In USA’s economic and health crisis – nuclear weapons spending is booming
Roughly 50,000 Americans are now involved in making nuclear warheads at eight principal sites stretching from California to South Carolina. And the three principal U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories — located in Los Alamos and Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif. — have said they are adding thousands of new workers at a time when the overall federal workforce is shrinking.
“the insane idea that after a pandemic and dealing with climate change and in an economic crisis in which people are struggling with massive inequality that we are going to spend this much money modernizing every last piece of our nuclear infrastructure — that would be a failure, a failure of policy and a failure of imagination.”
But major defense contractors and their employees — including many of those making nuclear weapons or running the national laboratories where they are designed — have long influenced budget choices by helping to finance elections of the members of Congress who approve spending for that work. The industry’s donations in the current election cycle to members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees alone had reached $9.4 million as of mid-October; of that amount, the two chairmen took in a total of at least $802,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group. These tallies don’t include separate donations by lawyers or lobbyists.
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While the country has been preoccupied with the COVID-19 pandemic, economic decline and the election, President Trump’s administration quietly and steadily steered America’s nuclear weapons industry to its largest expansion since the end of the Cold War, increasing spending on such arms by billions of dollars with bipartisan congressional support.
President-elect Joe Biden may embrace other priorities as he confronts the pandemic, tries to steer the country out of a recession, and is pressured to address social programs neglected under the Trump administration, as well as a ballooning deficit created by the 2017 Trump tax cuts and COVID-19 stimulus spending. But the creation of a larger and more modern nuclear warhead complex of factories, laboratories and related businesses is already playing out around the country, despite slowdowns in other federal projects due to the pandemic Four factories in Texas, South Carolina, Tennessee and New Mexico dedicated to producing warheads are being modernized. Four existing warheads are being substantially rebuilt with modern parts, on top of another such upgrade — costing $3.5 billion — that was completed last year. This pace compares with an average modernization of one type of warhead at a time during the Obama administration. “Over the next five years, the [nuclear weapons-related] costs start going up dramatically,” Continue reading |
USS Calhoun County sailors dumped thousands of tons of radioactive waste into ocean
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They asked the dying Pasco County man about his Navy service a half-century before. He kept talking about the steel barrels. They haunted him, sea monsters plaguing an old sailor.”We turned off all the lights,” George Albernaz testified at a 2005 Department of Veterans Affairs hearing, “and … pretend that we were broken down and … we would take these barrels and having only steel-toed shoes … no protection gear, and proceed to roll these barrels into the ocean, 300 barrels at a trip.”
Not all of them sank. A few pushed back against the frothing ocean, bobbing in the waves like a drowning man. Then shots would ring out from a sailor with a rifle at the fantail. And the sea would claim the bullet-riddled drum.
Back inside the ship, Albernaz marked in his diary what the sailors dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. He knew he wasn’t supposed to keep such a record, but it was important to Albernaz that people know he had spoken the truth, even when the truth sounded crazy. For up to 15 years after World War II, the crew of Albernaz’s ship, the USS Calhoun County, dumped thousands of tons of radioactive waste into the Atlantic Ocean, often without heeding the simplest health precautions, according to Navy documents and Tampa Bay Times interviews with more than 50 former crewmen. Albernaz began a battle for his life in 1988 when part of his brain began to die, mystifying doctors who eventually concluded the rare ailment might be linked to radiation. He filed a VA claim for benefits in 2001 that was repeatedly rejected, often with tortured government reasoning.
The VA and Navy told Albernaz he was not exposed to radiation on the Calhoun County, a vessel the Navy ordered sunk in 1963 because it was radioactive. The VA ignored Navy documents discovered by a former congressional aide proving the ship’s radioactivity, telling Albernaz they were “unsubstantiated.” And the Navy today points to Cold War records that are incomplete and unreliable as proof crewmen were not exposed to dangerous radiation. The Navy and VA’s insistence that atomic waste on the Calhoun County was not dangerous comes 15 years after the VA linked the death of a crewman who served with Albernaz to radiation…….
Up to 1,000 men served on the Calhoun County in the years it dumped radioactive waste, a practice that continued until about 1960 — two years before the ship’s decommissioning. It’s impossible to know how many suffered unusual health problems after they left the ship. The VA and Navy never followed up on their health. Some got sick and never filed VA claims. And after more than a half-century, much of the crew has died………
The opening of the Atomic Age brought a vexing problem — how to dispose of radioactive waste. The Atomic Energy Commission, which then managed most aspects of U.S. atomic energy policy, settled on a cheap, convenient fix: ocean dumping. The Calhoun County soon became the only Navy ship on the East Coast dumping radioactive waste. The containers looked like ordinary 55-gallon steel drums. Nobody on the ship was quite sure what was in them.
They arrived by the hundreds by train and truck at the ship’s home port at Sandy Hook Bay, N.J. or the ship picked them up at Floyd Bennett Field on Long Island. Less often, waste was picked up at other ports, including Boston. The hottest waste came from Floyd Bennett. At times, the barrels were marked with color-coded dots or a painted X. The “red dot” barrels were said to be the most dangerous.
Not that it mattered. Few if any of the crewmen, according to interviews, received any special training on handling the waste. They said they handled the “red dot” barrels the same as all the rest. Much of the waste, which was packed in concrete, came from Brookhaven National Laboratory, a government research facility on Long Island that had a reactor and generated radioactive material. Several shipments emitted 17 rems per hour of radioactivity even after the waste was encased in concrete, Calhoun County‘s deck logs show. That is the equivalent of about 1,700 typical chest X-rays. Two sailors would place each barrel on its side and roll it to the edge of the ship. The Calhoun County, with its flat, shallow bottom, always shifted crazily in the waves, back and forth, a metronome marking time for a dangerous waltz.
As the ship tilted in their direction, the men released their barrel with a push and let gravity help take it overboard. The ship carried the waste out off the continental shelf several times a year to waters of varying depths, usually 6,000 to 12,000 feet. The designated dumping areas were a full day’s trip up to 200 miles out to sea, though several men said in interviews that the ship would dump much closer to the coast when the weather was bad. After they handled the barrels, the men went below deck to drink coffee or eat.
No documents appear to exist showing what exactly the Navy dumped. Deck logs list dumping coordinates, tonnage handled and drum radiation levels — but often, even that information is missing. And from 1946 to 1953, the Calhoun County‘s officers were not recording any dumps in deck logs at all………
On the Calhoun County, according to documents and interviews, radiation was neither feared nor respected. “We had no supervision,” said Bob Berwick, 82, of Laguna Niguel, Calif., an officer on the ship in 1952 and 1953. “We were on our own.”…….
None of the crew interviewed for this story recall getting special clothing or gear during dumping operations. An exception were the cotton gloves provided to the crew in the early to mid-1950s. “We threw the gloves overboard into the ocean when we were done with them,” said Richard Tkaczyk, 85, of Buffalo, N.Y., who served on the ship from 1949 to 1951. Several men said they were told to shower and take off clothing for washing after dumps. But for much of the ship’s history, this was not done, according to crewmen.
Albernaz told the VA in 2007 he recalled a trip when an AEC worker came through the crew quarters with a Geiger counter. “It would go off like a machine-gun and he would say to us, ‘Okay. Get your pillow, blanket and mattress. We’re moving you to the tank deck,’ ” Albernaz said. But the tank deck was under barrels, too. “So actually, there was really no place on that ship that was safe,” Albernaz said……….
the ship was radioactive. On June 5, 1956, according to Navy memos, Naval Research Laboratory technicians took radiation readings on the Calhoun County before barrels were loaded on its deck. Parts of the ship were radioactive, a memo to the Third Naval District commandant said. The ship’s captain, Herbert Hern, was ordered to “decontaminate affected areas” as soon as possible. The discovery prompted a more thorough examination of dumping operations. Navy brass did not like what they found. The ship’s handling of this dangerous waste was sloppy, haphazard………..
George Albernaz, then 22, was excited to be on the Calhoun County as its newest quartermaster. He was born in Fall River, Mass., and had hardly been away from home. He thought he was going to be part of the Navy’s storied amphibious force. He took a diary with him and recounted his adventure in the words of a wide-eyed sailor. “This is the story of the most fascinating experience of my life … doing a job I never dreamed existed, serving on a ship whose days as a man of war are but a story in the past but today she is engaged in a service equally important as any fighting ship in the Navy,” he wrote. It wasn’t long before Albernaz began keeping a different kind of diary. He titled this new log “Nuclear Waste Dumping Diary.”
Jan. 20 1957: “371 tons atomic waste.” Feb. 7, 1957: “368 tons atom waste.” Nov. 13, 1957: “299 (tons) poison gas (and) A.W.” One of Albernaz’s last entries was on June 12, 1958: “200 tons. Spec. weapons,” or special weapons. That was the day, Albernaz later told his wife, that he helped dispose of an atomic bomb. The Calhoun County sailed out of Norfolk, Va. with two giant crates. The ship’s log noted it dumped “confidential material” at 2:31 a.m.
Albernaz’s wife said he told her about that trip. He said the crew was told the crates contained two atomic bombs. Other sailors interviewed said the occasional dumping of disassembled atomic bombs occurred several times in its history. • • •…….. On March 10, 1958, one of the Calhoun County‘s crew, Harvey Lucas, was ordered to a Navy hospital. He was in pain and vomiting a brownish liquid, hospital records show. Two months later, the ship’s muster rolls show, Albernaz was hospitalized for two weeks. His wife said he later told her he had severe nausea. The two men were among a handful that year with long hospitalizations, records show. Albernaz later said doctor’s diagnosed them with stomach ulcers………..
A Dec. 13 memo by the chief of the Navy’s Bureau of Ships doubted radiation on the Calhoun County could ever be reduced to levels then considered safe. The memo noted the Navy had never been able to decontaminate a radioactive ship. “Complete paint stripping and sandblasting have failed to accomplish this (on the Calhoun County) and in the cases of ships contaminated in nuclear weapons tests,” the memo said. So the Navy ordered the Calhoun County sunk……….
Navy officer George Self, 83, of Pahrump, Nev., got the job to ready the Calhoun County for sinking. …………
Self did not go out on the second trip, so he is unsunsure how the ship met its end. The Navy said demolition charges sent the old LST to the bottom.
The years after his 1960 Navy discharge were cruel to Calhoun County crewman Harvey Lucas.
Lucas, a Denver man who spent more than three years on the ship, had always been suspicious of the Calhoun County‘s mission even while still a deckhand. Like Albernaz, Lucas tried to document the ship’s work. He stole a radiation badge and took pictures of the barrels. “He documented everything,” said daughter Jeanine Lucas. His family said he wondered if the work had been far more dangerous than the Navy let on. Those concerns could only have been stoked when his uncle, George Dutcher, who served on the ship with Lucas, died of cancer in the late 1960s still in his 40s. Lucas left the Navy and developed osteoporosis. It was so severe that a doctor said he had the bones of a 95-year-old, his family told the VA. He and his wife had five children born with birth defects or health problems. Cancer took Lucas, too. He died on June 17, 1985, at age 47 of leiomyosarcoma, an aggressive soft-tissue cancer. It has been documented in women who in the 1950s and 1960s received radiation treatment for excessive menstrual bleeding. Damage from the disease was so bad a funeral home couldn’t embalm him. Lucas was buried in a body bag. Lucas, and then his wife after his death, battled the VA for benefits, arguing the radiation caused his cancer and brittle bones. The VA repeatedly denied a link, at first saying the ship hadn’t carried radioactive waste………….. William Kemper, a retired Naval physicist, estimated Lucas had been exposed to radiation five times greater than the legal limit when he served. Kemper told the VA, “it seems most likely that he had ingested some cobalt 90 or other (radioactive) waste in . . . his duties.” In 1998, the VA finally ruled Lucas’s death was caused by radiation he was exposed to on the Calhoun County and approved benefits for his widow………… Civilian workers at Brookhaven, the lab that packaged much of the waste dumped by the Calhoun County, found it difficult to prove their on-the-job exposure to radiation in the Cold War led to cancers some of them suffered. Records were too incomplete. Some workers were never monitored. o in 2010, the federal government decided they would no longer have to prove their specific radiation exposure to get financial compensation and medical care. If they worked at the lab at least 250 days from 1947 to 1979 and were diagnosed with one of 22 radiation-related cancers, they qualified. Congress protects military personnel in much the same way. But none of the men who served on the Calhoun County are eligible for automatic VA benefits for radiation illnesses because they did not participate in underwater or atmospheric atomic tests and related activities, the government says. Thus, the crewmen do not meet their country’s definition of “Atomic Veteran.” https://www.tampabay.com/news/military/veterans/the-atomic-sailors/2157927/?fbclid=IwAR2LJbkpgGf3wFer8x96o_60n2EMtJ8hS-JREmkbBp_EkER9sl_iAxJuDkA |
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Chinese demands on nuclear power investment complicate EU talks
Chinese demands on nuclear power investment complicate EU talks – WiWo, Reuters Staff BERLIN (Reuters) 23 De 20, – Negotiations between the European Union and China on an investment agreement have stoche reported on Wednesday.
The issue of nuclear power is controversial among EU countries because such invealled at the last stretch because China is raising additional demands on nuclear energy, German magazine WirtschaftsWstments could put sensitive infrastructure under Chinese control.
“China wants to invest in European nuclear power plants and use Chinese technology in this area,” WirtschaftsWoche cited EU sources as saying.
During the negotiations, China had indicated to its European counterparts that it viewed its own technology in this field as more advanced, the report said
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Several EU member states reject nuclear energy or have decided to withdraw from the technology within the next few years.
The EU and China aim to reach an investment accord by the end of the year that would grant European companies greater access to the Chinese market, according to German and EU officials.
The EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment would put most EU companies on an equal footing in China, potentially a big step in repairing Sino-European ties after the coronavirus outbreak in China and Beijing’s crackdown on dissent in the former British colony of Hong
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USA’s $128 billion next-generation submarine program at risk of cost overruns
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Next-Generation U.S. Nuclear Sub Facing Cost Overruns, Delays, Bloomberg, Anthony Capaccio December 24 2020, — The U.S. Navy’s plan to deliver the first vessel in its $128 billion next-generation submarine program on time is at risk by a dependence on inexperienced contractors with spotty quality control track records, according to a congressional watchdog.
The Government Accountability Office, in a restricted Nov. 6 report to the Pentagon and congressional defense committees, said the design contract for the first vessel in the Columbia-class sub fleet being built by General Dynamics Corp. could have a cost overrun of as much as 14%, or $384 million.
The GAO report outlines in detail the myriad challenges facing contractors and the Navy in the design and construction of a 12-vessel program that advocates say is most survivable leg of the U.S. nuclear triad, comprising land, air and sea-based warheads. Trump’s 5-Year Budget Plan for Navy Would Add 82 New Vessels (2) As an example, the report says that General Dynamics “continues to identify problems with non-destructive testing and welding across the supplier base, including suppliers responsible for piping, valves and large mechanical equipment.” More broadly, the report signals the difficulties the Navy will face in trying to carry out the Trump administration’s vision for a 355-to-500 vessel fleet by 2045 up from 297 today.
Those difficulties will be one of the first defense-procurement challenges confronting the Biden administration when it takes office next month amid a U.S. economy hobbled by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Columbia’s five-year plan envisions $30 billion being spent on the program through 2026, increasing from $4.7 billion planned for next year to $8.2 billion in 2026.
But first, several quality-control issues have to be addressed………….. https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/next-generation-u-s-nuclear-sub-facing-cost-overruns-delays : https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/next-generation-u-s-nuclear-sub-facing-cost-overruns-delays
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Following huge bribery scandal, Energy Harbor still manipulating to keep nuclear bailout law
Energy Harbor seeks option of turning down HB6 nuclear bailout money, Cleveland.com Dec 21, 2020; Ohio. Energy Harbor is lobbying for Ohio lawmakers to let it choose whether it should be eligible for House Bill 6 nuclear bailout money,
COLUMBUS, Ohio—Energy Harbor is lobbying for state lawmakers to allow it to decide whether to accept more than $1 billion in House Bill 6 bailout money for its two nuclear power plants because a federal regulatory ruling might otherwise make the subsidies a liability, according to a top lawmaker.
It’s still unclear whether legislators will agree to the proposal, which is being crafted by House Majority Leader Bill Seitz, or whether they will pass any reforms to HB6 at all on Tuesday, expected to be the final day of the current legislative session.But it shows that Energy Harbor, a former subsidiary of FirstEnergy, is working behind the scenes to influence what reforms might be made to HB6, which is at the center of what authorities say is the largest bribery scheme in Ohio history. Federal authorities say $60 million in FirstEnergy bribery money was used to pass the law and keep it on the books.
Under the 2019 law, Energy Harbor’s Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants are set to get $150 million per year from ratepayers from 2021 until 2027. Energy Harbor officials have said without the bailout, they will have to close the plants, though they’ve offered no financial data to back their claims.
But after the HB6 scandal broke last summer, GOP lawmakers have been working on possible changes to the law — including requiring yearly audits to see how much money the nuclear plants need to break even, then adjusting accordingly the amount of subsidies paid to Energy Harbor.
House and Senate leaders are still working to craft an HB6 reform plan that has the votes to pass both chambers. The main reform plan, House Bill 798, would delay the start of the bailout until 2022 to provide time for an audit to be conducted.
When asked whether lawmakers were close to a deal, Seitz said, “That’s kind of above my pay grade.”
“Energy Harbor is a corporation under investigation for orchestrating the largest bribery scandal in Ohio history,” Leland said, “and now Republicans want to let it decide whether to take $1.3 billion straight out of the pockets of everyday Ohioans.” https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/12/energy-harbor-seeks-option-of-turning-down-hb6-nuclear-bailout-money.html
Major Japan life insurers shun investing in nuclear weapons-linked firms
 Major Japan life insurers shun investing in nuclear weapons-linked firms, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/12/14/national/major-japan-life-insurers-investing-nuclear-weapons-linked-firms/ 14 Dec 20, Four major Japanese life insurers do not invest in or extend loans to producers of nuclear weapons or companies related to them, Kyodo News learned Saturday, as part of their efforts toward socially responsible investing.The revelation comes as various lenders in Japan, Europe and the United States have refrained from investing in companies involved in the nuclear weapons industry.It also precedes the entry into force in January of a United Nations treaty that will ban such weapons.
The four life insurers which managed a combined ¥151 trillion in assets in fiscal 2019 — Nippon Life Insurance Co., Dai-ichi Life Insurance Co., Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co. and Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Co. — did not disclose lists of targeted companies. The restraint shown by the life insurers reflects a growing trend toward valuing environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in making investment decisions. It is believed that such investing strategies will give a boost to the advancement of green technologies while cutting funding for developing nuclear weapons. Three of the insurers, with Nippon Life being an exception, say they do not invest in companies involved in the maintenance of nuclear warheads or manufacturing of ballistic missiles, in addition to those making nuclear weapons. According to PAX, an international nongovernmental organization for peace, U.S. Lockheed Martin Corp., which develops the long-range Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile, is among such companies. More than 300 lenders including major Japanese banks invested a total of $748 billion in companies involved in the nuclear weapons industry between January 2017 and January 2019, according to the NGO. In April, Dai-ichi Life published a basic policy that excludes weapons producers from its portfolio. The company told Kyodo News that companies linked to nuclear weapons raise concerns from the viewpoint of ESG. Meiji Yasuda said it does not invest in or extend loans to companies that are found to have links to nuclear and other inhumane weapons based on undisclosed internal rules. Categorizing companies related to nuclear weapons as “socially problematic,” Fukoku has excluded them from its investible universe in line with its own guidelines adopted in February 2019. Nippon Life, meanwhile, said it does not invest in shares or bonds of nuclear weapons producers. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will become the first international pact outlawing the development, testing, possession and use of nuclear weapons, though the world’s major nuclear powers have not joined it. Japan, the only country to have suffered a nuclear attack, has not taken part, to the disappointment of many atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as it is protected under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Sumitomo Life Insurance Co., which does not have guidelines on investing in nuclear weapons companies, said it will consider exercising restraint as investing in such companies would hurt its reputation once the nuclear ban treaty takes effect. |
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USA government resists paying compensation to nuclear workers made ill by ionising radiation
the labor department ignored overwhelming evidence that her husband became sick from working at SRS
the system has become hard to navigate, with the government often fighting tooth-and-nail against the workers they were supposed to help
More than 2,200 workers had spent five years or more going through the exhaustive claims process, according to McClatchy’s 2015 “Irradiated’’ series. Some workers who filed for benefits died while awaiting decisions from the government, McClatchy found.
Death and despair. How the feds refused to help a nuclear worker’s family in SC, The State,
BY SAMMY FRETWELL, December18, 2020 Every time Jerry Bolen came home from a construction job at the local nuclear weapons complex, he took off his dusty coveralls before stepping into the house he shared with his wife and children.
It was a precaution against tracking hazardous, radioactive materials into the family’s home in rural Barnwell County, says his widow, recalling how she would gingerly place the contaminated garment into the washing machine.
But while the effort protected the couple’s three kids, Jerry Bolen suffered. The long days he spent working at the Savannah River Site, exposed to chemicals and radiation, eventually killed him, his widow says.
Now, an exasperated Carolyn Bolen has sued the U.S. Department of Labor following a 13-year battle with the government over whether the family should receive compensation for the cancer that took Jerry Bolen’s life in 2006.
Her story is a familiar one. Many people who worked at SRS have complained for years that a federal compensation program for sick workers and their families is a bureaucratic morass that takes too long to maneuver and often doesn’t provide the benefits they were promised.
In Carolyn Bolen’s case, however, she was turned down so many times for benefits through the federal program that she exhausted all her appeals, prompting the federal lawsuit, she and her lawyers say.
The Nov. 20 suit against the labor department is among a handful of cases in South Carolina by ex-SRS workers and their families who were denied benefits in recent years through the federal compensation program, said Bolen’s lawyers, who specialize in helping sick workers.
Bolen’s attorneys said the labor department ignored overwhelming evidence that her husband became sick from working at SRS. They are seeking $275,000, the maximum she can get under the program. Other suits are expected as more workers or their loved ones are turned down by the government, said attorneys Warren Johnson and Josh Fester.
The federal government launched the compensation program two decades ago after conceding that employment at nuclear weapons sites likely made some of the workers ill. It was designed to help former employees who got sick working in U.S. nuclear sites during the Cold War.
To receive compensation, workers or their families must show that radiation on the site was as likely as not to have caused cancer or a handful of other ailments. Or, in some cases, they must show that people worked on the site during times when records of exposure are difficult to find.
The nuclear compensation program provides benefits to sick workers, but in some cases, covers their families after the person has passed away, such as with Bolen.
Unfortunately, the system has become hard to navigate, with the government often fighting tooth-and-nail against the workers they were supposed to help, Johnson said. Taking legal action to force federal compensation shouldn’t be necessary, said Johnson and Fester, whose law practice has represented sick SRS workers for years.
“This was supposed to be a way to make up for, or show our gratitude to these patriotic workers,’’ Johnson said of the compensation program. “They gave their health for our sake for the Cold War. We can at least offset the burden, by giving financial security, knowing they aren’t leaving a burden on their wives and children.’’………..
In 2015, the labor department told The State and the McClatchy Co. the program had approved more than 40 percent of the claims made by nuclear workers and their families, far more than the 25 percent the government anticipated when the program launched in 2001. The labor department said Friday the approval rate nationally is now more than 50 percent.
Even so, many claims don’t get approved and the wait for answers can be time-consuming. More than 2,200 workers had spent five years or more going through the exhaustive claims process, according to McClatchy’s 2015 “Irradiated’’ series. Some workers who filed for benefits died while awaiting decisions from the government, McClatchy found.
Earlier this month, a federal panel considered a proposal, advocated by Johnson, that could make it easier for thousands of workers and their families to receive benefits. But the board put off a decision until next year…………
he never complained about the long hours or said much about hazardous conditions at the site. That was important to the federal government because, during the Cold War, much of the work on the Savannah River Site needed to be kept confidential, family members say.
Tim Bolen, his son, said he never knew his father worked at SRS until just a few weeks before his death. But Carolyn Bolen did.
She remembers the days her husband came home with his coveralls coated in “white stuff’’ that she says came from the Savannah River Site. Bolen never knew what the material was, but she was always wary of the potential danger. And her husband occasionally offered clues that the white material came from SRS, she said……….
The site, a 310-square-mile complex, contains an array of nuclear production areas with some of the most toxic substances in the world.
Among them is a tank farm, which houses nuclear waste deadly enough to rapidly kill a person directly exposed to it. Carolyn Bolen’s lawsuit says her husband worked for a while in the tank farm area and another section where radioactive material is used.
The Savannah River Site, located near the Georgia border outside Aiken, was part of the national effort to produce atomic weapons between World War II and the early 1990s. Nationally, the effort employed some 600,000 people, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office……
After working periodically at SRS through the years, Jerry Bolen began to feel an uncomfortable sensation in the late 1990s that he couldn’t shake.
Something was wrong with his bladder. During trips to the bathroom, bloody urine flowed into the toilet and a sharp sting caused him to gasp. The pain was so bad, at times, that Carolyn Bolen could hear her husband’s cries throughout the house.
“He just screamed for mercy,’’ she said.
The discomfort sent him to a doctor, where the family learned the man who had faithfully kept a roof over their heads and food on the table was gravely ill. He had bladder and prostate cancer…….
In August 2006, Jerry “Little Mac’’ Bolen died at the age of 60, leaving his wife and family wondering how the once robust man could slip from their world. It didn’t seem right that a man so young and energetic had become so sick, family members say. …….
MISSING RECORDS
Jerry Bolen’s time at SRS, and his devotion to his family, haven’t impressed federal officials who have considered whether his family is eligible for benefits through the labor department’s sick worker compensation program. They’re skeptical an award to his widow is warranted, saying they need more evidence.
An obstacle some workers face is gaining access to records that could show there is at least a 50 percent chance radiation caused cancer they developed after working at the Savannah River Site, a complex developed in the early 1950s.
Many records either can’t be located, are inaccurate or don’t exist, meaning workers can’t prove how many days they worked on site, or the amount of radioactive material they might have been exposed to.
That’s a particular concern for subcontractors like Bolen, who did not work directly for the government or for the major contractors hired by the U.S. Department of Energy to run the site. Subcontractors often were local construction companies brought in to do specific jobs.
Johnson and Fester said records of subcontractors often are harder to find than those for energy department workers.
In Bolen’s case, the labor department turned down the family’s claim for benefits because “the submitted documentation does not establish covered SRS employment for the employee,’’ according to the federal lawsuit Carolyn Bolen filed. In declining comment on the Bolen case, a Department of Labor spokeswoman said Friday that claims can be turned down for a variety of reasons…..
Bolen’s lawsuit, however, said the labor department simply dismissed credible evidence that would prove the case. Jerry Bolen, for instance, worked with acquaintances or for his brothers’ construction businesses in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, according to five affidavits filed in Carolyn Bolen’s federal lawsuit last month.
Those affidavits, provided by family and friends who worked with Jerry Bolen, were combined with SRS identification badges issued in his name, and records of radiation doses the family ran across in his belongings. Some material was unearthed and provided to the government after the labor department had initially denied requests for compensation.
Despite the evidence, the Department of Labor ruled against the Bolen family’s request for reconsideration this past summer. Her case had been turned down at least three times before 2020.
“The department simply ignored additional evidence that Mr. Bolen was present at the site before 1968 and after Jan. 24, 1969,’’ the lawsuit said. “Mrs. Bolen’s request for reconsideration further asserts the department misapplied the law in determining covered employment by holding Mrs. Bolen to an impossible burden of proof.’’
While the Bolens have been turned down repeatedly in seeking compensation, Johnson and Fester are hoping the lawsuit will succeed. Fester said one of the five other cases the firm has filed resulted in a verdict that would have required payment to a sick worker. But the worker died before benefits were dispersed.
In the meantime, Fester and Johnson are pushing the federal government to approve a proposal that could open up benefits to thousands of people who worked at the Savannah River Site.
Under federal law, the government can acknowledge that it is too difficult to find records during certain years that would prove a person’s case for compensation for radiation-related cancer. As a result, the government can declare periods of years free of the need to provide records showing that a person likely got cancer from working at SRS.
The government already has done that for the time from 1953 to fall 1972. Some ex-workers at SRS, who were employed there for at least 250 days between these times, are eligible for benefits without producing extensive documentation about exposure to radioactive materials.
Now, a federal advisory board is considering whether to extend that to cover up to 1990 for some types of workers at SRS. It’s clear that Jerry Bolen worked well above 250 days between 1972 and 1990 at the site, so it’s possible his family could gain compensation if the time period is expanded to 1990, Johnson and Fester said.
A decision, under consideration for years, could be rendered as early as February if the federal advisory board recommends expanding the period. Such a decision ultimately would be made by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the labor department said Friday.
Carolyn Bolen said a favorable decision — and her lawsuit — would mean a lot to many people who need help after they or their loved ones got sick at SRS.
“There are a lot of poor people in this world, and they don’t have the money like the president or the people in the White House,’’ she said. “I ain’t just talking about myself. There are people with needs.’’
This story has been updated with information provided Friday Dec. 18, 2020 by the U.S. Department of Labor. https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article247828620.html
The cover-up of workers’ illnesss in radioactively polluted clean-up of Kingston coal ash spill
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.
………………………………….The apparent mixing of fossil fuel and nuclear waste streams underscores the long relationship between the 
Kingston and Oak Ridge facilities………… .
……….In 2017, a former chemist named Dan Nichols stumbled upon a news story that revealed the existence of the additional health problems TVA feared. High levels of uranium had been measured in the urine of a former cleanup worker named Craig Wilkinson. Like Thacker, Wilkinson had worked the night shift. After dredges piped the coal ash back onshore, Wilkinson used heavy equipment to scoop, flip, and dry the wet ash along the Ball Field.
Although Wilkinson worked at the Kingston site for less than a year, he quickly developed health issues, including chronic sinus infections and breathing problems that eventually led to a double-lung transplant. Frustrated by his sudden decline in health, Wilkinson shelled out over $1,000 for a toxicology test because he wanted to know what occupational hazards might be lingering in his body.
After reading Wilkinson’s story, Nichols sat stunned. Though he was not associated with the spill, he’d been unable to shake his obsession with the Kingston disaster. Nichols had worked as a Memphis-based field chemist for a wastewater technology company, and he was used to studying lab reports on industrial water supplies and samples. For years he’d been trying to solve a mystery that no one else seemed to be aware of: why Kingston regulators deleted and then altered a state-sanctioned report showing extremely high levels of radiation at the cleanup site.
Roughly a month after the spill, Nichols read a Duke University press release stating that ash samples collected at Kingston by a team led by Vengosh, the geochemist, showed radium levels well above those typically found in coal ash. Nichols knew that the state environmental regulator, the Tennessee Department for Environment and Conservation, or TDEC, was also testing soil and ash samples at the site. After seeing Vengosh’s high radium readings, he wondered if TDEC’s report would also show high levels of either radium or uranium. (Radium is a decay element of uranium.) Later that spring, Nichols visited TDEC’s website and discovered the test results.
“I opened it up and went to uranium, and it was just off the charts,” Nichols recalled. In a 2020 affidavit, Nichols reported that these levels were “extremely high so as to be alarming.” At least 27 soil and ash samples were collected from at least 20 different sites surrounding Kingston beginning January 6, 2009. The levels ranged from 84 parts per million (ppm) to 2,000 ppm. The average level was over 500 ppm, as much as 50 times the typical uranium content found in coal ash.
The next morning, when Nichols slumped back into his computer chair and refreshed TDEC’s website, he saw that the report had been changed. The high uranium readings had plummeted. Now the average uranium levels in the ash were 2.88 ppm, a tenth of the typical uranium content found in coal ash and illogically, below levels naturally occurring in soil. Luckily, Nichols had downloaded the unaltered report the night before.
A month later, Nichols sent the two lab reports to one of the attorneys representing Tennessee residents affected by the spill in a lawsuit they’d brought against TVA. According to Nichols, the lawyers weren’t interested. Nevertheless, Nichols was determined to find more proof of the unusually high levels of on-site radiation. In between cutting hay and spraying weeds on his family farm, he spent years poring over information online about TVA, coal ash, and uranium before he stumbled across Wilkinson’s story.
Back in 2014, Wilkinson’s urine tested for unusually high levels of both mercury and uranium. The mercury is more easily explained: The most common cause of mercury contamination, according to the EPA, is coal-fired power plant emissions, which account for 44 percent of all man-made mercury pollution. The 2008 spill released 29 times the mercury reported at the Kingston site for the entire decade before it, and TVA documents show high levels of additional legacy mercury were present in the Clinch River and could have migrated into the Emory. Today, Wilkinson has symptoms attributable to methylmercury poisoning including blurry vision, fatigue, a hearing impairment, memory loss, and loss of coordination that caused him to fall out of the machines he operated until retiring on disability in 2015.
But most shocking to Nichols was the high level of uranium in Wilkinson’s body — it was 10 times the U.S. average, and identical to the median levels that one study found in workers exposed to the substance. Prolonged occupational exposure to uranium is strongly linked to chronic kidney disease, which Wilkinson suffers from. Because Wilkinson’s toxicology results were taken four years after he left Kingston, they likely show lower uranium levels than what he and other cleanup workers initially had.
Wilkinson’s results left no doubt in Nichols’ mind that the original uranium readings he’d saved were significant. A reporter for the Knoxville News-Sentinel, Jamie Satterfield, contacted him after the report he saved showed up in court proceedings. Satterfield published a story about the altered uranium readings in May of this year.
In response to her story, TDEC told the News-Sentinel that its updated uranium readings, which plummeted by 98 percent, were due to a change in the sampling method used for the tests. (Satterfield also reported that radium levels had been lowered between the initial TDEC report Nichols downloaded and the updated one; the department attributed this to a “data entry error.”) In an email response to Grist and the Daily Yonder, a TDEC spokesperson elaborated that the sampling lab, which was neither staffed nor supervised by TDEC, “discovered there were interferences in the analysis of soil and ash samples for uranium” and subsequently changed the method of analysis from one EPA-approved protocol to another. The new results were then published without public notice of the alteration.
“Changing lab reports is a very serious thing,” Nichols said. “But I can assure you data entry errors don’t cause a man to test for unusually high levels of uranium. That’s [TDEC’s] big problem.”
Unbeknownst to Nichols, Russell Johnson, the district attorney with jurisdiction over Roane County, where Kingston is located, had informed TDEC’s commissioner in 2017 that he was beginning a criminal probe into the Kingston cleanup. “I am deeply concerned with the apparent intentional conduct of the cleanup contractors and their supervisors, actions that took place in Roane County, conduct that may indeed have caused serious bodily injury or possibly even death to a number of people,” Johnson wrote in a letter to TDEC.
In concert with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, Johnson began investigating whether TVA or its contractors “suppressed information” as part of the coverup alleged in the 2013 worker lawsuit against Jacobs. They now have Nichols’ evidence as well. But despite this ongoing investigation, it’s unclear if workers will ever learn for certain whether or not they were exposed to dangerous substances besides the coal ash itself. (Bob Edwards, an assistant district attorney working under Johnson, told Grist and the Daily Yonder that the district attorney’s office could not comment on a pending investigation.)………………….https://grist.org/justice/tva-kingston-coal-ash-spill-nuclear/
Is Energy Harbor cutting nuclear plant workers’ benefits in violation of labor deal?
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Energy Harbor is cutting nuclear plant workers’ benefits in violation of labor deal, union says
By Jeremy Pelzer, cleveland.com, Ohio—A labor union is claiming that Energy Harbor is cutting health benefits for its employees at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant in violation of a 2019 deal that allowed the company to emerge from bankruptcy.
Utility Workers Union of America Local 270 is seeking arbitration with Energy Harbor after the company notified the union that, starting next month, it would no longer pay into about 30 plant workers’ health coverage at the same rate it did when it was part of FirstEnergy Corp., according to emails provided by the union. Under Energy Harbor’s proposal, these employees — who include mechanics, plant operators, and warehouse and maintenance workers — would have to pay amounts ranging from an additional $61.06 per month for single employees to $168.78 more per month for family coverage, according to the emails. William W. Thompson, Energy Harbor’s compensation and benefits manager, justified the change to the union on the grounds that the 2019 labor deal states that employee premiums should be calculated using the same methodology that was being used at the time……….
Joyce Goldstein, an attorney representing Local 270, noted in an interview that the dispute comes as state lawmakers are considering what to do about House Bill 6, a scandal-ridden energy law that, if left untouched, would start collecting fees from ratepayers next month to fund a $1 billion-plus bailout to Energy Harbor’s Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear plants. “I mean, their greed never stops,” Goldstein said. As Energy Harbor — then called FirstEnergy Solutions — went through bankruptcy proceedings last year, it attempted to replace workers’ pension plan with a 401(k) plan. The dispute led a federal judge to hold up approval of Energy Harbor’s bankruptcy restructuring plan until the company reached a deal to guarantee the pension plan and existing employee benefits. https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/12/energy-harbor-is-cutting-nuclear-plant-workers-benefits-in-violation-of-labor-deal-union-says.html
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Why is UK govt taking the financial and flooding risk of Sizewell nuclear, when renewables are clearly safer and cheaper?
Tax Research UK 16th Dec 2020, There is an article in the FT this morning that suggests something thatshould be obvious, but needs saying. And that is that renewable energy is
now bringing deflation into the energy market.
Management. As he puts it: With the US poised to rejoin the Paris Agreement
under the incoming Biden administration and the proliferation of net-zero
commitments from various governments, the romance between equity markets
and renewable-energy goes from strength to strength.
overlooked: the underlying reason for the astonishing transformation of
renewables over the past decade from niche to mainstream competing
head-to-head with fossil fuels is economic rather than environmental.
fuels are intrinsically inflationary. This has huge implications for the
distribution of value across the global energy system over the next three
decades.
on the Suffolk coast where the chance that it will be flooded within the
foreseeable future is high? I wish I knew. We now have the option of viable
energy to sustain the transition we need. More investment in it only
increases its appeal. And yet still we stick with the harmful solutions. I
have never got this. I never will.
Britain: Controversial funding arrangements for unnecessary Sizewell C nuclear project ?
 Sizewell C: government reignites £20bn nuclear power station row, Talks with EDF could lead to energy customers being charged for construction costs, Guardian, Jillian Ambrose Energy Energy correspondent, Tue 15 Dec 2020 The government has reignited a row over Britain’s nuclear energy ambitions by agreeing to restart talks with EDF over plans to build a reactor at Sizewell C in Suffolk.The talks could lead to the government taking a direct financial stake in the project before the end of the current parliamentary term in 2024, and using a new financial model that would make the public liable for cost overruns.
The formal negotiations over the £20bn nuclear plant will hinge on whether the French state-owned EDF can prove it has learned lessons from its Hinkley Point nuclear project in Somerset, and that a successor plant would offer the public value for money. If it succeeds it may be offered a multi-billion-pound deal that allows it to charge energy customers for the cost of construction while it builds the reactor, effectively putting bill payers on the hook for delays or cost overruns. Ed Miliband, Labour’s shadow business secretary, accused the government of “kicking big decisions into touch” and failing to offer a “definitive statement today one way or the other on financing, costs or an overall plan. The decision to restart talks is also expected to reopen a debate over whether nuclear energy can offer good value for money, and whether the UK needs new nuclear reactors to help meet a steep rise in demand for low-carbon electricity to power a boom in electric vehicles, induction hobs and heat pumps. …….. The decision to restart formal negotiations follows a hiatus in talks that have been dogged by concerns over cost, and the involvement of China General Nuclear Power (CGN), which owns 20% of the project. But environmental campaigners, including Greenpeace, have warned that nuclear reactors are “unnecessary” and expensive compared with renewable energy combined with battery storage technology. The community group Stop Sizewell added that the reactor posed a risk to the natural habitats along the Suffolk coast and the nearby Minsmere nature reserve. ……. The government said it would only consider playing a greater role in the Sizewell project if there was “clear value for money for consumers and taxpayers”. It is also planning to back a new generation of small modular nuclear reactors, or “mini nukes”, which can be built at a lower cost…… https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/dec/14/sizewell-c-government-talks-nuclear-power-station-edf-suffolk |
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UK’s Sizewell nuclear project could be a costly fiasco like Hinkley Point C
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Britain must tread with caution on new nuclear
The country’s first power plant in over 20 years is costly and late,THE EDITORIAL BOARD, Ft.com, 14 Dec 20, The government cannot afford a repeat of what happened with Hinkley Point. Thanks to spiralling construction costs and a controversial support system that guaranteed EDF and its junior partner, China’s CGN, a steep price for the electricity, it has become one of the most expensive nuclear reactor projects in the world. Under the 2013 deal, the coalition government agreed a price of £92.50 per megawatt hour for the electricity — at the time, close to double the wholesale price. The price is also indexed to inflation. Since then, the cost of renewables has plummeted, making Hinkley Point look even more expensive. ….. https://www.ft.com/content/b528ba1c-3e29-4472-89ef-6627b60b6b0c
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UK Sizewell nuclear project could be a costly fiasco like Hikley Point C
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Britain must tread with caution on new nuclear
The country’s first power plant in over 20 years is costly and late,THE EDITORIAL BOARD, Ft.com, 14 Dec 20 The government cannot afford a repeat of what happened with Hinkley Point. Thanks to spiralling construction costs and a controversial support system that guaranteed EDF and its junior partner, China’s CGN, a steep price for the electricity, it has become one of the most expensive nuclear reactor projects in the world. Under the 2013 deal, the coalition government agreed a price of £92.50 per megawatt hour for the electricity — at the time, close to double the wholesale price. The price is also indexed to inflation. Since then, the cost of renewables has plummeted, making Hinkley Point look even more expensive. ….. https://www.ft.com/content/b528ba1c-3e29-4472-89ef-6627b60b6b0c
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UK and USA nuclear waste clean-up – a $billion here, a $billion there – pretty soon you’re talking real money
US Nuclear Site Cleanup Underfunded By Up To $70 Billion, Clean Technica, December 1st, 2020 by Michael Barnard
Headlines out of the UK are pointing out the horrible state of affairs for nuclear generation decommissioning after a committee of Members of Parliament that the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority really doesn’t have a handle on the 17 sites, their costs, or the vendors they selected for cleanup. They are currently projecting $177 billion and 120 years for the full decommissioning, over $1 billion per site. Some of this is due to botched procurement, with two different cleanup vendors stripped of their contracts.
Certainly the UK cleanup is a fustercluck of epic proportions, equivalent in fiscal sense to building Hinkley. That new reactor, billions and years over budget and schedule, required a commitment for 35 years to pay $150/MWh for every MWh they generated, at a time when onshore wind and solar in the UK are at or under $50/MWh and offshore wind is under $100/MWh.
Some US commenters were feeling chuffed, although that’s not a term they would use, that the US was handling things so much better. But the USA isn’t far behind the UK in problems, it just isn’t as public.
Per the World Nuclear Association:
In the USA, utilities are collecting 0.1 to 0.2 cents/kWh to fund decommissioning. They must then report regularly to the NRC on the status of their decommissioning funds. About two-thirds of the total estimated cost of decommissioning all US nuclear power reactors has already been collected, leaving a liability of about $9 billion to be covered over the remaining operating lives of about 100 reactors (on the basis of an average of $320 million per unit). NRC data for the end of 2018 indicated that there was a combined total of $64.7 billion held in the decommissioning trust funds covering the 119 operational and retired US nuclear power reactors.
An OECD Nuclear Energy Agency survey published in 2016 reported US dollar (2013) costs in response to a wide survey. For US reactors the expected total decommissioning costs range from $544 to $821 million; for units over 1100 MWe the costs ranged from $0.46 to $0.73 million per MWe, for units half that size, costs ranged from $1.07 to $1.22 million per MWe. For Finland’s Loviisa (2 x 502 MWe) the estimate was €326 million. For a Swiss 1000 MWe PWR the detailed estimate amounts to CHF 663 million (€617 million). In Slovakia, a detailed case study showed a total cost of €1.14 billion to decommission Bohunice V1 (2 x 440 MWe) and dismantle it by 2025.
[Brief aside: I love the World Nuclear Association, because they are actually honest and report details that contradict their mission. I cite them on Germany’s wholesale electricity prices, which they freely admit are among the lowest in Europe as that country ramps up renewables rapidly and dumps nuclear. They aren’t just a lobbying organization, although they are an industry-funded lobbying association. Unlike the equivalent oil and gas organizations, they seem compelled to be honest and complete, perhaps because being honest and complete usually isn’t so disgustingly horrific for them, just simply bad.]
Back to the thread. The US has collected a bunch of money from operating reactors into a cleanup fund that they acknowledge is underfunded to the tune of billions already. But the industry estimates show that they are collecting under half of what it will actually take to decommission the sites.
There are about 100 reactors in the United States. Assuming they collect the $320 million per reactor (they won’t, as reactors are closing prematurely), they would have a fund of $32 billion. But they need a fund of closer to $70 billion, and they are short regardless. So the US fleet cleanup is going to cost the taxpayer probably closer to an additional $40 billion, if it all goes according to the estimates.
Note that the UK and Slovakia examples show that it usually doesn’t, just as building new nuclear never seems to come in on time or budget. The reality is going to be closer to the European and Slovakian costs, so let’s assume a billion per reactor as a reasonable number.
The US will have maybe $30 billion. They’ll need $100 billion. Yeah, $70 billion is the more reasonable number.
“A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
– US Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen
Of course, this is on top of the $1.6 billion annual tax breaks nuclear plants in the US get, the $10 billion liability insurance cap with the taxpayer holding the bill should a Fukushima-scale disaster occur and the state-level boondoggles like the $1.1 billion Ohio subsidy that came with a side helping of $60 million in bribes…………….https://cleantechnica.com/2020/12/01/us-nuclear-site-cleanup-underfunded-by-up-to-70-billion/
Nuclear power is dead. Here’s why it’s pretending that it’s not
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US Nuclear Site Cleanup Underfunded By Up To $70 Billion, Clean Technica, December 1st, 2020 by Michael Barnard …………………..Nuclear power is going to be the gift that keeps on returning fiscal dividends for a century.
That’s why Brookfield bought the bankrupt Toshiba Westinghouse division, for the long-term, guaranteed decommissioning revenue. SNC Lavalin bought Canada’s CANDU for the same reason, although I’m sure they are at the trough on the Canadian SMR idiocy too. This isn’t exactly a secret. Nuclear projects always go over budget and over schedule, and there is exactly zero reason to believe decommissioning estimates provided by the industry. So why have jurisdictions been building more nuclear plants, whether at the egregious but at least honest costs of Hinkley, or the massively underestimated but increasingly obvious costs of the Virgil C. Summer and Vogtle sites? Three reasons. The first is the magic of net present value. That calculates the value of future dollars today given inflation. Just as a thousand bucks bought a lot more in 1990 than it does today, in 2050 it will buy a lot less than it does today. That means that liabilities that will be incurred decades in the future approach zero cost in today’s cost benefit analysis. Can you say generational inequity? The second is ideology. When really blatantly obvious economic sense gets thrown out the window, you start looking around for irrationality or graft. A lot of conservatives really hate onshore wind because it spoils the views from their manses (UK) or ranches (US) or country estates (Oz). They also think of wind and solar as inadequate hippy shit. They think nuclear is the answer. These are opinions that they formed in the 1970s or perhaps the 1980s, but conservatives have a stronger tendency to not let empirical reality change their mind. So Hinkley, Vogtle, and Summer are a triumph of ideology over reality. The third is graft. When we start talking about $10 billion or more to build a plant, billions in subsidies, and another billion to take the thing apart, a lot of people start rubbing their hands together and figuring out who they have to bribe now to get a big payoff later. The entire regulatory structure in the two states that had nuclear plants in construction until recently when one was finally put out of the state’s fiscal misery were both structured so that no matter how much the utility spent, it was guaranteed a set profit. If they built a $15 billion nuclear plant, they made a lot of profit off of the rate payers. If they built $2 billion worth of wind and solar instead, they made a lot less money off of the rate payers. It’s dumb as a box of hammers, but it’s part of the reason a lot of utilities love nuclear, and coal-generation carbon capture schemes to boot. They are licenses to print money. Outside of China, where they have trained resources who can build nuclear plants who would be mediocre at building wind and solar (which they are building a lot more of) and nuclear plants will displace coal plants, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to build new nuclear. The looming decommissioning debacle is just the icing on the cake. Wind and solar have proven themselves to be vastly cheaper, completely reliable on grids, and easy to integrate in very large amounts. Their decommissioning costs are trivial. That’s yet another reason why nuclear is dead, but pretending it’s not. https://cleantechnica.com/2020/12/01/us-nuclear-site-cleanup-underfunded-by-up-to-70-billion/ |
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1 This Month
23 April – WEBINAR – Why new nuclear reactors are the wrong tools for decarbonization Thursday, April 23 • 1 AM – 2 AM AEST
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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