2009 June 30 « nuclear-news

No answer on nuclear waste issue

No answer on waste issue Rutland Herald KATHLEEN KREVETSKI 29 June 09 “……………………. the Areva nuclear fuel processing plant — La Hague in France where spent nuclear fuel rods are refined for weapons-grade plutonium and enriched uranium. La Hague acknowledges that it is intentionally dumping thousands of gallons of radioactive waste into the ocean while the incidence of childhood cancer is rampant in the area surrounding that plant.

Before George Bush left office, the U.S. EPA had radically increased permissible public exposure to radiation in drinking water, including a nearly 1,000-fold increase in permissible concentrations of strontium-90, 3,000- to 100,000-fold for iodine-131, and a nearly 25,000 increase for nickel-63. The relaxation of these radiation protection regulations had been sought for years by the nuclear industry and its allies in the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission .

In the most extreme case, the new standards permit radionuclide concentrations seven million times more lax than permitted under the Safe Drinking Water Act and would permit public exposure to radiation levels vastly higher than EPA had previously deemed unacceptably dangerous. The public did not get to comment on these changes. What exactly is the radioactive waste that is now being discharged into the Connecticut River. When will our Vermont Department of Public Health start reporting on the trends of cancer incidence rising in Vermont? And Entergy and the NRC thinks its OK to continue to build up the stockpile of the radioactive waste here in Vermont because no one else will accept it

No answer on waste issue: Rutland Herald Online

June 30, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, USA | antinuclear, nuclear, radiation, radioactive | Leave a comment

Nuclear power is well-disguised fossil fuel

Nuclear power is well-disguised fossil fuel1 Mail and Guardian 30 June 09 …by Roger DiamondAs global warming gets hotter on the international political agenda, and with recent oil price volatility, the nuclear power proponents have jumped on a bandwagon to promote “the peaceful atom” as a means to power our society………………….. Carbon free? When uranium, or any other fissionable material, reacts, indeed, it does not give off any carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gases. However, almost every other aspect of the production of nuclear power does. Let’s start with mining uranium…………………All of this mining, processing and transporting activity uses energy — fossil fuels to be precise. But that’s not even the big energy user in nuclear power. The biggest factor is probably the building of the power stations that have to be over-engineered for terrorist strikes, earthquakes, careless operators………………………..the energy consumed in earth moving, making thousands of tons of cement and building a nuclear power station, is very significant. Maintenance of the power station also consumes energy, as does the transport and disposal of the low and medium-level radioactive waste, but the big unknowns in nuclear power are decommissioning and disposal of high-level nuclear waste.

All of this activity is driven by fossil fuels and so to say that nuclear power is carbon free is to pretend that nuclear power stations descend from the heavens and that fuel rods grow on trees, neither of which are particularly believable. It is also to ignore the challenge that decommissioning and high-level waste disposal pose………………………….he clincher is that all of this adds up to make nuclear power rather expensive and uncertain, and so the predicted boom in nuclear power has not materialised and in fact, the construction of new nuclear power stations is only keeping pace with the decommissioning of old ones built in the 1960s. This is even without the years of expense that we look forward to in guarding and maintaining radioactive hulks of concrete for the rest of civilisation so that they don’t crumble and leak radiation or demolishing the monstrosities and finding a hole to bury them in.

Thought Leader » Peak Oil Perspectives » Nuclear power is well-disguised fossil fuel

June 30, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, climate change, environment | antinuclear, nuclear, radioactive | Leave a comment

Reactor design puts safety into question

Reactor design puts safety of nuclear plants into question Globe and Mai Jun. 29, 2009 Feature speeds up rate of atomic reactions in event of a coolant leak; regulators say they misjudged size of the problem

Martin Mittelstaedt

If reactors are not shut down quickly, their ability to keep radioactivity from escaping would be put to the test, according to an internal commission document.

The document says Canada’s seven nuclear stations, which all use Candu technology, have a feature known as “positive reactivity feedback,” in which their atomic chain reactions automatically speed up if the water pumped into the reactors to cool them leaks, one of the worst accidents possible at a nuclear station. If reactors aren’t immediately shut down during this type of incident, positive reactivity leads to a quick snowballing in the pace of nuclear reactions, which in turn could cause potentially damaging overheating.

The fear is that with a large loss of coolant, such overheating could put the nuclear facilities’ containment features – the concrete domes and other protective mechanisms around reactors that are the last-ditch defences to stop the spread of radioactivity into the environment – to a dangerous test.

Reactor design puts safety into question – The Globe and Mail

June 30, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, safety | antinuclear, nuclear, radioactive | Leave a comment

Group offers plan to eliminate nukes by 2030

Group offers plan to eliminate nukes by 2030 Google News By ROBERT BURNS 30 June 09 WASHINGTON (AP) — A group committed to eliminating nuclear weapons presented on Monday a four-step plan to achieve that goal by 2030, while acknowledging that Iran could be a “show stopper.”The plan by the nonpartisan Global Zero Commission calls for the United States and Russia — the world’s largest nuclear powers — to agree to reduce first to 1,000 warheads each, then to 500 each by 2021.The U.S. is believed to have about 2,200 active strategic nuclear warheads and Russia about 2,800. Each has thousands more in reserve as well as large numbers of non-strategic, or tactical, nuclear arms.During the second phase of cuts to 500, all other nuclear weapons countries would have to agree to freeze and then reduce their warhead totals. Those other countries are China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan and Israel but not North Korea, which has conducted nuclear tests but may not have a useable weapon.In a third phase, from 2019 to 2023, a “global zero accord” would be negotiated to include a schedule for the phased, verified reduction of all nuclear arsenals to zero total warheads. In the last period, from 2024 to 2030, the reductions would be completed and a verification system would remain in place.The Global Zero Commission includes former and current senior officials from all existing nuclear powers.

The Associated Press: Group offers plan to eliminate nukes by 2030

June 30, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear weapons | Leave a comment

High-level forum stresses need to tackle radioactive waste in Central Asia

High-level forum stresses need to tackle radioactive waste in Central Asia UN News Centre 29 June 2009 – A high-level forum organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) wrapped up in Geneva today with the adoption of a joint declaration stressing the need to tackle the challenge of radioactive waste in Central Asia.The meeting brought together over 100 representatives from the region, international organizations, donors and others to discuss the problems associated with the uranium tailing deposits – left over from mining during the Cold War in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan – which contain more than 800 million tons of radioactive and toxic waste.

These countries have not been able to deal with the problem adequately due to lack of resources and capacity.

UNDP Administrator Helen Clark said the legacy of nuclear waste and related environmental management issues has a direct impact on human development in the region.

“As most of the uranium tailing sites are located in densely populated and natural-disaster prone areas of Central Asia’s largest river basins, they represent a major potential risk to the region’s water supply and the health of millions of people,” she said in a statement to the forum.

“Many more are likely to suffer if uranium contamination moves downstream to other areas,” she added.

High-level forum stresses need to tackle radioactive waste in Central Asia

June 30, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes | Leave a comment

“Being able to make nuclear arms doesn’t mean having them” – expert

Being able to make nuclear arms doesn’t mean having them” – expert

Russia Today 29 June, 2009, 11:08

Russia and the US have about 27,000 nuclear warheads – enough to destroy the planet several times over. Nuclear disarmament specialist Gareth Evans says reducing stockpiles should be the main priority of global powers. Australia’s former nuclear research and foreign minister Gareth Evans is the president of the International Crisis Group. Evans also coaches International Commission for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament which held its third meeting in Moscow on June 20-21……………………Gareth Evans: “………………At least by the end of this year we can get an agreement on the continuation of the basic treaty between Russia and the United States, we can get some significant reduction in the number of strategic weapons that are actually deployed. And that this, in turn, will create a further momentum not only for further US-Russia negotiations, but for everybody else………………………. a particular threat is we know that the North Koreans are being only too keen to sell their missile technology and hardware to other countries……………………….The truth of the matter is that the problem of nuclear proliferation and disarmament is right up there as one of the Big Three global problems……………………………. the risk that more and more countries will go on acquiring nuclear weapons for misguided reasons about their own security, if we don’t turn around our system as it now is. And remember that with nuclear weapons we are talking about a class of weapons that are perfectly capable of wiping out the planet, and wiping out the planet in a space of just a few weeks, compared with the fifty hundred centuries of climate change.”

“Being able to make nuclear arms doesn’t mean having them” – expert | Politics from 2009-06-29 | RT

June 30, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment