Canada’s tax-payers up for increased costs for nuclear wastes
Nuclear waste cleanup liability cost up by $2.4B, Ottawa told Andy Johnson, CTV News, , Mar. 20, 2013 The cost of cleaning up Canada’s nuclear program has risen dramatically in recent years and Ottawa is being warned another $2.4 billion is needed, bring the total to $6 billion.
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited posted a statement Tuesday saying liability costs will go up by $2.4 billion from $3.6 billion in March of last year.
The estimate represents the cost associated with “decommissioning, managing and disposing of its radioactive waste in a manner that will ensure long-term health, safety, security and environmental responsibility.” ”The main reason for the liability adjustment is an increase in the indirect costs attributed to the decommissioning and waste management over the period of up to 70 years of the program,” said a statement posted on the AECL website. Read more »
EU lacks funds for decommissioning nuclear reactors
Funding gap for nuclear decommissioning in Bulgaria, Lithuania and Slovakia
Defects in the EU’s nuclear decommissioning programmes in Bulgaria, Lithuania and Slovakia include cost overruns, delays, lack of coordination and supervision, diffused responsibilities, too much money going to unrelated energy projects and ill-informed priority setting, say Budgetary Control Committee MEPs in a resolution voted on Monday. Read more »
Corporations circle around for lucrative nuclear waste cleanup
UK firms to bid for Japan’s nuclear clean-up
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-firms-to-bid-for-japans-nuclear-cleanup-8458524.html
MARK LEFTLY, 20 JANUARY 2013 British engineers Amec, Babcock
International, and Atkins are believed to be circling nuclear
decommissioning work estimated to be worth at least $5bn (£3.2bn) in
Japan as a result of the Fukushima disaster.
The new Japanese government is thought to be preparing decommissioning
contracts that will include Fukushima’s Daiichi plant, which was
overwhelmed by a tsunami in 2011, and other reactors in seismically
endangered areas.
A nuclear source said bids could be invited for the clean-up work
before the end of the year, with British groups in a strong position
due to all the decommissioning work that has been undertaken in the
UK.
US-owned Energy Solutions will also be interested.
“This is a huge opportunity,” claimed the source. “Japan should start
making some real progress on decommissioning now.”
Nuclear weapons components “scattered” across America
Strategy Lacking for Disposal of Nuclear Weapons Components Secrecy News, January 17th, 2013 by Steven Aftergood There is a “large inventory” of classified nuclear weapons components “scattered across” the nation’s nuclear weapons complex and awaiting disposal, according to an internal Department of Energy contractor reportlast year.
But “there is no complex-wide cost-effective classified weapon disposition strategy.” And as a result, “Only a small portion of the inventory has been dispositioned and it has not always been in a cost-effective manner.”.. http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2013/01/disposal_strategy.html
There’s money in them thar nuclear wastes
Veolia Draws Upon Fukushima to Move Into Nuclear Dismantling, Bloomberg, By Tara Patel - Jan 15, 2013 Veolia Environnement SA (VIE), which treated radioactive water from Japan’s nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, plans to use the experience to move into decontamination and power plant dismantling.
The water utility and the nuclear research group known as CEA plan to earn as much as 400 million euros ($534 million) in revenue within about four years by cleaning radioactive sites and taking apart installations, they said today.
“The market is developing very quickly,” Veolia Chief Executive Officer Antoine Frerot told a press conference today in Paris. About 300 nuclear reactors will have to be halted worldwide within two decades including in France, Germany, Japan and the U.S., he said.
The shift into the atomic market comes after President Francois Hollande pledged to lower France’s dependence on the energy and shut the country’s oldest plant at Fessenheim. It’s also the first new market Veolia has publicly announced it will enter into since Frerot pledged to pull out of some countries and businesses in a bid to boost profit…… http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-15/veolia-draws-upon-fukushima-to-move-into-nuclear-dismantling-1-.html
$2 billion to shut down Quebec’s nuclear plant, but $4 billion to keep it open
The Parti Quebecois also announced it will set aside another $200 million in a
“diversification fund” to help the surrounding communities retrain
their workforces and spur alternative development opportunities.
Shutdown of Que. nuclear plant to cost $2B, Ifp
QMI Agency
December 28, 2012 MONTREAL - The licence for Quebec’s only
operational nuclear power plant expired Friday, and the provincial
government said it will spend hundreds of millions of dollars over the
next 50 years to dismantle the reactor.
The Parti Quebecois campaigned against refurbishing the plant,
claiming that the $4-billion price tag was financially unjustifiable, Read more »
Lithuanian nuclear plant: decommissioning stalled due to company disputes
EU freezes Lithuanian nuclear plant decommissioning funds, EurActive 14 Dec 12 The European Commission announced yesterday (13 December) that international donors, among which the largest is the EU, have decided to suspend the funding of one specific decommissioning project in the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania. The project covers the construction of the storage area for the leftover spent fuel and the supply of storage casks for defueling the central’s two reactors.
The decision was taken on the grounds that the operator of the power plant (INPP) and the consortium delivering the project (GNS/NUKEM) have not managed to settle their dispute, now on-going for more than two years, on how to implement the project concretely. Nukem is a “dual national” company based in Germany (NUKEM GmbH) and the United States (NUKEM, Inc.) focused on the civil nuclear fuel market. Read more »
Britain’s taxpayers up for more than 100 billion pounds in nuclear cleanup
Nuclear clean-up to cost £100bn and take 120 years. Decommissioning, no2nuclearpower, 9 December 2012 BRITAIN’S taxpayers will be landed with a bill of more than £100bn for cleaning up radioactive waste from sites such as Sellafield and Dounreay, according to the chief executive of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
The amount represents a near-doubling of the £56bn cleanup cost announced when the NDA began operating in 2005, and could rise still more. The warning comes as NDA 
engineers start work on some of the biggest and most expensive engineering projects seen in Britain — building giant robotic grabs to lift deadly nuclear waste from Sellafield’s decaying 1950s repositories.
The buildings being targeted include Sellafield’s B29 and B30 cooling ponds, where decaying 1950s fuel rods are stored. This weekend John Clarke, chief executive of the NDA, said he was spending £3bn a year on the cleanup, with about £1.6bn of that going on Sellafield alone. Such sums are similar to those spent on the London Olympic site at the peak of construction.
Figures released by the Department of Energy and Climate Change show that, since Britain’s first nuclear power station opened in 1956, they have generated 2.5 billion megawatt hours of electricity — worth £125 billion at today’s prices. If the cost of building Britain’s 20-odd nuclear power stations (around £10bn-£12bn each in today’s money), is included, it would far exceed the value of the power produced, say experts.
Such figures show why power companies, which would be responsible for the waste, are refusing to build new nuclear power stations without government guarantees of a consumer subsidy that will almost double the market price for their power.
Sunday Times 9th Dec 2012 more >> http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/news/daily12/daily.php?dailynewsid=343
Despite the hype, the nuclear industry is nervous about its future
Nuclear industry faces up to reality of ‘interesting times’ The 
Engineer, 7 December 2012 | ByStuart Nathan ”………Part of the problem is that the nuclear landscape is so complicated, especially in the UK, with its history as a nuclear
pioneer and the legagcy of experiment that has left behind. John Clarke of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, again reflecting the mood of realism, put it in a way which pretty much everyone would understand. ‘It’s like telling children to put their toys away before getting out new ones. Clearing up the mess is a key enabler to new build.’
…… .it’s relatively easy to put toys away. Nuclear is different. ‘At Sellafield, we’re dealing with structures which were put up in the 1940s in great haste to support military programmes, where the only concern was “is it safe for today”,’ he said. ‘They were neverdesigned to have waste taken out of them, and the waste is poorly categorised — we often don’t really know what it is.’
The situation isn’t much better even at industrial-scale power stations, said Peter Walkden, commercial director of Magnox. ‘It was never going to be easy to decommission a 50 year old plant that was never designed to be decommissioned, under a regime that was designed for operation,’ he said. Decommissioning a Magnox plant takes the best part of a century — three years to defuel, then ten years of preparation for care and maintenance while radioactivity subsides (the stage that current decommissioning projects are in), followed by 85 years of care and maintenance, then about ten years to clear the site.
A bit more than just putting the toys away, and something that can’t be done before building new plants’. ….”
Lucrative business for nuclear companies in the complex cleanup of UK’s Sellafield site
multinationals are aligning themselves into strategic relationships to attract the highly lucrative subcontracts coming on stream. Multi-disciplinary consultant Atkins recently formed a joint venture with French-based nuclear specialist Areva to bid for tier two work on decommissioning and fuel management projects in the UK.
Nuclear Legacy, The Construction Index, 23 Nov 12“…….To speed up the process, Sellafield Ltd, the site licence company owned by PBO Nuclear Management Partners (NMP), has started to implement a series of strategic alliances with a combined value of £9bn.
The first framework agreement – The Design Services Alliance – was awarded in February: a £1.5bn contract to The Progressive Alliance (led by Babcock and URS) and AXIOM (a consortium of Amec, Jacobs, Mott McDonald and Assystem). It is expected to extend to 15 years. Read more »
The costly problem Europe now faces – burying dead nuclear reactors
Only a handful of reactors worldwide have been fully dismantled, meaning the process is largely uncharted territory. Tearing apart reactor cores, for instance, creates unknown challenges and potential risks given the level of radiation inside them.
Aging Nuke Plants Add to Europe’s Economic Woes , Washingtpn Examiner, By GARY PEACH Associated Press VISAGINAS, Lithuania November 17, 2012 (AP) The parking lot outside the atomic power plant is weedy and potholed. Bus stops that once teemed with hundreds of workers are eerily empty.
Yet the stillness at Ignalina, a Lithuanian nuclear plant built in the 1980s Soviet era, belies an unsettling fact: There is still nuclear fuel inside one of its two reactors, three years after it was shut due to safety concerns.
A temporary storage facility for spent fuel and radioactive waste is four years behind schedule, creating a money drain at a time when the 27-nation European Union grapples with a crippling economic crisis. States don’t need EU permission to build nuclear plants, but they need to abide by its safety rules and the problems at Ignalina have provoked threats from the EU to cut the funding promised for dismantling it. That raises concerns that the facility will be around for years, possibly decades, longer than planned.
Ignalina is turning out to be a hard lesson for Europe: It’s one thing to kill a nuclear power station; getting rid of the remains is another headache entirely. Read more »
No real planning for burying Europe’s aging nuclear reactors
Aging Nuke Plants Add to Europe’s Economic Woes, By GARY PEACH Washington Examiner, Associated Press VISAGINAS, Lithuania November 17, 2012“…….Other EU countries will have to foot the bill for closing their own plants, adding to taxpayers’ woes. In Germany, it will be in addition to energy price increases as the government scrambles to finance an ambitious switch from nuclear to renewables, which should account for 60 percent of total energy consumption by 2030.
Just last month Germany’s main utilities announced that households could see their
electricity bill jump up to 50 percent in order to finance this transition from nuclear power.
Experts say that disassembling atomic plants promises to be far costlier than previously estimated, given the lack of experience worldwide and nuclear operators’ propensity to underestimate decommissioning costs to make new projects look more attractive.
Thomas of Greenwich University said in Britain nuclear operators were supposed to pay for the decommissioning, but over the decades the cost was passed to the government, which will have to come up with €120 billion ($153 billion) over the next century to dismantle the
country’s existing nuclear power plants.
Just abandoning the facilities with radioactivity trapped inside is not an option. But given the enormous expenditures, some governments are opting to drag out the decommissioning over many decades…… http://washingtonexaminer.com/aging-nuke-plants-add-to-europes-economic-woes/article/2513836
UK’s nuclear decommissioning problems
What’s the future of nuclear decommissioning? Building.co.uk, 16 November 2012 | By Will Hurst Last week’s devastating National Audit Office report on decommissioning facilities at Sellafield has led many to question whether the UK has the skills needed to deal with nuclear waste. But does the problem really lie with a Nuclear Decommissioning Authority overly occupied with cutting costs? Will Hurst investigates. Read more »
Germany’s lengthy process of dismantling nuclear power plants
Fears of low nuclear radiation run high, DW, 08.11.2012 Wolfgang Dick Decommissioned German nuclear power plants will be dismantled over the long term. Though no incidents have occurred in Germany, some citizen initiatives say legal safety measures are too lax.
Vattenfall, the company that runs the Brunsbüttel nuclear plant, recently applied to the Environment Ministry in the state of Schleswig Holstein for a permit to tear down the facility. The whole unit is supposed to be completely dismantled, rather than sealed over with a
concrete sarcophagus in the style of the Chernobyl reactor.
Since the German government decided to phase out nuclear power last year, the country has been gathering some experience dismantling nuclear power plants: Read more »
Quebec to close down its nuclear reactor
Quebec will close, rather than refurbish, its only nuclear reactor. Montreal Gazette, 12 Set 12, Nearly 30 years after it went into operation, it appears the days are numbered for Quebec’s only operating nuclear power plant.
A spokesperson for the Parti Québécois said the newly-elected government will go ahead with a plan to close Gentilly-2 in Bécancour. The party has wanted to do it since December 2009, Éric Gamache said….
. Gordon Edwards, a mathematician and president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, said after it is closed, Gentilly-2 could be transformed into a centre of expertise on dismantling nuclear power plants. Nearly 100 nuclear power plants in
the U.S. will soon come to the end of their natural life, creating a “great” opportunity for Trois-Rivières, he said. http://blogs.montrealgazette.com/2012/09/12/parti-quebecois-says-it-will-keep-promise-to-close-gentilly-2-nuclear-power-plant/
SEARCH for particular names or topics at the SEARCH BOX at very bottom of this sidebar
- AUDIO About San Onofre Nuclear plant. Nuclear Regulatory Commission – NRC: Lapdog or Watchdog? http://www.fairewinds.org/content/nrc-lapdog-or-watchdog
- and this Japan’s nuclear safety record criticised by regulator http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/radio/program/connect-asia/japans-nuclear-safety-record-criticised-by-regulator/1132464
VIDEO: Japan to open nuclear plant http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3761126.ht
From Fukushima to New York: Continuing Dangers of Nuclear Power
Women and nuclear radiation – Mary Olson speaks
Mary Olson, from Nuclear Information and Resource Service, spoke at the New York symposium on Fukushima’s effects, March 2013.
Here are some highlights:
Mary Olson discussed the findings of the latest National Academy of Sciences Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation ( BEIR VII) , illustrated by this graph:
This lifespan graph shows increased cancer risk by exposure to a given amount of radiation, The pink line shows the risk for girls, the blue line for boys. Look at left hand part of the graph. It covers from zero to 5 years, and includes pre birth. We see a striking difference between the blue line and the pink line. The nuclear regulators assume that the risk shown here at age 40 – in the blue line- is the same for every individual regardless of age or gender. Yet, even at ages 40 – 60 the cancer risk from radiation is significantly more for women, than for men.
The cancer danger from ionising radiation depends on the type of radiation, the amount, and the duration of the exposure. But it also depends on who is exposed. Radiation exposure endangers some individuals more than others. In order, the most vulnerable are:
Primary germ cells/ Embryo
Foetus
Children
Elders
Some genotypes
Females – both juvenile and adult
All of the world’s scientific authorities agree that there is no safe dose of radiation. That includes the WHO, EPA, NRC, and national Academy of Science.
The standards for permissable levels of ionising radiation were originally written to cover doctors using radiation, then were intended for the purpose of sending military into radiological areas. Yet these standads, based on a 30 year old man, are applied to everyone.
Over 100 years, man’s activities have increased the background radiation by 25%
The ratio of cancer risks from radiation for males and females is 3 to 2. That is for every 2 males who get cancer from ionising radiation, there are 3 females. In reports from BEIR and the Lifespan study of Hiroshima survivors only external radiation is considered, not internal radiation. The risk for females is being underestimated in reports and in regulations about radiation
The World Health Organisation is the first big agency to acknowledge this difference in radiation risk between males and females, in its latest report. WHO is also saying that there is 70% higher risk of thyroid cancer for little girls exposed to radiation.
Studies are continuing, and animal studies, too, are showing this gender difference. We must move towards prevention and precaution as the basis of policy. Sadly, it is too late for a lot of prevention. We need to cahnge the priorities – to protect first, study second
And we need to get a whole lot more women motivated to get involved.
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