nuclear-news

Savannah River Site Secretly Becoming World’s Nuclear Dumping Ground

Secretly Dumping Other People’s Problem Savannah River Site Becoming World’s Nuclear Dumping Ground, despite Safety Risks By: GLORIA TATUM Atlanta Progressive News 6-9-2014 (APN) ATLANTA — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is close to finalizing plans to accept highly radioactive commercial spent nuclear fuel from Germany to be deposited at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, according to news reports that were buried deeper than the plutonium itself.

However, it is not only Germany that is sending, or has sent, nuclear waste to SRS, but also Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, and perhaps other countries not yet known, Atlanta Progressive News has learned.

Atlanta Progressive News can report that South Carolina’s Savannah River Site is quietly becoming the world’s nuclear dumping ground, and de facto nuclear waste storage site, despite the facts that frequent rain and an overlapping earthquake zone make the site extremely dangerous, especially to our water supply.

There is no long-term storage plan for the waste in the U.S., with the Yucca Mountain proposal on the rocks, as it were, and with a temporary nuclear waste storage site in New Mexico having been closed to new shipments indefinitely.

SRS is already quietly storing plutonium brought in from other countries, and is now also planning to import 23,000 liters of liquid high-level waste from the Chalk River Laboratories in Canada, which would end up in the already stressed high-level waste tank system, according to an SRS Watch news release.

Shipments of foreign plutonium appear to have been secretly brought in via Charleston, South Carolina, in February and March 2014 of this year, according to an article by the Ottawa Citizen, dated March 29, 2014.

The article has a photo of PNTL transport ship Pacific Egret, noting that the ship carried guns and cannons, and that the ship–which originated in Italy with sensitive nuclear material– disappeared from an online marine tracking system after entering Canadian waters:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Covert+mission+Plutonium+source+might+Canada/9675369/story.html

Italy and Belgium have announced the transfer of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) to the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site.  The Italy and Belgium imports are admitted to in two respective statements posted to the White House’s website, just days before the Ottawa Citizen report:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/24/fact-sheet-italy-highly-enriched-uranium-and-plutonium-removals

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/24/fact-sheet-belgium-highly-enriched-uranium-and-plutonium-removals

Meanwhile, according to Reuters and other reports, Japan will transfer HEU and plutonium to the U.S., but that the destination is not known.  However, based on the closure of the New Mexico facility, it is highly reasonable to suspect that the Japanese shipment will also be dumped at SRS.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/24/nuclear-proliferation-idUSL5N0ML2MP20140324

At the National Security Summit at the Hague on March 24 and 25, 2014, a priority item on the agenda was to reduce the amount of dangerous nuclear material in the world.  They issued a statement that countries should repatriate highly enriched uranium (HEU) to its country of origin, thereby reducing the number of locations that terrorist groups could target to obtain it.

With the U.S. being the country of origin for much of the world’s nuclear material, this means all our nuclear chickens are coming home to roost……. http://www.fairewinds.org/secretly-dumping-peoples-problems/#sthash.mtEhWriM.dpuf

January 2, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes