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Nuke waste dumping: Are Somalia’s pirates reacting to international abuses?

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Are Somalia’s pirates reacting to international abuses? Somali UK 21 April 09 “…………………………The coast remains an easy dumping ground for toxic and nuclear waste.

“It’s a real problem,” said Roger Middleton, a Somalia expert and researcher for the London-based think tank, Chatham House.

“There are very shady goings-on, mostly involving the Mafia.”

The force of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami pulled up dozens of toxic-waste containers, leaving a lethal trail along the Somali coast.

A UN report found as a result many residents suffered “acute respiratory infections, heavy coughing, bleeding gums and mouth, abdominal haemorrhages, unusual skin rashes, and even death.”

Two years later, a team of specialists discovered nine toxic waste sites along 700 km of coastline in southern Somalia.

“Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there,” Nick Nuttall of the UN’s Environment Program told the television channel Al-Jazeera, echoing similar findings from other reports.

“And the waste is many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals like cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, and there are hospital wastes, chemical wastes – you name it.”

The waste came from European companies, which paid shady intermediaries as little as $2.50 a tonne to dispose of it, compared with about $1,000 a tonne in Europe…………

………. http://www.somaliuk.com/Indepth1/Fullarticle.php?IndepthID=483

April 21, 2009 Posted by | politics, Somalia | , , , | Leave a comment

Sellafield: the most hazardous place in Europe

Sellafield: the most hazardous place in Europe

The Guardian 21 April 09 Last week the government announced plans for a new generation of nuclear plants. But Britain is still dealing with the legacy of its first atomic installation at Sellafield – a toxic waste dump in one of the most contaminated buildings in Europe. As a multi-billion-pound clean-up is planned, can we avoid making the same mistakes again?

………………………… “It is the most hazardous industrial building in western Europe,” according to George Beveridge, Sellafield’s deputy managing director.

Nor is it hard to understand why the building possesses such a fearsome reputation. Piles of old nuclear reactor parts and decaying fuel rods, much of them of unknown provenance and age, line the murky, radioactive waters of the cooling pond in the centre of B30. Down there, pieces of contaminated metal have dissolved into sludge that emits heavy and potentially lethal doses of radiation.

It is an unsettling place, though B30 is certainly not unique. There is Building B38 next door, for example. “That’s the second most hazardous industrial building in Europe,” said Beveridge. Here highly radioactive cladding from reactor fuel rods is stored, also under water. And again, engineers have only a vague idea what else has been dumped in its cooling pond and left to disintegrate for the past few decades.

………………….. This, then, is the dark heart of Sellafield, a place where engineers and scientists are only now confronting the legacy of Britain’s postwar atomic aspirations and the toxic wasteland that has been created on the Cumbrian coast. Engineers estimate that it could cost the nation up to £50bn to clean this up over the next 100 years………

……… the condition of edifices such as B30 and B38 – and all the other “legacy” structures built at Sellafield decades ago – suggest Britain might end up paying a heavy price for this new commitment to nuclear energy. After all, if it is going to cost that much to decommission early reactors, green groups and opponents of nuclear energy are asking, what might we end up paying for a second clean-up if we go ahead with new nuclear plants?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/19/sellafield-nuclear-plant-cumbria-hazards

April 21, 2009 Posted by | UK, wastes | , , , | Leave a comment

Nuclear power still has the problems that led to a moratorium

Nuclear power still has the problems that led to a moratorium

StarTribune.com By ELLEN ANDERSON and ROOPALI PHADKE

: April 20, 2009 The Minnesota Senate recently approved an amendment to overturn the state’s moratorium on new nuclear power plants. Meanwhile, the nuclear industry has launched a savvy national campaign to convince citizens that conventional nuclear power is a silver-bullet solution to our energy and climate crisis.

Even the best PR campaign can’t change the reality that nuclear power remains as uneconomical and environmentally unsafe as it was 40 years ago. Conventional nuclear technology is expensive, creates few new jobs and poses long-term environmental hazards. It is a costly distraction from real energy solutions.

The current moratorium was put into place in 1994 because there was no permanent national solution to the problem of how to solve nuclear waste. That problem persists today……………………………… NASA’s top climate scientist James Hansen recently reported, even with the highest levels of priority funding, fourth-generation reactors will not be ready for deployment for 10 to 15 years. We need global warming solutions much sooner. The nuclear moratorium protects us against the development of new power plants based on outdated and risky technology.

In the midst of an international economic crisis, we should also be wary of the economic costs of nuclear power. New nuclear power is only cost effective with massive taxpayer subsidies. Current federal law caps the liability claims that can arise from nuclear accidents and passes that liability on to taxpayers. We have already shelled out billions of dollars to insure commercial nuclear reactors; we shouldn’t be forced to shell out billions more…….

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http://www.startribune.com/opinion/43305857.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUsZ

April 21, 2009 Posted by | spinbuster, USA | , , , | Leave a comment

Fallout from the fire of 1957: radioactive plume led to 200 cancer cases

Fallout from the fire of 1957: radioactive plume led to 200 cancer cases

The Observer, Sunday 19 April 2009 Sellafield is the site of Britain’s worst nuclear accident. A blaze in 1957 in the reactor of Pile 1 released a massive plume of radioactive caesium, iodine and polonium that spread across Britain and northern Europe.

Up to 200 cases of cancer – including thyroid and breast cancer and also leukaemia – may have been triggered by the fire’s emissions, according to estimates which were published by epidemiologists led by Professor Richard Wakeford, of Manchester University, two years ago.

…………………… After the fire the government placed a six-week ban on consumption of milk from cows grazing within 200 miles of Windscale (as Sellafield was then known). However, the weather carried nuclear contamination far beyond that boundary.

The reactor was left in such a dangerous state of intense radioactivity that it has lain undisturbed ever since and is still considered too dangerous to decommission. As a result, Pile 1 is destined to be one of the last sites to be cleaned up during the decommissioning of Sellafield.

……………………… In 1983, British Nuclear Fuels Limited, or BNFL, which was then the operator of the Sellafield plant, was fined £10,000 after radioactive discharges containing ruthenium and rhodium 106 were found to have contaminated a beach near the power station.

The plant – which was originally expected to make profits of around £500m for Sellafield’s operators – is now expected to make losses of up to £1bn and has been earmarked for closure by the year 2010.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/19/sellafield-nuclear-plant-cancer-cases

April 21, 2009 Posted by | safety, UK | , , , | Leave a comment

Yankee nuke extension increases risk

Yankee extension increases risk

Rutland Herald Charles McKenna 20 April 09 “………………………..In addition to the release of radioactive materials during normal operation and the continued production of nuclear waste (for which no permanent disposal method has been found), a nuclear plant allowed to operate beyond its design life increases the risk of catastrophic failure. Such an event would affect life for a very long time over several hundred square miles surrounding the plant’s location at the heart of New England. …………………….http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20090420/OPINION02/904200376/1037/OPINION02

April 21, 2009 Posted by | safety, USA | , , , | Leave a comment

Kewaunee nuclear power plant shut down

Kewaunee nuclear power plant shut down

By Rick Romell of the Journal Sentinel

April 20, 2009 The Kewaunee nuclear power plant remains out of operation after being shut down late Thursday night because of an instrumentation problem.

………………….. An event report posted on the site of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission indicates that a problem with calibration procedures was discovered about 6:30 p.m. Thursday. The problem was considered reportable to the NRC under three regulations, including one covering “any event or condition that results in the nuclear plant being in an unanalyzed condition that significantly degrades plant safety.” http://www.jsonline.com/business/43179997.html

April 21, 2009 Posted by | safety, USA | , , , | Leave a comment

Why one remote Taiwan village is giving nuclear waste the red carpet treatment

Why one remote Taiwan village is giving nuclear waste the red carpet treatment Minnesota Post By Jonathan Adams21 April 09 “……………………Critics of the plan say this poor village is merely being bought off by the government’s generous compensation proposal, and is low-balling the health risks. The debate highlights the growing problem of nuclear waste, as more nations — and especially, neighboring China — turn to this “cleaner” energy source to fuel their economies. It also points to a global phenomenon. Whether it’s inner-city America or a remote Aboriginal village in Taiwan, toxic and other waste often ends up dumped near the poorest, most marginalized communities. In Taiwan, Nantian Village is about as poor and marginal as they come……………….. Taiwan’s Aborigines — 2 percent of the population — are the island’s least advantaged, with poverty and alcoholism rates similar to those on Native American reservations in the U.S. Villagers talk about 5 billion — the payout, in New Taiwan dollars (about $150 million) — that the power company has said will go to the county. How much of that would go directly to these villagers is still unclear………………………..” http://www.minnpost.com/globalpost/2009/04/20/8193/why_one_remote_taiwan_village_is_giving_nuclear_waste_the_red_carpet_treatment

April 21, 2009 Posted by | indigenous issues, Taiwan | , , , | Leave a comment