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New research raises further concern about radioactive contamination from US arms testing

Studies renew worry about contamination from US arms testing, Stars and Stripes,  By RALPH VARTABEDIAN | Los Angeles Times  October 6, 2018 LOS ANGELES (Tribune News Service) — At the dawn of the nuclear age, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration placed the nation’s major nuclear weapons production and research facilities in large, isolated reservations to shield them from foreign spies – and to protect the American public from the still unknown risks of radioactivity.

By the late 1980s, near the end of the Cold War, federal lands in South Carolina, Tennessee, New Mexico, Colorado, Ohio and Washington state, among other places, were so polluted with radionuclides that the land was deemed permanently unsuitable for human habitation.

That much has long been accepted as a price for the nation’s nuclear deterrent. But a far more complex problem could emerge if recent research is correct.

Studies by a Massachusetts scientist say that invisible radioactive particles of plutonium, thorium and uranium are showing up in household dust, automotive air cleaners and along hiking trails outside the factories and laboratories that for half a century contributed to the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons.

The findings provide troubling new evidence that the federal government is losing control of at least some of the radioactive byproducts of the country’s weapons program.

Marco Kaltofen, a nuclear forensics expert and a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said he collected samples from communities outside three lab sites across the nation and found a wide variation of particle sizes. He said they could deliver lifelong doses that exceed allowable federal standards if inhaled.

“If you inhale two particles, you will exceed your lifetime dose under occupational standards, and there is a low probability of detecting it,” he said.

A peer-reviewed study by Kaltofen was published in its final form in May in Environmental Engineering Science.

Kaltofen, who also is the principal investigator at the nuclear and chemical forensics consulting firm Boston Chemical Data Corp., released a second study in recent weeks.

The Energy Department has long insisted that small particles like those collected by Kaltofen deliver minute doses of radioactivity, well below typical public exposures.

One of the nation’s leading experts on radioactivity doses, Bruce Napier, who works in the Energy Department’s lab system, said the doses cited by Kaltofen would not pose a threat to public health.

Such assurances have been rejected by nuclear plant workers, their unions and activists who monitor environmental issues at nearly every lab and nuclear weapons site in the nation.

Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, cited a long history of denial about the claims of “down winders,” the residents of Western states who were exposed to radioactive fallout from atmospheric weapons testing.

“We cannot trust self-reporting by the Department of Energy,” he said. “I don’t accept that low levels of radioactivity have no risk.”

Tom Carpenter, executive director of another watchdog group, the Hanford Challenge in central Washington, said as recently as last year that the Energy Department released an unknown quantity of radioactive particles during demolition of a shuttered weapons factory, the Plutonium Finishing Plant.

After a series of three releases during 2017, the Energy Department shut down the demolition and has yet to resume it. Forty-two workers were exposed in the incidents.

“If you work in a coal mine, you go home with coal dust on you,” Carpenter said. “Same with a textile mill; you go home with cotton dust. These Hanford workers went home with plutonium dust.”

The second study by Kaltofen, completed in August, reported that fairly high radioactivity levels were found in 30 samples from the communities around the Hanford nuclear site, near Richland, Wash. The samples found contamination on personal vehicles driven inside the Hanford site that would leave mechanics exposed if they worked around the vehicles, the report said.

Kaltofen also reviewed an internal study in March by an Energy Department contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions, that found a calculated potential dose of 95 millirem for workers, roughly 10 times higher than the federal Environmental Protection Agency standard.

Kaltofen said a broader independent study should look at residual contamination around Hanford. An Energy Department spokesman at the Hanford site said the office had no comment on the studies.

For his studies, Kaltofen collected samples outside the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the former Rocky Flats weapons plant near Denver and the Hanford site.

The samples were collected from the crawl spaces of homes, a trailer park office, vacuum cleaner bags, automotive air filters, furnace filters and along a hiking trail.

He subjected those samples to electronic microscopy analysis to determine exactly what type of element was emitting radiation. He identified isotopes of cesium, thorium, uranium and plutonium, all the results of building nuclear weapons parts.

The communities surrounding these facilities have long adapted to the reality that they are near radioactivity, though they are not willing to take risks that compromise their health. Kaltofen’s sampling found some very high levels of contamination in Los Alamos’ Acid Canyon, a recreational area near a community pool and skate park………

A worker’s exposure to radioactivity, such as walking by a radioactive substance or having particles cling to clothing, is checked by monitors and badges worn by workers at plant sites. Such exposure is like a medical X-ray, which delivers a momentary dose. But inhaling a small particle of plutonium or thorium can go unnoticed by such monitors and deliver a lifetime of alpha radiation right next to lung tissue, Kaltofen said.

“You can walk through a portal monitor without setting it off but you can get a substantial amount of energy from particles in the body,” he said. https://www.stripes.com/news/us/studies-renew-worry-about-contamination-from-us-arms-testing-1.550707#.W7pnK–LpJ4.twitter

October 8, 2018 Posted by | environment, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear pollution: Spain’s six radioactively contaminated sites

Six sites in Spain have radioactive contamination, nuclear agency admits https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/10/04/inenglish/1538636406_969260.html

Yet none of the areas are officially classified as contaminated ground due to a legal limbo MANUEL PLANELLES, English version by Susana Urra.Madrid 4 OCT 2018

Spain’s Nuclear Security Council (CSN) has admitted the existence of radioactive contamination in an area located between Madrid and Toledo, as EL PAÍS revealed a few weeks ago. The agency also lists five more contaminated sites whose existence was previously known.

However, none of the six zones listed by the CSN are officially classified as contaminated ground because Spain has yet to produce a formal inventory of sites affected by radioactive leaks, a full decade after a royal decree ordered one to be drafted.

The CSN said that the Nuclear Energy Law needs to be amended first in order for the inventory to go ahead. And since 2008, no government has made any moves in this direction. In this legal limbo, the agency in charge of Spain’s nuclear security is simultaneously stating that these contaminated sites exist, but that they are not officially listed as such.

On November 7, 1970, several dozen liters of highly radioactive liquid from a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing operation leaked from the Juan Vigón National Nuclear Energy Center, located inside Madrid’s university campus. The liquid spilled into the sewer system and reached the Manzanares river; from there it flowed to the Jarama River, to the adjoining irrigation canal, and to the Tagus River.

The Franco regime, which was busy developing an atomic bomb under the Islero Project, hushed up the accident and the existence of contaminated soil, which it collected after draining the Jarama canal. The sludge considered to be least contaminated was then buried in eight ditches alongside the waterway. The legacy is still there, covered with weeds and lacking warning signs of any kind.

In its release, the CSN said that the Ecological Transition Ministry is working on legal changes to facilitate the approval of an official list of contaminated sites in Spain. This, said the oversight body, will help determine the need for cleanup operations or access restrictions.

“There are several sites showing radioactivity originating from human activity,” says the release. However, the CSN says that “it is estimated that there is no significant radiological risk.”

Besides the eight ditches along the Jarama, which are contaminated with cesium-137 and strontium-90, the CSN lists five other areas whose existence was already known. At the top of the list is Palomares, in southeastern Spain, where a US B-52 bomber collided in midair with a refueling plane on January 17, 1966, dropping four hydrogen bombs. While the bombs did not explode and nobody was killed, two of them released plutonium across the land.

There are two more contaminated sites on the Tinto River in Huelva province. One is located in the marshes of Mendaña, on the Tinto’s estuary, where there are high levels of cesium-137; the other site is near the spot where the Tinto meets the Odiel, and it contains significant amounts of radium-226.

Also on the list is El Hondón, a rural area in Cartagena (Murcia), which contains phosphate sludge and uranium-238; the last site is in the Ebro reservoir in Flix (Tarragona), where there was also phosphate sludge and uranium-238, although the CSN said that the sludge has already been removed from the site.

On Wednesday, the environmental groups Ecologistas en Acción and Jarama Vivo staged a protest in one of the ditches along the Jarama, where they placed symbolic warning signs. “A mere visual inspection of the site clearly shows how easy it is to access,” said these groups in a release. This lack of oversight has meant that, over the years, some of the earth may have been moved around, “causing a possible risk of radioactive contamination to the local population.”

“Right now there is no guarantee whatsoever that this toxic waste hasn’t been moved and scattered,” said Raúl Urquiaga, of Jarama Vivo. “In fact, some of the sites are in the same spots as infrastructure such as the A-4 bypass, roads and transmission towers.”

October 5, 2018 Posted by | environment, Spain | Leave a comment

Consumer society, high energy, lifestyle underlies climate change

GLOBAL HUMAN POPULATION ISN’T GOING TO EXPLODE—BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN WE’RE SAFE | NewsWeek, RAGHU MURTUGUDDE , PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
 9/26/18 Population has grown super-exponentially over the 20th century, which has led to some alarmist messages along the way. The most well known of them is the 1968 book, The Population Bomb, by Stanford professor Paul Ehrilch. Mass starvation due to the classic Malthusian catastrophe of population growth outpacing food production was predicted for the 1970s and 80s in the absence of immediate implementation of population reduction measures. This dire prediction did not materialize, of course, thanks to the Green Revolution.

The main drivers of population growth are death and birth rates—but the initial population size is important as well. Lifespan has lengthened due to medical miracles, while fertility has dropped across the board due to birth controls and family planning. But most importantly, because of the education and empowerment of women.

While population growth rates have declined, total population has continued to grow due to the initial size of the population, referred to as population momentum. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs projected in 2017 that Earth’s population would surpass 11 billion by 2100, despite these fertility and population growth rate trends.

The UN expects that nearly 70 percent of the world’s population for the latter half of the 21st century would be made up of a population with fertility rates below-replacement (less than 2.1 births per woman). And yet, there has been a steady call for population reduction—only now in the context of emission targets developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to meet global warming goals.

This “Population Climate Bomb” alarm is founded on ignoring several important factors that have brought us to this state of affairs as far as climate change is concerned. Foremost is the arbitrary accounting of the impact of population on climate, which neglects the global trade network where emissions are moved around hidden in goods and services.

Even the lowered fertility rates among the educated and empowered women may be associated with an unintended upward bump in per capita consumption (as discussed below). Additional complications arise because humanity has yet to chart a course to increasing the Human Development Index without increasing the environmental footprint. All developed countries have a high environmental footprint and no developing country can achieve higher standards of living without increasing its per capita consumption.

The IPCC has often been accused of ignoring population as a driver of climate change and global warming. Population projections are very much a part of the calculations for future scenarios on emission, mitigation and adaptation—but some would like a more explicit mention of the impact of population reduction on greenhouse gas emissions……….

The developed world has a narrow base of younger population with a nearly even distribution up to the aging population. Japan stands as a stark example of an ever growing aging population due to stagnating birth rates.  Developing countries on the other hand display a pyramidal age structure with a large base of population under 25. This offers a golden opportunity to educate and empower girls and young women. Nothing has proven more effective as a contraception than educating and empowering women.

Climate assessments including adaptation and mitigation scenarios by the IPCC are indeed better served by focusing on reducing energy intensity of GDPs and carbon intensity of energy production. Population is a problem that is solving itself. Our penchant for high-energy lifestyle shows no signs of diminishing. Our energies are best focused on evolving into carbon-neutral sapiens who will naturally settle into a healthy population level.

Raghu Murtugudde is a Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science and Earth System Science at the University of Maryland. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in India. His research focuses On the role of the oceans on climate variability and change including the biological feedbacks on climate. https://www.newsweek.com/global-human-population-explosion-carbon-emissions-consumption-1138996

September 28, 2018 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change, environment | Leave a comment

Scientists study North Korea’s nuclear tests, and the earthquakes

Earthquake Studies Reveal the True Cost of North Korea’s Nuclear Tests Inverse,  By Emma Betuel September 26, 2018
On September 3, 2017, North Korea tested a nuclear bomb 17 times larger than the one that leveled Hiroshima, sending ripples of alarm across the world. More than just raise the eyebrows of policy makers, the blast also piqued the interest of experts at Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, who show in a pair of recent papers that last September’s nuclear test may be responsible for many of the aftershocks that occurred in the past year.

While some existing research argues it’s unlikely that a nuclear test could cause a massive earthquake, the two papers identify 13 high-frequency tremors that traveled through North Korea in the months following the September test. More importantly, they confirm which of them were triggered by the explosion, which were unrelated earthquakes, and which — as some have feared — were caused by additional nuclear tests.

“North Korea has conducted six nuclear tests, but the latest one was huge. That’s what we’ve analyzed the signals from,” Woon Young Kim, Ph.D., the lead author of the Seismological Research Letters paper and a professor of seismology geology and tectonophysics, tells Inverse. “The question was: Were they explosions or were they earthquakes?”

The earliest rumblings occurred just eight minutes after the initial nuclear test but were not included in the paper’s aftershock count. But two occurred later that month and another on October 12. In December there were five more. The tremors continued into 2018, with four in February and the final one on April 22.

The issue, explains Kim, is that scientists were aware of these tremors as they occurred but nobody knew why they were happening. At the time, some expertsidentified these tremors as evidence that North Korea was testing more nukes on a smaller scale, but Kim’s new paper, published in conjunction with another studyauthored by his colleague David Schaff, Ph.D., suggests not only that some of those tremors were actually just earthquakes but also that they were tightly grouped along a fault line, where similar events will likely occur in the future.

Bomb or Earthquake?

To find out whether these shakes were organic or the result of nuclear testing, Kim analyzed two major wave types measured after the tests. Whenever the earth shakes (whether it’s due to an explosion or not), the first rumble to roll by is called an “P-wave” or primary wave. It’s typically the first wave to get picked up by monitoring stations and travels around six kilometers per second.

…….. After more analysis, the researchers concluded that “event 8” was actually an earthquake, together with two other suspected explosions.

“There have been about three events at the North Korea test site that we feel were misclassified,” Schaff tells Inverse. “No method is 100 percent certain, but combining the two methods, I was able to say with a very high probably of certainty that these were earthquakes.”

The Real Consequences of September 3, 2017

The good news is that these results suggest that North Korea isn’t testing bombs as frequently as some might fear They do, however, suggest that there could be something going on underneath the surface as a result of the September 3 explosion.

Using the data provided by Kim, Schaff showed that the tremors following the explosion were clustered along a unified path. As it turns out, what had originally looked like a random spattering of explosions and earthquakes over an area spanning five kilometers was actually a cluster of tremors that occurred within about 700 meters of one another near North Korea’s Chinese border.

The activity around this fault line can actually be traced back to that initial explosion in September of last year, explains Kim. “It’s not 100 percent sure, but I think somehow that the nuclear test was so large that it triggered these small seismic events to the north of the area,” he says.

As some have feared, it appears that North Korea’s testing hasaltered the landscape, at least near the surface of the Earth. In April, Kim Jong-Un announced that North Korea would stop testing nukes in its mountainous hideaway beneath Mt. Mantap, a move that Chinese scientists have suggested is due to the fact that a number of underground tunnels have collapsed beneath the mountain. Other studies have also suggested that continued testing has blown bits of Mt. Mantap to smithereens, making it a non-useful test site.

Should North Korea start testing again, says Schaff, he will be eager to continue the project. “It’s nice to be working on something that affects the state of the world we’re living in,” he says. “This is more than just knowledge for knowledge’s sake.  https://www.inverse.com/article/49304-north-korea-nuclear-test-caused-earthquakes

September 28, 2018 Posted by | environment, North Korea, safety, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Sellafield nuclear site’s water use – a massive drain on Cumbria’s rivers and lakes

Radiation Free Lakeland 25th Sept 2018 The rain returned several weeks ago and our gardens and fields have
returned to their usual shades of green. However, United Utilities still
finds it necessary to take full-page advertisements urging us all “to use
a little less water,” to spend less time in the shower, to turn off the
tap when brushing teeth etc. These are, of course in themselves, laudable
actions, but it also seems reasonable to ask ‘Where has all the water
gone? ‘ and, subsequently, to speculate that a big part of the answer
lies in the enormous quantities of water being extracted from Cumbria’s
rivers and lakes to cool and service the many serious hazards that remain
at the Sellafield nuclear site, including Building 30.
https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2018/09/25/nuclear-costing-the-earth-rivers-and-sea/

September 28, 2018 Posted by | UK, water | Leave a comment

Under cover of darkness, EDF dumps 2,000 tons of ‘nuclear mud’ near Cardiff, UK

IN THE DARK, THE FIRST 2,000 TONS OF ‘NUCLEAR MUD’ IS DUMPED OFF PENARTH https://penarthnews.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/in-the-dark-the-first-2000-tons-of-pollution-is-dumped-off-penarth/  on September 11, 2018 

The first of hundreds of consignments of allegedly radioactive mud from the Somerset coast (adjacent to the Hinkley Point nuclear power station) was deposited off Penarth last night under cover of darkness.

The curious looking Belgian motor-hopper Sloeber made her first round trip from Hinkley Point to the Cardiff Grounds – a mile off shore from Penarth. She then  opened-up her belly underwater to disgorge thousands of tonnes of mud on one massive “bowel movement” –   last night .

Although the Conservative-run Vale of Glamorgan Council has protested about the mud dumping scheme, not a single Labour Assembly member, councillor or MP has raised a so much as a peep of protest about what is easily the worst-ever case of deliberate pollution ever witnessed in Wales.

Last night the Belgian hopper MV Sloeber – loaded with 2,000 tonnes of mud dredged from the sea bed adjacent to 3 Somerset nuclear power stations – sailed around the far side of the Monkstone light and skirted the sandbanks. As night fell she turned to port and headed directly towards Penarth,  pausing just a mile offshore to dump her controversial cargo into the shallow sea of the “Cardiff Grounds” – which up to now have only been used to deposit dredged mud from the approach channel to Cardif Docks .

Sloeber’s party trick is to split herself open from stem to stern with both halves of the ship opening up wide below the waterline to allow her cargo of mud to fall out of the ship under its own considerable weight .

In 3 months or so, when  all the thousands of tonnes of  mud from Hinkley Point have been dumped in the sea in Welsh waters,  the French energy company EDF will be able to wash its hands of all responsibility for this material and whatever lurks within it.

…As of last night the first consignment of English ‘nuclear mud’ become Wales’s problem.  The mud dropped from the belly of MV Sloeber last night will soon be washed ashore on the coastline between Penarth  and Lavernock – and could permanently change the shoreline.

Experts say the consequences of this operation – which involves the dumping of over 320,000 tonnes of English nuclear mud in Welsh Waters – may not become apparent for generations.

Meanwhile Sloeber returned to Hinkley Point to load more mud for another visit to Wales later today.

September 14, 2018 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment

EDF has started dumping Hinkley radioactive mud, despite 100, 000 petitioners against this

Wales Online 11th Sept 2018 , EDF has confirmed it has started to dump mud from the Hinkley Point nuclear
power station in the Severn Estuary off Cardiff. The news came on the same
day that rock musician and anti-nuclear campaigner Cian Ciaran lodged
papers at the High Court seeking an injunction to stop the dumping. The
papers name NNB Generation Company (HPC) Ltd as the respondent in the
action. The firm is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the French energy company
EDF, which obtained a licence to carry out the dumping. More than 100,000
people have signed petitions against the dumping plans , which campaigners
say could pose health risks.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/radioactive-mud-dumping-begins-coast-15136164

Wales Online 12th Sept 2018 , Letter: It is hard for the layman to know whether or not the assurances
about the safety of the mud from Hinkley Point can be accepted at face
value. Other issues do arise as well, however. Will the addition of this
sizeable tonnage of waste at Cardiff Grounds have any effect on the flows
of sand and mud within the Bristol Channel?

We have all seen how the opposite process – dredging – has over the years changed the nature and
shape of various beaches, usually to their detriment. Also does any income
accrue to Wales from the use of this site for the receipt of waste material
from elsewhere? This is perhaps the least we might expect given the vast
sums of money which are being made available for this project.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/western-mail-letters-wednesday-september-15140781

September 14, 2018 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment

Opposition to release of Fukushima radioactive tritium water into the sea; longterm storage the better option

Fukushima water release into sea faces chorus of opposition  https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox?compose=DmwnWtDqNzxklZTsLVvsRFtgBQZHzxshPgMCgrVGpNqZnjrqDwNNWbPprDwxPlNFzCVZnfDvsQwVCitizens and environmental groups have expressed opposition to the idea of releasing into the ocean water tainted with tritium, a radioactive substance, from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.’s disaster-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.“Long-term storage (of the tritium-containing water) is possible from technical and economic standpoints,” Komei Hosokawa, 63, an official of the Citizens’ Commission on Nuclear Energy, said at a public hearing held in Tokyo on Friday by a subcommittee of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. “The radiation levels in the water will decrease during the long-term storage,” he added.

At a similar hearing held the same day in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, Aki Hashimoto, a housewife from the city, said, “I never want to see further worsening of ocean pollution from radiation.”

Opinions objecting to the release of the tritium-contaminated water into the ocean were also heard at a hearing held in the Fukushima town of Tomioka on Thursday.

After Friday’s hearings, Ichiro Yamamoto, who heads the subcommittee, told reporters that many participants in the hearings said the tainted water should continue to be held in storage tanks.

The subcommittee will study the option of keeping the water in the tanks, he added.

Tepco is lowering the radiation levels in contaminated water at the Fukushima No. 1 plant using special equipment, but the device cannot remove tritium.

The tritium-tainted water is stored in tanks within the premises of the power plant, which was heavily damaged in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

In 2016, an expert panel of the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy discussed five methods to dispose of the tritium-tainted water —injection deep into the ground, release into the sea after dilution, release into the air through evaporation, conversion into hydrogen through electrolysis, and burying it after it is solidified.

The panel estimated that the ocean release is the cheapest option, costing up to about ¥3.4 billion.

September 3, 2018 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, oceans, radiation | Leave a comment

Ecological risks of China’s floating nuclear power plants in South China Sea

China’s Floating Nuclear Power Plants Pose Risks in South China Sea, VOA, August 31, 2018  Ralph Jennings, 

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Floating Chinese nuclear power plants stationed in the South China Sea would help Beijing fortify its claims in a decades-old maritime sovereignty dispute, but come with environmental risks, scholars say.

China plans to power some of its claimed islets with nuclear energy, the U.S. Department of Defense recently told Congress in an annual report on Chinese military activities. Beijing had indicated last year it was planning to install “floating nuclear power stations” that would start operating before 2020, the report says.

That development would bulk up China’s maritime claim after about a decade of land reclamation in parts of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea and the sending of military units to some of the artificial islands, analysts say. Rival maritime claimants Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam lack similar means to electrify their holdings.

“You are literally facilitating increase of physical control of the South China Sea,” said Collin Koh, maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

“I think the more immediate concerns of anyone, be they claimants, be they non-claimants, is a huge ecological risk, and taking into account that Chinese nuclear energy technology may not necessarily be one of the best in the world,” he said………

Ecological risks

China is unlikely to do an environmental impact study on any nuclear-power barges before installing them, Koh said. A “runaway reactor” could lead to a “major ecological disaster,” he said. The U.S. Defense Department report notes that the sea is prone to typhoons, during which most vessels seek shelter.

Pirates and terrorists at sea could also disrupt a nuclear power barge, said Andrew Yang, secretary-general of the Chinese Council of Advanced Policy Studies think tank.

“It certainly requires a different kind of infrastructure building, because it’s a floating nuclear power plant, never been doing it before, and the maritime conditions (are) putting a lot of potential risks or uncertainty in terms of maintaining such an installation,” Yang said. https://www.voanews.com/a/china-s-floating-nuclear-power-plants-risks-south-china-sea/4551979.html

September 3, 2018 Posted by | China, oceans, safety | Leave a comment

Inadequate radiation testing of Hinkley mud: Plaid calls for further testing

Glamorgan Gem 30th Aug 2018 , Plaid Cymru councillors in Barry have warned against disposing more than
300,000 tonnes of mud from Hinkley Point a few miles off the coast from
Cardiff, Penarth and Barry. Earlier this year Natural Resources Wales (NRW)
said sample results of the dredged material had demonstrated it is safe,
but campaigners claim it has been “insufficiently tested”.
NRW gave the French company EDF a licence to move mud from the construction site at
Hinkley Point C and release it at ‘Cardiff Grounds’ in the Severn
Channel where it can be dispersed. Plaid points out that concerns have been
raised by marine scientist Tim Deere-Jones that the mud has not been tested
for radioactivity at a depth lower than five centimetres and that the wrong
tests have been carried out. Cllr Nic Hodges, who represents Barry Island
and Barry’s West End on the Vale Council, spoke at a rally outside the
Senedd in Cardiff Bay on Bank Holiday Monday, calling for further testing.
http://www.glamorgan-gem.co.uk/article.cfm

September 3, 2018 Posted by | environment, UK | Leave a comment

Colorado River polluted since 1969 by nuclear explosion fracturing experiments

Ken Raskin 31 Aug 18  They detonated 5 nuclear bombs under parachute Colorado and Rangley. Not so far from Aspen Colorado. The radionuclides have been pouring  into the headwaters of the Colorado river and Colorado for years. Rangely and  Parachute have 15 times normal average for cancer.

Following the Project Gasbuggy test, two subsequent nuclear explosion fracturing experiments, 5   nuclear bombs total, were conducted in western Colorado in an effort to refine the technique. They were Project Rulison in 1969 and Project Rio Blanco in 1973. In both cases the gas radioactivity was still seen as too high and in the last case the triple-blast rubble chimney structures disappointed the design engineers. Soon after that test the ~ 15-year Project Plowshare program funding dried up. The underground aquifer and gas still radioactive

These early fracturing tests were later superseded by hydraulic fracturing technologies.

August 31, 2018 Posted by | environment, USA | Leave a comment

Plutonium remains in the ground below proposed Rocky Flats national wildlife refuge

Guardian 22nd Aug 2018 The nation’s newest national wildlife refuge, filled with swaying prairie
grass and home to a herd of elk, is slated to open next month just outside
Colorado’s largest city.

But seven Denver metro area school districts
have already barred school-sanctioned field trips to the preserve. A top
local health official says he would probably never hike there.

And a town is suing over what the soil might contain. “The threat posed by
contamination at Rocky Flats and its effect on visiting children appears to
be an issue of dispute amongst experts,” Lisa Flores, a Denver public
schools board of education member, told the Guardian.

“Until we have definitive assurances of child safety, we will exercise an abundance of
caution.” The 2,119-hectare (5,237-acre) Rocky Flats national wildlife
refuge, due to open this autumn, sits on land surrounding what once was a
nuclear weapons production facility. From 1951 to 1989, the Rocky Flats
Plant manufactured plutonium triggers – grapefruit-size spheres that,
when compressed by explosives, catalyze a nuclear reaction. Though the
area, about 20 miles north-west of Denver, has been cleaned up and declared
safe by the government, plutonium remains in the ground where the facility
once stood.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/22/new-us-refuge-rocky-flats-plutonium-toxic

August 25, 2018 Posted by | - plutonium, environment, USA | Leave a comment

Westinghouse: no clean-up of nuclear pollution at leaking reactor near Columbia – for 40 years!

Westinghouse won’t clean up pollution for 40 years at nuclear plant near Columbiahttps://www.thestate.com/news/local/article216789385.html, BY SAMMY FRETWELL  sfretwell@thestate.com, August 16, 2018 07:34 PM

Seven years before a uranium leak was discovered at a Westinghouse nuclear fuel factory this summer, the toxic radioactive material trickled out of a pipe buried below the plant on Bluff Road.

That 2011 leak, unknown to many Lower Richland residents, sent uranium levels soaring to amounts not typically found in the area’s soggy soil, in one spot exceeding safe drinking-water standards.

But Westinghouse hasn’t cleaned up the polluted site — and it doesn’t plan to for at least 40 years — despite evidence the contamination will spread into creeks, ponds and groundwater, according to a June report by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

If Westinghouse obtains a new 40-year operating license this year from the NRC, the cleanup would occur no sooner than 2058, when its Bluff Road plant would be shut down, federal records show. The NRC’s June environmental assessment says the contaminated soil is below a uranium recovery and recycling building on the Westinghouse site.

But Westinghouse hasn’t cleaned up the polluted site — and it doesn’t plan to for at least 40 years — despite evidence the contamination will spread into creeks, ponds and groundwater, according to a June report by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

If Westinghouse obtains a new 40-year operating license this year from the NRC, the cleanup would occur no sooner than 2058, when its Bluff Road plant would be shut down, federal records show. The NRC’s June environmental assessment says the contaminated soil is below a uranium recovery and recycling building on the Westinghouse site.

Westinghouse does not know how long the uranium leak — discovered in 2011 — occurred or how much pollution escaped into the ground, the NRC report said.

The report is a concern to some Lower Richland residents, already upset about this summer’s leak of uranium through a three-inch crack in the nuclear fuel-rod plant’s floor. In that leak, discovered in June and reported to the public in late July, contamination levels more than 1,000 times above normal soil levels were discovered.

Uranium is a radioactive material that can cause kidney damage in people exposed to elevated levels.

Many people in the Bluff Road area drink from wells and worry about water pollution stemming from Westinghouse. Contamination also is a concern at Congaree National Park, just six miles from the fuel factory.

During a tense community meeting Monday, plant neighbors blasted Westinghouse over pollution at the site, safety lapses and what they said is the company’s reluctance to talk with residents who live near the fuel factory. The site has an extensive history of groundwater pollution.

Company executive Mike Annacone apologized to the overflow crowd, saying he was sorry the leak occurred and Westinghouse had failed to stay in touch with the community.

Now, some Westinghouse critics are upset about the 2011 leak.

They say it is hard to believe the NRC would allow pollution to remain in place for 40 years if the contamination threatens groundwater.

“You can’t tell me that is the only solution,’’ said Virginia Sanders, a Lower Richland resident and organizer with the national Sierra Club conservation group. “There has to be some way of cleaning up that plume, so that it is not just sitting there.’’

Sanders and Tom Clements, a local representative of Friends of the Earth, said the NRC should deny the proposed 40-year operating license for Westinghouse and consider issuing a shorter new license. Both also questioned why Westinghouse is seeking a 40-year operating license when its current license doesn’t expire until 2027.

“I don’t think the license should even be issued at this point,’’Sanders said. “There was no community involvement. What impact is this having on the community and the people around the plant?’’

Clements wrote the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday, asking the federal agency to delay any licensing decision. His letter asked the agency to hold a community meeting in Richland County, adding that circumstances had changed since Westinghouse applied for the license.

Westinghouse did not respond to questions from The State about the 2011 leak. But the company has begun monitoring the area affected by the leak and testing the soil, said Tom Vukovinsky, a senior fuel facility inspector with the NRC in Atlanta.

Westinghouse says cleanup could be expensive because the 2011 pollution is under a major building at the fuel-rod plant, Vukovinsky said.
A cleanup would involve excavating 10 feet of soil below the building, or about 82,000 square feet, according to the NRC report.

Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear engineer who heads the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said state and federal regulators have questions to answer about what appears to be lax oversight of the plant. Despite concerns about groundwater contamination, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s June study said a new license for the plant will “not significantly affect the quality of the human environment.’’

Makhijani, who has read the NRC report, said one pocket of water near the 2011 leak had more than 1,000 times the level of uranium that is safe for drinking water. Uranium levels in the soil also were more than twice as high as naturally occurring, according to the report.

“Investigating this further is warranted,’’ Makhijani said.

Vukovinsky and Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the NRC, said pollution leaks primarily are the responsibility of the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. The NRC focuses on nuclear safety in the plant, they said.

DHEC, which ran Monday’s community meeting, has said it doesn’t know of any pollution that has trickled off the Westinghouse site and into the surrounding community. The agency said the June leak of uranium, if it gets into the groundwater, would flow away from most homes toward the Congaree River.
Efforts to get comment from DHEC on Thursday about the 2011 leak were unsuccessful.

The Westinghouse plant, first licensed by the NRC in 1969, lies in a rural, forested area with a smattering of homes and businesses nearby. Plant neighbors include longtime African-American residents and wealthy landowners who operate exclusive hunt clubs.

The Westinghouse plant employs about 1,000 workers, who are involved in various aspects of making nuclear fuel for the nation’s atomic power plants. The Richland County facility is one of only three fuel factories of its kind in the country.

Westinghouse is the same company whose bankruptcy helped derail the V.C. Summer nuclear expansion project in Fairfield County last summer.

August 20, 2018 Posted by | environment, USA | Leave a comment

Climate change brings risks of more devastating tsunamis

Climate change sea level rises could increase risk for more devastating tsunamis worldwide https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/vt-ccs081418.php, Even minor sea-level rise, by as much as a foot, poses greater risks VIRGINIA TECH 16 Aug 18 

As sea levels rise due to climate change, so do the global hazards and potential devastating damages from tsunamis, according to a new study by a partnership that included Virginia Tech.

Even minor sea-level rise, by as much as a foot, poses greater risks of tsunamis for coastal communities worldwide.

The threat of rising sea levels to coastal cities and communities throughout the world is well known, but new findings show the likely increase of flooding farther inland from tsunamis following earthquakes. Think of the tsunami that devasted a portion of northern Japan after the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake, causing a nuclear plant to melt down and spread radioactive contamination.

These findings are at the center of a new Science Advances study, headed by a multi-university team of scientists from the Earth Observatory of Singapore, the Asian School of the Environment at Nanyang Technological University, and National Taiwan University, with critical support from Virginia Tech’s Robert Weiss, an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences, part of the College of Science.

“Our research shows that sea-level rise can significantly increase the tsunami hazard, which means that smaller tsunamis in the future can have the same adverse impacts as big tsunamis would today,” Weiss said, adding that smaller tsunamis generated by earthquakes with smaller magnitudes occur frequently and regularly around the world. For the study, Weiss was critical in helping create computational models and data analytics frameworks.

At Virginia Tech, Weiss serves as director of the National Science Foundation-funded Disaster Resilience and Risk Management graduate education program and is co-lead of Coastal@VT, comprised of 45 Virginia Tech faculty from 13 departments focusing on contemporary and emerging coastal zone issues, such as disaster resilience, migration, sensitive ecosystems, hazard assessment, and natural infrastructure.

For the study, Weiss and his partners, including Lin Lin Li, a senior research fellow, and Adam Switzer, an associate professor, at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, created computer-simulated tsunamis at current sea level and with sea-level increases of 1.5 feet and 3 feet in the Chinese territory of Macau. Macau is a densely populated coastal region located in South China that is generally safe from current tsunami risks.

At current sea level, an earthquake would need to tip past a magnitude of 8.8 to cause widespread tsunami inundation in Macau. But with the simulated sea-level rises, the results surprised the team.

The sea-level rise dramatically increased the frequency of tsunami-induced flooding by 1.2 to 2.4 times for the 1.5-foot increase and from 1.5 to 4.7 times for the 3-foot increase. “We found that the increased inundation frequency was contributed by earthquakes of smaller magnitudes, which posed no threat at current sea level, but could cause significant inundation at higher sea-level conditions,” Li said.

n the simulated study of Macau – population 613,000 – Switzer said, “We produced a series of tsunami inundation maps for Macau using more than 5,000 tsunami simulations generated from synthetic earthquakes prepared for the Manila Trench.” It is estimated that sea levels in the Macau region will increase by 1.5 feet by 2060 and 3 feet by 2100, according to the team of U.S.-Chinese scientists.

The hazard of large tsunamis in the South China Sea region primarily comes from the Manila Trench, a megathrust system that stretches from offshore Luzon in the Philippines to southern Taiwan. The Manila Trench megathrust has not experienced an earthquake larger than a magnitude 7.8 since the 1560s. Yet, study co-author Wang Yu, from the National Taiwan University, cautioned that the region shares many of the characteristics of the source areas that resulted in the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake, as well as the 2011 earthquake in northern Japan, both causing massive loss of life.

These increased dangers from tsunamis build on already known difficulties facing coastal communities worldwide: The gradual loss of land directly near coasts and increased chances of flooding even during high tides, as sea levels increase as the Earth warms.

“The South China Sea is an excellent starting point for such a study because it is an ocean with rapid sea-level rise and also the location of many mega cities with significant worldwide consequences if impacted. The study is the first if its kind on the level of detail, and many will follow our example,” Weiss said.

Policymakers, town planners, emergency services, and insurance firms must work together to create or insure safer coastlines, Weiss added.

“Sea-level rise needs to be taken into account for planning purposes, for example for reclamation efforts but also for designing protective measures, such as seawalls or green infrastructure.”

He added, “What we assumed to be the absolute worst case a few years ago now appears to be modest for what is predicted in some locations. We need to study local sea-level change more comprehensively in order to create better predictive models that help to make investments in infrastructure that are or near sustainable.”

August 17, 2018 Posted by | 2 WORLD, climate change, oceans | Leave a comment

Federal judge rejects environmentalists’ case for halting opening Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge

Daily Mail 10th Aug 2018 , A federal judge on Thursday rejected a request to bar the public from a
Colorado wildlife refuge that was once part of a nuclear weapons plant.
Environmentalists and community activists had asked the judge to issue a
preliminary injunction that would prohibit opening Rocky Flats National
Wildlife Refuge northwest of Denver while the courts hear their lawsuit
claiming the government did not study public safety closely enough.

U.S. District Judge Philip A. Brimmer said the activists had not shown that
radioactive exposure at the site was bad enough to cause them irreparable
harm, so they had not met the judicial standard for an injunction.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-6044945/Judge-wont-bar-public-refuge-nuke-site.html

August 11, 2018 Posted by | environment, USA | Leave a comment

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