followed by an explosion—not in the steel room above the reactor, as in reactor number 1, but in deeper parts of the system—causing massive concrete fragments to be ejected?

The manual emphasizes the self-stability of the installation—that is, in these water-cooled reactors, if abnormal reactivity occurs and the core emits too many neutrons, this will heat the water and cause expansion. This effect is sufficient to reduce the water’s moderating action (reducing neutron slowing). Consequently, fewer slow neutrons remain, leading to reduced activity in the core—since we know uranium fission occurs more easily with slow neutrons than fast ones.

Following pages of diagrams showing all emergency systems.

One chapter is missing, titled:

What to do in case of earthquake and tsunami?

I find this omission significant.

The second point concerns the aging of nuclear installations. Radiation weakens the steel of the reactor vessel over time. When it is estimated that this vessel can no longer withstand pressure, the reactor is considered to have reached the end of its life.

B

March 26, 2011:

A reader from the CEA sent me the daily report from the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), specifying: "Here are the real facts regarding the status of the Fukushima site."

This assessment appears less optimistic than that provided by a French engineer living on-site, commenting on information released by Japanese official sources.

IRSN Report dated March 25, 2011

Excerpts:

IRSN
Institute for Radiological Protection
and Nuclear Safety

Information Note
Status of Nuclear Installations in Japan Following the Major Earthquake on March 11, 2011
Situation Update as of March 25 at 08:00

Reactor Status

IRSN remains strongly concerned about the current status of reactors No. 1, 2, and 3
(risk of equipment failure due to massive salt presence in the vessels and containment buildings, lack of a permanent system capable of removing residual heat...). This precarious situation is expected to persist for weeks or even months given the difficulty involved.

IRSN is currently examining possible worsening scenarios,
particularly those involving a potential rupture of reactor No. 3’s vessel.
It will be difficult to confirm such a scenario, but the environmental impact in terms of radioactive releases is under review.

Reactor No. 1

The rate of seawater injection into the vessel has been adjusted (to 10 m³/h) to control temperature above the core. This flow should allow for the removal of residual heat. Pressure measured inside the containment building has stabilized. There should be no need to depressurize this containment in the near term.

Reactor No. 2

Seawater injection into the vessel is maintained to ensure core cooling, although the core remains partially uncovered. The containment building may be damaged. The situation has not changed, and depressurization of the containment building is no longer necessary at this time. The control room should be reconnected to electricity today.

Reactor No. 3

Seawater injection into the vessel is being maintained to ensure core cooling, although the core remains partially uncovered.

The containment building appears no longer airtight according to pressure readings; this loss of integrity is likely responsible for continuous unfiltered radioactive releases into the environment.

Smoke emissions observed on March 23 have ceased. IRSN is analyzing potential causes of containment failure in reactor No. 3.

One hypothesis being examined by IRSN involves the possibility of a vessel rupture followed by interaction between the corium (a mixture of molten fuel and metals) and the concrete at the bottom of the containment building.

The environmental impact of such an event is currently under review.

Three workers were contaminated on March 24 in the turbine building of reactor No. 3.

Work to verify equipment has been suspended. These efforts aim to restore freshwater supply to the reactor.

Reactor No. 4

The core of this reactor does not contain fuel.

Reactors No. 5 and 6

These reactors are properly cooled (core and fuel assemblies in spent fuel pools).

One concern raised by Japanese engineers is that salt introduced via seawater cooling might clog solenoid valves, which can only be operated remotely. A malfunction of this kind could have incalculable consequences, and their priority is to return as quickly as possible to freshwater cooling.

So, what is the solution? ...

I have "hot" information to share about the Z-machine, based on firsthand sources: I gathered it at two international conferences—Vilnius 2008 and Jeju, Korea, October 2010—and directly from Malcolm Haines himself. Nexus has agreed to publish the article, which will appear in its next issue. These revelations will simultaneously amplify hopes and fears surrounding this new ultra-high-temperature technology. Without spoiling the story (the article will be drafted quickly):

• In 2005, Americans indeed achieved 3.7 billion degrees in Sandia’s Z-machine. Prioritizing military applications (pure fusion bombs), they have since kept all information under wraps. With ZR, current intensity rose from 17 to 26 million amperes, and the system's performance is now classified.

Go back to the beginning of this page dedicated to the Japanese nuclear disaster

March 20, 2011:

Should we treat this Japanese accident like a soap opera? There are so many other disasters happening on Earth that it’s hard to know where to begin. What can be said is that this disaster is once again due to human stupidity: building nuclear reactors right on the seashore (which applies to all Japanese reactors) in a country periodically devastated by tsunamis. Furthermore, constructing cheap reactors just to maximize profits. Neglecting the recommendations of seismology specialists who had called for enhanced safety measures against earthquakes.

Shortsightedness.

The Japanese continue to amaze us with their spectacular advances in robotics. In Japan, robots can ride bicycles, speak, and smile. We are creating humanoid robots that look impressive and may one day be sold like artificial pets or electronic hostesses to lonely city dwellers. This evokes a chapter from Ray Bradbury’s "The Martian Chronicles," which I strongly encourage you to read or reread.

But in Japan, no one had invested in safety robots capable of climbing rubble—especially those with lead-shielded electronics able to withstand intense radiation. They had to be imported from abroad.

We saw one of the responsible figures behind this criminal negligence “overcome with emotion,” shedding crocodile tears (but he wouldn’t go so far as to sit beside the operators who, risking their lives, approached reactors in an attempt to cool them). In Japan, political or economic leaders who have ruined hundreds of thousands of ordinary people periodically appear on media to offer public apologies. The head of a nuclear disaster sheds a few tears. This replaces the traditional ritual of seppuku—the ritual suicide with a blade.

This video animation shows the layout of waste materials from boiling water reactor operations, handled remotely and stored in pools filled with water, which acts as a shield absorbing radiation.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/12/world/asia/the-explosion-at-the-japanese-reactor.html?ref=asia

You must understand one thing: In the nuclear industry, the byproducts of electricity production—highly radioactive and dangerous to handle—are simply stored
immediately adjacent to the reactor
in basic pools. Water alone is sufficient to shield against various types of radiation. Only later will these wastes be transported to reprocessing centers like La Hague, to extract future fuel for fast breeder reactors. These wastes
are by no means inert
and represent material as dangerous as the reactor core itself.

.

The spent fuel storage pool.

Located immediately next to the reactor for ease of handling.

A close-up of these “assemblies” containing “rods”:

Each rectangular element ending in a lifting ring is an “assembly.”

Zooming in further, we see the “rods,” which make up the “assemblies.” These are zirconium tubes (also called “gins”), filled with “fuel pellets”: uranium oxides, or in the case of MOX, a mixture of uranium and plutonium oxides. If the water surrounding these assemblies evaporates, the residual heat generated by these tightly packed assemblies is sufficient to rapidly damage the zirconium tubes, allowing the pellets to escape and accumulate at the bottom of the pool. Or worse, an explosive event could disperse these materials around the reactor.

60 rods per assembly in Japanese reactors.

Here is the source for what follows:

http://allthingsnuclear.org/tagged/Japan_nuclear

The vessel (here open) and the pool are connected by doors
that function as locks.

Periodically, “the reactor is shut down.” Control rods are
raised, reducing activity to a minimum—but not zero—because fission products continue to decay, releasing heat (60 megawatts, one-tenth of nominal operating power). The lock separating the reactor top from the storage pool is opened. Water fills all available space. Handling of assemblies then occurs
underwater
using cranes and telescopic arms, whether removing “used” assemblies or replacing them with “new” ones. In any case, unless a reprocessing facility like La Hague takes over, the “used” assemblies will remain stored in the adjacent pool, continuing to heat the water in the spent fuel storage pool, which also serves as a transit area for bringing in new fuel elements.

Handling of assemblies underwater, shielding radiation.

Here is a photo showing such handling, taken at a reactor in the United States, at the Brown Ferry plant in Alabama.

Transfer of a used assembly to the storage pool (Alabama)

The term "cattle chute" was chosen due to the resemblance between these bridges and the passages that lead cattle to slaughter.

The photo is taken from the crane operator’s perspective. Under his feet: water protecting him from radiation.

A few meters below, the blue glow corresponding to radiation emitted by the “used” fuel elements is clearly visible. It’s far from inert!!!

Here is another photo of a U.S. reactor storage pool (Alabama), empty before use.

Decades ago, I visited the experimental Pégase reactor at Cadarache. Looking through the clear water, I could see “all the inner workings of the reactor,” surrounded by a blue glow ten meters below. It was like facing death—nuclear poison up close. The emitted particles traveled at speeds not exceeding that of light in vacuum, but exceeding it
in water, which slows light to about 200,000 km/s. The ratio 200,000/300,000 = 1.5 corresponds to
the refractive index of water. Thus, the particles were emitted at “supersonic speeds” relative to light in this medium, and we could clearly see phenomena resembling “shock waves,” known as
the Cherenkov effect. In any medium other than vacuum, light propagation time is lengthened due to absorption and re-emission by atoms or molecules. But between atoms, photons travel at 300,000 km/s.

PEGASE (35 thermal megawatts), research and testing reactor, criticality achieved at Cadarache in 1963—a reactor used for testing fuels for gas-cooled reactors.

The Pégase reactor pool was converted in 1980 to store 2,703 containers holding 64 kg of plutonium.

Here are the sources for what follows:

http://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/genpatsu-fukushima

http://allthingsnuclear.org/tagged/Japan_nuclear

Each assembly (see above) weighs 170 kilograms and contains 60 “rods.” The storage pool of reactor No. 3 held as many highly toxic used rods as the reactor core itself.

Below is an image broadcast by Japanese TV NHK, indicating that water spraying (using seawater) must be done at a height of 22 meters.

Spraying Japanese reactors requires pumping (seawater) to a height of 22 meters (source: Japanese TV NHK).

.

The water-spraying pole, mounted on a mobile vehicle

Test of the water-spraying pole

March 22, 2011:

As noted by a reader, this appears to be a remote concrete pouring pole, as indicated by the image he sent me (and I thank him for it):

Indeed, on the left, we see a concrete transport truck with its rotating mixer.

In front, a large slab where the articulated pole allowed for even distribution of concrete.

Of course, such a pole could also be used to deliver water at 22 meters—where cooling would be most effective. But if it were meant to flood the reactor with cement, that would be far worse. It would mean the reactor’s cooling systems—or at least one of them—had been destroyed.

Let’s wait...

We can only hope for the Japanese that the situation isn’t as critical as it appears on the nuclear front (setting aside the fact that tsunami victims already number over twenty thousand).

Still, these events abruptly remind us of the dangers of nuclear energy.

March 21, 2011:

I’ve placed this information at the date it appeared on the Ouest-France website. But a reader only brought it to my attention on April 26, over a month later.

Source:

http://www.courrierdelouest.fr/actualite/saumur/article_-Nucleaire.-Les-Japonais-declinent-l-offre-des-robots-de-Chinon_21399-49_actualite.Htm

We might title it:

THE JAPANESE PRIDE

Indeed, the irresponsible TEPCO officials flatly rejected an offer from the French to send robots capable of operating in high-radiation environments.

Japanese authorities declined France’s offer to send specialized robots for intervention at the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant, judging them "unsuitable" for the situation, the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) said Monday.

EDF announced Friday it would dispatch remotely piloted robots capable of acting in place of humans during a nuclear accident. This equipment from the Intra group is based just next to the Chinon nuclear power plant (Indre-et-Loire).

Volunteer Translator Groups.

Some readers have offered to help disseminate this analysis of the situation (and other pages on this site) by volunteering their translation services. Some are professional translators or bilingual. But no such level is required to participate. The key is getting the information out.

For Spanish, contact:

Emilio Lorenzo
who will manage the various translations, possibly segmenting the pages

For English, several candidates have come forward, particularly to translate. This is clearly the most important language, with the greatest potential reach.

I ask these readers to contact one another. If one of them could take charge of distributing the pages, possibly segmented.

So far, the following have offered:

Has offered to translate part of this page, which I will divide into segments of roughly equivalent length to five pages of text:

April 9:

Agreed to translate into English:

François Brault

Has accepted to coordinate all translations of my site pages into English:

I will therefore segment the pages of my site—some of which are quite long, like this one—by inserting colored (green) separating lines

and labeling them with alphabetical markers: A, B, C, D, etc.

This will allow me to add updates later, marked as D+, D++, D+++

These additional sections will also be bordered by separating lines, helping keep translations up to date.

For Italian, the coordinator is:

Go back to the beginning of this page dedicated to the Japanese nuclear disaster

May 13, 2011:

On Agoravox: How nuclear power plants are like real swords of Damocles
http://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/societe/article/nucleaire-la-cible-terroriste-93801

To the East, Nothing New

April 8, 2013

I’m adding this note at the bottom of this extensive page dedicated to the Fukushima disaster. It’s true I worked intensively on this topic during the events. Further down, you’ll find a link to a lecture by Professor Hinoaki Koide, who formerly directed the Nuclear Energy Master’s program at Kyoto University. He explains things very clearly.

It feels like a reminder. These events seem so distant now. Japan is in the Southern Hemisphere, as we were told at the time by Cécile Duflot.

I’ve just turned 76, and I’m asking myself: “Now what?” When I saw the immediate decisions made by the Hollande government, I admit I was deeply shaken. But should we expect anything different from “socialists” than what happened during the previous presidential exercise? Hollande is simply an idiot. Oh, he’s just confirmed the decision to build the EPR. I should have added a section on this page. But I admit I lacked the courage.

There’s another one I’m presenting as a scoop—brand new, just released. The DCNS has just won a contract to supply an immersed nuclear power plant
Flexblue
to a foreign country. It must be delivered within four years.

Immersed nuclear power plant Flexblue, a civilian reuse of submarine reactor technology

Specialty of Cadarache

I’ll try to contact Hinoaki Koide. I’m helping Michel Guéritte in his struggle against the permanent disposal of long-lived waste at Bure, Champagne. The government is pushing hard, with its idiot minister “of ecology.” Meanwhile, Fioraso, another idiot, gushes over ITER (“which will take us to the stars”). What a bunch of idiots in this cabinet! It’s true that an idiot has a good chance of surrounding himself with others like him.

A major publication is preparing a highly documented article on this issue of disposal, which deeply worries supporters of the CIGEO project and all nuclear establishment figures. Because disposal is the cornerstone of France’s completely insane plan for “deploying fourth-generation reactors,” alias fast breeder reactors operating on plutonium (the EPR running 100% MOX being a transitional step between pressurized water reactors and sodium-cooled fast breeders).

Disposal at Bure will involve 100,000 Castor wagons (invented and developed by my neighbor Klaus Janberg), packed with radioactive materials. A robotic disposal operation expected to last... a century. Within this complex, various waste types will be stored—including plastics that, as they decompose, will release hydrogen. This is unavoidable. Once air contains over 5% hydrogen, explosion risk increases. Moreover, many “packages” are sealed with bitumen, which is flammable at relatively low temperatures. And all of this “sealed for hundreds of thousands of years.”

Our descendants will curse us. But the disaster might happen much sooner.

As Jesse Ventura reminds us in his videos:

• If you want to understand, follow the money trail.

Guéritte and his team might have the financial means to bring Koide to France. Koide is a “repentant” of nuclear energy (see below). He only realized after Fukushima that it was “suicide manual.”

I also have another project among many others: completing my album
Energétiquement vôtre
on nuclear energy, already available in Japanese version
on the Savoir sans Frontières website, where Gilles d’Agostini, its treasurer, has just paid for the 400th translation and added Finnish to his list of 37 languages. I’ve long awaited this language, thanks to a gag from the film
Hellzapoppin
—a film absolutely nonsensical, directed by Harry Codman Potter. One character, Peppi, is played by
Mischa Auer. In the film, Mischa plays a Finn, and there’s this dialogue:

• You have a strange accent. Are you not British?

(You have a strange accent. You're not British?)

• No.

(No.)

• What country are you from?

(What country are you from?)

• I am Finnish.

(I am Finnish.)

• But you don’t speak Finnish...

(But you don’t speak Finnish?)

• No.

(No.)

• Why?

(Why?)

• Finnish is too difficult.

(Finnish is too difficult.)

My friend Gilles d’Agostini, who has co-managed the Savoir sans Frontières site since its creation in 2005, has done excellent work. Now, if you go to
the homepage
and hover your mouse over the flags, a pop-up will tell you which language is being shown.

No media echo in five years—except for a brief appearance on “La Tête au Carré” on France Inter, a few years ago. But that hasn’t stopped the machine from moving forward. Fans of Savoir sans Frontières periodically replenish the funds. It works without subsidies, without support from the Ministry of National Education or UNESCO. It runs on small donations from kind-hearted people. You’ll find their list on the site. Twenty euros here, fifty there. Thank you, friends—you’re doing a great job!

I’m just the messenger.

This is different from stories like Cahuzac’s. I admit I hadn’t seen
the video clip
where this financial acrobat and tax evasion expert spewed lies in full view of the National Assembly, while serving as Minister of Budget and supposedly dedicated to fighting such practices.

The character, a loudmouth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OjYNB6ogdU

Now take a look at the following video—it’s worth it.

• Mr. Cahuzac, did you or did you not have an undeclared Swiss bank account?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxemczLqgsk

When this question was asked clearly and loudly by a UMP parliamentarian, Danielle Fasquelle, referencing revelations from
Mediapart, an information and news website, loud booing erupted in the chamber (probably to stigmatize “low political attacks”), emanating from deputies who could not ignore that suspicions about their “colleague” had been circulating for three months. Since the question came from an opposition UMP member, it’s highly likely these protests came from Socialist deputies. Acts of solidarity within the same “family,” from people who, if we looked into their accounts, would probably have plenty of similar skeletons to explain.

Had the question come from a left-wing representative, the chamber would have erupted in protests from the right.

In any case, one would be used to attack the other.

Paraphrasing a famous character, someone could have said:

• Let him who has no undeclared account throw the first stone!

During the previous presidential exercise, we had a Minister of Justice who confused, in a Freudian slip,
inflation
and
fellatio,
allowing all kinds of speculation about her rise in politics. A woman who became pregnant while trying to extort a pension from a very wealthy man.

Today, Taubira, whenever she gets angry, speaks at the National Assembly like a fishmonger from the old port.

A friend reminded me yesterday that 45 police officers have committed suicide in one year. I recall once having a phone conversation with a woman who led a gendarmerie unit, discussing working conditions, lack of equipment, and how gendarmes were being diverted from their mission to become tax collectors, pressured to “produce numbers.” She added: “Sometimes I receive young gendarmes who completely break down in my office.”

The number of desperate people—unemployed, at the end of benefits—using SNCF trains to end their lives totals 450 per year. One every twenty hours. Recently, I took a TGV that was stopped while they extracted another body. SNCF apologized for the delay. In this context, fraudulent enrichment by those who exploit the “system” without the slightest scruple is deeply revolting.

Back to the Cahuzac affair. This animal told the press that this matter had
“devastated” him,
then claimed he had been treated in an
“inhumane” way.
Finally, regarding his lies: “But everyone lies in the National Assembly! If we were to expose all the liars, there’d be a crowd!”

This man reminds me of Cardignac, a character from the Largo Winch series (Album No. 2).

This guy has the same cold-bloodedness as the character in the series. Because to lie like that, in front of the French People’s Assembly, you need genitals made of stainless steel. But it’s the same everywhere. I have many books in progress, and among them I’ll write one about the scientific community. You’ll see there are some fine specimens of sellouts. When they’re not sold out, they’re cowardly and lying beyond imagination.

April 12:

I’m returning to this page. Definitely...

Gilles Bernheim, Grand Rabbi of Paris, has been accused of plagiarism. Indeed, in his book Forty Jewish Meditations, several passages were found to be verbatim borrowings from other authors. Faced with the evidence, the man gets tangled up:

• I had asked a student to write certain sections, and he betrayed my trust by doing cut-and-paste.

The plagiarizing Grand Rabbi

Of course, it’s… the student’s fault!

Nonsense…

Le Monde clarifies that the investigation revealed he does not hold the title of philosophy agrégé, which had appeared in his biographies and more recently in Who’s Who.

In the world we live in—completely collapsing—there’s nothing left but to laugh at these revelations. Another one who must be “devastated.”

I remember a Sunday morning show where a believing Jew tried to dialogue with the then Grand Rabbi of France, I believe Sitruck. This notable, a physician, defended his position:

My wife and I are deeply religious and observant. Our son married a non-Jew (a "goy"). They had two sons. We gave them a religious education. But when they reached 13 years old, the age of their Bar Mitzvah
( the equivalent of Catholic "first communion" in the Jewish world )
they were rejected.

• It's normal. Their mother is not Jewish. You know very well that Jewish identity is passed through women. If their father were a non-Jew, it would be possible to welcome them into the synagogue. But in the case of your two grandsons, it's impossible...

• Can't we possibly consider changing this rule?

The rabbi smiled, and this good man was wasting his time. Many social behaviors around the world are similarly constrained by outdated norms. In fact, this rule does not appear in the Pentateuch, the part of the Bible corresponding to the Old Testament. It is a later addition,
rabbinic,
just like countless customs of the Jewish world.

Grand Rabbi Bernheim is Ashkenazi, his ancestors originating from Central Europe (in contrast to Sephardim, from the Eastern world). His wife strictly follows Ashkenazi rules. I read that she wears a... wig. Why? Because a Jewish friend told me the strictest Ashkenazi rule requires women to shave their heads. As for Rabbi Bernheim, he does not shake hands with women.

Between these people and hardcore Muslims, you'd really be hard-pressed to tell one from the other.

I propose, to change the subject, that we listen to the words of an honest man, Hiroaki Koide. It will be a refreshing change, even if to find a bit of fresh air we have to go all the way to Japan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUbWz9ydm0I&NR=1&feature=endscreen

In our country, people like this simply don't exist.

See also:

http://fukushima.over-blog.fr/

I didn't understand why, on certain Paris metro lines, a system of double automatic doors prevents access to the tracks.

It's to... prevent suicides!

April 26, 2013.

Reader's reaction.

Good evening Jean-Pierre,

I've just read your article from April 8, 2013.

What disturbs me most about the minister’s fraudulent revelations is the "tree hiding the forest."

Hypocritical Right-wingers scream "Wolf!" while the Left plays the fool. Me Benkasem pretends to cry crocodile tears when their minister admits his sins (sins committed by everyone).

But I remember a phrase that struck me when the former ELF boss, hiding in Thailand, was brought back to France handcuffed. His first words at Roissy CDG in front of journalists were, I quote:

• I have enough to blow up the Republic more than 200 times.

He also announced that 70% of deputies have Swiss or offshore accounts (the soup is good—everyone has understood this for a long time). But as soon as he returned from Thailand, with his sharp tongue ready to spill everything, they managed to make him choke to death during sleep in a prison cell...

These revelations will never see the light of day, thanks to the non-aggression pact between the two major corrupted parties. But I would have loved to see UMP publish in grand style the details of Ziad Takhiedine’s retro-commissions in the arms sales scandal to Pakistan, among other things... and the envelopes from the OREAL boss, and countless others we’ll never know about, since amnesty is now five years and politicians are automatically granted it...

All this gives the impression of a grand-scale farce where the nobility and court pretend—like the "Precious Ridiculous" of Molière—to convince the people they are blameless...

As you so well put it, suicides of desperate people happen daily, and more than 450 per year.

In June 2006, I witnessed four to five suicides per week on Line 1 of the metro between La Défense and Étoile.

It started on Thursday afternoons, sometimes even Wednesday. They finally installed plexiglass windows on automatic doors that only open when the train is docked—this in all stations of Line 1, about two years ago.

But what does it matter? Suicides are still happening—and now they're increasingly shifting to the RER B line, where trains alternate between express and stopping ones passing through stations at high speed.

What shocked me even more is that for several years I’ve seen, and continue to see every evening in Paris, elderly homeless people unable to pay their rent, sleeping in large numbers in RER stations like AUBER. The RATP even provides them with designated "reserved spots" where they sleep on cardboard boxes and tattered blankets—a real deathbed for people who once contributed to the country’s economy.

Even worse: about a year and a half ago, under Sarkozy’s rule, I saw a significant number of elderly homeless people outside in the cold at the Saint-Michel metro station, at the corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain, just steps from Gibert. One man, one winter night, seemed utterly hopeless, wanting nothing but to die. Sitting along a building, he let himself freeze to death. Despite two passersby intervening, he refused help. The firefighters arrived.

But this had never happened before.

I think of the puppet show of the time, Sarkozy—spokesman for banking mafias—who was flying around in his own megalo jet.

I can’t take it anymore—I’m exploding. And this drift is happening at every level... there’s nothing left but castes.

How can people coming from the elite ENA factories, where ranking trumps intellectual reflection, serve a country honestly? They’re already pre-programmed to serve their own interests and careerism, as we clearly see later on.

Even small humanitarian associations in Paris were dismantled a year ago on Delanoé’s orders, their premises razed to the ground under the pretext that any social intervention toward vulnerable people had to first receive PS approval and go through them. Delanoé is pure political careerist marketing, and he couldn’t care less about the suffering of people.

We’re walking on our heads.

I fear a surge of pure, hardline fascism in Greece and Spain, where Francoists still lurk in the shadows. The only thing this absurd political incompetence from all sides—serving the financial establishment—will succeed in achieving is establishing fascist states across Europe.

All it would take is Italy collapsing, and then the domino effect follows. Then Hollande will implement the reforms Sarkozy wanted, but with a little oil to make them go down more smoothly. He’ll soon fully deregulate gas prices. Margaret Thatcher would have applauded. And he’ll allow shale gas extraction. Standard & Poor’s, whose job is being mafia bankers, "bangsters," has just created a subsidiary for shale gas exploitation—and we’re told this is all for our own good...

Hollande is under the same orders as the previous government.

The tone was set when Me Benkasem announced—this struck me deeply—I jumped up, I quote:

• Out of solidarity with people suffering, ministers have decided to reduce their salary from 17,900 Euros per month to 13,900 Euros per month.

( Of course, all expenses are still paid separately, outside of this "salary," naturally... )

Just four days after Hollande’s election, I already knew where I stood. I thought to myself:

• A farce. The soup is too good. They’ll do and keep doing exactly what everyone else does.

The "change" had already sunk into the abyss after only four days...

And given that there are very few honest people across all political lines, there’s almost no future or hope for change.

They all went through the same molds, graduated from the same schools, and defend the same interests and lobbies. We probably need a pseudo-Roosevelt who would bring banking systems under control with veto power—but I fear in the end we’ll drift toward an Argentine-style economic scenario, with fascist governments emerging in a quarter or third of Europe.

We’re watching a world collapse—driven by the unlimited greed for money for its own sake—that has sawn off the branch it’s sitting on. And I don’t see what comes next...

Warm regards,

Philippe M.

I fully agree with this reader.

A few updates in passing. In summer 2012, with help from a friend, I recorded six hours of videos, three of which were about nuclear energy, particularly fusion. But to post them online, they needed illustrations. At 76 years old, managing everything else already, I couldn’t take on this work. A man from Marseille is supposed to handle it. These videos will thus compete with those I recorded and that Jean Robin sells exclusively on DVD, despite having agreed to return 3 euros to Savoir sans Frontières for each DVD sold. A clear abuse of trust. But what else could you expect from such a character—a true ideological chameleon who presents himself as a "liberal Gaullist"?

If this young man who’s illustrating the videos—still sitting in my hard drive since August 2012—actually does the work, they’ll be immediately uploaded to YouTube, and you’ll be notified right away.

Tomorrow morning, an internet user from Aix will help me repair my aquagym pool, which my health depends on and has been broken for three months.

I’m illustrating a new book that won’t be handed over to a publisher (incompetent and unscrupulous).

Friends are helping me convert my website (7 gigabytes!) to WordPress—a task I could only entrust to people I fully trust.

I’d like reader feedback on Jesse Ventura’s productions. Here are some of his videos, which have been dubbed into French.

April 25, 2013:

Before you go any further. It didn’t take long—I had an answer to the question I was asking within a few days. See the boxed section below, where I provided the addresses of Jesse Ventura’s French-dubbed videos.

They were promptly removed. A singular coincidence: I draw attention to these videos, and immediately they vanish! Who dubbed them into French (Canadians? The accent doesn’t match). Did they appear on a French or simply francophone channel?

One thing seems clear from this massive removal: these videos are disturbing. Personally, knowing the subjects, I found the ones I shared reasonably well-made. But many rushed to denounce "Ventura’s sensationalism." That said, no matter how he addresses these highly sensitive topics, I find him bold—a rare quality in France, especially among journalists.

Did anyone save these files? Can they be viewed elsewhere?

Ventura does sensationalize, certainly. But in doing so, he speaks directly to the American heartland—and hits the mark. A million six hundred thousand viewers tuned in to his first show—something never seen before. And it kept up at that pace.

But how do you speak to the deaf, to people who don’t want to question anything, unless you hammer your words?

I’ve received messages from people saying, "These conspiracy theories have been debunked long ago. See these analyses..."

Robert Salas, the American officer who was in his bunker at the Minuteman missile launch site in Malstrom in 1967, saw the ten missiles he controlled with a colleague—25 meters underground—suddenly deactivated by a UFO hovering above the silos, terrifying the soldiers on the surface. See the press conference held in Washington on this matter.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfakhq_ovni-conference-de-presse-27-septem_news#.UXmqcoX83bk

Salas wrote a book, The Faded Giant, self-published. In his conclusion, page 53, he writes:

No one wants a government that seems to be serving an elitist few. No people want a government focused on controlling their lives. History tells us this is how it is with people. If it’s true our government has withheld information about extraterrestrial visitors and extracted some technology from them without public knowledge, then we have a secret government that has lost contact with its people.

Translation:

No one wants a government that seems to serve only a privileged few. No people want to be governed by those whose main concern is controlling their lives. History tells us this is how it is with people. If it’s true our government has withheld information about extraterrestrial visitors and extracted some technology from them without public knowledge, then we have a secret government that has lost contact with its people.

These words seemed powerful. I contacted Salas, and he visited me in the summer of 2012. He brought me a dossier on "scientific work related to the UFO case" he had collected. What could I say? That it was fascinating? I’d be lying. That the documents were worthless? I’d hurt him. I stayed silent and put on a good face. I suggested we write a book together, to be published in the U.S. He’d find an editor. Even more: I later proposed contacting former Canadian Defense Minister Paul Hellyer, suggesting he co-sign a three-author book. Hellyer would surely get excellent media coverage.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xdajjp_ovni-revelations-ex-ministre-canadi_news#.UXmpi4X83bk

There are elements in such statements that I think can be scientifically explained. I believe that when a UFO "inverts its mass," it ceases interacting with surrounding air molecules. This volume is then perceived by those molecules as empty space. Air rushes into this vacuum, potentially creating strong aerodynamic disturbances capable of disintegrating an aircraft. Thus, the destruction of the plane isn’t due to aggressive maneuvers but rather to a flight maneuver.

This is how I imagine the destruction of pilot Mantell’s plane in 1948.

Salas did nothing and is currently finishing his second book. A move that lacks determination. Years passed, and Salas has become just another UFO enthusiast.

Faced with this silence, this inertia, I decided to write him asking what he thought of Ventura’s video on September 11 (which I personally find excellent, courageous, and well-documented). He immediately mocked the man, denouncing his taste for sensationalism. Worse: he denounced the content, telling me, "You, a scientist, surely don’t believe in such irrational nonsense!"

It quickly became clear Salas had never genuinely engaged with such topics. He’s "single-task," concluded my friend Alix, head of reopen 9/11.

I insisted, asking:

• In this September 11 video, do you find Ventura irrational?

No reply.

Salas experienced undeniable, transcendent events—events that forged in him an unshakable conviction, as expressed in his book, that the Malstrom incidents, being caused by extraterrestrial visitors, meant "Attention, nuclear danger!"

But his "awakening" stops there. For everything else, his intelligence remains frozen at the level of the average American. Unless he’s under pressure, or telling his story is being used to expose others involved in similar cases, so that "the secret government," having identified them, can neutralize them.

Or perhaps it’s not even that. Look at Hasting, who instigated this Washington press conference. He’s cut from the same cloth. Behind him lies a simple ego, a craving for fame.

I’m far from done with this subject.

Jesse Ventura videos:

Inaccessible since April 25, 2013 (a few days later)

The FEMA camps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwN36UTzqxQ

Inaccessible since April 25, 2013 (a few days later)

9/11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7ZLK6xchMY

Inaccessible since April 25, 2013 (a few days later)

The Bilderberg Group

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sm3FZJ94t1M

Inaccessible since April 25, 2013 (a few days later)

HAARP Project

Inaccessible since April 25, 2013 (a few days later)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3SNIdHMYuk

JFK Assassination

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLOturMN5Wo

In English: The Pentagon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9tvrYg85qU

The journalist who leaves (2009) from reopen 9/11 (subtitled)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xfpbmb_clash-sur-fox-news-a-propos-du-11-septembre-2001_news#.UXBjDIX83bk

Ventura takes on the disinformation expert: David Icke, with his theory of reptilian invasion

(In English. Too bad. Could someone subtitle it?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYpMBJNL0TU

Immediate reactions from many people:

• This guy specializes in sensationalism!

Certainly, but let’s admit he has real courage. His 9/11 show is well-crafted.

You know the Latin maxim:

IS FECIT CUI PRODEST

Refer to Larousse pages giving translations of Latin maxims. I think this maxim fits this case quite well.

In Ventura’s investigations—especially on Bilderberg, which is top-notch—how can 120 of the world’s most powerful people meet annually at a "private gathering" when they’re all public figures? There’s something going on here. What? That remains to be determined.

Meanwhile, I note the actions of figures like David Icke. For 20 years, in 55 countries, he’s claimed Earth is under control by "reptilians." These beings can take over prominent political figures and even media personalities. Ventura discovers (it’s in the video referencing this matter) that Time Magazine listed various "conspiracy theories," including "the reptilian conspiracy" among them. According to Icke, these reptilians are preparing total domination of humanity, followed by its elimination. I leave it to you to discover which politicians are actually reptilians. Clinton and his wife are allegedly among them.

Bill Clinton in the showers of his tennis club

Monica Lewinsky

Ventura explodes and decides to conduct his own investigation. If you don’t understand English fluently, here’s a summary. He starts by following men and women claiming to know something about reptilians on U.S. soil. He follows a man who leads him to a desolate area, where a base full of reptilians supposedly hides deep underground. They’re accompanied by a woman completely hysterical, claiming she "feels them nearby" and is terrified.

No more reptilians than butter in a bun.

Conscientious, Ventura meets a woman who claims to be a hybrid between human and reptilian. Another display of hysteria, with communication via a medium.

After a quest that ends in nothing, Ventura decides to meet David Icke. A filmed encounter.

As with all good gurus, I must admit Icke handles women quite well—even if the photo might be old:

David Icke, visibly uncomfortable, arrives at the agreed meeting to face the boogeyman Jesse Ventura (former wrestler, former combat swimmer, and former governor of Minnesota)

David Icke, immediately uneasy, facing Jesse Ventura

If someone could at least subtitle this dialogue, it would enlighten many. See Icke’s expression—completely shattered—facing Ventura. It’s obvious he’s outmatched and looks terrible from the start.

David Icke no longer smiles

Jesse Ventura immediately corners him. David Icke:

• The answers to your questions are in a 700-page book I wrote.

• You don’t expect me to read a 700-page book just to get an answer to a simple question: how can I be confronted by a reptilian?

Icke loses it, explaining that to see someone is a reptilian, you must be able to perceive, briefly, an "invisible light." Ventura laughs in his face.

Perceive an... invisible light! You’re joking?

We’re near knockout. Icke says he’s given conferences for 21 years in 58 countries. Ventura applies the principle of his investigations:

• Follow the money trail.

Icke denies doing it for money, but Ventura lays out his accounts. With all he earns from his 19 books, conferences, and broadcast rights, the total comes to $1.9 million per year.

• I think you’re mainly in it for the money. Let me give you some figures.

David Icke stands up and leaves, saying:

• I thought during this meeting we were supposed to talk about what’s happening in the world...

David Icke flees

And now you understand what we’re up against. Men like David Icke spread amplified disinformation (while lining their pockets), just like that "Dr. Greer" who freely mixes UFO phenomena with "zero-point energy." Like Nassim Haramein, pillar of the Thrive movement.

The "Thrive" movement ("well-being" in English) casts a wide net, drawing attention to world hunger, denouncing conspiracies and the Fed, while mixing it all with nonsense. In passing, the backup guru presents the sect’s central fetish: the zero-groove torus (said to be "abundant in nature"). Imagine a video by Jean-Pierre Petit where I produce countless images of Boy’s surface. The zero-groove torus (created by rotating a circle tangent to a line around that line) induces complete enlightenment in the man.

Think of honorable Mr. Keshe, his nonsense like the Camelot project, the moldy videos presented by Bill Ryan, etc., etc...

The Camelot project, by Bill Ryan, and briefly by Kerry Cassidy, other oddballs of alternative media.

Revisit
this page
on all kinds of oddballs. The list is long, passing through Jean-Marc Roeder and Claude Poher with their "Universons" nonsense.

All this is pitiful and infuriates me.

Yes, you’re being deliberately misled—full throttle. Misled by real agents, sponsored, paid. Or by delusional manipulators, which amounts to the same thing. Or by dangerous money-makers like David Icke and Dr. Steven Greer, who has just released his film-conference "Sirius," which I watched this afternoon. He’s quite polished, and you’ll need to prove he’s spreading misinformation everywhere.

But real information—like the blatant failure of the NIF (National Ignition Facility), the fiasco of the U.S. laser fusion project—I discussed in the January-February issue of NEXUS magazine. You won’t find a trace of it elsewhere (except in alternative media like Gizmodo and "20 minutes"). Elsewhere, in journals like Pour la Science, La Recherche, Science et Vie, etc.: a deafening silence that continues to astonish specialists.

If the young man in Marseille does the work of inserting images and short videos into the files I gave him and recorded in August 2012 with my friend Alix (reopen 9/11), I’ll make more. What’s long and tedious is illustration. I’ll also give interviews on nuclear energy, audio-only, to Info-Libre (link on my homepage). I bought a headset-micro set to get better sound. Know that the guy handling this, David, works alone. He finishes his weekly audio editorial, dedicating a nice chunk of hours each week, without any profit.

I’ll return in these interviews to genuinely interesting ideas, like the MagLif pulsed fusion project, derived from the "Z" projects. Now that my friend Malcolm Haines passed away two months ago, I’m the only one in Europe who can speak meaningfully about this topic. Beyond that, there’s potential for aneutronic fusion. And that’s truly worth holding on to—so we can extract something livable from nuclear energy, while the rest leads us to ruin.

That’s quite different from these gentle distractions about cold fusion, a real phantom of physics and chemistry.

Regarding Jean-Paul Biberian’s book:

LA FUSION
DANS TOUS SES ETATS

Cold Fusion, ITER, Alchemy
Biological Transmutations...

Editions Trédaniel, 2012

Jean-Paul Biberian

I’m convinced that conditions enabling catalyzed fusion reactions must exist.

Since nuclear energy is nothing but the chemistry of atomic nuclei, fission is an auto-catalyzed dissociation. Fusion reactions are analogous to chemical reactions. It’s therefore logical to think it’s not impossible that the nuclear world could contain exo-energetic reactions with catalysis, possibly at low temperature. Every high school student has seen a platinum sponge glow red from the heat released by hydrogen burning in oxygen. But the platinum sponge doesn’t just allow this reaction to start at low temperature. If we coated a metal tube carrying a coolant with this sponge, the reaction would continue at normal or even sub-normal temperatures.

Freshly retired from Aix-Marseille University, Jean-Paul Biberian has just published a book, "Cold Fusion in All Its States," with the subtitle: "Cold Fusion, ITER, Alchemy, Biological Transmutations..."

No, I don’t “have a grudge” against him—I’ve met him before and found him very pleasant. But frankly, the more I read his book, the more I discover things that discredit him.

He covers a wide range. I bought his book. What’s inside doesn’t differ from what he says in conferences or in his videos. It’s... empty. Lots of chatter, anecdotes, speeches with little relevance to the topic (like his very incomplete personal analysis of ITER, a subject he devotes a whole chapter to, lacking sufficient expertise).

On the cover, he lists:

Cold Fusion, ITER, Alchemy, Biological Transmutations...

Those who know Biberian and have followed him for years agree: the book is "weighted" with "scientific publications or presented as such."

But refer to page 192. I quote:

In 2003, at the ICCF10 (Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion) held in the U.S., it was decided to create a scholarly society for cold fusion... Due to difficulties publishing our results in scientific journals, we felt it necessary to create our own journal, which I’ve edited since 2006, with a team of six other regional editors... At the start, Peter Hagelstein from MIT (the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology) was the editor-in-chief.

He wanted a high-level journal. Unfortunately, very few articles of that caliber were submitted... After two fruitless years, Hagelstein handed over the direction to me. It seemed to me this journal should be less ambitious and simply serve as a communication tool for the community...

Thus, we remained open to less firmly established data

(...). We were no longer trying to prove in each article the reality of cold fusion, since the entire readership was already convinced (...); this allowed us to produce articles that, while not necessarily absolutely credible (...), each contributed something to the field.

Regarding theoretical articles, I thought judging the validity of a theory was extremely difficult, so as editor-in-chief, not knowing what the future holds, I took the risk of being open to new ideas.

It's better to be slightly lax

(...), with a chance of discovering a correct theory, than to be overly strict and miss it entirely, because it might lie beyond conventional paths.)

This laxity marks the end of all credibility. This admission opens the door to self-discrediting.

Biberian devotes 5 pages to alchemy

and mentions his meeting with the alchemist Albert Cau in 1998. Under his direction, he attempted an experiment, and on page 161:

"A possible solution might be: drop molten silver into quicklime. The thermal shock should produce transmutation. I conducted several experiments of this type, but again without success."

A little further on, in this brief five-page chapter, Biberian refers to his analysis of "alchemically purported silver coins" held in a German museum. He tested the isotopic abundance ratios, hoping to discover a ratio different from that found in natural silver. The result was negative.

In short, this chapter could be summed up by the sentence:

• When I have nothing to say, I say it...

Does this mean alchemy is nonsense? I wouldn't go that far, and I'll mention a personal experience on the side (I have so much to tell and... to do).

Around the same time, Cau contacted me. He was living miserably in a small room in Paris and was seeking a sponsor to fund his research. To conduct alchemy, the first requirement is a proper furnace. Cau couldn't experiment in his attic. So he carried out these experiments in his sister's small garden on the outskirts of Paris.

He knew I was friends with Alain D., a wealthy industrialist from southern France who owned a private jet used for his numerous professional trips. It was before him that Cau proposed to demonstrate material transmutation into gold. We offered him the following deal: We would buy the materials ourselves and conduct the experiment with our own hands under his guidance. He would touch nothing. If the result was positive, Alain would pay for an electric induction furnace capable of heating samples of a few cubic centimeters to high temperatures, placed in a crucible. Alain would cover travel and accommodation expenses.

Cau agreed. These were so-called spagyric manipulations, where silver would be transmuted into gold. Alain bought silver and the second ingredient: lime. His wife made pottery in a kiln, which we would use. Prudently, Alain had purchased Plexiglas masks and protective gloves. Cau stayed at a distance and touched nothing at all. From ten meters away, he gave his instructions. We followed his orders:

• We melt, in the kiln and in a refractory clay crucible, a mixture of silver and lime.

• I am responsible for opening and closing the kiln door.

• When we judge the mixture to be molten, I open the door. Alain grabs the crucible with tongs and quickly pours the molten silver-lime mixture into a cylindrical basin 30 cm in diameter and 40 cm high, filled with tap water.

• The water boils violently. But very quickly, once the boiling subsides, we can recover an object. In fact, this molten mixture transformed into something that looks exactly like popcorn, even in size.

Cau warned us: it doesn't work every time. But still relatively often. Let's say,

once every two attempts.

Then we hear what sounds like a strong hammer blow, evoking a shock wave. And then, oh surprise, this popcorn is "gold-plated." It's not just a slight iridescence. No, all these hollow, small-diameter metallic bubbles are completely "gilded on the edge."

Unfortunately, I didn't keep any. Alain might have some at home.

Is it gold? Cau intervenes, dissolves one of these small golden spheres—extracted with tweezers from an object about 4 or 5 cm in size—into nitric acid (we follow his every move). The silver turns into liquid silver nitrate. At the bottom of the test tube, fine specks remain. The amount is infinitesimal, perhaps fractions of a milligram. But they are clearly visible.

Cau continues the analysis. The specks are dissolved in

aqua regia.

And he concludes: "It's definitely gold."

It would have been necessary to continue with a mass spectrometer. But regardless, the golden, shiny appearance of the "bubbles" was undeniable. Raw silver is dull gray.

Alain takes out his checkbook and pays for the induction furnace: 3,000 euros. Cau leaves for Paris that same evening. As I drive him to the station, I say:

• Of course, if this is truly alchemical gold, we can't claim the process is industrially profitable, given the tiny amounts produced and the energy expended. But I see a way for you to make some money. Why not, with the furnace Alain has provided, produce these specks? You could embed them in transparent resin and sell these objects—medallions, necklaces, rings—at a reasonable price, as samples of alchemical gold, complete with a certificate signed by you and explanations.

Cau stares at me with fury. I don't know what became of that man.

We left it at that. Alain and I had many other concerns at the time. We never had time to clarify this matter further. Moreover, repeatedly opening and closing the kiln door damaged it due to thermal stress. The door no longer closed properly, and Alain’s wife complained because we’d ruined her appliance. She didn’t care about alchemy. Only men dream of such things.

Did the silver we used contain traces of gold? It would have been easy to verify. All one needed was a small amount of this unprocessed silver, of the same mass as the sample analyzed by Cau, then dissolve it in nitric acid. If it contained gold, a deposit would form at the bottom of the test tube.

If no deposit appeared, that would have been remarkably interesting.

But life is a torrent. We never returned to this topic. If anyone wants to repeat this experiment, it's completely transparent, with no ambiguity at any point, and I believe it’s very likely reproducible. Alain had obtained "industrial silver," and Cau couldn't have faked it.

In any case, the effect remains incredibly spectacular. Even if the silver contained gold, what phenomenon could have projected this metal, coating the outer surface of the "silver popcorn" to a thickness of perhaps just a few microns?

Biberian devotes a chapter of... 7 pages to biological transmutations,

announced with sensationalism on the cover page.

On page 151 he writes:

• Not being a chemist, and not knowing how to perform quantitative chemical measurements... I've never liked chemistry, with its test tubes and precise dosages (...)

He immediately mentions experiments conducted by a certain Kervran. In his article on page 207,

Corentin Louis Kervran

is cited on page 212. He appears to have died (1901–1983). I translate:

• Kervran is certainly the most well-known scientist who has worked in the field of biological transmutations. He possessed extensive knowledge in installations, geology, and nuclear physics. He published his discoveries in French in ten books. Some were translated into English. He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize.

On Wikipedia it reads:

In 1993, he received

(posthumously)

the parody Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for concluding that the calcium in chicken eggshells is created by a cold fusion process.

The Ig Nobel Prize

(named as a pun on "Nobel" and the adjective "ignoble") is a parody award given to individuals whose "discoveries" or "achievements" may seem strange, funny, or absurd. Sometimes dismissive and critical, the prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor imagination, and stimulate interest in science, medicine, and technology.

There seems to be a clear difference between

"receiving the parody Ig Nobel Prize"

and

"being nominated for the Nobel Prize." It gives the impression that Jean-Paul Biberian’s book is a hodgepodge where he verifies nothing, merely compiling facts he considers proven. Indeed, every time I reread his book—whose discourse is the most complete artistic vagueness—I discover new... blunders.

On page 152,

Biberian writes:

• I successfully reproduced part of Kervran’s experiments.

Where, when, how? Where was it published?

I don’t know whether these biological transmutations are real or not. I’ve seen enough in my life to know that hasty conclusions, in either direction, are always risky. I recall discussions about calcium in chicken eggs—“they couldn’t have absorbed it from their feed.” One commentator on Kervran suggested these birds might have drawn calcium from their skeletons, or more generally, from calcium already present in their bodies, within their cells.

On page 205 of his book, you'll read:

ANNEXES

Selection of scientific articles published

in peer-reviewed journals

in English

It begins with a paper by Jean-Paul Biberian. Look at the top, in small print:

1. Condensed Matter Nucl. Sc. 7 (2012) 11–25

This is... the journal of which Biberian has been editor-in-chief and the sole French-language referee since 2006. The list of other editorial board members appears in a footnote on page 192.

Indeed, not everything that glitters is gold.

I’ve published books on a subject that is extremely controversial: UFOs. Some of my books included reproductions of scientific articles and communications. But each time, these were high-level publications with genuine peer review and presentations at international conferences, at the top of the field. In Korea in 2009 and Prague in 2012, Doré and I presented undeniable, high-level experimental results from experiments conducted in... his garage. At any moment, I would be ready to immediately respond to any challenge to these works. The courageous Doré is still finalizing the work that will form the basis of our next presentation at a conference where we will... thank donors to our association

UFO-science.

Personally, I’ve been banned from seminars for years—over twenty, at least. The door of the Institute of Higher Studies in Bure-sur-Yvette has been closed to me by Academician Thibaud Damour, who wouldn’t want to face me publicly, head-to-head. Same for Carlo Rovelli’s seminar in Marseille. Same at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics

(Alain Riazuelo affair),

or Joa Magueijo at Imperial College, London (on variable speed of light). All have miserably avoided confrontation. They all know that over forty years of seminars, I’ve never lost a battle. Riazuelo wouldn’t last a round against me in his own domain, and he knows it very well.

Alain Blanchard had also previously fled publicly, when I made a request during a seminar he gave at the Marseille Observatory while I was still working there. I had read aloud in front of my colleagues the foolish critique he had made about my cosmology work, within the CNRS committee I belonged to. In response, Blanchard gathered his slides and fled through the back door. One of my colleagues stood up and said:

• You saw! He’s running away!

It seems he now heads the Institute of Astrophysics in Toulouse. There, I was told: "If you asked to give a seminar there, it would be seen as a provocation" ( ... ).

• Cowards, cowards, cowards, without courage, without honor!

On December 5 and 6, I gave three two-hour seminars at the mathematics department of Toulouse-Mirail University. Attendees: six people at the first seminar, three at each of the next two, including the mathematician who invited me (at my own expense), and... whom I haven’t heard from since. Aged 71, he is a seasoned expert in Clifford algebras. His plan was for us to co-author a book, published by a major German scientific publisher, where he had connections. He was supposed to contact me again.

I doubt he will.

Were there any criticisms during these seminars? None,

on the contrary.

The mathematician who invited me was delighted "because the connection was good." This first visit was meant to be followed by others. But upon my arrival in Toulouse, the hostility from astrophysicists was evident.

After this trip to Toulouse:

• I’ve heard feedback about your presentation. What’s curious is that, broadly speaking, astrophysicists agree with your work—but paradoxically, they don’t want to engage with it.

Of course, "because of the UFO context," all the implications—such as the non-impossibility of interstellar travel (a second matter where light speed is 50 times ours).

I found myself facing high-level geometers, with whom, indeed, "the connection was good." At the first seminar, the deputy director of the astrophysics institute was present. A nice man, but he looked like a ping-pong player lost on the Central Court at Roland Garros during a final.

I believe it was truly there, after 38 years of work, that I realized my work could only be genuinely understood by mathematician-geometers. But at least with such people, dialogue is possible. With astrophysicists, no.

Back to Jean-Paul Biberian’s book. Colleagues who have known him for a long time say:

• Jean-Claude, he’s an Oriental...

Yes, his videos, like his book, resemble the Thousand and One Nights. This cold fusion, said to have occasionally produced up to 24 watts of anomalous heat, often peaking at just one watt or even... milliwatt, remains stagnant. In this book, which reads like a visit to a souk, you’ll find an exhaustive list of all those who’ve tried cold fusion. These experiments are in the hands of hobbyists. None offers a theoretical model. Nothing. They simply bring "this and that" together, immersed in something, and watch what happens. What most resembles cold fusion is cooking.

Biberian repeatedly mentions Rossi’s cold fusion machine.

• If this concept holds up...

• If, as the Spartans say.

If you like oriental tales, go ahead and spend your 18 euros. I dare hope this empty book won’t go viral online or spark passionate debates in major media, because, as it stands, the mountain gives birth to a mouse. I think there are more urgent paths to pursue than chasing dreams with no real substance, marked by numerous failures.

• It didn’t work. No energy release could be observed...

We would be delighted to echo significant advances, ideas with coherence. But years pass, and cold fusion remains "a topic one can discuss among friends."

What frustrates me is that for 40 years I’ve strictly followed scientific protocol, placing my goals (at the cost of so much sweat!) in genuine scientific arenas—high-level journals and conferences—while Biberian’s approach lacks rigor at every turn. I have nothing against the man, absolutely nothing. Personally, I believe research into catalyzed fusion should be supported.

Before discussing what might be attempted toward sonofusion, let’s conclude by citing further excerpts from Biberian’s book.

In his book, he says one thing, then its opposite, a few pages apart. The reader will judge. Skipping over the numerous phrases like "he demonstrated," "he proved," we find many statements of failure.

Page 73:

• Unfortunately, after several years of work, dozens of letters, and experiments as varied as they were, we still haven’t reached a conclusive result (...).

Page 79:

• We tried these French balls, but the results weren’t convincing enough to publish. At best, we obtained only a few percent more energy. It wasn’t enough to convince ourselves, let alone others (...).

Page 104:

• In the field of cold fusion, the situation is difficult because, at present, there is no theory to verify (...)

This observation doesn’t prevent Biberian, on page 133, from devoting

Chapter 6

of his book to "Theories of Cold Fusion."

At the end of the book, he signs his conclusion on page 194. I reproduce this passage in full:

Page 194

WHAT FUTURE FOR COLD FUSION?

Since 1989, enormous progress has been made in cold fusion (...). We are beginning to better understand which ingredients are important, and the necessary conditions for the system to work (...). Not only has the original experiment by the two discoverers been reproduced, but new experiments have shown other ways to achieve similar results. We’ve also seen that the phenomenon is far more general than initially thought, and that couples other than palladium-deuterium are possible. Perhaps one key point is that the nickel-hydrogen couple could be a future solution. The results obtained by Andrea Rossi’s team in Italy and by the Greek company Defkalion are extremely encouraging and suggest that applications could soon emerge.

Thus, the epilogue. After a quarter-century of struggle, chasing often non-reproducible experiments and highly problematic measurements, Andrea Rossi will save the situation by scaling up from fractions of a watt to... megawatts. May heaven help this story not deflate like a balloon—sincerely! To be continued.

Regarding Biberian’s book, sorry for being so frankly negative about its construction. I repeat, I have nothing against the man. But there is indeed a systematic marginalization of these teams in his approach: organizing conferences, creating a journal where the editorial board identifies with the authors of the papers, and presenting laxity with complete sincerity—and also naïveté—as a common practice. How can one trust publications built with such carelessness?

If anyone should know that the scientific community is violently hostile to anything stepping outside conventional paths, it’s me. The publications I’ve managed to secure in high-level journals came at the cost of unimaginable, exhausting battles.

Worse still: not only is this community hostile, but it is also

frankly dishonest,

fleeing cowardly from confrontation, from face-to-face debate, from the necessary clash of ideas in seminars. That said, fleeing to a deserted island and publishing in one’s own journal isn’t the solution—especially when one openly admits these publications are tainted by laxity.

J.P. Petit, April 20, 2013

April 22, 2013.

Shortly after posting my analysis of Jean-Paul Biberian’s book, a colleague researcher, Frédéric Heny Couannier, assistant professor at Aix-Marseille University, also cited in the book on pages 95 and 96, responded with the message below, which I reproduce with his permission.

It is true that the results allegedly achieved by Italian Andrea Rossi would represent a thousandfold leap forward in thermal energy production via cold fusion using a nickel-hydrogen pathway, a technology that has reportedly undergone demonstrations and patent applications.

It is also true that if this breakthrough were real, it would provoke extremely violent reactions given the enormous sums involved, as well as the geopolitical upheavals resulting from the emergence of this new technology—reactions that could even include threats of death directed at the individual.

But recall that we’ve known, even in France alone, impostures of unimaginable scale, such as the "sniffing aircraft." Watch this incredible investigation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agoshqLW59Y

To be continued.

J.P. Petit

From: Frédéric Henry-Couannier fhenryco@yahoo.fr
To: Jean-Pierre Petit jppetit1937@yahoo.fr
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2013, 12:09 AM
Subject: Re: Biberian’s Book on Cold Fusion

Jean-Pierre,

I fear you’ve missed the most important message in JP Biberian’s book, which lies in the preface by Stanley Pons, co-discoverer of cold fusion. I quote this excerpt from page 11:

• Very quickly, I realized the subject had been declared dead in America, embalmed in America, buried in America; and as for me, I was unofficially exiled forever by “the men of the president.”

It seems evident to me that military laboratories of the DoD (Department of Defense) seized control of cold fusion, deliberately discrediting it in the media. Such a discovery obviously had strategic implications. How could it be otherwise?

Hence, the systematic blocking of patents (Rossi), the taboo maintained in the media (like with water memory), the blocking of publications in prestigious journals—with the consequence that researchers working on this topic are forced to create their own journal (a trend observable across all fields outside mainstream science).

This subject is also abandoned by serious theoretical physicists, who are often even more subservient to the dominant paradigm than experimentalists.

Don’t forget that Biberian is exclusively an experimenter. What else could he do but recount all the experiments he attempted, mostly unsuccessful, but occasionally yielding positive results confirming colleagues’ findings and reinforcing his conviction in the phenomenon’s reality—entirely in the most total groping, given the absence of a consensus theoretical framework?

Regarding Rossi, the possibility of a methodological error can be ruled out because this man:

• Claims to run his own factories (he’s an industrialist) using energy produced by his reactors.
• Insisted that the steam exiting his e-cat was tested to confirm it was truly dry—answering the main methodological criticism often leveled against him.
• Claims he can operate his reactor in a closed loop once it reaches cruising mode (using part of the produced energy to reinject it as input to sustain the reaction), thus avoiding any external energy consumption.

So either he’s telling the truth, or he’s a total fraud. But:

• When you consider the scale of the fraud, it’s still astonishing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5osJcNalags — Rossi cooperated (signed agreements) with the Greek company Defkalion for a brief period, after which there was a rather conflictual split. Shortly after, Defkalion announced it could soon offer a domestic reactor with performance similar to Rossi’s and published its independent results at the summer 2012 conference. Many details here:

http://nickelpower.org/2013/04/10/my-visit-to-defkalion-canada/

Defkalion and Rossi are now competitors. So if there’s fraud, it’s monumental (given the considerable resources involved) and contagious, since it now involves a company (Defkalion) with dozens of engineers and scientists who have published results independently of Rossi—exactly on the same technology (nickel-hydrogen)!

http://defkalion-energy.com/technology/

Here’s what I believe:

Rossi, blocked and threatened with death, may have leaked information to Defkalion—the only way out for him—to ensure his discoveries survive... otherwise, what’s the probability that both would independently develop the famed method to multiply cold fusion performance a thousandfold, while hundreds of independent researchers worldwide trying to guess Rossi’s trick have failed?

When I posted this on the Defkalion forum, all my posts were deleted. I asked for explanations, and they apologized, citing a "false manipulation," but couldn’t restore my posts (with links to my site and forum exchanges). I was about to repost when the Defkalion website simply vanished for several months! Then it reappeared recently—but without the forum.

Defkalion had invited dozens of "experts" for a demonstration last spring. JP Biberian was one of them... the day before, everything was canceled!

Rossi’s latest message seems quite clear: the domestic e-cat is blocked (patents), while the e-cat MegaWatt is currently acquired by a secret military organization! Yet here it says:

http://nickelpower.org/2013/04/10/my-visit-to-defkalion-canada/

that initially:

Defkalion was created to commercialize the black box technology Rossi claimed he had on a global scale, excluding the United States of America and all military applications.

This gives the impression of a blackout.

For years I’ve tried to enlighten JP Biberian about what truly hinders cold fusion, but I think only recently has he truly grasped it. Now retired, he can more easily consider that this research barrier stems from a real conspiracy—something he couldn’t have admitted while still in office.

Fred

Let’s return to what we might consider a complement to this analysis of the book—a digression on the hope of achieving

sonofusion.

It all begins with the phenomenon of cavitation, identified in 1917 by Lord Raleigh (co-inventor, among others, of the

Raleigh-Taylor instability,

a phenomenon that condemns laser fusion attempts at the U.S. NIF and in the future on France’s Megajoule facility). At the beginning of the century, it was discovered that the bronze propellers of His Majesty’s warships seemed eaten by moths. The explanation is as follows: when the propeller rotates, a region on the outer edge of the blade experiences depression. Pressure then drops below the saturated vapor pressure of water. A hemispherical vapor bubble forms and grows. But carried by the liquid flow, this vapor bubble moves downstream into a region of the blade where pressure rises again. The vapor hemisphere is then recompressed. That is, along this liquid-vapor boundary, pressure suddenly increases. This triggers the launch of a centripetal hemispherical shock wave converging toward the geometric center of this small volume located at the wall. This self-focused shock wave concentrates energy into a tiny zone, which then experiences an impact corresponding to extremely high pressure (several thousand atmospheres). In a very localized area, temperature exceeds that of bronze fusion. By combining mechanical and thermal shock effects, rapid metal abrasion occurs.

Cavitation can also be achieved by subjecting water to pressure oscillations generated by a piezoelectric crystal, producing ultrasound. During the rarefaction phase, cavitation manifests within the liquid, with the appearance of spherical vapor microbubbles. During the compression phase, the same scenario unfolds, with a centripetal spherical shock wave launched. Again, pressure and temperature reach considerable values (5,000 bars, 5,000 to 10,000 degrees). The high temperature excites water molecules, causing their dissociation and emission of blue light (a phenomenon known as

sonoluminescence).

Therefore, there is no doubt that, locally, very high temperatures are achieved in a liquid medium by creating a micro-cavitation phenomenon through ultrasound. One can even buy online a fairly cheap kit, a probe that produces ultrasound, which can be immersed in water. So, if you immerse everything in darkness, the water emits a blue glow, quite effective.

Biberian mentions in his book, pages 73-64, a attempt by Californians, Roger Stringham and Russ George, to obtain fusion reactions by operating with ultrasound, acting on heavy water where hydrogen in the water molecules is replaced by its second isotope, deuterium. They placed a sheet of palladium in this D2O volume, this magical material, used by Pons and Fleischmann in 1988, a metal capable of absorbing 900 times its volume of hydrogen, to the point of ... expanding.

Of course, researchers are looking for an abnormal heat release, which is problematic since ultrasound brings energy to this water. Moreover, in the hangar where the experiments were conducted, frequent temperature variations made calorimetric measurements problematic. But Biberian, who collaborated on these works, after raising these questions, writes: "Nevertheless, I was able to contribute and clearly demonstrate an unusual heat release."

How? Mystery. In the next line, he provides an important clarification: Stringham and he are vegetarians (I am not making this up, you will read it).

Stringham was convinced that the bubbles forming on the surface of the palladium caused nuclear reactions. And Biberian comments, page 74, saying:

• Indeed, on the palladium sheet, one could see under the electron microscope melted areas, craters, indicating the presence of violent reactions.

In the book, he confesses his incompetence in chemistry. If Biberian examined ship propellers, he would also observe the trace of "violent reactions".

No, these are not "reactions", but the effect of the focusing of mini shock waves, a phenomenon long known to physicists.

April 25, 2013:

Email from Jean Paul Biberian, which I reproduce with his permission.

My comments are in red.

From: Jean-Paul Biberian

To: Jean-Pierre Petit jppetit1937@yahoo.fr

Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 9:47 AM

Subject: Regarding comments on my book

Hello Jean-Pierre,

I just read with astonishment the critique you made of my book: La Fusion dans tous ses états: Fusion Froide, ITER, Alchimie, Transmutations Biologiques, published by Trédaniel.

First of all, my name is Jean-Paul, and I am retired from Aix-Marseille University and not from CNRS, and thank you for not holding a grudge against me!

My mistake. I corrected it immediately. If you give me your university rank before your retirement, I can mention it.

This book is intended for the general public, it is not a scientific work. It is not "nonsense," I am actually telling a story, my own through my scientific journey. I describe what I did, the people I met, what worked, and what failed. In short, the life of a scientist that the general public does not necessarily know. I am not a model, but it is simply my path. Much of what I wrote, I actually said in my lectures, it is normal, I only have one life to tell.

If you tell your life, then it would have been better to put another title. You put "La Fusion Froide dans tous ses états" - Fusion Froide, ITER, Alchemy, Biological Transmutations ... You would have then had to put something like: "Memories of a researcher walking off the beaten path," for example.

Regarding ITER, I made a quick overview of the situation, and gave my opinion. I could not elaborate much on this subject, as I have never really worked on Tokamaks, but I know enough to form an opinion and share it.

No. You don't know enough. It is a very complex issue, requiring advanced knowledge in plasma physics and MHD, which you don't have. It is just a digression, weak in content. ITER is a serious problem, on an international level. It is a misuse of public funds, unprecedented. If you had wanted to talk about this subject and had consulted me before, I would have provided you with more precise data. The real experts in fusion, the specialists (and I have become one of them), know that this machine will never give what is expected from it, it will only ever be a fantastic waste. It is too unstable, and these chronic and harmful instabilities seem incurable. Look at the presentation by de Wurden at Princeton in 2011 on my website.

Cold fusion is an entirely new field of science, and to date, there is no fully satisfactory theory to explain it.

Then, how can you claim to be a popularizer in a field that no one has mastered! ?!

It is possible that with current knowledge of quantum mechanics and solid-state physics, the phenomenon can be explained, but it is not certain. It is also possible that it is a new phenomenon that requires new ideas outside of what is known.

That is why a scientific journal such as the one I am the editor-in-chief of: Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science must keep an open mind in the selection of published articles. I remind you that it is a refereed journal, and all the articles published there have been refereed.

The journal in question publishes articles on cold fusion. If these articles are validated by referees, then they must automatically be experts in this field. But how can people present themselves as experts in a field that no one masters? It makes no sense. It could be a bulletin of a community, why not? But a refereed journal, no. Someone had to say it.

Too strict a control might let an interesting idea pass. It is not about discrediting in this editorial approach, but about openness to new ideas. It is up to the reader to judge for himself.

This sentence shocks me. How can the average person be able to judge a scientific approach described in articles? A approach that can only be validated by concrete facts. Yet, for a quarter of a century, cold fusion has been stuck in terms of notable facts. Outside of the alleged progress by Andrea Rossi. There, it is something very important. At this point, there are only three possible options:

• Either it is a major discovery. Then it must be quickly implemented in the international energy landscape. It must be provided with means to develop this new field.

• Second scenario: this discovery is real, but suppressed by the military, by financial powers, as suggested by Frédéric Henry Couannier. Then an investigation must be carried out, and if it is confirmed, it must be made known, and everything must be done to free this discovery.

• Third option: it is a fraud that has reached the entire planet. Then it must be noted and denounced. The scale of the means is unprecedented. See the case of the sniffing planes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agoshqLW59Y

Alchemy is an interesting topic, since it implies transmutations. By telling my experimental adventure in alchemy, I simply wanted to show that a researcher must be open to new ideas. As an experimenter, I tried to reproduce alchemical experiments. I have nothing to say, simply, I found nothing. I think that is important. A negative result is still an interesting result.

I find that your chapter adds nothing. It is anecdotal. If it is an episode of your professional life, the chapter title should be changed. You put "Chapter 9, ALCHEMY", and on the cover the enticing word: "Alchemy".

It would have been better to put: "Chapter 9: "White Cabbage in Alchemy", or "My misadventure in Alchemy".

You saw in my comment that I cited the experiment I did under Cau's instructions. Even if there was no transmutation (which needs to be clarified), the projection of gold on the surface of the sample remains an undeniable and perfectly reproducible phenomenon, which deserves to be studied.

Regarding biological transmutations, I believe this topic is important, very few people know that it exists, it was important to talk about it especially since I myself have done successful work in this area. In science, not everything is published. My results in reproducing Kervran's work will be published as soon as I finish my current experiments.

So these are experiments that are not published, nor even completed, and you write, page 152

"From there I successfully reproduced part of Kervran's experiments".

The first review article in the appendix of my book concerns a review on biological transmutations. It is the first article of this kind. It was published in the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science of which I am the editor-in-chief, but like all other articles of the journal,

it went through a referee

. I am not the referee for the French language, the articles are all in English, I am only the only French member of the editorial team.

Same comment as above. Your publication should be titled "Bulletin of the researchers working for energy production by low temperature fusion in condensed matter".

That is just a bulletin, not a refereed journal, since there are no experts in this field, not mastered.

Indeed, being of Armenian origin, I have an oriental side, and I like stories. Moreover, the science we like is the one where we are told a story, whether it is the story of the origin of the universe, the destruction of the dinosaurs, the discovery of radioactivity, X-rays or superconductivity.

This book is not a "souk", it is a journey through the path of a researcher's life. Cold fusion may be similar to the search for the right filament for Edison's incandescent lamp, which tried many materials before finding the right one. When we don't have a theory to guide us, we try in all directions until we find the right one. The experimenter is indeed a bit a "cook" who tries to add a bit of this, a bit of that.

I don't see things the same way as you, even if I also like stories and have written many. I have forty years of research behind me and, at 76 years old, I continue. In September 2013, Doré and I will present an experimental work on MHD, 100% original and without the slightest shadow, at an international plasma physics colloquium at the top level, in Warsaw, after the international colloquia in Vilnius (MHD), Bremen (supersonic aerodynamics), Korea (plasma physics). In Warsaw we will present experiments focused on "disk MHD aerodynamics". We have published 3 articles in Acta Physica Polonica, an authentic refereed journal, and we will continue in this direction.

My professional life is not a "souk". I have worked in many directions, in a rational, methodical, organized, supported way. I had to fight a lot and I am still forced to do so. The publications aimed are always in top-level refereed journals. Some experimenters are cooks, not me. In my research, the construction and publication of theoretical works and the experiments that confirmed the predictions have always gone hand in hand.

Jean-Pierre, don't worry, the big media are not interested in the subject. The blackout is complete. Yet, at a high level, everyone is aware. Stanley Pons clearly states this in the preface he had the honor of writing. My meeting with the RG that I describe in the book is also significant.

It is especially regrettable that the people of cold fusion have not produced presentable and reproducible experimental facts. Far from me the idea of blaming them. It is quite normal when one is riding a subject that is not mastered. My friend Benveniste had the same problems, presumably because he did not understand that the distilled water flasks bought by his laboratory could differ, despite their purity, depending on how this water was "nano-structured", and that there could be not one water, but several waters. But, with the media, this does not simplify things.

Cold fusion is already 24 years old, and since the beginning, the progress has been important, we understand much better what is happening, what needs to be done to succeed, and especially what should not be done.

How can one "understand better what is happening" in the absence of a model that allows interpreting what is observed.

I appreciate that you "think that research on catalyzed fusion should be supported" because it is not currently the case.

My support on this point is total. It has always been.

Once again, the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science publishes articles from many authors who are not on the review committee. It is not "laxity", but openness to new, non-orthodox ideas.

It is not me who spoke of laxity. It is you, in your book, page 192, I quote:

" It is better to be a bit lax.."

Regarding the sonofusion experiments with Roger Stringham, it is clear that if I mention the fusion of palladium, it is because of the excess heat we observed. It is obviously possible that this is only due to a cavitation effect. It is the correlation between fusion and abnormal heat that I have noted. It is also evident that we have removed the heat directly brought by the ultrasound from our measurements!

It is not this measurement that I have disputed, but the interpretation of the fusion points on the electrode surface, which you link to "violent reactions". I quote:

Page 74:

• Indeed, on the palladium sheet, one could see under the electron microscope melted areas, craters, indicating the presence of violent reactions.

While the impact of shock waves related to cavitation can perfectly melt this metal, a phenomenon known for ... a century.

Wishing that one day the production of energy through low-temperature nuclear reactions, and if possible without waste, could be established in the international energy landscape.

Jean-Pierre

._______________

After accepting the online posting of the email, in the response

Good evening,

I was a Maître de Conférences.

I completely agree with you regarding ITER. I have not done an in-depth study of the subject as you have, but I know it is a dead project. Unfortunately, it is an international project very difficult to stop, and it will continue for a long time, spending a lot of money...

I have certainly heard a lot about magnetic over-unity machines, but I have not yet seen one that works.

On the other hand, it is not because there is no theory that one cannot study a scientific subject. It took 50 years to understand low-temperature superconductivity, and now we still don't know why high-temperature superconductivity works. Catalysis works, even though there is no complete theory, and researchers continue to develop catalysts with a lot of trial and error.

Completely agree.

Superconductivity was discovered in 1911 by the Dutchman Kamerlingh Onnes, with mercury, brought to the temperature of liquid helium. This discovery was part of a logical program: the study of the properties of materials at very low temperatures. Immediately, the experimental fact could be maintained over time and proved to be perfectly reproducible. The experimental parameters could be identified. This is why this work immediately took its place as a new branch of physics; without any possible controversy. No one could stand up and say "I don't believe in superconductivity". And in these conditions, it doesn't matter if the theoretical modeling is not up to date. Astronomers did not wait for the functioning of stars (fusion) to be clarified to study them, through spectroscopic studies, and classify the different stars according to their spectroscopic signature. But all the astronomers who aimed at the same star, found the same spectrum. It is different when research presents major reproducibility difficulties. I followed day by day the efforts (dramatic) of my late friend Jacques Benveniste (we were very close). He did not master it, and the experimental parameters are still not measured. And you know that when you organized a conference on cold fusion in Marseille, you tried to set up a demonstration experiment, which could have been shown to the press and skeptics, and unfortunately, that day it did not work.

You can leave my email, anyway it is easy to find on my website.

Sincerely

It would be interesting to create this cavitation, not with ultrasound, but using a convergent-divergent nozzle, a disk nozzle, which gives a very high expansion rate. And this with an upstream pressure in thousands of bars.

When the liquid is pushed into the divergent, as it cannot expand, like a gas, it would be filled, by cavitation, with vapor bubbles. A new section modification, with a convergent peripheral part, would cause the implosion of these bubbles, with a new start of a centripetal spherical shock wave.

Cavitation in the disk nozzle

The mechanism of the implosion of a bubble in cavitation

One could increase the expansion by placing, not disks, but two cones facing each other.

I think that the energy associated with this implosion could then be greater than that communicated to the microbubbles by an ultrasound actuator. And I do not exclude that at the center of these bubbles, the temperatures reached exceed hundreds of millions of degrees, allowing to consider fusion reactions.

Why not a brutal compression-expansion-recompression of a deuterium-tritium mixture in liquid state? Why not a compression-expansion-recompression of lithium hydride (the explosive of hydrogen bombs), or boron hydride in liquid state? (aiming for neutronless fusion).

To close this page, before the file disappears from the net, if you want to be entertained, see or rewatch this masterpiece of Jules Romain, the film Knock, with Jouvet. A film that has not aged, which is not the case for many old films now available on the net: .

Knock with Jouvet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXNDOtd0vYw

By the way, I also suggest:

The construction of Pyramids in Ancient Egypt with Closets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU1IiPr_1uI

An old film, with beautiful images and sometimes a bit of humor (I love the pre-title sequence), where Closets repeats several times "no, these pyramids are not tombs". I agree with him. If tomb robbers empty tombs, it would be logical that one could find fragments of fabric, bandages, wood, something to chew on, which could be analyzed. But no, nothing. Did they vacuum the place when leaving? If elements were removed from the sepulchral chambers, reinforcing the theory that they were tombs, where are they and what have we gained from their examination?

Egyptologists may have, over the years, carefully cleaned the sepulchral chambers of all debris, "to make them more presentable". It is not impossible. I had looked into the site of Entremont, west of Aix in Provence, just after the city exit. A Gallic oppidum discovered during the war when the Germans wanted to install a radar there. They dug in the hope of finding water and it was then that it turned out that this height concealed a rich archaeological site.

After the war, Fernand Benoit, who became responsible for archaeological excavations for the Provence Côte d'Azur region, did excavations. They found on the site heaps of "cased pottery". Benoit gave his orders:

• Clear me all of this, so that we can see clearly!

It was done. And thus all the puzzle pieces that were only fragments of Gallic crucibles, which were broken after use to extract the cast iron cake, disappeared. Precious information that went to the dump, in whole tons.

If you visit the site, you will easily find a wall with three small entrances. The ground in front has been ... concrete. If you look at these three entrances carefully, you will notice that they are not of the same height. The lower part of the small left door is lower than the upper part of the small right door.

I think it is a longitudinal furnace, where the left door was the air inlet and the right door the outlet. The central door served for filling and cleaning this duct. The fact that the air stays longer allows obtaining higher temperatures, thus refining the cake obtained. The cakes to be refined were located in a tunnel above, built in clay, which was destroyed when these enriched cakes were retrieved.

No archaeologist has paid attention to it.

Returning to the pyramids, I incline to think that they were above all

initiation sites

. At least some of them, like those of Dashour. The "Red Pyramid", among others. They imprisoned the novices. To be initiated, they had to put themselves in a vegetative state similar to that which Yogis know how to achieve. Decreased heart rate, lowered temperature, etc. I think it was a bit like saying to the candidate:

• If you want to live, you must first die, then be reborn.

If his spiritual preparation was sufficient, the applicant passed the test. Otherwise, he was found dead in the tomb.

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