for all of its ambition, and its government’s strident rhetoric, India’s nuclear industry is one beset by problems, both in its current operation and in its plans for expansion.
Emboldened by a global nuclear wariness post-Fukushima, those living nearby to proposed plants are resisting by all means available.
At Kundakalum in Tamil Nadu, rolling protests have slowed construction by years. Violent demonstrations against a proposed mega-plant in Jaitapur (it would be the third largest in the world) have seen hundreds arrested, dozens hurt and one man shot dead by police.
(unfortunate & incorrect title) India depends on a nuclear future The Age, June 22, 2013 Ben Doherty “……India has bold plans for its nuclear industry – 470GW by 2050, Dr Singh says, more than the entire world can produce now – but today, with the lights still flickering out, the country is finding its nuclear ambitions frustrated on every front.
Plans for new power plants are being resisted by violent protest, existing ones are stricken by radiation leaks, and uranium mines are plagued by reports of thievery and smuggling.
And high on a hill in a tiny corner of the country, one woman is holding out against the might of her government’s will. 81-year-old Spility Langrin Lyngdoh has lived in the village of Domiasiat in the Khasi Hills of Meghalaya, longer than modern India has existed.
Her father bought this land decades ago – his grave is a few hundred metres from the home where she now sits – and Spility has spent almost her entire life here. She wants it to remain as a home for her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
But beneath the hills her father bought lies uranium, more than 9,500 tonnes the Indian government estimates, between eight and 47 metres underground: the “largest, richest, near-surface and low-cost sandstone-type uranium deposit discovered in India so far”.
The state-run Uranium Corporation of India Limited is anxious to begin commercial mining as soon as possible. It plans two open-cut mines over 10 square kilometres…… Continue reading →
The Black Hills Unitarian Universalist Fellowship has passed a resolution
opposing in-situ leach mining for uranium in the Black Hills. The
Canadian company, Powertech, wants 12.96 million gallons of water per
day from the Inyan Kara and Madison aquifers. We in Rapid City used
11.35 million gallons per day in 2012.
Our Unitarian Universalist principle that affirms and promotes the
inherent worth and dignity of every person includes those who are not
yet born. Clean water is essential for life; it would not be right to
deprive future generations of an irreplaceable resource. The demand
for clean water is growing; the supply is not.
Respecting the interdependent web of all existence is a principle that
requires us to regard all living beings as valuable. This value must
be upheld even when it is inconvenient or when it requires
thoughtfulness about unintended consequences. We consider caring for
the earth and everything on it a moral imperative.
A U.S. Geological Survey stated, “To date, no remediation of an ISR
(in-situ recovery) operation in the U.S. has successfully returned the
aquifer to baseline conditions. Often at the end of monitoring,
contaminants continue to increase.” Citizens in this area are well
aware of the arsenic from gold mining tailings leaching into Whitewood
Creek all the way to the Cheyenne River. The proposed Powertech
project includes ponds of polluted water, which will be detrimental to
all life.
Because of our belief in the right of conscience and the use of the
democratic process within our congregation and in society at large, we
encourage other religions and secular groups to join us in our
objection to in-situ mining for uranium in the Black Hills.
There is no safe waste disposal. Do we really want to risk so much for
an energy source that is an enormous gamble? Let us also contemplate
the fact that we have no say in how the yellowcake will be used when
it leaves here. Do we want to be responsible for the creation of more
nuclear weapons in the world? Let’s say, “No.”
The walk’s purpose “is to re-engage the community with this issue and to keep pressure on council,” said Pat Gibbons, a member of Save Our Saugeen Shores, a local citizens’ group.
Last year’s walk during the same weekend drew more than 500 residents as well as tourists who gravitate to this area during the summer.
It was the largest protest to be held in any of the 21 communities across Canada that are vying to host an underground repository that will store all of the country’s most radioactive waste.
The group hopes this year’s protest will be larger, Gibbons said. It will start at the flagpole in Southampton at 11 a.m. on Saturday.
So far, the group has about 2,500 signatures on their petition.
The group’s main fear is that a nuclear dump could contaminate the drinking water for 40 million people living in the Great Lakes basin, said Gibbons, a retired vice-principal from St. Mary’s High School in Kitchener who now lives in Southampton.
Of the 21 communities vying for this $16-million project, five are in Bruce County where Canada’s largest nuclear power plant is located.
The Bruce Nuclear power plant near Kincardine, which is the largest employer in Bruce County, has about 40 per cent of Canada’s used fuel already stored at its site.
All five Bruce County communities interested in the project are at Stage 3 of a nine-stage process which could take up to 10 years to complete. Stage 3 involves an in-depth feasibility study.
Mike Smith, mayor of Saugeen Shores — which consists of the towns of Southampton and Port Elgin — said the community is split on the issue. Some residents say it would create jobs and others say it would decrease property values.
Smith said even the town’s nine councillors are split on the issue, with some publicly saying if they had to vote today on the project, “they would vote no.”
Smith, a retired 34-year employee of the Bruce plant, said he’s undecided on the project.
Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities Grist By David Roberts Solar power and other distributed renewable energy technologies could lay waste to U.S. power utilities and burn the utility business model, which has remained virtually unchanged for a century, to the ground That is not wild-eyed hippie talk. It is the assessment of the utilities themselves.
Back in January, the Edison Electric Institute — the (typically stodgy and backward-looking) trade group of U.S. investor-owned utilities — released a report [PDF] that, as far as I can tell, went almost entirely without notice in the press. That’s a shame. It is one of the most prescient and brutally frank things I’ve ever read about the power sector. It is a rare thing to hear an industry tell the tale of its own incipient obsolescence. Continue reading →
Nevada Gov. Tells Feds To Bury ‘Dirty Bomb’ Nuclear Waste ElsewhereJune 21, 2013 CBS, LAS VEGAS (AP) — Nevada’s governor is telling the federal government the state doesn’t want highly radioactive waste of the type that could be used to build a “dirty bomb” buried in a shallow pit at the former national nuclear proving ground north of Las Vegas.
The federal Energy Department is reviewing Gov. Brian Sandoval’s letter opposing plans to ship about 400 canisters of waste from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to the Nevada National Security Site, agency spokeswoman Aoife McCarthy said Friday.
Sandoval, a Republican former federal judge and state attorney general, accused the Energy Department of trying to set a dangerous precedent by exploiting a regulatory loophole to classify the waste as a low-level hazard so that it can be buried at the former test site about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The governor said the material should be handled as high-level radioactive waste.
“This dangerous waste should be managed in the same manner as remote-handled transuranic waste,” Sandoval said, noting that the Energy Department provides hands-free handling and permanent deep-geologic storage of similar material at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
The governor also accused the Energy Department of failing to adequately address concerns of affected local governments and Indian tribes.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported (http://bit.ly/1982fbx) that Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid and U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nevada, are backing Sandoval…….
Even if the canisters meet a “legalistic definition” of low-level waste, Sandoval said in his letter, they aren’t suitable for shallow land burial at the Nevada National Security Site.
Scientist and wife plead guilty to espionage involving nuclear weapons, Examiner, CRIME & COURTS JUNE 23, 2013 BY: JIM KOURI
Two contract workers for a U.S. nuclear facility pleaded guilty in
U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico on Friday to
espionage charges involving classified nuclear weapons information,
according to Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security
John Carlin.
Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Argentina,
and Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, a U.S. citizen, pleaded guilty to
charges under the Atomic Energy Act and other charges related to their
communication of classified nuclear weapons data to a person they
thought was a representative of the Venezuelan government under
then-President Hugo Chavez……..
Both husband and wife were indicted in September 2010 and they were
charged with conspiracy to communicate and communicating Restricted
Data to an individual with the intent to secure to an advantage to a
foreign nation.
DOE Expands Solar Research Capability by Energy Matters, 24 June 13, A new $135 million renewable energy research facility is the latest addition to the U.S. Department of Energy’s network of National Laboratories.
The 182,500-square-foot Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) will allow researchers and manufacturers of promising renewable energy systems to test and scale up their products in a real-world environment by simulating a utility-scale energy grid…….. According to the DOE, solar generation in America has doubled in the last four years, while the cost of solar power systems has fallen by 80 percent. Consolidating these gains depends in part on next-generation inverter technology that is cheaper to produce and better suited to smart energy grids.http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=3804
How can we boost distributed solar and save utilities at the same time? Grist, By David Roberts, 11 April 2013 Yesterday I wrote that solar PV and other distributed-energy technologies pose a radical threat to U.S. power utilities and the centralized business model they’ve operated under for the last century. This is, I hasten to add, according to the utilities themselves. So what should be done about it?
It’s complicated. On one hand, more distributed renewable energy is a good thing. It reduces carbon emissions, increases resilience, stimulates the growth of new industries with new jobs, and gives Americans a taste of energy democracy.
On the other hand, it just won’t do to have utilities view the spread of rooftop solar PV as an existential threat. Whatever you think of them, utilities still have tons of political power. If they want to slow the spread of distributed energy, they can. A lot.
….The contract with Nuclear Management Partners (NMP) – a consortium made up of British company Amec and Areva of France and led by URS of the US– was first signed in 2010 for five years with an option to roll it over for up to 17 years at a total cost of more than £22bn…
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority declines to predict final lifetime clean-up cost amid fears total bill could exceed £100bn
The public body charged with overseeing the dismantling of Britain’s network of atomic power and research stations will reveal on Monday that its estimates for the lifetime cost of the programme has risen by billions of pounds.
Despite this, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) will say in its annual report that it is getting to grips with the clean-up problem because the rate of cost growth is slowing year-on-year.
Yet the soaring costs will alarm industry critics at a time when the government is trying to encourage construction of a new generation of atomic power plants while plans to construct a permanent home for high-level radioactive waste are stalled.
In the NDA’s 2011 annual report the provisional cost of dealing with the UK’s nuclear legacy was put at £53bn, compared with a 2010 figure of £49bn. The new number in the 2012 set of accounts is expected to be around £55bn. But under previous accounting methods, the figure historically used has risen to well over £80bn with some predicting the final bill could exceed £100bn.
By now we are all familiar with the concept of ‘surveillance.’ In the Orwellian tyranny of the new normal, we are all gradually being made aware that we are living in a panoptic society where everything we do and say is being watched and recorded. So what is the answer to this constant surveillance? Why not use the surveillance technology to keep tabs on what the government is doing? Welcome to the world of sousveillance. Join us today on The Corbett Report as we explore this concept and the grassroots revolution in citizen media that it has made possible.
“Military contractor Booz Allen Hamilton of McLean, Virginia, has shot into the news recently over two of its former employees: Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who has just revealed the extent of US global spying on electronic data of ordinary citizens around the world, and James Clapper, US director of national intelligence.”*
Maybe Booz Allen could use some more government scrutiny. Maybe it would, if the private defense contractor didn’t have such a revolving door relationship with Washington. Just how much is your private information in their hands? Cenk Uygur breaks it down.
Image source ; 
nuclear-news 