2009 June 20 « nuclear-news

Big Nuke’s Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio

Signs of Desperation?

Big Nuke’s Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio counterpunch 20 June 09 By HARVEY WASSERMANJob-starved southern Ohioans are being promised a shiny new nuclear plant. But the announcement has come with a cruel reminder, and the scent of a desperate hoax.Using the gargantuan corpse of the shuttered Portsmouth-Piketon uranium enrichment plant as his backdrop, U.S. Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) punctuated his enthusiastic endorsement the new nuke by proclaiming that, with his support, the US government has paid thousands of Ohio workers hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for the health damage they suffered from being irradiated while working there…………………………….

Now the heaviest of nuclear hitters want to use this same site for a 1600-megawatt French-designed plant that would anchor a “Clean Energy Park.” In a region devastated by the enrichment plant’s shutdown, and by the decimation of the American industrial economy, it would be a flagship for the “nuclear power renaissance.”

It is a cruel hoax

……………………………….the most critical spot was occupied by Anne Lauvergeon, CEO of AREVA, the French government’s nuclear front group. She ended her brief speech with a heavily inflected “Go Buckeyes!”

Lauvergeon is a top A-List industry hitter, the flamboyant, hard-nosed chief of the world’s number one reactor pusher. But AREVA’s finances have been hard-hit by an outdated technology teetering at the brink of collapse, even as its supporters push ahead with high-profile—but hollow—events like this one…………………………Other bothersome details remain to be solved, most importantly: who will actually pay for all this?……………….Nor has the insurance industry come forward to provide liability coverage in case of a major accident.

Harvey Wasserman: Big Nuke’s Radioactive Hoax in Impoverished Ohio

June 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | antinuclear, AREVA, nuclear, nuclear costs, radioactive | Leave a comment

So-called “CLEAN” nuclear energy

Ohio Governor, Duke Power, UniStar, USEC, and France merge to build “clean energy park” at DOE site

Beyond Nuclear 20 June 09 Background: An alliance involving Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, Duke Power company, United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC), UniStar Nuclear Energy, and France’s troubled nuclear power giant AREVA is being forged to build a new 1600 megawatt Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR) at the now closed atomic bomb and nuclear fuel enrichment factory site in Piketon, Ohio. The proposed site is at the U.S. Department of Energy’s old Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant which was leased to USEC for the enrichment of uranium. USEC ceased operations in May 2001. The Piketon site is also the USEC pilot project for new uranium enrichment technology with the construction of the American Centrifuge Demonstration Facility.

Our View: There is nothing “clean” about this proposed first-of-a-kind nuclear energy park for the enrichment of nuclear fuel alongside a new nuclear power plant including the secret dumping of radioactive contamination from the Cold War Piketon bomb factory. The Piketon facility is still the focus of more than $100 million in long overdue cleanup money from industrial contamination dating back to the bomb factory’s opening in 1952. The construction of a new uranium enrichment and now a new power reactor will likely result in widening contamination and divert vital resources from truly clean renewable energy resources and energy efficiency.

June 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster, USA | antinuclear, AREVA, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear wastes, radioactive | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste cargo sailing the Barents Sea –

Nuclear waste cargo sailing the Barents Sea barents Observer 19 June 09

40 year old rusty spent nuclear fuel containers from Russia’s abounded submarine base Gremikha were shipped to Murmansk this week.

The voyage from Gremikha to Murmansk normally takes one day. This is the same route as the Russian retired submarine K-159 took when it sank northeast of the inlet to the Kola Bay in August 2003. The vessel which is sailing with the highly radioactive spent fuel this week is the 35 year old Serebryanka.

The rusty spent nuclear fuel containers have been stored outdoor at Gremikha for 40 years, posing a grave radiation threat. They contain uranium fuel from some of the Soviet Union’s first nuclear powered submarines, which at that time were based at Gremikha. The submarines reloaded their deadly radioactive spent fuel to the onshore open-air storage site.

Nuclear waste cargo sailing the Barents Sea – BarentsObserver

June 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive, wastes | Leave a comment

A potential nuclear mess

A potential nuclear mess LAS VEGAS SUN 19 June 09 Many companies are not setting aside enough money for closing of nuclear plants The companies that own most of the nation’s aging nuclear reactors are not putting aside an adequate amount of money to properly close them when the time comes, an Associated Press review of financial records found……………………..

Instead of planning for closure, plant owners are delaying the inevitable, with the help of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC has given 19 plants permission to mothball their reactors for as many as 60 years before closing them. The commission has also granted 20-year license extensions for 54 reactors, more than half of the nation’s plants, which could mean closure would come in 80 years.

The hope, apparently, is that the plant owners will be able to afford closure several decades down the road, and that is dangerous. The plants could become a safety and security risk if the owners don’t have the money to properly maintain and close them. Nuclear power critics wonder whether the companies that plan to mothball their plants will even be around in 60 years.

“Our concern is that they’ll just walk away from it,” said Jim Riccio of Greenpeace. “It’s like a sitting time bomb. The notion that you can just walk away from these sites and everything will be hunky-dory is just not true.”

Supporters of nuclear power like to portray it as a clean, environmentally friendly source of power, but that is not true. Nuclear power has created tremendous environmental and health hazards and the contamination the plants have created will be around, in some cases, for tens of thousands of years. These issues must be adequately addressed, yet the NRC appears to be letting the nuclear plant operators push off the problems to the next generation.

A potential nuclear mess – Las Vegas Sun

June 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive, wastes | Leave a comment