Waking up to a new year - Researchers at MIT have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet named Kepler 78b

 

by Jennifer Chu for MIT News
Boston MA (SPX) Aug 26, 2013

From their measurements of Kepler 78b, the team determined that the planet is about 40 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun. The star around which Kepler 78b orbits is likely relatively young, as it rotates more than twice as fast as the sun - a sign that the star has not had as much time to slow down. Image: Cristina Sanchis Ojeda

In the time it takes you to complete a single workday, or get a full night's sleep, a small fireball of a planet 700 light-years away has already completed an entire year.
Researchers at MIT have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet named Kepler 78b that whips around its host star in a mere 8.5 hours - one of the shortest orbital periods ever detected.
The planet is extremely close to its star - its orbital radius is only about three times the radius of the star - and the scientists have estimated that its surface temperatures may be as high as 3,000 degrees Kelvin, or more than 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. In such a scorching environment, the top layer of the planet is likely completely melted, creating a massive, roiling ocean of lava.
What's most exciting to scientists is that they were able to detect light emitted by the planet - the first time that researchers have been able to do so for an exoplanet as small as Kepler 78b. This light, once analyzed with larger telescopes, may give scientists detailed information about the planet's surface composition and reflective properties.
Kepler 78b is so close to its star that scientists hope to measure its gravitational influence on the star. Such information may be used to measure the planet's mass, which could make Kepler 78b the first Earth-sized planet outside our own solar system whose mass is known.
The researchers reported their discovery of Kepler 78b in The Astrophysical Journal.
In a separate paper, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, members of that same group, along with others at MIT and elsewhere, observed KOI 1843.03, a previously discovered exoplanet with an even shorter orbital period: just 4 1/4 hours.
The group, led by physics professor emeritus Saul Rappaport, determined that in order for the planet to maintain its extremely tight orbit around its star, it would have to be incredibly dense, made almost entirely of iron - otherwise, the immense tidal forces from the nearby star would rip the planet to pieces.
"Just the fact that it's able to survive there implies that it's very dense," says Josh Winn, an associate professor of physics at MIT, and co-author on both papers. "Whether nature actually makes planets that are dense enough to survive even closer in, that's an open question, and would be even more amazing."
Dips in the data
In their discovery of Kepler 78b, the team that wrote the Astrophysical Journal paper looked through more than 150,000 stars that were monitored by the Kepler Telescope, a NASA space observatory that surveys a slice of the galaxy. Scientists are analyzing data from Kepler in hopes of identifying habitable, Earth-sized planets.
The goal for Winn and his colleagues was to look for Earth-sized planets with very short orbital periods.
"We've gotten used to planets having orbits of a few days," Winn says. "But we wondered, what about a few hours? Is that even possible? And sure enough, there are some out there."


Read More Here

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Arnie Gundersen: VT Yankee Closing Permanently, Fukushima still in a World of Hurt(ing)

MsMilkytheclown1

Published on Aug 27, 2013
 

A Breaking News Podcast:
Vermont Yankee Closing! Also some other stuff going on at Fukushima that is currently going on (all bad) closer to the end of the podcast.
Entergy just announced that they are shutting down Vermont Yankee Nuclear Generating Station in Vernon, Vermont. We've been saying that Yankee would probably be shut down in 2014 to avoid the expensive modifications that they would have had to comply with as a result of the Fukushima Daiichi triple meltdowns in 2011, as the Yankee reactors were of the same unsafe design. There are 22 other reactors in the US identical to Fukushima, all of which face these costly modifications. We recorded a special podcast today with Arnie and Nat to respond to the news. Listen In

Vermont Public Radio: "Citing Economics, Entergy To Close Vermont Yankee By End of 2014"

http://tinyurl.com/oo87fsu

Citing Economics, Entergy To Close Vermont Yankee By End of 2014

By John Dillon

Enlarge image

Credit AP Photo/Matthew Cavanaugh

Entergy Wholesale Commodities president Bill Mohl speaks at a news conference, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2013, in Brattleboro, Vt., to announce the closing of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station by end of 2014.

Listen

4:40

Vermont Yankee will close by the end of next year, ending years of litigation over the plant’s future.
But Yankee says financial pressure not lawsuits or legislative mandates are forcing the shutdown.
Gov. Peter Shumlin said he got the call from Entergy Tuesday morning, shortly before the news release went out announcing the company’s decision to shutter Vermont’s only nuclear plant.
Shumlin, an ardent opponent of Entergy and Vermont Yankee, said he now wants to forge a new relationship with the Louisiana based corporation. The governor said his thoughts now are with the plant’s 650 workers.
“Those employees have done an extraordinary job running the plant. They’re dedicated, they’re smart, they’re capable, and we’re going to work with them to find a great jobs future,” he said.
In Vernon, William Mohl, Entergy’s president of nuclear operations, said the news brought tears from some long-time employees. Mohl blamed the closure on the energy market, not the ongoing legal battle with the state.
“This decision was based on the economics of the plant.  Not operational performance.  Not litigation risk, nor political pressure,” he said. “Simply put, the plant costs exceed the plant revenue and this asset is not financially viable.”
The Yankee plant went on line in 1972. It’s is the same General Electric boiling water design as the reactors in Fukushima, Japan that were disabled and damaged by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. In the wake of Fukushima, Entergy was facing expensive modifications required to improve safety.


Read More Here
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Seven Days: "Nuclear Expert Says It'll Take At Least 20 Years — and More Money — to Clean Up Vermont Yankee" http://tinyurl.com/plnz23c

BREAKING: Nuclear Expert Says It'll Take At Least 20 Years — and More Money — to Clean Up Vermont Yankee

Posted by Ken Picard on August 27, 2013 at 12:04 PM

In the end, it wasn't the attorney general's federal lawsuit, the Vermont Legislature, the Public Service Board or any of those pesky enviros nitpicking about underground tritium leaks and collapsed cooling towers that shut down Vermont Yankee.
It was the invisible hand of the marketplace.
On Tuesday, New Orleans-based Entergy Corporation announced plans to close the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Vernon by the end of 2014. Praising Vermont Yankee's talented, committed and dedicated workforce, Entergy chairman and CEO Leo Denault called it "an agonizing decision and an extremely tough call for us."
Denault touched on some of the economic forces that compelled Entergy's decision, including a "transformational shift" in the natural gas market that has driven down electricity-generation costs, high maintainence costs on the 41-year-old trouble-prone plant and "wholesale market design flaws" that have kept energy prices "artificially low" throughout New England.
So what happens next? Presumably, the plant spends the next decade or more decommissioning the plant and cleaning up the radiation. According to Entergy's press release, the Vermont Yankee decommissioning trust has a balance of $582 million, in excess of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's minimum financial assurance of $566 million for terminating the plant's license.
But one nuclear-engineer-turned-industry-watchdog isn't comforted by that figure. Burlington-based Arnie Gundersen was the first to raise a hue and cry in 2007 about projected shortfalls in the VY decommissioning fund.

Gundersen, who provided expert testimony recommending the closure of five of the six nuclear plants nationwide that were eventually deep-sixed this year, says he was right that Vermont Yankee was neither economically viable nor safe enough to remain open for another 20 years, as Entergy argued when its operating license was extended last year.


Read More Here

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WPTZ Channel 5 News: "Nuclear Engineer Talks Yankee Options" http://tinyurl.com/ozc4spp
BURLINGTON, Vt. —The news of the closure came as a shock to Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer who has been lobbying against the plant for 10 years. He said the place won't immediately turn into a ghost town and that he has some concerns.
"It doesn't mean we're out of the woods from a safety standpoint," said Gundersen.
Even after Yankee is shuttered in about 15 months, Gundersen said there will still be plenty of activity for at least a few more years.
"The first step is wait five years and get the nuclear fuel out of the fuel pool which is high, down into dry caste storage in the ground," said Gundersen.
Entergy officials have stated they expect to finish decommissioning the plant through a process called SAFSTOR. They said the facility would be drained, secured, then let be for decades.
Gundersen isn't a fan of that plan. "What happens in those 60 years is that the plant's physical structure deteriorates and lets in things like rodents," he said. In his opinion, the better and quicker option is to knock the whole facility down, but that's expensive.

Read More and Watch Video Here

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Entergy's Press Release http://tinyurl.com/ka322pa
& FAQs http://tinyurl.com/q9dom73
Press Release: Entergy's official announcement of their plans to shut down Vermont Yankee Nuclear Generating Station
Entergy Corporation announced that it will permanently shut-down and decommission the single unit boiling water reactor at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station at the end of its current fuel cycle.
Let's not forget your newest bonus link for today boys and girls:
Japanese Nuclear Propaganda Cartoon


http://youtu.be/sOFg8oWMHRM


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Vermont Yankee nuclear plant to shut down by end of 2014

Toby Talbot/AP

Toby Talbot/AP

The nuclear plant sits along the banks of the Connecticut River in Vernon, Vt. -

Toby Talbot/AP

The nuclear plant sits along the banks of the Connecticut River in Vernon, Vt.

- See more at: http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2013/08/27/vermont-yankee-nuclear-plant-shut-down/VthM9oe73f8zeaHdWJJOVN/story.html#sthash.4a2AoSjQ.dpuf

By Martin Finucane, Globe Staff

The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant will be shut down, the company that owns it announced today, bringing to a close a long-running, divisive battle over the plant.
“This was an agonizing decision and an extremely tough call for us,” said Leo Denault, chairman and chief executive of Entergy.
While activists have criticized the plant for years, the company said its decision was based, in the end, on economics. The company blamed a variety of factors, including the boom in natural gas that has driven down natural gas and wholesale energy prices, the high cost of operating the plant, and what it called wholesale market “design flaws.”
The company said it would operate the Vernon, Vt., plant through the fourth quarter of 2014 to “duly and properly plan for a safe and orderly shutdown” and prepare filings with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on shutdown and decommissioning.
“We are committed to the safe and reliable operation of Vermont Yankee until shutdown, followed by a safe, orderly and environmentally responsible decommissioning process,” Denault said in a statement.
The company says on its website that 630 people are employed at the plant.

Read More Here


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• Entergy Opts To Shut Vermont Yankee
• VT nuclear plant is closing after 41yrs
• Entergy to Close Vermont's Only Nuclear Power Plant
• State's Only Nuclear Plant To Close By End Of 2014
• Entergy to Close, Decommission Vermont Yankee
• Vermont Yankee Nuke Plant to Close by End of 2014

Global sea level rise dampened by Australia floods

by Staff Writers
Boulder CO (SPX) Aug 26, 2013

Heavy rains transformed Australia's landscape, as show in these two NASA satellite images of floodplains in southwestern Queensland. The first image was taken on September 26, 2009. By the time of the second image, on March 26, 2011, so much rain had been driven over Australia instead of falling on the ocean that global sea levels temporarily dropped. (Image taken with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite.)

When enough raindrops fall over land instead of the ocean, they begin to add up. New research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) shows that when three atmospheric patterns came together over the Indian and Pacific oceans, they drove so much precipitation over Australia in 2010 and 2011 that the world's ocean levels dropped measurably.
Unlike other continents, the soils and topography of Australia prevent almost all of its precipitation from running off into the ocean. The 2010-11 event temporarily halted a long-term trend of rising sea levels caused by higher temperatures and melting ice sheets.
Now that the atmospheric patterns have snapped back and more rain is falling over tropical oceans, the seas are rising again. In fact, with Australia in a major drought, they are rising faster than before.
"It's a beautiful illustration of how complicated our climate system is," says NCAR scientist John Fasullo, the lead author of the study.
"The smallest continent in the world can affect sea level worldwide. Its influence is so strong that it can temporarily overcome the background trend of rising sea levels that we see with climate change."
The study, with co-authors from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Colorado at Boulder, will be published next month in Geophysical Research Letters. It was funded by the National Science Foundation, which is NCAR's sponsor, and by NASA.
Consistent rising, interrupted
As the climate warms, the world's oceans have been rising in recent decades by just more than 3 millimeters (0.1 inches) annually. This is partly because the heat causes water to expand, and partly because runoff from retreating glaciers and ice sheets is making its way into the oceans.
But for an 18-month period beginning in 2010, the oceans mysteriously dropped by about 7 millimeters (about 0.3 inches), more than offsetting the annual rise.
Fasullo and his co-authors published research last year demonstrating that the reason had to do with the increased rainfall over tropical continents. They also showed that the drop coincided with the atmospheric oscillation known as La Nina, which cooled tropical surface waters in the eastern Pacific and suppressed rainfall there while enhancing it over other portions of the tropical Pacific, Africa, South America, and Australia.
But an analysis of the historical record showed that past La Nina events only rarely accompanied such a pronounced drop in sea level.


Read More Here

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• Eric: Global sea level rise temporarily dampened by 2010-11 Australia floods - US National Science Foundation (NSF)
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• Global Sea Level Rise Temporarily Dampened By 2010-11 Australia Floods
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• New excuse for no sea-level rise: It rained a lot in Australia
• Global sea level rise dampened by Australia floods
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Fukushima Leak Worse than Thought, Decontamination a JOKE. Update 8/27/13

MsMilkytheclown1

Published on Aug 27, 2013

A LOT of news about Fukushima I've collected for the last 4 days. No real editing, just the reports.
BONUS LINK FOR TODAY: Fukushima ... What YOU Need To Know
http://tinyurl.com/ppeynrl
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Latest Headlines: http://enenews.com/

Study: "Fuel materials" entering Pacific Ocean via drains of Fukushima Daiichi resulted in potentially serious contamination of marine environment

Japan Professor compares cesium-137 releases from radiation disasters: Fukushima at up to 77 quadrillion Bq (77 PBq); Chernobyl at 85 quadrillion Bq (85 PBq) — Fukushima releases ongoing

'The Coming Fallout': Experts now fear massive reservoir of Fukushima contamination about to reach Pacific Ocean — "Slow, seeping buildup of a second catastrophe" — Workers can't say when or how they can stop flow

Vermont Yankee closing permanently — Embattled nuclear plant will be decommissioned in 2014 when current fuel cycle ends — Had license to operate until 2032

Nuclear experts concerned about water flow "reversing" due to Fukushima underground ice plan — Even more highly radioactive liquid inside reactor buildings to enter aquifer?

Warning that foundations of Fukushima reactor chambers have been "compromised" — Groundwater rising fast, now just 10 inches from surface

Nuclear Official: Tepco made Fukushima plant into a "machine for generating radioactive water" — Runoff from molten atomic cores now in groundwater, ocean — 'Air cooling' should be used

Japan Times: Extreme contamination in Fukushima reactor buildings 'most likely' mixing into aquifer, reveals Tepco — Bloomberg: Could this flow downstream to Tokyo and present a big risk? (VIDEO)

Water with nuclear fuel coming up from ocean floor off Fukushima coast? Tokyo Professor: 156 quadrillion Bq of Cs-137 once in basements — Double Chernobyl; Getting close to total fallout from every atomic bomb test in history — May be outputting from seeps in seafloor, I don't know (VIDEO)

Nuclear Engineer: Estimated 276 quadrillion Bq of Cs-137 entered Fukushima basements — Triple Chernobyl total release — A portion "has already made its way to aquifer, whence it can easily flow into sea"

Experts: Fukushima leaks "much worse" than authorities will admit — Disturbing questions confront Japan as leader visits Middle East to push nuclear

TV: "The Japanese are part of a massive non-consensual experiment on radiation exposure" — "Everywhere now is radioactive, we can't escape it," say Fukushima locals at beach (VIDEO)

Local Gov't Official in Fukushima: "One day the world will sue Japan for this" (VIDEO)

Alaska Newspaper: Concern Fukushima nuclear waste is tainting our salmon — Worried about impact on humans — Scientists urged to conduct tests

NHK: Sinking ground at Fukushima plant may have deformed tank, leading to leak of extremely contaminated water (VIDEO)

Contamination now spiking in seawater off Fukushima plant — Asahi reports up to 18-fold increase in a week

Highly Regarded Physician: The salmon migrate through radioactive plumes coming off Fukushima, then we catch them on Canada's shores — Concerned about lack of testing — Officials "rely on Japan for test results" (VIDEO)

Nuclear Experts: Portion of Fukushima's molten fuel believed to have "moved into earth" — Melted cores contacting groundwater may be cause of recent spike in radiation levels -CTV

TV: We're talking about generations being affected by Fukushima, and also their future healthcare... How are those in charge getting away with this, time after time by just saying sorry? — What do we tell the younger generation about what happened to our ocean? (VIDEOS)

"Ultimate, worst-case scenario" underway at Fukushima? New York Times: Experts suspect intense contamination is seeping out from under melted-down reactors and into Pacific — Will surpass even the leaks from disaster's early days

Lawmaker: Declare 'State of Emergency' right away and intervene at Fukushima — Japan Professor: Issue S.O.S. now, it's really an emergency... Gov't is utterly lost, international help is needed

Gundersen: Ocean already contaminated from deluge of Fukushima toxic water — Will stop eating fish from west coast — Cesium at 1,000% normal levels in middle of Pacific

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Bloomberg.com News

Tepco Faces 132 Olympic Pools Worth of Radioactive Water

By Yuriy Humber & Jacob Adelman - Aug 27, 2013 9:03 PM CT

Tepco `Textbook' Management Failure at Fukushima

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) has accumulated the largest pool of radioactive water in the history of nuclear accidents. The utility must now decide what to do with it: dump in the ocean, evaporate into the air, or both.

Enlarge image

A worker checks radiation levels near the No. 10 storage tank in the H3 tank area at the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, in this handout photograph taken on Aug. 21, 2013. Source: Tokyo Electric Power Co. via Bloomberg

Enlarge image

Moored fishing boats sit at Hisanohama fishing port in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. Tokyo Electric Power Co. will need approval from the government, local residents and fishermen before it can act on how to dispose of the radioactive water. Photographer: Yuriko Nakao/Bloomberg

The more than 330,000 metric tons of water with varying levels of toxicity is stored in pits, basements and hundreds of tanks at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant. The government said this week it will take a bigger role in staunching the toxic outflow that’s grown to 40 times the volume accumulated in the atomic disaster at Three Mile Island in the U.S.
Processing and disposing of the water, enough to fill 132 Olympic-size swimming pools, will be one of the most challenging engineering tasks of our generation, former nuclear engineer Michael Friedlander said. Tokyo Electric has chopped down forest to add more water tanks at the site 220 kilometers (137 miles) northeast of Tokyo.
The steel storage tanks are vulnerable to spills due to earthquakes as well as leaks, representing “a very clear and present danger to the plant site and to the people working there,” said Friedlander, who spent 13 years operating U.S. nuclear plants, including the Crystal River Station in Florida.
“There are really only a few ways you can get rid of it,” Friedlander said. “You put it in the ocean or it’s going to have to be evaporated. It’s a political hotspot, but at some point you cannot just continue collecting this water.”
Deciding on a disposal method is increasingly urgent after a series of leaks, including one last week labeled by Japan’s safety regulator as the most “severe incident” since the site was disabled by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Disposal Method

Tepco has 300 tons of water flowing into the reactors each day for cooling, while another 400 tons of groundwater from hills behind the plant is seeping into basements and mixing with contaminated run-off. Tepco is then pumping hundreds of tons out of the basements each day to store in tanks to await treatment to extract cesium and strontium via two filter systems. After sufficient processing, the water gets classified as low-level contaminant for disposal.
Tepco said this week that the second of the two filter systems failed this month and it won’t be fixed until next month. A leak of at least 300 tons from one of the 1,000-ton storage tanks last week prompted the Nuclear Regulation Authority to warn that more may be prone to similar spills. The watchdog also criticized Tepco for management of the tanks.
“This is becoming rapidly an international issue, so I think there is some pressure from countries in the region, including China Korea and others,” said Tom O’Sullivan, founder of Tokyo-based energy consultant Mathyos.

‘Took Too Long’

Japan’s nuclear industry used the tank storage method even before the Fukushima accident and it has been shown to be ineffective from a safety standpoint, Joonhong Ahn, a professor in the nuclear engineering department at the University of California, Berkeley, said.
“The process toward solution is not simple,” yet someone in charge must make the decision to release water with a low level of contamination, Ahn said. “The remedies taken by Tepco have been very incomplete and took too long.”
Tepco has yet to decide how to dispose of the contaminated water, spokeswoman Mayumi Yoshida said. Tepco will need approval from the government, local residents and fishermen before it can act. The company said last week it would seek help from abroad to manage the water issue.

Read More  and  Watch Video Here

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Fukushima inspectors 'careless', Japan agency says, as nuclear crisis grows

• New high-radiation spots found at quake-hit Fukushima plant
  Thu, Aug 22 2013
• Japan's nuclear crisis deepens, China expresses 'shock'
  Wed, Aug 21 2013
• INTERVIEW -Uranium miners face new hurdles as Fukushima disaster worsens
  Wed, Aug 21 2013

Related Video

Fishing banned off Fukushima coast

Fri, Aug 23 2013

Related Interactive

Containing Fukushima's leaking radiation

HIRONO, Japan | Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:20am EDT

(Reuters) - The operator of Japan's wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant was careless in monitoring tanks storing dangerously radioactive water, the nuclear regulator said on Friday, the latest development in a crisis no one seems to know how to contain.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. also failed to keep records of inspections of the tanks, Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) Commissioner Toyoshi Fuketa told reporters after a visit to the nearby Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Fuketa visited the plant on Friday after NRA chairman Shunichi Tanaka said this week he was concerned more of the hastily built giant containers would fail.

Read More Here

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The Telegraph

Japanese government to take over Fukushima nuclear reactor

The Japanese government has finally lost patience with the bungling efforts of Tokyo Electric Power Company to get the crippled reactors at the Fukushima nuclear plant under control.

The crippled Tepco Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant's unit 3 reactor building  Photo: AFP/Getty Images

By Julian Ryall, Tokyo

2:31PM BST 26 Aug 2013

Toshimitsu Motegi, the minister of trade and industry visited the plant on Monday to determine progress to date on decommissioning the three damaged reactors at the plant.

Speaking after being shown around the site, Mr Motegi said, “The urgency of the situation is very high. From here on, the government will take charge.”

One week ago, TECPO admitted that hundreds of tons of highly radioactive water had leaked from a steel tank at the plant and that as much as 300 tons of contaminated water has been escaping into the sea every day since the plant was devastated by a magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.

The minister said poor maintenance by TEPCO was to blame for the ongoing problems at the site.

As well as leaks of water contaminated with radiation, work to bring the damaged reactors under control has been making painfully slow progress. Radiation levels in three of the reactor buildings are so high that it is impossible for workers to spend more than a couple of minutes inside at one time.

Read More Here

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Related articles

• Japan Professor compares cesium-137 releases from radiation disasters: Fukushima at up to 77 quadrillion Bq (77 PBq); Chernobyl at 85 quadrillion Bq (85 PBq) - Fukushima releases ongoing
• Fukushima Disaster ~ Radioactive Water Leak At Fukushima Worse Than Previously Explained
• Nuclear Engineer: Estimated 276 quadrillion Bq of cs-137 entered Fukushima basements - Triple Chernobyl total release - A portion "has already made its way to aquifer, whence it can easily flow into sea"
• Japan raises toxic water leak severity at Fukushima plant to level 3
• Fukushima alert level raised
• Fishing banned off Japan's Pacific coast near Fukushima
• Japanese government to take over Fukushima nuclear reactor
• China - Fukushima contamination reaches the 20 degrees north latitude - IAEA are still silent on lack of monitoring.