Workers shut down Italy again in solidarity with Palestine
Hundreds of thousands joined a new general strike across Italy, in solidarity with the people of Gaza and the Global Sumud Flotilla.
October 03, 2025 by Peoples Dispatch, https://peoplesdispatch.org/2025/10/03/workers-shut-down-italy-again-in-solidarity-with-palestine/
Hundreds of thousands of people have again taken to the streets of Italy in response to a general strike call originally launched by the grassroots union Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) and later joined by some of the country’s largest trade union confederations. As they blocked ports, highways, and industrial zones, protesters delivered a resounding rejection of Giorgia Meloni’s government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, demanding an immediate end to the attacks and the release of activists kidnapped from the Global Sumud Flotilla.
“Tens of thousands of people took to the streets for the general strike in support of Palestine: this is a huge success,” Giuliano Granato of the left party Potere al Popolo reported from one of the marches. “It shows that there is a majority in the country that is fighting for Palestine and doing what our government has not dared to do for two years.”
The strike came just days after Israeli forces assaulted dozens of vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters, detaining activists, including several Italians. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and other officials failed to act decisively for their protection or release. Instead, they implied Israel had acted with measure and tried to shift the blame on the flotilla for continuing its humanitarian mission despite threats. The government’s attempt to present itself as “sovereignist” fell apart in the face of these events. “This is not a government of sovereignists. This is a government that bows down and prostrates itself before Israel,” Granato said.
In several cities, demonstrators faced heavy police repression. In Padua, more than 10,000 protesters occupying the industrial zone were attacked with water cannons and tear gas. “The march stayed united and we are continuing the blockade,” one participant said. “We want an end to complicity. We want a free Palestine.”
Protesters in Bologna and Naples also pushed through police lines to occupy strategic points. In Naples, at least 50,000 people seized part of the port despite heavy policing. In Bologna, 150,000 blocked major roads. “This is the response of the people to Israel expanding the war, to the government repressing us, to those who want to divide us into good and bad,” Potere al Popolo’s Bologna chapter wrote. “Let’s center our priorities around those who keep this country going every day, with precarious lives, low wages, and insecure jobs. Instead of rearmament and alliances with Israel, let’s lay down arms and raise salaries!”
Union leaders echoed the calls. Maurizio Landini, head of the confederation CGIL, stated: “There are no rights, there is no dignity without peace. True security does not mean increasing spending on weapons, but investing in public health, education, employment, and the redistribution of wealth.”
The strike raised demands for a full arms embargo on Israel, the severing of all ties with the occupation authorities, and an immediate end to the genocide. And there is no end in sight for the mobilization – those who joined the strike are already preparing for Saturday’s national demonstration in Rome, where they will again assert their solidarity and determination to see a free Palestine.
Sellafield nuclear workers to strike over pay
ITV 3rd Oct 2025, https://www.itv.com/news/border/2025-10-03/sellafield-nuclear-workers-to-strike-over-pay
Construction workers at the Sellafield nuclear site are to strike from Saturday in a dispute over pay.
Unite said 1,500 of its members, including electricians, joiners and welders, at the Cumbria site will walk out until 13 October.
The union said other nuclear projects pay premiums it wants Sellafield to match, and it warned of further industrial action if the dispute is not resolved.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Our members are highly skilled workers operating in an extremely challenging environment.
“That this is the most significant industrial action at Sellafield in recent history speaks volumes about the levels of feeling among the workforce.”
As well as the strikes, a continuous overtime ban will start on 14 October.
Miliband’s Nuclear Quango Chief In Line for £200,000 for Working Three Days a Week
Guido Fawkes 4th Aug 2025, https://order-order.com/2025/08/04/milibands-nuclear-quango-chief-in-line-for-200000-for-working-three-days-a-week/
Great British Energy – Nuclear (not to be confused with the inexplicably separate quango Great British Energy) is searching for a new chairman. ‘GBE-N’, as it is known in the ever growing domain of government bodies poking around in the energy industry, is in charge of delivering small modular reactors (SMRs) in the UK, among other things. That programme has been ongoing since at least 2015…
Now Red Ed is looking for a new head for the organisation – and a live job advert shows a cool salary of more than £203,268 per annum for just three days a week. Meltdown for taxpayers…
The government is banking on deploying SMRs in the 2030s. The new chair will oversee that target with a “more agile, programmatic and faster delivery approach than has been achieved previously”. That won’t be hard, because currently zero SMRs have been delivered. It’s such a civil service priority it’s a three day a week role…
Sizewell C to give jobs to hundreds of ex-offenders
Hundreds of ex-offenders will be hired to work on the construction of the
Sizewell C nuclear power station as part of a drive to generate broader
social and economic benefits from big public infrastructure projects.
Sizewell C, which was given the final go-ahead last month, is already
working with local prisons in Suffolk to design training courses in
welding, construction, engineering and hospitality that are aimed at
equipping inmates with the skills needed to work on the plant.
The Observer 3rd Aug 2025, https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/a-second-chance-sizewell-c-to-give-jobs-to-hundreds-of-ex-offenders
Sellafield nuclear plant contractors to strike
BBC 5th Aug 2025,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg38w4xly3o
Workers supplying the Sellafield nuclear site have voted in favour of strike action over pay.
Almost 40 workers at Fellside Combined Heat and Power facility, the plant supplying the steam and power to the Cumbria site, will take industrial action on 19 and 20 August after rejecting two pay offers.
Owned by PX Ltd, Unite workers are also undertaking an overtime ban.
PX Ltd said it was unable to comment as another meeting was due to take place with the union on Wednesday. A spokesperson for Sellafield said the site was not “directly involved in the dispute”.
The final pay offer was 3.5 to 5% depending on a set of criteria, Unite said.
Unite general secretary, Sharon Graham, said: “PX Limited can clearly afford to pay our members for the vital work they do but is choosing to put profits over people.
“This dispute is completely caused by the employer’s greed.”
A spokesperson for Sellafield added: “As always, the safety and security of the Sellafield site, our workforce and the local community will be our priority during any industrial action.”
Workers at Hinkley Point C nuclear plant stage wildcat strike over alleged bullying
Hundreds of mechanical engineers stopped work in protest over
‘management practices’ at construction site. A group of mechanical
engineers numbering in the low hundreds stopped work on Tuesday without the
backing of their trade unions amid deepening woes within the 26,000-strong
workforce over the conditions on the site.
It was the second unofficial
strike to take place in a week after a walkout last Wednesday in defiance
of union reps and the site developer, French utility company EDF, following
claims that senior managers on the Hinkley site have bullied engineering
staff. A contract worker on the project, which is running years late and
billions of pounds over budget, told the Guardian one of the incidents was
believed to have involved a senior manager bullying a young woman on the
team.
“They’ve had enough, and they’re out the gate,” he said.
Trade union Unite confirmed that a number of workers are taking part in a
protest over “management practices” which has resulted in the workers
being removed from the site. “Unite expects this matter to be resolved
soon,” a spokesperson said. The Guardian understands that EDF, which is
developing the first new nuclear reactor in a generation at Hinkley Point,
has begun an independent investigation into the alleged bullying on site.
The row has emerged days after the UK nuclear watchdog confirmed it would
prosecute EDF alongside the site’s main contractors Bouygues Travaux
Publics and Laing O’Rourke for health and safety offences over the death
of a site supervisor at the site after an accident in 2022.
Guardian 15th July 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/15/workers-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-plant-stage-wildcat-strike-over-alleged-bullying
Construction workers walk out at Hinkley Point C
Thousands of construction workers have walked out unofficially at the
massive Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant against bullying management. As
we go to press, they are still out. It has been estimated that there are
12,000 workers on the site, organised by Unite and the GMB, and it is
reported that anything from 2,000 to 4,000 workers are involved in this
dispute, reportedly at MEH Alliance – bringing together Altrad Services,
Cavendish, Balfour Beatty, NG Bailey and Altrad Babcock.
Socialist Party 15th July 2025,
https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/140831/15-07-2025/construction-workers-walk-out-at-hinckley-c/
Staff walk out at Hinkley Point C over alleged ‘bullying’
“This bullying has been going on for far too long.”
Staff at Hinkley Point C walked out
on an unofficial strike on Wednesday over alleged bullying. An unconfirmed
number of workers in the MEH group of contractors have downed tools at the
nuclear power station construction site in Somerset yesterday (July 9). A
person involved in the staff walk out told the Local Democracy Reporting
Service it was a response to bullying from senior management. They said:
“This bullying has been going on for far too long.”
Somerset Live 10th July 2025, https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/local-news/staff-walk-out-hinkley-point-10333388
How Torness will decommission and what it means for jobs.
.The power plant is due to stop generating by the end of March 2030. However, that will not
be the end of the story, with decommissioning work expected to get under
way there afterwards. A spokesperson for EDF, which manages the plant,
said: “Decommissioning happens in stages. “Removing all the spent fuel
from the reactors will take about four years and will be carried out by
EDF.
“The site will then transfer to Nuclear Restoration Services (NRS)
to carry out deconstruction. “It will take around 15 years to remove all
the buildings from site, with the exception of the reactor building.
“It will be left in situ, in a state called ‘Safestore’, for around 70 years,
until final site clearance.” The decommissioning staffing structure is
yet to be agreed at the power station, which currently employs about 550
full-time EDF employees, plus more than 180 full-time contract partners.
Staff consultation is yet to begin, but the spokesperson added: “Every
site is different but, as a rough guide, at Hunterston B, the number of EDF
staff being transferred to NRS is about 250, which is around half the
generation headcount. “This has been a managed reduction which has been
taking place over a number of years and has largely been accommodated
through redeployment, retirement and voluntary redundancy.
“During defueling, we will go through formal consultation with staff to see who
wants to stay at site and who would like to leave. “Decommissioning
offers lots of new opportunities, but we have found at other sites that not
everyone who works at a site during generation wants to stay and be part of
deconstruction. “Those who do want to stay and secure a role in the
decommissioning structure will transfer over to NRS.
Herald 28th June 2025, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25260842.torness-will-decommission-means-jobs/
President Trump fires a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
June 16, 2025, Geoff Brumfiel
President Trump has fired one of the five members of the independent
commission that oversees the nation’s nuclear reactors. Nuclear Regulatory
Commissioner Christopher T. Hanson was terminated on Friday, according to a
brief email seen by NPR from Trent Morse, the White House Deputy Director
of Presidential Personnel. The e-mail said only that Hanson’s “position as
Commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is terminated
effective immediately.”
“All organizations are more effective when leaders
are rowing in the same direction,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna
Kelly told NPR via e-mail. “President Trump reserves the right to remove
employees within his own Executive Branch who exert his executive
authority.” In a statement shared with NPR, Hanson said that he was fired
“without cause,” and that he had devoted his term to “preserving the
independence, integrity and bipartisan nature of the world’s gold standard
nuclear safety institution. … I continue to have full trust and
confidence in their commitment to serve the American people by protecting
public health safety and the environment.”
Hanson was appointed to the NRC
by President Joseph Biden in 2020 and then reappointed in 2024. His current
term was set to expire in 2029, according to a bio on the NRC’s website
that has since been removed. Some observers of the nuclear industry were
sharply critical of the decision. “I think that this coupled with the other
attacks by the administration on the independence of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission could have serious implications for nuclear safety,” says Edwin
Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned
Scientists, an environmental watchdog group. “It’s critical that the NRC
make its judgements about protecting health and safety without regard for
the financial health of the nuclear industry.”
NPR 16th June 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/06/16/nx-s1-5435285/trump-fires-nuclear-regulatory-commission-member-nrc
UK’s Bakers’ union rejects new nuclear reactors, calls for socialist Green New Deal
Bakers’ union rejects new nuclear reactors, calls for socialist Green New
Deal. Tens of thousands of energy jobs could be created with a socialist
Green New Deal without the need of new nuclear reactors, the bakers’
union said today. Delegates from the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union
(BFAWU) passed a motion calling for the democratic public ownership of all
forms of energy. They condemned the loss of skilled jobs in North Sea
industry and Grangemouth oil refinery, saying they have “no faith” in
private firms to tackle the climate crisis “nor do we accept that nuclear
power is a clean form of energy production.”
Morning Star 16th June 2025
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/bakers-union-rejects-new-nuclear-reactors-calls-socialist-green-new-deal
Top nuke officials admit staffing challenges after DOGE layoffs, hiring freeze
Testifying to a Senate committee, National Nuclear Security Administration leaders acknowledged staffing woes after DOGE-led reductions.
Davis Winkie. USA TODAY, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/21/nuclear-weapons-leaders-describe-workforce-woes-doge/83770727007/
Key Points
- During May 20 testimony, top acting officials from the National Nuclear Security Administration acknowledged the risk and impact of workforce vacancies caused by Elon Musk’s DOGE.
- A USA TODAY investigation published May 18 detailed the potential impact of endemic federal staffing shortages at NNSA recently exacerbated by the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce.
WASHINGTON − Top leaders of the agency responsible for the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile admitted to DOGE-related staffing challenges at a Senate hearing.
Asked by Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, if a hiring freeze, resignations and attrition could bring “some pretty important vacancies,” acting National Nuclear Security Agency defense programs head David Hoagland said, “That’s very true.” Hoagland said at the May 20 hearing that his office had “shifted people around” to meet “critical needs.”
Hundreds of NNSA staff were fired by Elon Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year, amid a $1.7 trillion nuclear weapons upgrade, in a chaotic wave of layoffs. Most were later rehired. Other critical staffers agreed to leave their jobs under DOGE’s “fork in the road” resignation offer.
King said NNSA claims that staffing shortages hadn’t placed agency’s mission at short term risk “strikes me as implausible.”
The NNSA struggled with staffing and talent pipeline issues for decades before the new Trump administration, a recent USA TODAY investigation found. Then Musk launched efforts to reduce the federal workforce, which further destabilized the NNSA workforce, experts said.
The agency currently faces a near-total hiring freeze and lost more than 130 of its 2,000 federal employees to the DOGE deferred resignation program. More than 300 more employees were fired and reinstated in February damaging morale.
NNSA’s acting principal deputy administrator, James McConnell, said told senators on a subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee the agency could handle the losses “in the short term,” but he said the NNSA needs to “make sure that our resources are adequate.”
Experts told USA TODAY sustained staffing shortages could cause further delays and cost overruns on the agency’s beleaguered portions of the nation’s broader $1.7 trillion nuclear arsenal modernization effort. USA TODAY documented billions of dollars in overruns, as well as safety issues, at NNSA facilities that were attributed to staffing shortages.
Marv Adams, Hoagland’s Senate-confirmed predecessor atop NNSA’s defense programs, said in an interview that during his tenure, “our federal [warhead] program offices struggled to keep up and not get behind because of understaffing.”
The agency’s field offices faced similar strain, according to David Bowman, a retired civil servant and former manager of the NNSA’s Nevada Field Office. From 2020 until his retirement in the fall of 2024, Bowman oversaw operations at the expansive Nevada National Security Site.
NNSA field offices must review and approve much of the work the agency’s massive contractor workforce does on the nuclear arsenal, as well as safety management plans. In an interview, Bowman said such review “requires … technical experts who are feds.”
“If the field offices or the safety experts are short staffed, the work is going to back up,” he said.
Bowman described finding qualified staff for his far-flung office northwest of Las Vegas as “the big challenge we had.”
Contributing: Cybele Mayes-Osterman, USA TODAY
Nuclear weapons woes: Understaffed nuke agency hit by DOGE and safety worries
The consequences of DOGE’s disruptions at the National Nuclear Security Administration could be far-reaching, experts say.
Davis Winkie and Cybele Mayes-Osterman, USA TODAY, 18 May 25
- For decades, the NNSA has struggled with federal staffing shortages that have contributed to safety issues as well as delays and cost overruns on major projects.
- Experts fear that the Trump administration’s moves to reduce the federal workforce may have destabilized the highly specialized federal workforce at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
- USA TODAY reviewed decades of government watchdog reports, safety documents, and congressional testimony on U.S. nuclear weapons.
In 2021, after a pair of plutonium-handling gloves had broken for the third time at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, contaminating three workers, and after the second accidental flood, investigators from the National Nuclear Security Administration found a common thread in a plague of safety incidents: the contractor running the New Mexico lab lacked “sufficient staff.”
So did the NNSA.
The agency, whose fewer than 1,900 federal employees oversee the more than 60,000 contractors who build and maintain the U.S. nuclear arsenal, has struggled to fill crucial safety roles. Only 21% of the agency’s facility representative positions – the government’s eyes and ears in contractor-run buildings – at Los Alamos were filled with qualified personnel as of May 2022.
Now, President Donald Trump’s administration has thrown the NNSA into chaos, threatening hard-won staffing progress amid a trillion-dollar nuclear weapons upgrade. Desperately needed nuclear experts are wary of joining thanks to chaotic job cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, experts say.
The disruption of NNSA’s chronically understaffed safety workforce is “a recipe for disaster,” said Joyce Connery, former head of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
Los Alamos is not the only facility with staffing shortages in crucial safety roles.
As of May 2022, less than one-third of facility representative roles at NNSA’s Y-12 facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Pantex plant near Amarillo, Texas were held by fully qualified employees, according to a USA TODAY review of nuclear safety records.
At Pantex, where technicians assemble and disassemble nuclear weapons, only a quarter of safety system oversight positions had fully qualified hires, and only 57% of those safety positions had qualified employees at Y-12.
Nuclear weapons workers don’t grow on trees, nor do the federal experts who oversee them. Many of the jobs require advanced degrees, and new hires often need years of on-the-job training. Security clearance requirements limit the most sensitive jobs to U.S. citizens.
America’s nuclear talent crisis isn’t new, but its consequences have grown as tens of billions of dollars pour into the NNSA annually in a broader $1.7 trillion plan to modernize U.S. nuclear weapons.
Congress ordered the cramped, aging plutonium facility at Los Alamos – called PF-4 – to begin mass production of plutonium pits, a critical component at the heart of nuclear warheads, for the first time in more than a decade.
Enter Elon Musk and DOGE…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
What’s at stake
The struggle for staff has been NNSA’s Achilles heel for decades – and the stakes have only grown.
But despite efforts to develop talent, watchdogs said in February of this year the NNSA was “understaffed” and struggling to execute key oversight requirements.
Then came DOGE…………………………………………………………………………………….
Connery fears the strain and staffing problems could combine to disastrous effect.
“When you take an inexperienced or an understaffed workforce and you combine it with old facilities and a push to get things done – that is a recipe for disaster,” Connery said. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/18/nuclear-weapons-woes-nuke-agency-hit-by-doge-and-safety-worries/83621978007/
The US buried millions of gallons of wartime nuclear waste – Doge cuts could wreck the cleanup
Guardian, Andrew Buncombe in Richland, Washington. 16 May 25
Hanford made the plutonium for US atomic bombs, and its radioactive waste must be dealt with. Enter Elon Musk
Andrew Buncombe in Richland, WashingtonThu 15 May 2025 23.00 AESTShare
In the bustling rural city of Richland, in south-eastern Washington, the signs of a nuclear past are all around.
A small museum explains its role in the Manhattan Project and its “singular mission – [to] develop the world’s first atomic bomb before the enemy might do the same”. The city’s high school sports team is still known as the Bombers, with a logo that consists of the letter R set with a mushroom cloud.
Richland lies just 30 miles from the Hanford nuclear site, a sprawling plant that produced the plutonium for America’s atomic weapons during the second world war – and later the bomb dropped over Nagasaki. Over the decades, thousands of people in the Tri-Cities area of southern Washington worked at the plant, which shuttered in 1989.
Residents have long spearheaded an operation to deal with 56m gallons of nuclear waste left behind in dozens of underground tanks – a cleanup that is expected to cost half a trillion dollars and may not be completed until 2100. The government has called it “one of the largest and most expensive environmental cleanup projects worldwide”.
In recent weeks, what has already been a costly and painstakingly slow process has come under renewed scrutiny, following an exodus of experts from the Department of Energy (DoE) that is overseeing the cleanup being executed by thousands of contract workers.
According to local media, several dozen staff, who reportedly include managers, scientists and safety experts, have taken early retirement or been fired as part of a broader government reduction overseen by Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency”. The government has refused to provide a specific figure for how many people involved with cleanup efforts have left. The top DoE manager at the Hanford site, Brian Vance, who had many years of experience, resigned at the end of March without giving a reason.
The changes have thrown the communities around the Hanford plant into limbo. And while the Department of Energy has said that only six staff have been fired, and reiterated its commitment to the cleanup, that hasn’t managed to assuage locals’ concerns.
Those raising the alarm include politicians from both parties, environmental activists, and Indigenous communities who have historically owned the land on which the 560 sq mile (1,450 sq km) site sits.
The US senator for Washington Patty Murray said workers were already understaffed, and that cutting further positions was “reckless”.
“There is nothing ‘efficient’ about indiscriminately firing thousands upon thousands of workers in red and blue states whose work is badly needed,” the Democrat said.
Dan Newhouse, the local Republican congressman is similarly concerned. “A strong, well trained federal workforce is essential,” he wrote in a weekly newsletter to constituents.
Concerns have also been raised by some over the difficulty former workers face in making medical compensation claims to the government for everything from cancer to acute pulmonary disease linked to their time at the plant.
Taken together, there is fresh anxiety in a community, where many are still living with the health and environmental effects of Hanford.
Richland, part of the Tri-Cities, was obtained by the army in 1943 to house workers engaged in top-secret efforts to produce plutonium used in the world’s first nuclear explosion – the-so-called “Trinity” device tested near Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1945. Though the city was returned to the public a decade later, it can still feel like a company town.
To get anywhere near what is known as Hanford’s B-reactor, the world’s first full-scale plutonium production reactor, you need to sign up for an official tour. Yet a view of its grey, single tower, looming from the hillside, can be seen from state route 24, close to the Columbia River.
Those expressing concern about the federal government downsizing include local Indigenous groups who historically owned the land where the site is located and were pushed off it by the government. The Hanford plant area contains the location of several sacred sites, among them Gable Mountain, which were used for ceremonies, and the area of Rattlesnake Mountain, or Lalíik, which has for centuries been used to hunt elk.
The site is also located close to the Yakama Indian Reservation, home to 11,000 people, and the tribe has long pushed to be central to decisions about the cleanup and what it is eventually used for. The tribe recently signed a deal to carry out their first elk hunt in the area for seven decades.
“One of the biggest fears is that without proper manpower, there might not be a very good crew for the cleanup of the property,” says Gerald Lewis, chairman of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation. “Without this cleanup, that’s been happening for a number of years, we’re afraid of a nuclear mishap.”
Dr Elizabeth McClure, a health data specialist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, is currently conducting research in the communities around Hanford. She says there is a history of government-led cover-ups over the years at the site, including what is known as “the Green Run”, the intentional release of 8,000 so-called curies of iodine-1 into the atmosphere in 1949……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/15/us-government-nuclear-waste-doge
Kingston Fossil Plant and Oakridge Nuclear Facility – an unholy alliance of radioactive pollution,
While no one was killed by the 2008 coal ash spill itself, dozens of workers have died from illnesses that emerged during or after the cleanup. Hundreds of other workers are sick from respiratory, cardiac, neurological, and blood disorders, as well as cancers.
The apparent mixing of fossil fuel and nuclear waste streams underscores the long relationship between the Kingston and Oak Ridge facilities.
Between the 1950s and 1980s, so much cesium-137 and mercury was released into the Clinch from Oak Ridge that the Department of Energy, or DOE, said that the river and its feeder stream “served as pipelines for contaminants.” Yet TVA and its contractors, with the blessing of both state and federal regulators, classified all 4 million tons of material they recovered from the Emory as “non-hazardous.”
A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency analysis confirms that the ash that was left in the river was “found to be commingled with contamination from the Department of Energy (DOE) Oak Ridge Reservation site.
For nearly a century, both Oak Ridge and TVA treated their waste with less care than most families treat household garbage. It was often dumped into unlined, and sometimes unmarked, pits that continue to leak into waterways. For decades, Oak Ridge served as the Southeast’s burial ground for nuclear waste. It was stored within watersheds and floodplains that fed the Clinch River. But exactly where and how this waste was buried has been notoriously hard to track.
A Legacy of Contamination, How the Kingston coal ash spill unearthed a nuclear nightmare, Grist By Austyn Gaffney on Dec 
15, 2020 This story was published in partnership with the Daily Yonder.
In 2009, App Thacker was hired to run a dredge along the Emory River in eastern Tennessee. Picture an
industrialized fleet modeled after Huck Finn’s raft: Nicknamed Adelyn, Kylee, and Shirley, the blue, flat-bottomed boats used mechanical arms called cutterheads to dig up riverbeds and siphon the excavated sediment into shoreline canals. The largest dredge, a two-story behemoth called the Sandpiper, had pipes wide enough to swallow a push lawnmower. Smaller dredges like Thacker’s scuttled behind it, scooping up excess muck like fish skimming a whale’s corpse. They all had the same directive: Remove the thick grey sludge that clogged the Emory.
The sludge was coal ash, the waste leftover when coal is burned to generate electricity. Twelve years ago this month, more than a billion gallons of wet ash burst from a holding pond monitored by the region’s major utility, the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA. Thacker, a heavy machinery operator with Knoxville’s 917 union, became one of hundreds of people that TVA contractors hired to clean up the spill. For about four years, Thacker spent every afternoon driving 35 miles from his home to arrive in time for his 5 p.m. shift, just as the makeshift overhead lights illuminating the canals of ash flicked on.
Dredging at night was hard work. The pump inside the dredge clogged repeatedly, so Thacker took off his shirt and entered water up to his armpits to remove rocks, tree limbs, tires, and other debris, sometimes in below-freezing temperatures. Soon, ringworm-like sores crested along his arms, interwoven with his fading red and blue tattoos. Thacker’s supervisors gave him a cream for the skin lesions, and he began wearing long black cow-birthing gloves while he unclogged pumps. While Thacker knew that the water was contaminated — that was the point of the dredging — he felt relatively safe. After all, TVA was one of the oldest and most respected employers in the state, with a sterling reputation for worker safety.
Then, one night, the dredging stopped.
Sometime between December 2009 and January 2010, roughly halfway through the final, 500-foot-wide section of the Emory designated for cleanup, operators turned off the pumps that sucked the ash from the river. For a multi-billion dollar remediation project, this order was unprecedented. The dredges had been operating 24/7 in an effort to clean up the disaster area as quickly as possible, removing roughly 3,000 cubic yards of material — almost enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool — each day. But official reports from TVA show that the dredging of the Emory encountered unusually high levels of contamination: Sediment samples showed that mercury levels were three times higher in the river than they were in coal ash from the holding pond that caused the disaster.
Then there was the nuclear waste. Continue reading
1 This Month
5 March -Online – Reversing nuclearization:
From nuclear weapons in Belarus and NATO host countries to a European-Nuclear-Weapon Free Zone
11am-12:30pm Eastern Time USA / 5pm-6:30pm CET
of the week – Advocating for a
nuclear free beach – https://www.samuellawrencefoundation.org/
The Samuel Lawrence Foundation advocates for a Nuclear Waste Free Beach at San Onofre, join us and take action!
10 March A LIVE WEBINAR THE REAL EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR POWER
What the Industry Isn’t Telling Us
1:00 PM Mountain, 2 pm Central, 3 pm Eastern. Live on the Keepers of the Water Facebook page
18 March Webinar @ 1 PM EST: An Assessment of SMR Projects: The Case of Canada
register for the zoom:
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of the week – STOP SMALL MODULAR REACTORS IN CANADA
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