Uranium Ghost Town in the Making
, Time and again, mining company Homestake and government agencies promised to clean up waste from decades of uranium processing. It didn’t happen.
Reader supported News, Mark Olalde and Maya Miller/ProPublica, 25 Aug 22
he “death map” tells the story of decades of sickness in the small northwest New Mexico communities of Murray Acres and Broadview Acres. Turquoise arrows point to homes where residents had thyroid disease, dark blue arrows mark cases of breast cancer, and yellow arrows mean cancer claimed a life.
Neighbors built the map a decade ago after watching relatives and friends fall ill and die. Dominating the top right corner of the map, less than half a mile from the cluster of colorful arrows, sits what residents believe is the cause of their sickness: 22.2 million tons of uranium waste left over from milling ore to supply power plants and nuclear bombs.
“We were sacrificed a long time ago,” said Candace Head-Dylla, who created the death map with her mother after Head-Dylla had her thyroid removed and her mother developed breast cancer. Research has linked both types of illnesses to uranium exposure.
Beginning in 1958, a uranium mill owned by Homestake Mining Company of California processed and refined ore mined nearby. The waste it left behind leaked uranium and selenium into groundwater and released the cancer-causing gas radon into the air. State and federal regulators knew the mill was polluting groundwater almost immediately after it started operating, but years passed before they informed residents and demanded fixes.
The contamination continued to spread even after the mill closed in 1990.
The failures at Homestake are emblematic of the toxic legacy of the American uranium industry, one that has been well-documented from its boom during the Cold War until falling uranium prices and concerns over the dangers of nuclear power decimated the industry in the 1980s. Uranium mining and milling left a trail of contamination and suffering, from miners who died of lung cancer while the federal government kept the risks secret to the largest radioactive spill in the country’s history.
But for four decades, the management of more than 250 million tons of radioactive uranium mill waste has been largely overlooked, continuing to pose a public health threat.
ProPublica found that regulators have failed to hold companies to account when they missed cleanup targets and accepted incorrect forecasts that pollution wouldn’t spread. The federal government will eventually assume responsibility for the more than 50 defunct mills that generated this waste.
At Homestake, which was among the largest mills, the company is bulldozing a community in order to walk away. Interviews with dozens of residents, along with radon testing and thousands of pages of company and government records, reveal a community sacrificed to build the nation’s nuclear arsenal and atomic energy industry.
Time and again, Homestake and government agencies promised to clean up the area. Time and again, they missed their deadlines while further spreading pollution in the communities. In the 1980s, Homestake promised residents groundwater would be cleaned within a decade, locals told the Environmental Protection Agency and ProPublica. After missing that target, the company told regulators it would complete the job around 2006, then by 2013.
In 2014, an EPA report confirmed the site posed an unacceptable cancer risk and identified radon as the greatest threat to residents’ health. Still, the cleanup target date continued shifting, to 2017, then 2022.
Rather than finish the cleanup, Homestake’s current owner, the Toronto-based mining giant Barrick Gold, is now preparing to ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the independent federal agency that oversees the cleanup of uranium mills, for permission to demolish its groundwater treatment systems and hand the site and remaining waste over to the U.S. Department of Energy to monitor and maintain forever.
Before it can transfer the site to the Department of Energy, Homestake must prove that the contamination, which exceeds federal safety levels, won’t pose a risk to nearby residents or taint the drinking water of communities downstream.
Part of Homestake’s strategy: buy out nearby residents and demolish their homes. Local real estate agents and residents say the company’s offers do not account for the region’s skyrocketing housing costs, pushing some who accept them back into debt in order to buy a new home. Those who do sell are required to sign agreements to refrain from disparaging Homestake and absolve the company of liability, even though illnesses caused by exposure to radioactive waste can take decades to manifest.
Property records reveal the company had, by the end of 2021, purchased 574 parcels covering 14,425 acres around the mill site. This April, Homestake staff indicated they had 123 properties left to buy. One resident said the area was quickly becoming a “ghost town.”
Even after the community is gone, more than 15,000 people who live nearby, many of them Indigenous, will continue to rely on water threatened by Homestake’s pollution.
The company said it has produced models showing that its waste won’t imperil the region’s water if it walks away. The NRC says it will only grant a groundwater cleanup exemption if that’s the case.
But while Homestake and other mining companies have polluted the region, it’s been the NRC and various other agencies that stood by as it happened. ProPublica found the NRC has issued exemptions from groundwater cleanup standards to uranium mills around the country, only to see pollution continue to spread. This has occurred as climate change hammers the West, making water ever scarcer.
“Groundwater moves. Groundwater doesn’t care about regulations,” said Earle Dixon, a hydrogeologist who reviewed the government’s oversight of uranium cleanup and pollution around Homestake for the New Mexico Environment Department and the EPA. Dixon and other researchers predict contamination at Homestake will likely spread if cleanup ends.
The company has denied that its waste caused residents’ illnesses, and judges ruled in Homestake’s favor in a case residents filed in 2004 alleging the site caused cancer. Doctors testified that the pollution was a substantial factor contributing to residents’ cancers, but tying particular cases to a single source requires communitywide blood, urine and other testing, which hadn’t been done…………………………………………………..
ProPublica found that, as with most uranium mills in the U.S., Homestake built no liner between the earth and the sandy waste left over from milling, known as tailings. This happened even though an engineer with the New Mexico Department of Health warned the company only weeks after the mill opened that it needed to at least compact the soil underneath its waste to prevent leaks. Without a liner, pollution seeped into aquifers that supplied drinking water. In 1961, the same engineer wrote that groundwater samples showed radium 226, a radioactive and cancer-causing element, at levels as much as 31 times higher than naturally occur in the area, indicating “definite pollution of the shallow ground water table by the uranium mill tailings’ ponds.”
A federal report a year later identified even higher levels of radium 226 in groundwater…………………………..
More than 500 abandoned uranium mines pockmark the Navajo Nation, and Billiman’s father, a Navajo Code Talker in World War II, died of stomach cancer, an illness associated with downwind exposure to nuclear tests. Boomer has written the story of uranium into lyrics, singing about the harm caused by the waste that was left behind…………………………………………….more https://www.rsn.org/001/a-uranium-ghost-town-in-the-making.html
China’s record-breaking heatwave, threatening water resources
The southwestern Chinese regions of Chonqging and Sichuan were battling
fires on Tuesday as they awaited a long-anticipated drop in temperatures
over the next week, but the country’s important autumn harvest remained
under serious threat. Officials warned this month that temperatures were
rising faster in China than in the rest of the world and a record-breaking
heatwave has raised concern about its ability to adapt to rapid climate
change and conserve already scarce water resources.
Reuters 23rd Aug 2022
Pacific Alliance of Municipal Councils starts Petition against dumping nuclear wastewater in Pacific
https://www.mvariety.com/news/petition-against-dumping-nuclear-wastewater-in-pacific/article_5ad4f2f2-2103-11ed-ac27-6ffcaa93ec58.html Aug 22, 2022 , The Pacific Alliance of Municipal Councils or PAMC has started a petition on change.org (https://chng.it/JLT2btJQB6) to try and stop Japan from dumping its Fukushima nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.
PAMC President and Secretary of the Rota Municipal Council, Councilman Jim Atalig, expressed his strong opposition saying, “If it’s not good for their land, it is definitely not good for our ocean where most of us get our food on a daily basis!”
Chairman Joseph E. Santos, PAMC member and chairman of the Tinian Municipal Council, says, “It is an outrage for anyone to think that it’s okay to dump their toxic wastes in our ocean when we rely on it for food, health activities, and economic sustainability.”
The other members of PAMC are Saipan and Northern Islands Municipal Council member Ana Demapan-Castro, Chairwoman, Antonia Tudela, member Daniel Aquino; Rota Municipal Council Chairman Jonovan Lizama, Vice Chairman William Taitano; Tinian Municipal Council Vice Chairwoman Thomasa P. Mendiola, and Secretary Juanita M. Mendiola, who is also the vice president of PAMC.
PAMC is urging everyone to please circulate the petition through their Facebook page so we can prevail in preventing Japan and any other countries from using our ocean as their toxic waste dumping ground!
“Nothing good will come out of this, just as the toll of human suffering as a result of all nuclear energy fallouts were never worth their well-intended, but disastrously misguided, objectives!”
California nuclear power plant extension challenged in legislative proposal
“This is too little too late, a sham process designed to circumvent citizen enforcement of the National Environmental Policy Act,”
Watchdog groups contend that regardless of the review, the NNSA will march ahead with its production plans for plutonium cores at Los Alamos
S nuclear policy | US nuclear stockpile | Environment protection
AP | Albuquerquue (US) August 20, 2022
The US government is planning to review the environmental effects of operations at one of the nation’s prominent nuclear weapons laboratories, but its notice issued Friday leaves out federal goals to ramp up production of plutonium cores used in the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
The National Nuclear Security Administration said the review being done to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act will look at the potential environmental effects of alternatives for operations at Los Alamos National Laboratory for the next 15 years.
That work includes preventing the spread and use of nuclear weapons worldwide and other projects related to national security and global stability, the notice said.
Watchdog groups contend that regardless of the review, the NNSA will march ahead with its production plans for plutonium cores at Los Alamos.
The northern New Mexico lab part of the top secret Manhattan Project during World War II and the birthplace of the atomic bomb is one of two sites tapped for the lucrative mission of manufacturing the plutonium cores. The other is the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
The US Energy Department had set deadlines for 2026 and 2030 for ramping up production of the plutonium cores, but it’s unclear whether those will be met given the billions of dollars in infrastructure improvements still needed.
Watchdog groups that have been critical of Los Alamos accused the NNSA of going through the motions rather than taking a hard look at the escalating costs of preparing for production, the future consequences to the federal budget and the potential environmental fallout for neighbouring communities and Native American tribes.
This is too little too late, a sham process designed to circumvent citizen enforcement of the National Environmental Policy Act,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico.
The Los Alamos Study Group, another New Mexico-based organisation that monitors lab activities, said there is no indication that NNSA will pause any preparations for the sake of complying with National Environmental Policy Act, which mandates some scrutiny before moving ahead with major federal projects.
The group pointed to more than $19 billion in new construction and operational costs for Los Alamos’ new plutonium core production mission through fiscal year 2033. They say the price tag is expected to grow.
According to planning documents related to the sprawling Los Alamos campus, lab officials have indicated that they need more than 4 million square feet (371,612 square metres) of new construction to bolster one of its main technical areas and the area where the lab’s plutonium operations are located. Several thousand new staff members also would be needed.
This is a completely bogus process in which NNSA seeks to create a veneer of legitimacy and public acceptance for its reckless plans,” said Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group……….. more https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/plutonium-cores-review-at-us-nuclear-lab-sham-process-watchdog-groups-122082000062_1.html
France’s government determined to expand nuclear power, oblivious to environmental, safety, and cost ill-effects
the plant’s cooling processes have increased the water’s temperature by 6 degrees C, which has triggered ripple effects throughout the food chain.
that will have a disastrous impact on the ecosystem,”
French nuclear plants break a sweat over heat wave, DW 15 Aug 22, Successive heat waves are putting French nuclear reactors under strain. But that is not pushing them into an existential crisis, as Lisa Louis reports from Paris.
Like other European countries, France has been baking in temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for several weeks. Although that is putting French nuclear reactors under strain, this does not seem to be calling the country’s nuclear-heavy energy strategy into question.
Nuclear power plants normally generate roughly 70% of electricity in France — making nuclear’s share of the energy mix there higher than in any other country.
But more than half of the country’s 56 reactors have been closed for several months due to planned or extraordinary maintenance.
And about a fifth of them would normally need to interrupt their activity or at least reduce it to a bare minimum, as the water temperature of the rivers into which plants discharge their cooling water exceeds a certain limit.
But the government has suspended that rule until at least September 11.
‘Ripple effects throughout the food chain’
For Jean-Pierre Delfau, an environmental activist at local group FNE86, that is an exasperating decision.
“I just can’t understand how they can keep the reactors running although that will have a disastrous impact on the ecosystem,” he told DW, as he and two other environmentalists made their way through high grass on the bank of the Garonne river to take a water sample on a recent afternoon.
The Garonne supplies cooling water for the Golfech nuclear plant in southwestern France. One of the power station’s two reactors has been standing still for months, after authorities found corrosion and small cracks on pipes relevant for the plant’s safety. The second reactor is still functioning.
“Due to the heat, the Garonne’s water throughput is already down to 50 cubic meters per second, from several thousand in normal times,” Delfau said. “The Golfech plant makes that worse, as it uses 8 cubic meters for its cooling system but only discharges 6 cubic meters back, as some of the water evaporates during the process,” he pointed out.
He added that the plant’s cooling processes have increased the water’s temperature by 6 degrees C, which has triggered ripple effects throughout the food chain.
“The warmer water destroys microalgae that are food for certain small fish, which bigger fish feed on,” explained the 79-year-old, who has been an anti-nuclear protester for more than 50 years.
“Plus, warmer water contains more bacteria. In order to make it potable, we have to add a lot of chemicals, which people then drink.”
Not an existential crisis for French nuclear power
Power company EDF, which runs all of France’s nuclear power plants, declined an interview request with DW. A spokeswoman replied by email that the situation was “extraordinary” and that so far, environmental probes had not revealed any negative impact on the flora and fauna around the respective reactors.
Despite environmental concerns, current issues are not throwing French nuclear power into an existential crisis. The government is planning to soon nationalize EDF and construct additional nuclear plants.
That has Anna Creti, climate economy director at Paris University Dauphine, scratching her head.
“It’s not quite clear how this strategy is supposed to work on a technology level, especially in the short run,” she told DW.
Technology not ready
“France is banking on so-called small modular reactors (SMRs), for which there exist roughly 40 different technologies, all of them in a pilot phase,” Creti said. “Getting them ready for deployment could take up to 10 years,” she added.
“The government also plans to construct more pressurized-water, so-called EPR reactors — a model that has encountered numerous problems,” she continued.
According to current predictions, the country’s first EPR plant is to go live next year in Flamanville in the north of the country. According to developer EDF, building costs have so far at least tripled, to roughly €13 billion ($13.3 billion).
The European Court of Auditors puts that figure at €19 billion — with construction taking more than 10 years longer than planned. Other EPRs in Britain, China and Finland are reported to experience construction, conceptual or production problems.
“The government has nevertheless earmarked €150 billion for refurbishing existing nuclear plants and constructing new ones,” Creti said, adding that no such funding boon was announced for renewables, although Paris is working on new rules to cut red tape for development of renewables.
“Putting more money intorenewables would make sense, as theyhave become ever cheaper over the past few years, and their technology is sufficiently advanced for them to be deployed immediately across the country,” she emphasized.
France is the only European country not to have reached its 2020 EU renewables targets. Renewable energies make up only roughly 19% of energy production, instead of the planned 23%……………………………………..
Energy shortages expected in winter
Philippe Mante is strongly hoping for that [shift to renewables]. He’s in charge of climate affairs at EELV, France’s green party, which is opposed to constructing new nuclear plants. For the sake of energy security, the party is not in favor of immediately dismantling existing nuclear energy plants.
Neighboring countries will be watching closely. Until now, France has been Europe’s biggest net energy exporter. This year, however, the country will have to import more electricity than it’s exporting.
That’s likely to add even more pressure to energy prices, which are already skyrocketing, due among other things to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and reduced delivery of Russian gas. https://www.dw.com/en/french-nuclear-plants-break-a-sweat-over-heat-wave/a-
FOCUS: Respite for Japan as radioactive Fukushima water accumulation slows
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/08/d10f63c6bde0-focus-respite-for-japan-as-radioactive-water-accumulation-slows-in-fukushima.html By Takaki Tominaga, KYODO NEWS – Aug 12, 2022 Tanks containing treated water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant are likely to reach capacity around the fall of 2023, later than the initially predicted spring of next year, as the pace of the accumulation of radioactive water slowed in fiscal 2021
The slowdown, based on an estimate by operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., gives some breathing space to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s government if any roadblocks are thrown up in the plan to discharge the treated water into the sea starting around spring next year.
China and South Korea as well as local fishing communities that fear reputational damage to their products remain concerned and have expressed opposition to the plan.
About 1.30 million tons of treated water has accumulated at the Fukushima Daiichi plant following the 2011 nuclear disaster, and it is inching closer to the capacity of 1.37 million tons.
The water became contaminated after being pumped in to cool melted reactor fuel at the plant and has been accumulating at the complex, also mixing with rainwater and groundwater.
According to the plan, the water — treated through an advanced liquid processing system, or ALPS, that removes radionuclides except for tritium — will be released 1-kilometer off the Pacific coast of the plant through an underwater pipe.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has been conducting safety reviews of the discharge plan and Director General Rafael Grossi says the U.N. nuclear watchdog will support Japan before, during and after the release of the water, based on science.
An IAEA task force, established last year, is made up of independent and highly regarded experts with diverse technical backgrounds from various countries including China and South Korea.
Japan’s new industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura says the government and TEPCO will go ahead with the discharge plan around the spring of 2023 and stresses the two parties will strengthen communication with local residents and fishermen, as well as neighboring countries, to win their understanding.
Beijing and Seoul are among the 12 countries and regions that still have restrictions on food imports from Japan imposed in the wake of the massive earthquake and tsunami triggered nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima plant in March 2011.
“We will improve our communication methods so we can convey information backed by scientific evidence to people both at home and abroad more effectively,” Nishimura said after taking up the current post in a Cabinet reshuffle Wednesday.
Kishida instructed Nishimura to focus on the planned discharge of ALPS-treated water that will be diluted with seawater to one-40th of the maximum concentration of tritium permitted under Japanese regulations, according to the chief of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.
The level is lower than the World Health Organization’s recommended maximum tritium limit for drinking water.
TEPCO will cap the total amount of tritium to be released into the sea as well.
Meanwhile, the Kishida government has decided to set up a 30 billion yen ($227 million) fund to support the fisheries industry and said it will buy seafood if demand dries up due to harmful rumors.
Fishing along the coast of Fukushima Prefecture, known for high-quality seafood, has been recovering from the reputational damage caused by the nuclear accident but the catch volume in 2021 was only about 5,000 tons, or about 20 percent of 2010 levels.
Construction of discharge facilities at the Fukushima plant started in August, while work to slow the infiltration of rain and groundwater was also conducted.
TEPCO said it was able to reduce the pace of accumulation of contaminated water by fixing the roof of a reactor building and cementing soil slopes around the facilities, among other measures, to prevent rainwater penetration.
The volume of radioactive water decreased some 20 tons a day from a year earlier to about 130 tons per day in fiscal 2021, according to the ministry.
The projected timeline to reach the tank capacity has been calculated based on the assumption that about 140 tons of contaminated water will be generated per day, according to METI.
However, storage tanks could still reach their capacity around the summer of next year if heavy precipitation or some unexpected events occur, the ministry said.
As part of preparations for the planned discharge, the Environment Ministry has started measuring tritium concentration at 30 locations on the surface of the sea and seabed around the Fukushima plant, four times a year.
Similarly, the Nuclear Regulation Authority has increased the number of locations it monitors tritium levels by eight to 20. The Fisheries Agency has started measuring tritium concentration in marine products caught along the Pacific coast stretching from Hokkaido to Chiba Prefecture.
Given that it is expected to take several decades to complete the release of treated water, NRA and METI officials urged TEPCO to further curb the generation of contaminated water at the plant.
“We want TEPCO to step up efforts so as to lower the volume of the daily generation of contaminated water to about 100 tons or lower by the end of 2025,” a METI official said.
China also discharges triated water from its nuclear power stations
 | Bob commented on Japan extremely selfish to insist on discharging nuclear wastewater into sea August 8, 2022 TOKYO, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) — Japan’s Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. (TEPCO) has recently started …Neither you, nor China, whose official viewpoint this is, ever admits that China discharges tritiated water into the sea from its own nuclear plants and that the amount of this discharge exceeds that proposed for the ALPS treated tritiated water which has then been mixed with sea water before discharge (otherwise, the water will be so pure that its purity will poison sea life) on an annual basis. They also deliberately omit the fact that the annual discharge rate will be less than that of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station during its 40 year operational lifetime. A much better assessment is discussed in this other recently posted article here https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/08/d10f63c6bde0-focus-respite-for-japan-as-radioactive-water-accumulation-slows-in-fukushima.html |
Nuclear bomb tests at Maralinga triggered Hedley Marston to study fallout over Australia
ABC Radio Adelaide / By Daniel Keane 10 Aug 22,
Hedley Marston could be charming, genial and witty but he was not above fulmination, especially where fulminations of a different kind were concerned.
In the mid-1950s, the CSIRO biochemist emerged as arguably the most significant contemporary critic of Britain’s nuclear weapons testing program, which was launched on Australia’s Montebello Islands almost 70 years ago in October 1952.
Despite the imminent anniversary Marston remains an obscure figure, but his biographer Roger Cross believes that should change.
“He appears to be totally unknown to the Australian public and, of course, to South Australians — he was a South Australian after all,” Dr Cross said.
Marston’s reservations about the nuclear program were far from spontaneous; indeed, his strongest concerns weren’t voiced until several years after the first test, when he recorded a radioactive plume passing over Adelaide.
The source of that plume was Operation Buffalo, a series of four nuclear blasts in 1956, and Marston was especially outraged by the fact that the general population was not warned.
“Sooner or later the public will demand a commission of enquiry on the ‘fall out’ in Australia,” he wrote to nuclear physicist and weapons advocate Sir Mark Oliphant.
“When this happens some of the boys will qualify for the hangman’s noose.”
What made Marston’s fury difficult to dismiss, especially for those inclined to deride opposition to nuclear testing as the exclusive preserve of ‘commies’ and ‘conchies’, was the fact that he was no peacenik.
Detractors might have damned him as an arriviste, but never as an activist: his cordial relations with Oliphant and other scientific grandees demonstrate that Marston was, in many respects, an establishment man.
Dr Cross has described Marston’s elegant prose as “Churchillian”, and the adjective is apposite in other ways.
While the roguish Marston might not have gone as far as the British wartime leader’s assertion that, during conflict, truth is so precious “that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies”, he had, in a 1947 letter to the editor, publicly defended scientific secrecy:
Under present conditions of fear and mistrust among nations it is obvious that military technology must be kept secret; and to achieve this end it should be conducted in special military laboratories where strictest security measures may be observed.”
But by late 1956, Marston’s alarm at radioactive fallout across parts of Australia was such that he was privately demanding greater disclosures to the general public.
Much of his ire was aimed at the Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee — a body established before the Maralinga tests, but after blasts had already occurred at Emu Fields* and the Montebello Islands.
“He was the only senior Australian scientist to express concerns and, because of his character, the concerns that he expressed were very forthright,” said Dr Cross, whose biography of Marston, aptly entitled Fallout, inspired the documentary Silent Storm.
“When the safety committee after each explosion said there was absolutely no effect on Australians, he believed that they were lying.”
‘If the wind changes, we need to go’
The experiments that led Marston, whose reputation largely rested on his expertise in sheep nutrition, to reach this conclusion were two-fold.
In the more protracted one, he analysed the presence of radioactive iodine-131 — a common component of nuclear fallout — in the thyroids of sheep.
“One group he kept penned up under cover eating dried hay, which had been cut some time before. The other group, he put outside eating the grass,” Dr Cross said.
“He tested the thyroids in each group – the ones on the hay only had background amounts of iodine-131.
“But the ones in the fields had a tremendously high concentration of this radioactive isotope, both north and south of the city.”
A fallout map from the 1985 royal commission, which stated that while fallout at Maralinga Village from the October 11, 1956, test was “considered to be ‘negligible from a biological point of view’ it does suggest difficulties with the forecast prior to the test”.(Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia)
For the other experiment, Marston conducted air monitoring in Adelaide.
He was especially alarmed by what he found for the period following the Maralinga test of October 11, 1956.
“There was a wind shear and at least part, maybe the major part, of that cloud, blew in a south-easterly direction and that took it towards Adelaide and the country towns in between,” Dr Cross said.
“The safety committee — who must have known of the wind shear — had done nothing about warning Adelaide people perhaps to stay indoors.”……………………………………………………
Despite Marston’s reservations, the nuclear program carried on regardless.
Less than a year after the Operation Buffalo tests, Maralinga was hosting Operation Antler.
In September 1957, newspapers around Australia reported on an upcoming “second test” that would, weather permitting, proceed as part of a “spring series”.
If it hadn’t been for the presence of the words “atomic” and “radioactive”, a reader might easily have inferred that what was being described was as commonplace as a game of cricket.
 |
Nuclear reactors at Bugey, Blayais, Saint-Alban-Sanit-Maurice, Golfech and Tricastin allowed to release hotter water into rivers
New thermal discharge limits applicable to the reactors of the Bugey,
Blayais, Saint-Alban-Saint-Maurice, Golfech and Tricastin power plants have
been set and will be valid until 11 September. The nuclear power plants of
Blayais, Saint-Alban-Saint-Maurice, Golfech, Bugey and Tricastin will
benefit until September 11 from environmental exemptions concerning water
discharge temperatures due to high temperatures, despite impacts possible
negative effects on the environment.
A decree published on Saturday in the
Official Journal sets ” new thermal discharge limits applicable to the
reactors of the nuclear power plant of Bugey, Blayais,
Saint-Alban-Saint-Maurice, Golfech and Tricastin “. It is specified that
the implementation of these measures will be “associated with a
reinforced environmental monitoring program”.
Le Figaro 6th Aug 2022
Fukushima water dumping plan triggers fresh anger from South Korea
As water-dumping moves advance, S. Koreans seek firm regional stance, http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202208/09/WS62f1be52a310fd2b29e7119d.html By YANG HAN in Hong Kong |2022-08-09
Japan’s plan to dump radioactive wastewater from the stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant will endanger the lives of people in the Asia-Pacific region, say experts who want to see stepped-up efforts against the ocean disposal from the countries most at risk.
South Koreans have been among those expressing their opposition to the plan, and voices have again been raised after Japan moved a step closer to implementing its planned discharge of the nuclear-contaminated water from next year, following the recent approval of the plan’s details by the nation’s nuclear regulator.
“The discharge of wastewater from Fukushima is an act of contaminating the Pacific Ocean as well as the sea area of South Korea,” said Ahn Jae-hun, energy and climate change director at the Korea Federation for Environment Movement, an advocacy group in Seoul.
“Many people in South Korea believe that Japan’s discharge of the Fukushima wastewater is a wrong policy that threatens the safety of both the sea and humans,” Ahn told China Daily.
Last month, Japan’s nuclear regulator approved the plan to discharge wastewater into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, after it built up a huge amount of radiation-tainted water. The water has been collected and stored in tanks following efforts to cool down the reactors after an earthquake and tsunami struck Japan in 2011.
The dumping plan has drawn fierce opposition from government officials and civic groups in South Korea, one of the world’s major consumers of seafood.
On Aug 1, South Korea’s Minister of Oceans and Fisheries Cho Seunghwan said the government is considering whether to take the issue to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Yonhap News Agency reported. Cho said the government’s primary plan is to prevent Japan from releasing the contaminated water. “We do not accept the release plan”, he said.
Ahn said radioactive materials can generate long-term effects and it remains unclear how they will affect the marine ecosystem.
Though the South Korean government is considering taking the issue to the international tribunal, Ahn said it will be difficult to quantify the potential damage.
South Korea has said it will conduct a thorough analysis and revision of the impact of Japan’s plan, but the government has not received enough data from Japan to conduct such research, South Korea’s Hankyoreh newspaper reported in June.
After Japan’s nuclear regulator approved the Fukushima discharge plan, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said Tokyo needs to transparently explain and gain consent from neighboring countries before releasing the contaminated water.
Potential impact
Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist with Greenpeace Germany, said the environmental group is concerned about the potential impact of the water’s release on the wider Asia-Pacific region.
The level of exposure depends on multiple variables including the concentration in seawater and how quickly it concentrates, disperses and dilutes, forms of life, and the type of radionuclide released and how that disperses or concentrates as it moves through the environment, Burnie said.
“The concentrations are of direct relevance to those who may consume them, including marine species like fish and, ultimately, humans,” Burnie told China Daily.
Noting that the Fukushima contaminated water issue comes under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as it is a form of pollution to international waters, Burnie said there are strong grounds for individual countries to file a legal challenge against Japan’s plan.
Ahn said joint expressions of opposition in the region could force the Japanese government to choose a safe method to deal with the wastewater instead of dumping it into the sea. China is also among the neighboring countries that have voiced opposition to the Fukushima discharge plan.
Sizewell C nuclear station approval faces legal challenge
Campaigners have begun a legal challenge against the government’s decision to give the Sizewell C nuclear power station the go-ahead amid warnings that UK nuclear plants will be on the frontline of climate breakdown.
Citing the threat to water supplies in an area officially designated as seriously water stressed, the threats to coastal areas from climate change and environmental damage, the challenge is the first step in a judicial review of the planning consent.
The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, overruled the independent Planning Inspectorate to grant permission for the new nuclear reactor in Suffolk in July. Kwarteng is pushing ahead with
government plans to approve one new nuclear reactor a year as part of an energy strategy that aims to bolster the UK’s nuclear capacity, with the hope that by 2050 up to 25% of projected energy demand will come from it.
But Sizewell C has faced stiff opposition from local campaigners, and environmental groups both for its cost and the environmental impact. In a letter to Kwarteng outlining their legal challenge Together Against Sizewell C (TASC) argues that the permission by the government for the plant was given unlawfully. Represented by Leigh Day solicitors and supported by Friends of the Earth, the group says there was a failure to assess the implications of the project as a whole, by ignoring the issue of whether a permanent water supply could be secured, a failure to assess the environmental impact of that project and the suggestion that the site would be clear of nuclear material by 2140, which was not upheld by evidence showing highly radioactive waste would have to be stored on site until a much later date.
The Planning Inspectorate had rejected the scheme saying “unless the outstanding water supply strategy can be resolved and sufficient information provided to enable the secretary of state to carry out his obligations under the Habitats Regulations, the case for an order granting development consent for the application is not made out”.
Pete Wilkinson, chair of TASC, said: “The case against Sizewell C is overwhelming, as has been carefully documented throughout the inquiry stage and was found by the planning inspector to have merit. “Even to consider building a £20bn-plus nuclear power plant without first securing a water supply is a measure of the fixation this government has for nuclear power and its panic in making progress towards an energy policy which is as unachievable as it is inappropriate for the 21st-century challenges we
face.”
Guardian 8th Aug 2022
Drought may force nuclear power production cut
https://journalrecord.com/2022/08/05/drought-may-force-nuclear-power-production-cut/ Associated Press August 5, 2022 0
PARIS — French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne warned that France is facing the “most severe drought” ever recorded in the country and announced the activation of a government crisis unit.
The crisis unit will be in charge of monitoring the situation in the hardest-hit areas and coordinate measures like bringing drinking water to some places. It will also monitor the impact of the drought on France’s energy production, transport infrastructure and agriculture.
The drought may force French energy giant EDF to cut power production at nuclear plants which use river water to cool reactors.
France now has 62 regions with restrictions on water usage due to the lack of rain.
Borne said many areas in France are going through a “historic situation” as the country endures its third heatwave this summer.
“The exceptional drought we are currently experiencing is depriving many municipalities of water and is a tragedy for our farmers, our ecosystems and biodiversity,” the statement said.
Damage to marine life from seismic testing, and from dumping of radioactive waste.
Concerns raised as the UK starts hunt for undersea nuclear waste disposal
sites. Animal welfare groups and campaigners blast ongoing surveys for
undersea nuclear waste dump. Officials have been warned about the potential
environmental impact of plans to dispose of radioactive nuclear waste
beneath the seabed off the north coast of England.
Yesterday, ELN reported
that the first marine geophysical surveys to determine suitable sites for
nuclear waste disposal started in the Irish sea near Cumbria. Nuclear Waste
Services (NWS), the developer of the Geological Disposal Facility (GDF)
said it is “committed to environmental protection at all times”.
Richard Outram, Secretary of the campaign group Nuclear Free Local
Authorities, told ELN: “The Nuclear Free Local Authorities are opposed to
both the seismic testing and its purpose. “Our concerns regarding the
testing regime itself is that it necessitates the prolonged and repeated
sound blasting of the seabed of the Irish Sea every few seconds for a
period of several weeks whilst the ship patrols a search area of some 250
square kilometres and that this activity will be both disruptive and
harmful to marine life, some of which has protected status, both in the
area and for many miles around it.”
Mr Outram added that he was not
convinced that any nuclear waste dump facility, however well engineered,
could provide a ‘forever guarantee’ against a potential leakage
scenario.
Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme Manager Rob Deaville
from the Zoological Society of London said: “Many species of odontocetes
are sensitive to noise disturbance, given their primary sense is acoustic
in nature. “Generating impulsive noise, such as through seismic surveys,
can have a disturbance effect and may cause habitat avoidance and
potentially exclusion from an area. “Depending on how close animals are
to the source of impulsive noise, potential impacts can also include direct
physical effects ranging from temporary or permanent threshold shifts in
hearing to direct blast trauma and also the risk of decompression sickness
like conditions in some species that may ascend too rapidly to startle
responses.
“Finally, the area is a known habitat for many cetacean
species, ranging from coastal harbour porpoises to deeper diving Risso’s
dolphins. So, I would still have a concern about the seismic survey efforts
and our teams are very much on standby, in the event we receive increased
reports of live/dead strandings over this period.”
Energy Live News 3rd Aug 2022
https://www.energylivenews.com/2022/08/03/concerns-raised-as-the-uk-surveys-undersea-nuclear-waste-disposal-sites/
Dead fish near SC nuclear fuel site were an early warning. Then came the spills and accidents
The State, BY SAMMY FRETWELL, JULY 30, 2022
Dead fish floated in a small pond near a nuclear fuel factory one day in 1980, raising concerns about the Columbia plant’s danger to the surrounding environment. A cocktail of contaminants had been documented in groundwater, which seeps into creeks and ponds, and it appeared that one of these pollutants — ammonia — had contributed to the fish kill in Gator Pond, according to environmental studies. It was a disturbing discovery that foreshadowed a variety of environmental and safety troubles the Westinghouse nuclear fuel plant would deal with over the next 40 years.
Since 1980, more than 40 environmental and safety problems have been tied to the Westinghouse plant, ranging from groundwater pollution to nuclear safety violations that endangered plant workers, according to a review of news accounts and public records by The State. Despite those issues, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a final environmental study Friday that said the future environmental impact of the plant would be small to moderate. The NRC recommended a new license for the plant to operate for an additional 40 years, a decision that greases the skids for final license approval this fall.
John Grego, who is with the Friends of Congaree Swamp organization that supports Congaree National Park, said the fuel factory has had too many troubles of all kinds through the years. “The variety of problems is what troubles me, that this occurred in so many aspects of their culture,’’ Grego said. “It just seems to suggest systemic problems with the safety culture at Westinghouse. You had these long-standing problems that weren’t remediated, problems that weren’t reported.’’
Some of the pollution tied to Westinghouse was not known to the public or government regulators for years, which has incensed some Lower Richland residents who live near the plant. Some residents of the predominantly African-American community have said they were left out of the loop for too long.
Only in recent years, when a flurry of safety issues at the plant arose, did many people learn about past pollution. A key community concern is whether water pollution from the plant could one-day contaminate their drinking water wells. State regulators said mechanisms are now in place to hold Westinghouse more accountable, while resolving past environmental problems. The company struck a binding agreement with the state Department of Health and Environmental Control in 2019 to investigate and clean up pollution on the property. The company also is nearing completion of an investigative study of the site’s environmental problems, according to a statement Friday from DHEC.
……………………… Congaree Riverkeeper Bill Stangler was skeptical. Stangler said he is not confident Westinghouse will improve the operation, despite recent assurances and agreements with state regulators to clean up and do a better job. The plant is located near the Congaree River. “They have a long track record of problems at that facility that would raise anyone’s eyebrows,’’ Stangler said. “It’s concerning if you have an interest in the environment; it’s concerning if you are someone who lives in the surrounding area. Time after time we have seen that they haven’t followed the rules, and they have had problems.’’
………………………
Troubles at Westinghouse began in the 1970s, not long after the plant opened, when a wastewater pond leaked. But problems continued steadily after the 1980 fish kill, sometimes little known to the public. After the company reported a leak of uranium through a hole in the plant floor in 2018, federal and state regulators learned that the company had spilled toxins into the ground in 2008 and in 2011 without telling them or the public. The company said it was not required to report the spills. Contaminants such as fluoride, uranium, solvents and ammonia have been found in groundwater on the Westinghouse site. Technetium, a nuclear pollutant, also has been discovered on the soggy property, but no one has yet pinpointed the cause of the pollution.
Some of the biggest troubles at Westinghouse have revolved around nuclear safety inside the plant. The company has run into trouble through the years for failing to make sure nuclear materials it manages didn’t trigger small bursts of radiation, which can endanger workers. Records show the NRC has expressed concerns multiple times with Westinghouse over the issue, known as criticality safety
……………………… Government records also show that people working at the plant falsified records, including as recently as 2009. In some cases, employees have been injured or threatened by nuclear accidents.
…………………. News accounts and government records also show that Westinghouse has, at times, had trouble handling and keeping track of nuclear material it is responsible for…………………………………………. https://www.thestate.com/news/local/environment/article263945551.html
Grief for the abuse of nature that will come with Sizewell C nuclear station
East Anglia – already in drought and water scarcity, and climate change bringing heat waves – and they want to inflict more water-guzzling nuclear power upon this fragile environment
It’s hard not to be a nimby when nuclear meets nature. The margins of
our village lanes are thick with yellow leaves. It looks autumnal, but
they’ve changed colour and fallen due to heat stress. The fields are
tinder-dry; crop fires have sprung up here and there, some sparked by chaff
from combine harvesters hitting power lines, some thought to have been
started by the sun glancing off glass bottles left as litter.
In my garden the sparrows are no longer busy and voluble but sit out each day’s heat
in the privet, tiny beaks agape.
East Anglia gets little rain; the region
includes some of the driest places in the UK. Even so, aerial images
comparing now with last July are shocking — only the larger forests and
the damper creases of the watercourses still appearing green.
When I went to our local river for a cooling paddle, the water didn’t even reach my
knees. I drove to the coast. Suffolk’s seasides can be busy, but the long
dog-friendly beach south of the fishing hamlet of Sizewell is largely
overlooked by tourists and is a great place to swim. Kwasi Kwarteng, the
business secretary, had just given the proposed new nuclear power station
the go-ahead, and, bobbing in the waves, I gazed at the existing site’s
faraway blocks and sphere and tried to come to terms with what’s likely
to happen to this lovely stretch of coast — not to mention the Minsmere
nature reserve and all the sleepy villages, nightingale-filled woods and
family farms that the long building process will irrevocably change.
My grief for the countryside here is acute. I wish there were other options
than Sizewell on the table. You might say that’s nimbyism, but without
people willing to protect their home patches even more of our precious
landscapes, habitats and creatures will disappear — and that’s not just
a loss to locals, it’s a loss to all of us.
Times 29th July 2022
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/its-hard-not-to-be-a-nimby-when-nuclear-meets-nature-sd2wgdt9b
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