Nuclear waste has no place to go

Obama budget kills Nevada storage site for used radioactive fuel rods piling up near power plants

Chicago Tribune By Michael Hawthorne |Tribune reporter

March 11, 2009

In a pool of water just a football field away from Lake Michigan, about 1,000 tons of highly radioactive fuel from the scuttled Zion Nuclear Power Station is waiting for someplace else to spend a few thousand years…………………………..

More than 57,000 tons of spent fuel rods already are stored next to reactors, just a few yards away from containment buildings where they once generated nuclear-heated steam to drive massive electrical turbines. More than 7,100 tons are stored in Illinois, including at the Zion facility in Chicago’s northern suburbs.The lack of a permanent solution poses a serious challenge to the industry’s plans to build more than 30 new reactors. Existing nuclear plants already produce 2,000 tons of the long-lived waste each year, most of which is moved into pools of chilled water that allow the spent—but still highly lethal—uranium-235 to slowly and safely decay.But containment pools never were intended to store all of the spent fuel that a reactor creates. The idea was that the cool water would stabilize the enriched uranium until it could be sent to a reprocessing plant or stored in a centralized location.Instead it keeps piling up. And though industry officials insist the waste is safely stored in fenced-off buildings lined with concrete and lead, concerns remain that a leak or a terrorist attack could create an environmental catastrophe.As power companies run out of space in their containment pools, they increasingly are storing the waste above ground in concrete and metal casks; the Zion plant’s spent fuel rods eventually are to be moved into casks a little farther away from Lake Michigan.

“We continue to ask the federal government to provide a clear solution for what the long-term storage of spent fuel will be,” said Marshall Murphy, spokesman for Exelon Nuclear, which owns Illinois’ plants.

Federal Court Rules that Certain Types of Radioactive Waste Can’t Be Stored at Hanford Indefinitely
KPLU 88.5 Anna King RICHLAND, WA (2009-03-11) The federal Ninth District Court of Appeals has ruled that Washington State doesn’t have to store other states’ dangerous radioactive waste forever. It also ruled that the state has the right to enforce cleanup deadlines for certain kinds of waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near the Tri-Cities.

Groups petition against new nuclear plant
Monroe News by Charles Slat ,March 10. 2009  A coalition of citizen groups is asking federal regulators reject DTE Energy’s plans to build a new Fermi 3 nuclear plant, contending that it would pose a range of threats to public health and the environment.
The groups have filed 14 contentions with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, claiming that a new plant would pose “radioactive, toxic and thermal impacts on Lake Erie’s vulnerable western basin.”DTE Energy, which already operates the Fermi 2 reactor near Newport, is considering building a Fermi 3 plant at the same site, using a new and as-yet unapproved, design.

“For starters, this plant is not needed and we’re prepared to demonstrate that,” said Michael Keegan of Monroe and member of Don’t Waste Michigan, one of the groups opposing the project. “We have national experts and former NRC commissioners — some of the nation’s best minds — who helped compile this document.”
“The proposed Fermi 3 would represent another half-century of safety and security risks for the Great Lakes shoreline,” he said. “Many concerned local residents don’t want to play yet another round of radioactive Russian roulette.”

The groups say that the environmental impacts of the proposed plant have not been determined adequately and the government probably should determine the plant’s environmental impact on a regional basis rather than more local impact.Other contentions are that there is no good way to dispose of the radioactive wastes and fuel the plant generates and that the design of the plant DTE is considering should be approved before the licensing process begins.

Greenpeace energy report predicts cheap, lean power – and more jobs  Los Angeles Times March 11, 2009 “…………………… by 2050, the United States could sever ties with coal and nuclear power, draw nearly all its electricity from renewable sources and cut its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80% –- all with existing technology and with a net gain of 14 million jobs to the domestic economy.
The report, commissioned by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council and conducted by Germany’s equivalent of NASA, was released this morning at a press briefing in Washington. It is heavy on charts and supporting data and transparent on some key assumptions. And its sponsors call its findings “conservative.”

At its core, the report envisions a steep drop in the United States’ energy use, both in absolute terms and compared with International Energy Agency predictions — driven by strict efficiency standards. It also projects dramatic changes in the nation’s electricity mix, with wind and solar power mushrooming to replace coal, oil and nuclear sources that would gradually go offline.

The report includes some fairly stark trade-offs. More than 10 million coal-related jobs would disappear by 2050, it concludes, but they’d be more than replaced by 9 million efficiency-related jobs, 11 million solar-related jobs and 4 million wind-related jobs.

Because solar and wind plants don’t require recurring fuel costs to operate, the authors say, the long-term fuel savings would more than double the up-front investment needed to spur those changes. And they’re not counting what they call massive additional savings from reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid what many scientists warn could be catastrophic economic effects from global warming.

Wind Energy And Solar Power – 40% By 2050? by Energy Matter 12 MARCH, 2009 he International Scientific Congress on Climate Change is currently taking place in Copenhagen. The congress has received almost 1,600 scientific contributions from researchers from more than 70 countries, including Australia. 

Among the submissions and presentations is research from the Helsinki University of Technology’s Advanced Energy Systems that states renewable energy technologies like wind and solar power could supply 40 percent of the world’s electricity by 2050.

According to the University’s Peter Lund, the findings show that with global political support and suitable investment, previous estimations for the potential for renewables making up a much smaller fraction of world demand were wrong – the issue is simply one of prioritisation. All the renewable energy industry needs is the same level of support as provided to fossil fuel and nuclear power generation industries………………………..The results of the conference will be presented to world leaders later this year in Copenhagen for the post-Kyoto negotiations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15