Uranium contamination haunts Navajo country
THE NEW YORK TIMES by Luis Hipolito on 07/26/2009
“………….The legacy wrought from decades of uranium mining is long and painful here on the expansive reservation. Over the years, Navajo miners extracted some four million tons of uranium ore from the ground, much of it used by the United States government to make weapons.
Many miners died from radiation-related illnesses, and some, unaware of harmful health effects, hauled contaminated rocks and tailings from local mines and mills to build homes for their families.
Now, those homes are being demolished and rebuilt under a new government program that seeks to identify what are very likely dozens of uranium-contaminated structures still standing on Navajo land and to temporarily relocate people living in them until the homes can be torn down and rebuilt.
Stephen B. Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency, and other tribal officials have been grappling for years with the environmental fallout from uranium mining.
“There were a lot of things people weren’t told about the plight of Navajos and uranium mining,” Mr. Etsitty said. “These legacy issues are impacting generations. At some point people are saying, ‘It’s got to end’”.
Hiroshima: A Visual Record
The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 27 July 09 by elin o’Hara slavick
On August 6, 1945, the United States of America dropped an atomic bomb fueled by enriched uranium on the city of Hiroshima. 70,000 people died instantly. Another 70,000 died by the end of 1945 as a result of exposure to radiation and other related injuries. Scores of thousands would continue to die from the effects of the bomb over subsequent decades………………
……………There are 258,000 names of A-bomb victims registered under the cenotaph. Each year on August 6, new names are added. The Flame of Peace is not an eternal flame because it will only burn until nuclear weapons are abolished. Hiroshima has 20/20 vision—a vision of a nuclear weapons-free world 75 years after the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. 2,000 cities outside of Japan participate in the annual conference of Mayors for Peace, an organization started in Hiroshima………………..
……… Parents who lost children, old parents, rush to see with slight hope if they can find a clue of their children. These parents are in their 80s and 90s now. Today there are over 30,000 nuclear weapons in this world. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not past events. They are about today’s situation.”
Nuclear decommissioning – costs blow out endlessly!
Saving funds for shutdown of nuclear plants proves tricky
MISSOURIAN July 24, 2009
BY DAVE GRAM and FRANK BASS/The Associated PressVERNON, Vt. — The companies that own almost half the nation’s nuclear reactors are not setting aside enough money to dismantle them, and many may sit idle for decades and pose safety and security risks as a result, an Associated Press investigation has found……………………….At 19 nuclear plants, owners have won approval to idle reactors for as long as 60 years, presumably enough time to allow investments to recover and eventually pay for dismantling the plants and removing radioactive material.
But mothballing nuclear reactors or shutting them down inadequately presents the most severe of risks. Radioactive waste could leak from abandoned plants into ground water or be released into the air, and spent nuclear fuel rods could be stolen by terrorists.
During the past two years, estimates of dismantling costs have soared by more than $4.6 billion because rising energy and labor costs, while the investment funds that are supposed to pay for shutting plants down have lost $4.4 billion in the battered stock market………………………………
“No one at the NRC wants to acknowledge what is absolutely obvious to us, that the funds are inadequate and that the industry has bare assets,” said Arnold Gundersen, a retired nuclear engineer and decommissioning expert.
Those critics say the industry is making assumptions about their investments that do not account for another market collapse, political obstacles to getting the licenses renewed and unforeseen safety problems that could make nuclear power less palatable.
Last week, British officials reported on a 2007 leak in a cooling tank at the decommissioned Sizewell-A nuclear plant.
Saving funds for shutdown of nuclear plants proves tricky – Columbia Missourian
Nuclear reactor shuts down after malfunction
Nuclear reactor shuts down after malfunction
The Local 24 Jul 09
One of Germany’s most modern nuclear power stations was shut down on Friday due to a technical fault, operator RWE said, less than three weeks after problems at another reactor hit the headlines.
The Emsland reactor in northwest Germany, which supplies around 3.5 million households, underwent an automatic shutdown at 3:00 am (0100 GMT), RWE said in a statement……………………In early July, the Krümmel reactor near Hamburg was shut down after problems – not long after it had been reopened following two years of repairs.This reignited the nuclear debate in Germany, which decided in 2000 under then chancellor Gerhard Schröder to mothball its 17 reactors by about 2020 amid strong public opposition to atomic energy.
Perry nuclear plant reduces power
Perry nuclear plant reduces power
WKSU , July 24, 2009
The Perry Nuclear power plant east of Cleveland has reduced power to 37-percent. The plant is operated by FirstEnergy. Company spokesman Todd Schneider says employees found a leak in the system that controls the turbine and reduced power to make repair
The costs and risks of nuclear energy
The costs and risks of nuclear energy
Gainsville.com Diane Forkel 24 July 09 “……………….Progress Energy is looking ahead to increasing energy use. Their plans are to build two new nuclear power plants. However, electric customers beware, excessive cost overruns (and defects and deficiencies) at a Finnish power plant have been reported in the New York Times. If Progress Energy experiences similar problems, utility customers should brace for a double-cost whammy in their electric bills.
Nuclear power plants carry a good deal of financial risk, so the industry is heavily backed by the government. Currently, applications are being made for billions of dollars in loan guarantees, aka government bailouts. And they could end up being just that.
A Union of Concerned Scientist website notes in 1985 Forbes magazine called the nuclear industry bailout of that era “the largest managerial disaster in business history.”……………The nuclear power plant carbon footprint (CF) is also quite large. It encompasses plant construction, plant decommissioning, and construction of a huge waste storage facility, such as Yucca Mountain, and/or other additional storage facilities. I am sure new research buildings and experimental plants for nuke waste technological breakthroughs will also add to CF………………………..
Inexperience is also blamed for Areva’s costly nuclear power plant construction problems in Finland. Yet Areva has more experience than its U.S. counterparts in building nuclear facilities.
Areva’s costly construction issues are unnerving. Structural construction problems raise safety concerns. An accident at any nuclear facility could be devastating in terms of loss of live and long-term environmental damage.
I have to wonder if this country is adequately prepared to handle radiation fallout from a nuclear accident. And the financial burden of a nuclear accident, or even just a huge bailout, could cause the country’s soaring deficit to shatter and crash.
Nuclear power rejected anew in Indonesia – Infoshop News
Nuclear power rejected anew in Indonesia
Infoshop News July 23 2009 PHILIPPINES — The rejection of nuclear power in Indonesia is another nail in the coffin of the nuclear industry, Greenpeace said today as it demanded the Philippine government to follow suit and abandon its dangerous nuclear power plans which it criticized as “backward and unproductive,” and seemingly “reeking of less-than-noble intentions.”
The environment organization had recently welcomed the decision of Indonesia’s largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama, (NU), that nuclear power is haram (forbidden) on the island of Madura, East Java.
he announcement in Madura, close to Indonesia’s second largest city of Surabaya, follows a similar decision by the Jepara, Central Java chapter of NU on 1 September 2007, when scholars and clerics concluded that the threat to the local communities from potential radioactive leaks and radioactive waste handling far outweighed any potential benefits.
“In Indonesia and in any part of the world including the Philippines, communities clearly do not want nuclear power as they will be the most at risk from its operations. This latest case of rejection of nuclear power is another nail in the coffin for the obsolete nuclear power industry.
…………………..Worldwide, the nuclear industry is failing and still struggles with the same problems as it did forty years ago. Very few of the 435 operational nuclear power plants, as well as waste storage sites around the globe have been built within budget and on schedule. While there were reactors being built in 2008, many of these were delayed and no new reactors came online–compared to 27,000 megawatts of wind energy which came online in the same year.
Nuclear decommissioning: the problem that won’t go away
“…………………………IT IS A sprawling landscape of chimneys, storage ponds filled with nuclear waste and radioactive buildings awaiting demolition. The UK’s Thorpe nuclear-processing plant at Sellafield – nestled somewhat incongruously among the picturesque hills of Cumbria, northern England – is unlikely ever to become a tourist attraction, despite its fame.
For decades, Sellafield has been officially the most hazardous building in western Europe (according to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority). And disposing safely of its crumbling, highly radioactive edifices, its hastily dumped reactor parts and decaying fuel rods is a slow and painstaking job that will probably ensure Sellafield holds the same dubious accolade for decades more…………..http://www.petroleum-economist.com/default.asp?Page=14&PUB=46&SID=721393&ISS=25450
Delayed Nuclear Reaction
Delayed Nuclear Reaction
Mother Jones 21 July by Bruce falconersEight years after 9/11, a global effort to secure nuclear plants from terrorists has only just begun. MoJo interviews the man in charge……………
even as the threat of terrorism has grown, security has remained an ad hoc affair, with each individual facility or country left more or less to its own devices. It was only last September that a Vienna-based nongovernmental organization called the World Institute for Nuclear Security (WINS) began bringing nuclear security specialists together to formulate procedures to prevent violent extremists from obtaining the key ingredient in nuclear bombs. ………..
Roger Howsley: It’s a matter of record that there are terrorist groups that have made plain that if they could access nuclear weapons or nuclear materials and use them for terrorist purposes, they would do so. If you look at some of the court cases related to terrorists, you find that there are people who have actively tried to get hold of nuclear or radioactive materials or have planned to try to get hold them with a view to using them……………………
the thing that governments most worry about is the possibility of someone stealing a nuclear weapon or enough nuclear material to produce an improvised nuclear device, which would be shocking. But we also need to understand that there would be a high level of public paranoia if it were just a small amount of radioactivity that was dispersed. I’ve heard people call dirty bombs “weapons of mass disruption” as opposed to destruction—psychologically, people don’t respond proportionately to the scientifically calculated harm that might be caused from a radioactive release.
Delayed Nuclear Reaction | Mother Jones
Israeli Nuclear Waste ‘Leads to Palestinian Cancer’
Israeli Nuclear Waste ‘Leads to Palestinian Cancer’
The Media Line by Rachelle Kliger , July 21, 2009
Radiation from Israel’s nuclear facility in Dimona is being buried in Palestinian territory and causing an increase in cancer cases among West Bank Palestinians, a Palestinian doctor and anti-nuclear activist says.“The waste from Dimona is buried west of Dahriyya and the radiation from this buried waste reaches the people and causes cancer,” said Dr. Mahmoud Sa’ada, a Palestinian general practitioner and head of the Middle East division at International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, referring to a small West Bank Palestinian village just north of Hebron and just over 12 miles from the Dimona nuclear reactor.
“What’s new over the past two months is that the radiation has reached Tul Karem,” he told The Media Line, referring to a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank over 100 miles from the Dimona site.
Allegations that Israel’s nuclear facility is causing health hazards are not new, but researchers say the scope of the damage is expanding and putting an increasing number of both Israelis and Palestinians in danger……..
………….. the Dimona nuclear facility was built in the 1960s and has not undergone an overhaul as required after 1993.
Israel admits to having a nuclear facility in Dimona, a city in the south of Israel, but will not confirm or deny allegations that the facility is being used to build nuclear weapons.
Israel maintains a policy of ambiguity regarding its alleged nuclear program whereas it will not confirm or deny the existence of nuclear weapons in its arsenal.
Non-Israeli sources have claimed Israel has more than 200 nuclear warheads in its possession.
US nuclear companies to make $billions out of India deal
ww.chinaview.cn 2009-07-21By Xinhua Writer Yang Qingchuan
“…………. The agreement, inked by Clinton and Indian Minister of External Affairs S. M. Krishna, will set terms for U.S. officials to monitor India’s weapons usage and allow the US to sell sophisticated military technology to India, including fighter jets.
Under the terms of the deal, the U.S. would be allowed to conduct “end-use monitoring,” meaning it would conduct regular assessments of India’s military policies to verify that weapons systems are being used for their intended purposes.
Such an agreement is required by U.S. law before American companies can legally sell weapons systems to any foreign nation.
In other words, it will turn on the greenlight for U.S. defense giants such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, to sell advanced and sophisticated weaponry to India.
“The agreement will boost India’s ability to defend itself through the acquisition of U.S. defense equipment while promoting American high tech exports,” the U.S. State Department said of the deal in a statement.
New pact puts growing U.S.-India military ties under spotlight_English_Xinhua
Waste storage is dark cloud over nuclear power industry |
Burlington Free Press By Crea Lintilhac • July 20, 2009 –
“……………decommissioning of civilian nuclear reactors has been performed only seven times in the industry’s 60-year history and there is a shortage of data to make projections. Moreover, in recent times, the decommissioning of Connecticut Yankee ran half a billion dollars over budget and Yankee Rowe of Massachusetts ran four times over the projected costs. Since the financial collapse, I think we all believe that forecasting our financial future is ever more challenging…….
…….The lack of a disposal site is the dark cloud hanging over the entire enterprise of nuclear power. Until a deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel opens, existing spent fuel should be stored in dry casks; the 150-ton concrete and metal cylinders each holding 10 tons of spent fuel and placed at the 104 reactor sites throughout the U.S…………
…………here are some of the critical points about the dangers of reprocessing and why it’s not the way to go as a waste disposal solution. To “reprocess” spent fuel, different elements like plutonium, are separated so they can be used in new fuel. The problem is, separated plutonium can be readily used to make nuclear bombs…………..
……….The Ford administration, and later the Carter administration, concluded that reprocessing was both uneconomic and dangerous.
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……………..In June 29, President Obama decided to scrap nuclear reprocessing in the United States. It is an encouraging first step towards building an international consensus on reducing the threat from nuclear weapons.Even if no new reactors are built, it is estimated that by mid century, the amount of spent fuel will double………..……We have only a temporary solution with dry cask storage. In the meantime we should at least shut the faucet off and stop generating more waste for the sake of our children’s future.
“There is money in energy efficiency”
There is money in energy efficiency Business World
21 July 09 Investments in energy efficiency projects are enjoying a resurgence of popularity in attracting investments, although they still have to play catchup to their more popular cleantech cousin, renewable energy. This was apparent from the Asian Clean Energy Forum (ACEF) held at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Manila last June 15-19.One of the concepts explored in the ACEF was the concept of an equivalent power plant, or “efficiency power plant,” as some of the speakers called it. An efficiency power plant is a visualization of savings in power capacity from energy savings, a concept that is useful considering that most laypersons struggle to conceptualize energy efficiency, unlike the popular images of renewable wind turbines and solar farms etched in many minds……………………..
Energy efficiency is a relatively inexpensive and proven way to contribute to climate change mitigation, and at the same time contribute to the bottom line. We should expect it to share the limelight with its more visible cleantech cousin, renewable energy, particularly with ADB’s announcement during the closing plenary (and in media releases) that its target for energy efficiency investments is $2 billion.
But until a way can be found to help businessmen and investors visualize what energy efficiency is and its viability as an investment vehicle, it will always remain the unsung relative of its more popular cleantech cousin, renewable energy.
Chinese villagers flee county in radiation scare, return amid official assurances of safety
Chinese villagers flee county in radiation scare
Freaking News 24/7 20 July 09 BEIJING — They fled in droves, terrified by rumors of a radiation leak, with many jumping empty-handed into motorcycle taxis and farm trucks they hoped would take them out of harm’s way. While most of the residents of Henan province’s Qi county had returned by Monday amid government assurances it was safe, last week’s mass exodus — some residents estimated that hundreds of thousands of people left — illustrates how quickly rumors can spread and cause alarm in China……………..
………….. alarm spread as people began hearing word that explosions occurred at the irradiation plant……………..
……..Rumors can run rife in China, where many do not trust local officials and the government-controlled media because they downplay or in some cases boycott negative news fearing it will trigger social unrest.
Chinese villagers flee county in radiation scare, return amid official assurances of safety
The World from Berlin: Germany’s Radioactive Election Fever
Germany’s Radioactive Election Fever
SPIEGEL ONLINE Josh Ward 17 July 09 Two recent mishaps have provided an opportunity for anti-nuclear forces in Germany — and their flagbearer, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel — to take the offensive. But some German commentators think that, in trying to win votes for his party, Gabriel might actually drive them into the arms of the Greens.German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel is taking advantage of two recent accidents related to the country’s nuclear energy industry to press home his — and most of the country’s — opposition to nuclear energy………………….……….The Krümmel nuclear power plant operated by the Swedish energy giant Vattenfall near Hamburg automatically shut down on July 4 after a fault in a transformer. And, on Tuesday, officials announced that the troubled Asse underground nuclear waste storage facility, a former salt mine, was having renewed problems with major water leakage………………….
……….According to a recent survey by the Forsa polling institute, almost two-thirds of Germans support the closing of the country’s remaining nuclear power plants.
The World from Berlin: Germany’s Radioactive Election Fever – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International
1 This Month
10 June – Assessing Canada’s Investments in Small Modular Nuclear Reactors – https://zoom.us/meeting/register/IiqHA5feRhaEBycOLNTJlA#/registration
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
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