North Korea warns military cleared to wage nuclear attack against US

Published April 03, 2013

Associated Press

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  April 3, 2013: South Korean Marines pass by K-55 self-propelled howitzers during an exercise against possible attacks by North Korea near the border village of Panmunjom in Paju, South Korea.AP

PYONGYANG, North Korea –  The North Korean army is warning Washington that its military has been cleared to wage an attack using "smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear" weapons.

The threat from the unnamed army spokesman early Thursday is latest in a series of escalating warnings from North Korea, which has railed for weeks against joint U.S. and South Korean military exercises taking place in South Korea and has expressed anger over tightened sanctions for a February nuclear test.

The spokesman said in a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency that troops have been authorized to counter U.S. aggression with "powerful practical military counteractions."

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Nuclear board warns of Washington tank explosion risk

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  March 23, 2004: In this file photo, workers at the tank farms on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, Wash., measure for radiation and the presence of toxic vapors.AP

YAKIMA, Wash. –  Underground tanks that hold a stew of toxic, radioactive waste at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site pose a possible risk of explosion, a nuclear safety board said in advance of confirmation hearings for the next leader of the Energy Department.

State and federal officials have long known that hydrogen gas could build up inside the tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, leading to an explosion that would release radioactive material. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board recommended additional monitoring and ventilation of the tanks last fall, and federal officials were working to develop a plan to implement the recommendation.

The board expressed those concerns again Monday to U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who is chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and had sought the board's perspective about cleanup at Hanford.

The federal government created Hanford in the 1940s as part of the secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. It spends billions of dollars to clean up the 586-square-mile site neighboring the Columbia River, the southern border between Washington and Oregon and the Pacific Northwest's largest waterway.

Federal officials have said six underground tanks at the site are leaking into the soil, threatening the groundwater, and technical problems have delayed construction of a plant to treat the waste for long-term safe disposal.

Those issues are likely to come up during confirmation hearings next week for Energy Secretary-nominee Ernest J. Moniz. The fears of explosion and contamination could give Washington and Oregon officials more clout as they push for cleanup of the World War II-era site.

Central to the cleanup is the removal of 56 million gallons of highly radioactive, toxic waste left from plutonium production from underground tanks. Many of the site's single-shell tanks, which have just one wall, have leaked in the past, and state and federal officials announced in February that six such tanks are leaking anew.

"The next Secretary of Energy - Dr. Moniz - needs to understand that a major part of his job is going to be to get the Hanford cleanup back on track, and I plan to stress that at his confirmation hearing next week," Wyden said in a statement Tuesday.

The nuclear safety board warned about the risk of explosion to Wyden, who wanted comment on the safety and operation of Hanford's tanks, technical issues that have been raised about the design of a plant to treat the waste in those tanks, and Hanford's overall safety culture.

In addition to the leaks, the board noted concerns about the potential for hydrogen gas buildup within a tank, in particular those with a double wall, which contain deadly waste that was previously pumped out of the leaking single-shell tanks.

"All the double-shell tanks contain waste that continuously generates some flammable gas," the board said. "This gas will eventually reach flammable conditions if adequate ventilation is not provided."

All of the tanks are actively ventilated, which means they have blowers and fans to prevent a buildup of hydrogen gas, and those systems are monitored to ensure they are operating as intended, Energy Department spokeswoman Carrie Meyer said.

For even greater safety, she said, the agency implemented an improved monitoring system in February.

"DOE is absolutely committed to ensuring the safety of Hanford's underground tanks," Meyer said.

The board also noted technical challenges with the waste treatment plant, which is being built to encase the waste in glasslike logs for long-term disposal. Those challenges must be resolved before parts of the plant can be completed, the board said.

The federal government spends about $2 billion annually on Hanford cleanup -- roughly one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. About $690 million of that goes toward design and construction of the plant. Design of the plant, last estimated at more than $12.3 billion, is 85 percent complete, while construction is more than 50 percent complete.

The problems identified by the board show that the plant schedule will be delayed further and the cost will keep rising, Wyden said, adding: "There is a real question as to whether the plant, as currently designed, will work at all."

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Power still out at damaged nuclear plant in Japan

TOKYO –  Four fuel storage pools at Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant have been without fresh cooling water for nearly 20 hours due to a power outage, the plant's operator said Tuesday, raising concerns about the fragility of a facility that still runs on makeshift equipment.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said that pool temperatures at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant were well within safe levels, and that pools would remain safe for at least four days without fresh cooling water. The utility said the reactors were unaffected and no other abnormalities were found.

TEPCO workers were scrambling to find the cause and repair the problems.

Workers were fixing the last of the three switchboards that they suspect as a possible cause of the problem and the utility was preparing a backup system in case the repairs didn't fix the issue, TEPCO spokesman Masayuki Ono told reporters.

"If worse comes to worst, we have a backup water injection system," said Ono.

Japan's March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant's power and cooling systems, causing three reactor cores to melt and fuel storage pools to overheat.

The current power outage is a major test for TEPCO to show if it has learned anything from the disaster. TEPCO, which has repeatedly faced cover-up scandals, was already slammed by local media Tuesday for waiting hours to disclose the blackout.

Ono acknowledged the plant was vulnerable.

"Fukushima Dai-ichi still runs on makeshift equipment, and we are trying to switch to something more permanent and dependable, which is more desirable," he said. "Considering the equipment situation, we may be pushing a little too hard."

Ono said the utility did not immediately try to switch to a backup cooling system because doing so without finding and fixing the cause could lead to a repeat of the problem. There is a backup cooling system but no backup outside power.

Regulators previously have raised concerns about the makeshift equipment and urged the plant to switch them to more permanent arrangement. The operator still has to remove melted, fatally radioactive fuel from reactors before fully decommissioning the plant, which officials say could take 40 years.

Yoshihide Suga, the chief government spokesman, sought to allay concerns.

"In a sense, we have put in place measures that leave no room for worry," Suga told reporters in a regular press briefing.

The command center at the plant suffered a brief power outage before 7 p.m. Monday. Electricity was quickly restored to the command center but not to equipment pumping water into the fuel pools.

The temperature in the four pools had risen slightly, but was well below the utility's target control temperature of 65 degrees Celsius, TEPCO said.

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Associated Press writer Malcolm Foster contributed to this report.

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Power still out at damaged nuclear plant in Japan

TOKYO –  Four fuel storage pools at Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear plant have been without fresh cooling water for nearly 20 hours due to a power outage, the plant's operator said Tuesday, raising concerns about the fragility of a facility that still runs on makeshift equipment.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said that pool temperatures at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant were well within safe levels, and that pools would remain safe for at least four days without fresh cooling water. The utility said the reactors were unaffected and no other abnormalities were found.

TEPCO workers were scrambling to find the cause and repair the problems.

Workers were fixing the last of the three switchboards that they suspect as a possible cause of the problem and the utility was preparing a backup system in case the repairs didn't fix the issue, TEPCO spokesman Masayuki Ono told reporters.

"If worse comes to worst, we have a backup water injection system," said Ono.

Japan's March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami destroyed the plant's power and cooling systems, causing three reactor cores to melt and fuel storage pools to overheat.

The current power outage is a major test for TEPCO to show if it has learned anything from the disaster. TEPCO, which has repeatedly faced cover-up scandals, was already slammed by local media Tuesday for waiting hours to disclose the blackout.

Ono acknowledged the plant was vulnerable.

"Fukushima Dai-ichi still runs on makeshift equipment, and we are trying to switch to something more permanent and dependable, which is more desirable," he said. "Considering the equipment situation, we may be pushing a little too hard."

Ono said the utility did not immediately try to switch to a backup cooling system because doing so without finding and fixing the cause could lead to a repeat of the problem. There is a backup cooling system but no backup outside power.

Regulators previously have raised concerns about the makeshift equipment and urged the plant to switch them to more permanent arrangement. The operator still has to remove melted, fatally radioactive fuel from reactors before fully decommissioning the plant, which officials say could take 40 years.

Yoshihide Suga, the chief government spokesman, sought to allay concerns.

"In a sense, we have put in place measures that leave no room for worry," Suga told reporters in a regular press briefing.

The command center at the plant suffered a brief power outage before 7 p.m. Monday. Electricity was quickly restored to the command center but not to equipment pumping water into the fuel pools.

The temperature in the four pools had risen slightly, but was well below the utility's target control temperature of 65 degrees Celsius, TEPCO said.

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Associated Press writer Malcolm Foster contributed to this report.

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Examples of past nuclear threats between countries

WASHINGTON –  North Korea's overt threat to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States is unprecedented in its bluntness. But other nuclear powers, including the United States, have made less explicit threats. Here are some examples:

— November 1950: U.S. President Harry Truman, the only leader to ever order a nuclear strike, said in a press conference that the use of atomic weapons was under "active consideration" in the Korean War against targets inside China. The White House later clarified that that the comment was theoretical, noting that "consideration of the use of any weapon is always implicit in the very possession of that weapon."

— March 1955: After China's People's Liberation Army seized a group of islands in the Taiwan Strait during the first Taiwan Strait Crisis, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said the U.S. could intervene with nuclear-equipped ships and planes under some circumstances.

The next day, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower said he saw no reason why nuclear weapons "shouldn't be used exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else." To make sure China got the point, a day later then-Vice President Richard Nixon said that "tactical atomic weapons are now conventional and will be used against the targets of any aggressive force."

— July 2005: Chinese Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu said that China might retaliate with nuclear weapons if the United States attacked Chinese forces in a conflict over Taiwan. The Chinese government later played down the comments saying they were the personal views of the general, then a dean at the country's National Defense University.

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