“Nuclear waste coming soon to an interstate near you”
Nuclear waste coming soon to an interstate near you The Register Guard By Jack Dresser – Mar 4, 2009, Pasco, Wash., is an exceptionally clean, well-kept little city. But as many unhappy homeowners and investors now realize, when something looks too good, you’d better look more closely. Pasco is the gateway to the most contaminated nuclear site in the Western Hemisphere……………………
The Nov. 17 hearing presented a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement on the energy department’s earlier proposal to develop a “Global Nuclear Energy Partnership” presented in May, 2007 at the same locations. The DOE snuck in its mandated hearings far from our population centers, with short and little notice. For good reason.
Under the GNEP plan, nuclear fuel would be produced in the U.S. and other advanced nuclear nations through a reprocessing technology that is yet to be developed. The cost is undisclosed but substantial. Nuclear fuel would be provided to developing countries for their nuclear energy development. In return, we would receive their waste for further reprocessing — an international recycling system that would keep the big boys in control of weapons-grade nuclear material production. The DOE claims the reprocessing site isn’t yet selected, but the inside word is that it’s Hanford.
Most of the waste would be shipped by truck or train through Oregon, primarily along the Interstate 5 and Interstate 84 corridors………………………In contrast to the local news, the deceptively soothing DOE handouts had brief and carefully worded descriptions, touting nuclear as an energy source that doesn’t pollute the air (never mind the Earth and water). And its proposed system will allegedly be “proliferation-resistant” (not proliferation-secure), making nuclear materials “nearly impossible” (not impossible) to divert without detection. They were clearly hedging their pledges, and it wasn’t reassuring.
World’s largest nuclear plant catches on fire –
World’s largest nuclear plant catches on fire ABC News By North Asia correspondent
Mark Willacy 5 March 09A fire has broken out at the world’s largest nuclear plant in Japan, 200 kilometres north-west of Tokyo.
The operator of the facility says there is no threat of a radiation leak.
The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, says a small fire broke out at the facility but was extinguished after 90 minutes.
It says a worker was taken to hospital with minor facial injuries.
The fire started just weeks after the company was given the green light to re-start one of the seven reactors at the plant, which had been suspended since an earthquake two years ago caused a fire and a small radiation leak.
World’s largest nuclear plant catches on fire – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Nuclear waste clean-up drive still lacks leader
From The TimesMarch 6, 2009Nuclear waste clean-up drive still lacks leaderRobin Pagnamenta, Energy and Environment Editor
The Government’s handling of the nuclear power industry’s rebirth was attacked by MPs last night as it emerged that the executive responsible for the £73 billion clean-up operation has still not been replaced eight months after his departure.
Ian Roxburgh quit as chief executive of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a key organisation tasked with the clean-up of 19 toxic UK sites, including Sellafield, Harwell and Dounreay, last July.
But The Times has learnt that the NDA is still struggling to find a replacement, leaving a string of pressing issues building up in his successor’s in-tray, including questions over how the UK should handle waste created by new reactors……………………………. This year alone the NDA will spend £2.8 billion on decontamination, including £1.8 billion from taxpayers. It
Nuclear waste clean-up drive still lacks leader – Times Online
Nuclear power is still loaded with problems
Nuclear power is still loaded with problems StarTribune.com By Ken Bradley and Monique Sullivan- March 5, 2009 – “…………………….Shipping and storing one of the most dangerous substances ever created will continue be problem for a quarter of a million years. It isn’t responsible to leave this problem for future generations. It’s even worse to continue to add to existing stockpiles of nuclear waste.
In 2008, Bloomberg News reported that the most recent estimates for building a new nuclear power plant range from $6 billion to $12 billion. According to Cambridge Energy Research Associates, that cost has increased by 185 percent since 2000. Government subsidies are required for any new nuclear plant. These tax dollars could be invested more effectively in wind, solar, efficiency and other alternatives. The Congressional Budget Office assumes that half of all loans to nuclear power projects will default. Our state and nation cannot afford to take on this liability.
The cooling of nuclear power requires significant amounts of groundwater, and thermal energy production is one of the largest users of water in our state. Our present nuclear plants are located along the Mississippi River, where an accident would affect not only the local community but millions of people downstream. The location of plants and the storage of waste has been concentrated near low-income and native communities.
Nuclear waste dogs US energy policy
Nuclear waste dogs US energy policy The Christian Science Monitor Yucca Mountain was supposed to be where the highly toxic material was sent. But Obama’s energy budget leaves it out.By Gail Russell Chaddock Christian Science Monitor 6 March 09
Washington – President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2010 all but sinks prospects to store America’s nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.
But it leaves wide open the role of nuclear power in building “a new economy powered by clean and secure energy” – and the question of what to do with existing, highly toxic nuclear waste.
“The nation has already accumulated 60,000 metric tons of spent nuclear waste, and the material is going to have to be isolated from the environment for hundreds and thousands of years,” says Edwin Lyman, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington.
“There’s no way to make the waste disappear. No matter what the French say, there’s no alternative to having a mined geological repository,” he says. The challenge is to find one that is technically and politically acceptable……………………….the budget document released by the White House last week makes no mention of nuclear power as an element in a transition to a low-carbon economy. Instead, it cites the need for increased support for solar, biomass, geothermal, wind, and low-carbon-emission coal power………………………….Since failing to complete a storage facility by 1998, as provided in the contract, the US Energy Department has faced open-ended court challenges over billions in liability payments to utilities now having to store toxic waste on site.
Israel mulling strike on Iran nuclear facilities
Israel mulling strike on Iran nuclear facilities – Washington, 5 March (IranVNC)—Israel is seriously considering taking unilateral military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, although the time frame for action is quickly fading, according to a report by top US political figures and experts released Wednesday.The nine-page report, entitled “Preventing a Cascade of Instability”, was put out by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.The bipartisan group, several of whose members met high-level Israeli officials to assess their perspective, said that Israeli leaders seem convinced that at least for now, they have a military option.
Vote now for Miss Nuclear Reactor 2009 | Technically Incorrect – CNET News
Vote now for Miss Nuclear Reactor 2009 cnet news
What would you do, in this age of green power and greener pastures, to improve the image of the nuclear power industry?
And what would you do if you happened to live in the country where the nuclear power industry brought you, um, Chernobyl?
Well, the Russians, traditionalists to the bitter end, have come up with a brainwave of a quite elevated frequency. Yes, an online beauty pageant.
Who, on this Thursday that seems surrounded only by woes, can resist logging on to this sumptuous contest to find the most beautiful woman working in the Russian nuclear power industry? n the interests of nuclear objectivity, I have taken it upon myself to observe some of the contestants with an artist’s eye and an espionage operative’s concern.
In all, there are 200 contestants. And all have the ambition to effect world peace and work with small children.
However, it is hard, merely by looking at these images, to know exactly what services these women perform to benefit the nuclear cause.
All the same, I am expecting voting to rival that of an average week of “American Idol”.
Vote now for Miss Nuclear Reactor 2009 | Technically Incorrect – CNET News
Evidence mounts of Syrian nuclear cover-up: U.S. | Reuters
Evidence mounts of Syrian nuclear cover-up: U.S.
By Mark Heinrich
VIENNA (Reuters) – The United States said on Wednesday that U.N. inspectors had found growing evidence of covert nuclear activity in Syria, and European allies said a lack of Syrian transparency demanded utmost scrutiny.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is looking into U.S. intelligence reports that Syria had almost built a North Korean-designed, nuclear reactor meant to yield bomb-grade plutonium before Israel bombed it in 2007.
Uranium
Book Reviews
Uranium
From atomic bombs to cellphones, a history of uranium’s rise.
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR By Steve Weinberg | March 5, 2009 edition
“…………………………After Zoellner dispenses with World War II-related uranium lore, he covers the uranium saga from multiple angles. Some of the book’s latter half is organized geographically, as Zoellner demonstrates the moral and financial impacts of uranium fever in locales as diverse as Niger, Australia, and the state of Utah. Other portions of the book are organized by the product-yields of uranium – medical treatments, energy to power homes and businesses, and decorative uses (despite the danger.)
The perils are rarely far from the center of the discussion, even when everybody involved in a uranium enterprise is well intentioned.After all, Zoellner explains, uranium “cannot undergo fission in a reactor without producing a tiny residue of plutonium,” the form used in bombmaking. “A ‘peaceful’ nuclear reactor is no different in basic design from the complex at Hanford [Washington State] that manufactured the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb.”Then, Zoellner comments sagely, “herein lies one of the damnable paradoxes of uranium: The apparatus that spins a turbine also happens to be a munitions plant. One is a coefficient of the other; the mineral cannot escape its own unstable essence.”…………………………
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