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Washington opposition to transport of intensely radioactive liquid waste from Chalk River

radiation-truckFlag-USAChalk River nuclear shipments opposed in Washington, Ottawa Citizen, IAN MACLEOD  July 25, 2014 A New York congressman says the proposed trucking of intensely radioactive liquid waste from Chalk River to the United States could cause a “mobile Chernobyl” in the event of a spill while crossing the border at Buffalo.

Representative Brian Higgins brought the issue to the floor of the House Thursday, calling on the Department of Energy to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) before the contentious shipments are allowed to proceed.

“An EIS provides a roadmap to make informed decisions on proposals and is especially warranted given the volatile substance and significant impact area involved in this case,” Higgins said in a statement.

“Without a comprehensive review and plan, they are setting us up for a mobile Chernobyl,” a reference to the 1986 nuclear accident in Ukraine.

The exact route of the proposed shipments is secret, but one of the most direct would cross the Peace Bridge linking Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo.

Higgins, a Democrat representing western New York State, also has written to Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz warning that a major contamination on or near the bridge would have dire health and economic consequences. The Buffalo-Niagara region, “sits along two Great Lakes which represent the largest fresh water supply in the world and serves as the centre point of a 500-mile (800-kilometre) radius that includes approximately 55 per cent of the U.S. population and 62 per cent of the Canadian population.

“It is the responsibility of the Department of Energy and all relevant agencies involved in the process to thoroughly assess the safety of this action.”

The planned armed convoys of trucks are to haul specially-designed steel casks containing 23,000 litres of highly-radioactive liquid to the Savannah River Site nuclear complex in Aiken, South Carolina for down-blending into low-enriched uranium fuel feedstock for U.S. commercial power reactors.

Based on U.S. government documents, it would take at least 179 shipments to move the entire contents over the course of at least a few years. U.S. federal budgetary estimates suggest the shipments would begin next year. None would take place in winter.

If approved by regulators on both sides of the border, it would be the first time authorities have trucked highly-enriched uranium (HEU) in a liquid solution. That has prompted nuclear safety advocacy groups to sound the alarm for greater government scrutiny. They say the weapons-grade HEU should be denatured and the liquid waste disposed of in Canada………

A crucial consideration is understanding the liquid’s unique material characteristics. It is now securely stored in a fortified, in-ground tank at Chalk River and carefully monitored, mixed and warmed to prevent the HEU particles from solidifying and – in a worst-case scenario – potentially achieving a self-sustaining chain reaction of fissioning atoms called criticality.

The energy and heat from such a chain reaction could potentially rupture the tank, release the solution into the environment and endanger anyone nearby. http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/chalk-river-nuclear-shipments-opposed-in-washington

July 26, 2014 Posted by | Uranium, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

New TV series “Manhattan” explores the age of nuclear power, nuclear weapons

Flag-USANew series ‘Manhattan’ to explore implications of nuclear age NEWS 3 JULY 25, 2014, BY ,  “……MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE SECRET RACE TO CREATE THE FIRST NUCLEAR WEAPONS BEFORE OUR ENEMIES.

Every Sunday night, tune in to WREG as ‘Manhatten’ takes you back to the Cold War and the race for atomic and nuclear weapons.

“At its heart, this is not a show about nuclear physics or even history. This is a show about the complications in the lives of people doing their very best to try and get by in a really complicated circumstance,” said series creator Sam Shaw.

In today’s society, there’s another race involving nuclear material: how to get rid of it, and who should be responsible.

Mississippi is one of several states proposing a nuclear waste facility.

It would store and recycle the dangerous material in the southern part of the state. While the project would bring in lots of cash, environmentalists are worried about the dangers that come with it.

Actor John Benjamin Hickey says the concern shows how much America changed in the last 70 years when nobody even knew about the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

“The fact that we could build a town in the middle of the country and no one knew what we were doing is an interesting look back at our not-so-distant history,” said Hickey.

The set in Santa Fe is actually 45 minutes from Los Alamos where the Manhattan project took place, and before it was turned into a television set, it was a real hospital where some of the scientists, their families and the troops were treated if they had medical emergencies.

Environmentalist fear future emergencies due to possible nuclear waste plant in Mississippi.

The show also focuses on the secrets governments keep, and that’s something producer and director Thomas Schlamme says is still happening…..

“We were just reading the paper today about Wikileaks and Edward Snowden and the NSA and transparency and what you should know and whenever you talk about those things, it leads right back here to the desert in 1943 where all this took place,” said Schlamme.

Series star Daniel Stern also feels the show brings to light questions everyone should at least consider.http://wreg.com/2014/07/25/new-series-manhattan-to-explore-implications-of-nuclear-age/

July 26, 2014 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

Belarus anti nuclear critic presses on, despite harassment

Belarus anti-nuclear activist fears for ‘another Chernobyl’ on her doorstep theguardian.com, Friday 25 July 2014 “…………The proposed new plant in Belarus will be funded by Russia. Belarus’s official cost estimate is 9.4 billion US dollars, with one third of this to be spent by 2015. Its reactors would be constructed by the Russian company AtomEnergoMash.

Novikova is critical of the EU for not clamping down on nuclear power in the wake of the Fukishima nuclear disaster of 2011, and points out that some countries are steering away from nuclear energy. “Germany is phasing out of nuclear power; it produced 50% of all electricity generation from more renewable sources last year. The Italians said no in their nuclear referendum.”

Like many Belarusian activists, Novikova has faced severe harassment. She was detained in her own home in Minsk during anti-nuclear protests. Her elderly mother has received prank calls which the police confirmed came from the KGB. In Russia, she was arrested and jailed for five days for trying to hand in an environmental petition to the Russian embassy.

She was also was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2011, and can’t tell if she was contaminated from radiation exposure from Chernobyl. The WHO says the disaster will cause 50,000 new cases of the cancer among young people living in the worst-affected region. Increased rates ofthyroid cancer are also being reported in Japan, post-Fukushima.

But she refuses to dwell on her own problems: “I’m still alive. Mine is not the worst case of persecution of people.”

“What should I do? Stop my fight? I lost my health, now I have lost my house,” she says. “Why should I run from this problem? I could go to the US or Europe, but it won’t change if I run – maybe I will, if my life will be in danger. Nobody knows. Right now, I have an opportunity to do something.”http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/25/belarus-anti-nuclear-chernobyl-on-her-doorstep

July 26, 2014 Posted by | Belarus, civil liberties | Leave a comment

UK government’s approach to nuclear waste disposal ?bullying and bribing

Communities could be paid £40m for considering nuclear waste dump   The Guardian, Thursday 24 July 2014 “……..The government said the new approach to waste disposal will involve two years of work to come up with a “more sophisticated” process by which the views of local communities affect decision taking, but it said the ability of a council to veto had gone.

“All levels of local government must be involved but we are keen that no one level has an absolute veto,” said a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc).

She said the new plan would give communities access to independent advice. “We hope putting in place these actions will mean volunteer communities will understand better what it is all about,” she said. “One of the lessons from our [Cumbria] experience and experience internationally is that the immediate reaction is negative, because ‘nuclear must be bad’, but once people to get to dig into the detail they get more positive.”

Construction of the underground waste dump, sited between 250m and 1000m down, will then take 10-15 years, meaning it could be almost 2050 before any waste is buried.

Germany, Sweden, Finland and the US are currently considering deep geological disposal for nuclear waste. The UK currently has around 600,000 cubic metres of nuclear waste, enough to fill the Royal Albert Hall six times over. Waste from any new nuclear plants will be more concentrated and current government projection for new reactors would mean another two more Albert Halls’ worth.

The UK underground waste site is estimated to cost £12bn, more than the £9bn Olympic Games in London in 2012. The government says the sum is already accounted for in spending plans of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

Despite extensive previous geological examination, a new national screening process will take place to identify suitable regions, but it will not pinpoint a site.

The chair of the campaign group Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA), councillor Mark Hackett, said: “NFLA welcomes the new policy of carrying out a national geological screening exercise, rather than assuming waste can be buried near Cumbria where the geology has been shown to be unsuitable. We also welcome the idea of assisting communities to obtain independent third party expertise………

Craig Bennett, at Friends of the Earth, said: “We’re still not even close to figuring out an adequate solution for the nuclear industry’s legacy of toxic radioactive waste. The fact that the government is now having to offer bribes to communities to even talk to them, while making it clear they will override their views anyway, makes it crystal clear that this is a technology of the past, not the future. UK governments have wasted immense amounts of money and political effort on nuclear power down the years. If even half of that had been put into renewables and energy efficiency, we’d all be in a much better place”.

Greenpeace UK’s Louise Hutchins said: “This is a bullying and bribing approach by a government that is getting desperate about solving this problem. First David Cameron reneged on his promise [on nuclear waste], now he’s resorting to bribing reluctant communities.”http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/24/communities-could-be-paid-40m-for-considering-nuclear-waste-dump

July 26, 2014 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Lack of preparation for the next nuclear power disaster

No Big Deal But We’re Not Ready for The Next Nuclear Disaster http://gawker.com/no-big-deal-but-were-not-ready-for-the-next-nuclear-dis-1610776894 Hamilton Nolan 126 July 14 Hey, what’s up, good morning to you. In the news today is sports, weather, and nuclear disaster (potentially).

There is nothing wrong our nation’s nuclear power plants, right now. They’re all functioning well! This could change under certain circumstances, though. A report out yesterday from the National Academy of Sciences says that the nuclear power industry’s disaster planning and safety regulations “are clearly inadequate for preventing core-melt accidents and mitigating their consequences.”

Heck.

The LA Times reports:

The U.S. nuclear industry should prepare for unlikely, worst-case scenarios when designing, building and regulating plants, the report recommends.

That is the big lesson the industry should take away from the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in Japan, the report says. Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, solar storms and situations that seem rare are precisely the events that triggered the world’s three major nuclear disasters: Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

Jerry-NetherlandHamilton Nolan

Fortunately, this monstrosity, a 40 year blight on one of the most exquisite stretches of pristine beachfront in California, has been decommissioned and will soon be history.

July 26, 2014 Posted by | general | Leave a comment

Lack of knowledge about potential cancer risks of electromagnetic radiation from cell phones

Here’s What We Know About Mobile Phones And Cancer, Business Insider  LAUREN F FRIEDMAN JUL 22 2014, “……..Mobile phones emit “non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation” (the kind that comes from microwaves), not “ionizing radiation” (the kind that comes from X-rays). And it turns out that’s an important difference.

“Exposure to ionizing radiation, such as from radiation therapy, is known to increase the risk of cancer,” the National Cancer Institute explains, although even there, the dose matters a lot. “However, although many studies have examined the potential health effects of non-ionizing radiation from radar, microwave ovens, and other sources, there is currently no consistent evidence that non-ionizing radiation increases cancer risk.”

Non-ionizing radiation also does not cause DNA damage, something that’s usually considered a necessary trigger for cancer.

While people spend much more time with their cell phones than their microwaves, it’s still hard to get a good idea of the dose of non-ionizing radiation we get from them. The amount of radiation absorbed by individuals will vary depending on the kind of phones they have and how they use them.

A lot of uncertainty also comes from improved cell phone technology and increased usage over the years — the research just can’t keep up.

The Research So Far

“Studies thus far have not shown a consistent link between cell phone use and cancers of the brain, nerves, or other tissues of the head or neck,” the National Cancer Institute notes on their website. But their fact sheet addressing the topic is not conclusive for the reasons above.

Since proximity is so important in radiation exposure, most research has looked for links between cell phones and brain cancer specifically, which only represents 2% of all cancers……….

The World Health Organisation, in 2011, concluded that the radiation emitted by cell phones was “possibly carcinogenic to humans” based on evidence they describe as “limited.” …..

More recent research, however, suggests that if anyone is at risk, it would be the heaviest cell phone users, not those who use their phones with moderation.

What’s Next

While the research has been inconclusive so far, scientists are working to figure out if there is a link between cancer and cell phone use — or if such a link can be ruled out.

One study in the U.K., known as COSMOS, began in 2010 and will follow 290,000 cell phone users for 20-30 years. Researchers will have access to participants’ phone records, which should give a much more reliable picture of usage than previous studies, which relied largely on people’s recollections of their cell phone usage from many years ago.

Such ongoing research will be crucial.

“It often takes many years between the use of a new cancer-causing agent — such as tobacco — and the observation of an increase in cancer rates,” Dr. John Moynihan, of the Mayo Clinic, points out. “At this point, it’s possible that too little time has passed to detect an increase in cancer rates directly attributable to mobile phone use.”

In the meantime, people concerned about the potential but as yet wholly unknown risks from cell phones can minimize usage, text instead of call, use a headset, and keep a distance from the phone as much as possible. http://www.businessinsider.com.au/do-cell-phones-cause-cancer-2014-7

July 26, 2014 Posted by | health | Leave a comment

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