nuclear-news

The ‘science’ of Yucca Mountain’ Guaranteeing’ the safety of nuclear waste
reviewjournal.com 5 Oct 08″…………………………..

To pretend that we can foresee how the landscape around us will appear in a million years — or even 100,000 years, which far exceeds the length of recorded human history — is hubris on a biblical scale. To pretend that we can build structures whose architectural integrity will withstand such changes is even more absurd. Ice ages with their glaciers can come in go in such a time period, as can volcanoes. Compared to such time frames, the age of the pyramids of Egypt is the blink of an eye.

Yet, because the courts have ruled that guaranteeing the safety of radioactive waste storage at Yucca Mountain for 10,000 years is not sufficient (because wastes buried there could remain deadly for a million years), the federal Environmental Protection Agency has now required that those building the dump certify its safety for a million years. And Department of Energy spokesman Allen Benson blithely replied, this week, “We believe we can meet the standard.”

The motivations for the waste dump at Yucca Mountain are not scientific, but economic and political. Congress and the nuclear industry believe they will have less trouble building new nuclear power plants if they can say they’ve “solved” the problem of where to put their spent (but still highly radioactive) fuel. And so “science” is bent and shaped to bolster these political and economic needs.

Low-level nuclear waste is piling up at hospitals
South Carolina law that took effect in July leaves 36 states nowhere to stash the stuffB Houston Chronicle by SEANNA ADCOX Associated Press 4 Oct 08

BARNWELL, S.C. — Tubes, capsules and pellets of used radioactive material are piling up in the basements and locked closets of hospitals and research installations around the country, stoking fears they could get lost or, worse, stolen by terrorists and turned into dirty bombs.

For years, truckloads of low-level nuclear waste from most of the U.S. were taken to a rural South Carolina landfill. There, items such as the rice-size radioactive seeds for treating cancer and pencil-thin nuclear tubes used in industrial gauges were sealed in concrete and buried.

But a South Carolina law that took effect July 1 ended nearly all disposal of radioactive material at the landfill, leaving 36 states with no place to throw out some of the stuff. So labs, universities, hospitals and manufacturers are storing more and more of it on their own property……………………….n 2003, the federal Government Accountability Office reported there wasn’t even a record of how many radioactive sources existed nationwide