Russia’s Federal Nuclear Center, the All-Russian Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC-VNIIEF), recently placed a somewhat unusual government tender: It is seeking a supplier of religious icons with the images of Saint Seraphim of Sarov and Saint Fedor Ushakov. Meanwhile, a private foundation, backed by President Vladimir Putin and Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu, has been gathering funds to build a massive temple to the Russian Armed Forces at Patriot Park,. Artisans are crafting a new icon for the temple, while the steps are to be made from melted-down Nazi equipment captured by the Red Army in World War II.
Viewed in isolation, these may seem to be the occasional eccentric habits of a latter-day authoritarian state. However, Dima Adamsky’s new book, Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics, and Strategy, demonstrates convincingly that there are indeed important signs being missed all around us, pointing to a longstanding nexus between the Russian Orthodox Church and the country’s nuclear-military-industrial complex.
Adamsky’s groundbreaking book lays out the largely unstudied history of how a nuclear priesthood emerged in Russia, permeated the units and commands in charge of Russia’s nuclear forces, and became an integral part of the nuclear weapons industry. Continue reading →
Nuclear Power & Natural Gas Hit A Wall In US: Now What? https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/22/nuclear-power-natural-gas-hit-a-wall-in-us-now-what/ June 22nd, 2019 by Tina Casey Two developments in the US energy landscape this week call into question the “clean energy” status of nuclear power and natural gas, too. In Rhode Island, state officials torpedoed a proposed natural gas power plant after a massive wave of public opposition. Meanwhile, federal officials greenlighted the sale of New Jersey’s Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in New Jersey to the company Holtec Decommissioning International, which will take it down atom by atom. So, now what?
The Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant
Decommissioning a nuclear power plant is a tricky business. It’s even trickier in the Oyster Creek case because Holtec intends to deep-six the facility in record time. The company credits its proprietary technology with enabling it to beat conventional timelines, though the Sierra Club is among those questioning Holtec’s ability to accomplish the task at a white-hot pace.
How fast? Well, According to our friends over at Energy Central News, by law the plant has a 60-year window for decommissioning. The NRC has already approved a 15-year schedule ending by 2035. Holtec anticipates completing most of the heavy lifting by 2025, with site remediation to follow.
Presumably New Jersey ratepayers have already chipped in for the cost of decommissioning by paying into an $848 million trust fund over the years of the nuclear power plant’s operation. Holtec expects to add another $46 million in investment income to the fund during decommissioning. We say presumably because anything can happen, but that’s the plan.
If all goes well, Holtec will get the job done within that budget. Still to be settled is where to stash the spent fuel. Holtec anticipates building a facility in New Mexico for that, though critics are already raising environmental justice issues.
Nuclear Power Out, Wind Power In
Oyster Creek’s fate was all but sealed years ago, when environmental groups and local stakeholders began drawing attention to its devastating impact on the ecosystem in Barnegat Bay. Fresh waves of residential and commercial development aren’t doing Barnegat Bay any favors either, but Oyster Creek took the #1 slot in the state’s 2010 list of action steps for restoring the 1,350 square mile estuary.
Critics of the closure plan (the plant pumped out its last kilowatts last fall) had been advocating for keeping the plant open while installing new cooling towers to help restore the bay. In past years they had a key ally: the absence of any handy alternative for the plant’s 636 megawatts.
Now they do. New Jersey is finally beginning to tap its massive offshore wind resources. In the latest development on that score, just last Friday the state tapped Denmark-based Ørsted to build a 1,100 offshore wind farm.
If that sounds big, it is. Ørsted’s so-named Ocean Wind project is the largest ever offshore wind procurement for a US state, according to Reuters.
Did you hear the sound of teeth gnashing? That’s probably former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, known for his alliances with fossil industry stakeholders. New Jersey’s offshore wind industry hit the doldrums under the Christie administration, but his final term ended two years ago and now it’s a different ball of wax.
Natural Gas Hits An Offshore Wind Power Wall
Natural gas stakeholders have been hungrily eyeballing the New England market for growth opportunities, but like New Jersey, Rhode Island has set its sights on offshore wind.
Alex Kuffner of The Providence Journal has the scoop. Take it away, Alex:
In a long-awaited decision with far-reaching implications for the state’s energy regime and environment, Rhode Island regulators on Thursday rejected approval of a proposal to build a $1-billion fossil-fuel burning power plant in Burrillville that would be among New England’s largest.
Ouch! Invenergy, the company behind the 1,000 megawatt Clear River Energy Center, has the right to appeal through the courts. However, like nuclear power fans in New Jersey, fossil energy fans in New England are facing a double whammy: local opposition plus the availability of an alternative, that being offshore wind power.
Friday’s ruling came down on the basis of failure to show need, but — as with the Oyster Creek situation — opponents also had a strong environmental argument. Aside from its contribution to the global climate crisis, the project would take up 67 acres of forest in a “vital wildlife corridor.”
The Town of Burrillville also brought its legal guns to bear against the project. That’s interesting because in past times, a large new power plant would get a favorable reception from local stakeholders as a matter of economic development. According to Kuffner, labor unions did support the project but the locals joined a chorus of opposition from environmental organizations.
Speaking of offshore wind as an alternative, Rhode Island is already planning the next phase of its offshore ventures, and Ørsted’s New Jersey project is just part of that state’s 2030 offshore wind energy goal of 3,500 megawatts.
The nearby states of New York and Massachusetts are also working on ambitious renewable energy plans that include offshore wind.
Whither Nuclear & Natural Gas?
Nuclear stakeholders are working overtime to focus attention on the zero emissions aspect of nuclear power plants, but as the Oyster Creek closure demonstrates, other environmental considerations can thwart the growth of the nuclear industry here in the US.
Similarly, the Clear River rejection illustrates how natural gas stakeholders are losing their grip on the “clean” title as public awareness grows over both global warming and local environmental concerns.
Though small in size, New Jersey and Rhode Island are having an outsized impact on the US energy landscape. No wonder US natural gas and nuclear energy technology stakeholders are looking to the export market for relief.
Day of reckoning nears for Ohio nuclear bailout bill, Cleveland.com Jun 21, 2019 By Jeremy Pelzer, cleveland.com, COLUMBUS, Ohio— Next week will be an important one in deciding the fate of Ohio’s two nuclear power plants and the state’s green-energy mandates.
House Bill 6, which would bail out FirstEnergy Solutions’ Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants and scrap Ohio’s energy-efficiency and renewable-energy standards for utilities, must be passed before the legislature leaves for summer break at the end of the month, proponents say. That’s because FirstEnergy Solutions asserts it must decide by June 30 whether to order $52 million worth of new nuclear fuel or move to close the two plants.
(The company, which is going through bankruptcy proceedings as part of an effort to separate from FirstEnergy Corp., says the plants are unprofitable without state subsidies).
But as that June 30 deadline approaches, state senators are still working to hammer out a compromise deal that is acceptable to both the Ohio Senate and House.
State Sen. Matt Dolan, a Chagrin Falls Republican, told The Plain Dealer/cleveland.com editorial board Friday that he is working on an “alternative” to HB6 with state Sen. Steve Wilson, a Maineville Republican who chairs the Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee, which has been holding hearings on the bill.
Dolan, who also serves on the committee, said their proposed revision is “not ready to be aired yet,” but he indicated it would no longer seek to completely abolish the state’s energy-efficiency and renewable-energy standards.
That alternative, Dolan said, “won’t undermine the development of alternative energy and clean energy in Ohio.”
Wilson didn’t immediately return a phone call Friday to his office. But he said earlier this month that he personally favors spinning out the nuclear subsidies away from the other parts of the legislation that don’t need to be passed before summer break…….
Under the current version of HB6, passed by the Ohio House late last month, every residential ratepayer in Ohio would be charged up to $1 per month through 2026 to create a “clean-air” fund that would raise about $190 million per year. Most – if not all – of that money would go toward bailing out the two nuclear facilities. ………
Political opposition grows to nuclear waste storage plan, SF Chronicle, By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, Associated Press June 21, 2019 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)— Plans by a New Jersey-based company to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors in the New Mexico desert is running into more political trouble, as some of the state’s top elected officials are raising red flags.
Congresswoman Deb Haaland became the latest member of the delegation to weigh in Friday, sending a letter to the U.S. Energy Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The first-term Democratic lawmaker suggested existing railways weren’t built to withstand the weight of the special casks that would be used to transport the high-level waste from sites around the country to southeastern New Mexico.
Haaland said there are no plans for new construction or renovations as part of the project proposed by Holtec International and that cities and states shouldn’t bear the cost of the infrastructure improvements needed to ensure safe transportation.
“I believe such a facility poses too great a risk to the health and safety of New Mexicans, our economy and our environment,” Haaland wrote.
Holtec is seeking a 40-year license from federal regulators to build what it has described as a state-of-the-art complex near Carlsbad……….
n her letter, Haaland pointed to past studies done by the Energy Department when it was considering Yucca Mountain. She said modeling predicted rail accidents at a rate of 1 in 10,000 shipments.
She also said the agency has found that a severe accident involving one cask of radioactive waste has the potential to contaminate dozens of square miles and result in hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup costs.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the transfer of the reactor’s license from Exelon Generation Co. to a subsidiary of Holtec International Inc., a nuclear services provider with headquarters in Camden. Holtec has developed a specialty in handling spent nuclear fuel and dismantling retired reactors.
The decommissioning will largely be concentrated in 2019 through 2025, but completed by 2035, according to a schedule submitted to the NRC. Under law, the owner could have taken up to 60 years to dismantle the plant and restore the site. ……
Holtec is hiring 200 of 600 Oyster Creek employees to work on the decommissioning. In addition, the other experts will be hired to assist in the project at various stages, Pierre Oneid, Holtec senior vice president and chief nuclear officer, said in a statement.
The company will pay the decommissioning costs from a $848 million trust fund that built up from payments collected from customers during 49 years of operations. The owner anticipates the fund, conservatively invested, will generate $46 million in interest income in the coming years that will also go toward decommissioning.
Exelon secured a license renewal through to 2029, but announced in 2010 that it planned to shut down the reactor by 2019 rather than install a costly cooling tower required under new environmental standards to reduce the temperature of the water it discharges into Barnegat Bay.
NUCLEAR UTILITIES SCRAMBLE TO STAVE OFF TRUMP URANIUM QUOTAS, by John Siciliano & Josh Siegel June 20, 2019 Washington Examiner, : Major U.S. nuclear utilities are warning President Trump it would be a big mistake to impose strict limits on the amount of uranium the nation imports from Canada and other allies, risking thousands of layoffs and other calamitous effects at nuclear power plants.
Trump is expected to meet with his Cabinet in the next few days to discuss recommendations the Commerce Department provided to him in April on placing firm quotas on uranium imports as a matter of national security.
Utility lobbyists representing Exelon, Duke Energy, and other owners of nuclear power plants, say the idea of placing limits on the amount of fissile fuel the nation imports is misguided, and Trump should reject any proposal that recommends such action.
Uranium mining firms had petitioned for the quotas to protect U.S. jobs in the mining sectors under trade provisions aimed at protecting national security……..
Sometimes, life experience — say, a Navy career that includes running aircraft carriers’ nuclear reactors — shapes legislation.
Which is why Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Norfolk, has proposed a bill meant to fast track advanced nuclear energy. And, as seems to be emerging as a pattern, she’s enlisted Virginia colleagues from the across the aisle — Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland County, and Rep Denver Riggleman, R-Nelson County — as co-sponsors.
“As an engineer who operated nuclear reactors on aircraft carriers, I know that ensuring a thriving civilian nuclear industry is vital,” Luria said. “Nuclear energy must be part of any solution to transitioning to a clean energy future because nuclear power provides over 55% of our carbon-free energy.”
The bill would:
*set a strategy for nuclear science and engineering research and development;
* provide for at least two advanced nuclear reactor demonstration projects, to be completed by the end of 2025;
* let federal entities arrange power purchase agreements for up to 40 years, to make it more feasible for nuclear plant operators to venture into this line of business;
* start a pilot program for a long-term nuclear power purchase agreements for new nuclear technology;
* require the Department of Energy to provide a source for fast-neutron research;
* launch a program to supply reactors with High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) fuel.
* set up scholarships and funding for students pursuing studies in nuclear science.
“We need an all-the-above energy strategy, and nuclear energy is an important component of that,” Wittman said.
Riggleman said “This bill will help position the United States as a global energy leader in a responsible and bipartisan way.”
Bipartisan House Members Introduce Nuclear Energy Leadership Act, Bill set for referral to the chamber’s energy, science committees, Morning Consult, BY JACQUELINE TOTH, June 18, 2019
House members have introduced an identical companion to the Senate’s premier nuclear legislation, opening the bill up for conversation in the chamber.
Reps. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) and Denver Riggleman (R-Va.) co-sponsored the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act, along with Reps. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) and Conor Lamb (D-Pa.), who chairs the Energy Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee — to which parts of the bill will likely be referred.
The House introduction shows enthusiasm for advanced nuclear energy in both chambers and will allow for discussion to move forward on NELA simultaneously in both the House and Senate, said Ryan Fitzpatrick, deputy director of the Clean Energy Program at the think tank Third Way. “Getting that conversation moving is a good thing for a timely process towards an actual passage.”
Among other directives in the measure, the Energy Department would have to create a national strategy for nuclear energy, demonstrate advanced nuclear reactor concepts and make an initial supply of high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel available, which is required by some new reactors.
Much of the nuclear industry is hoping for the bill’s enactment as a third win for the sector, which celebrated passage of two advanced nuclear energy measures last Congress. “The three pieces of the legislation together really will help push forth the advanced reactor industry,” said Everett Redmond, senior technical advisor for new reactor and advanced technology at the Nuclear Energy Institute trade group.
The bill has powerhouse support in the Senate, where it was introduced by Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and has 17 co-sponsors to date, including committee ranking member Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Development Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
Russia unveils a floating nuclear power plant NHK, 19 June 19, A Russian floating nuclear power plant was opened to the foreign media on Tuesday in the Arctic city of Murmansk.
The country’s state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom developed the vessel-like unit. The plant will provide power to sparsely populated regions, mainly in the Arctic circle and the Russian Far East…… https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20190619_26/
Since early 2019 we’ve been hearing about the Green New Deal, a program that did not initially include nuclear power. Then suddenly, after an extensive lobbying effort by the atomic power industry, we heard: Ocasio-Cortez: Green New Deal ‘Leaves the Door Open’ on Nuclear.
How Green are the atomic power reactors proposed by the nuclear power industry? Fairewinds has produced a two minute animation showing that carbon reduction via atomic power reactors is a nuclear industry marketing ploy.
Let’s look at the history of atomic power and the way governments and the atomic weapons and power industries have worked together to promote nuclear power. Nuclear physicists discovered the nuclear chain reaction in 1938, and power has been produced using the atom since the 1940’s beginning with the Manhattan Project for the creation of the atomic bomb. Splitting the atom and creating nuclear weapons and power are old technologies that began more than 80 years ago! During that 80-year timespan, Americans and ratepayers in other capitalist countries were told that using nuclear power as a source of electricity would be “too cheap to meter” if taxpayers would only subsidize more research.
Now we see impending financial collapse of almost all of the US nuclear power plants due to green energy! Solar, wind, wave, battery storage, and even newer technologies have proved that electricity can be created anywhere in the world in a manner that creates jobs, saves billions of dollars, and makes the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink much safer for all of us.
Instead of admitting nukes cannot compete with renewable energy, the atomic industrial complex is now proposing dozens of new designs that it claims on paper will compete in timeliness to successfully impact the growing climate crisis, including atomic reactors utilizing thorium and molten salt and new designs like Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), Micro-reactors, Traveling Wave, etc. Once again, the atomic power industry, which is the handmaiden to the nuclear weapons manufacturers, is sending lobbyists to convince your Congressional representatives that the atomic future will be different than the past. Lobbyists now claim that society will be so much better off when taxpayer funds bail out the aged, dangerous, and non-performing nukes and if the atomic power and weapons lobbies are given even more research subsidies.
Since the early 1960s there have been 250 applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and its precursor the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to generate electricity for profit using atomic power reactors. None of these 250 proposed atomic reactors have been built on time or within budget. You did not misread; truly, every single proposed nuke went millions and then billions of dollars over budget and have started generating electricity years later if at all.
If a baseball player was at bat 250 times and struck out 250 times, would he still be playing baseball? Yet, the atomic lobbyists marketing nuclear power want us to pay them for more chances to use our money and strike out one more time.
Renewables, storage and conservation already have a well-proven track-record of lower costs, more jobs, and environmental compatibility than any of these newly imagined nukes will ever have – I say newly imagined because I have spent my career life as a nuclear engineer. When I first began my career, I drank the Kool-Aid and believed that nuclear power reactors were the solution to the world’s energy shortages and that atomic power created from the same technology as the atomic bomb was as safe as the nuke power industry claimed. As the 5 commercial meltdowns during the last 40-years have proved, especially the 3 major meltdowns that included explosions at Fukushima, nuclear power is simply not a safe method of generating electricity. The impact of the devastation from three simultaneous meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi to the social culture, environmental legacy, personal health, and financial welfare of Japan in 2011 is not a legacy that should be passed onto future generations.
Why then is the US Congress, including AOC – one of the brightest members of this new Congress and the creator of the Green New Deal (#GND) – “leaving the door open” for the same old atomic power marketing ploys? For more than 80-years, we have witnessed the economic failure, ratepayer bailouts, subsidized atomic meltdown insurance, and actual catastrophic meltdowns.
French Nuclear Power Producer EDF Plans a Turnaround, CFO Xavier Girre is selling assets and trailing new financing tools ahead of a potential reorganization of the company. WSJ By Nina Trentmann June 14, 2019
Aging nuclear reactors, soaring debt and large capital-spending commitments that generate are just some of the problems facing Xavier Girre, the chief financial officer of French electricity supplier Electricité de FranceSA .
The room to maneuver is limited: Key operating decisions must be taken in conjunction with the French government, EDF’s largest shareholder.
“We are not the decision makers,” Mr. Girre told CFO Journal. “With regards to regulation, the state is.”……..
France’s largest energy producer has also sold assets worth €10 billion ($11.24 billion), and assets worth a further €2 billion to €3 billion are to be divested by 2021. The government recently allowed EDF to give shareholders new shares instead of a cash dividend
A planned restructuring of the company’s assets and a new pricing structure for the French energy market could help Mr. Girre make further improvements, said Claire Mauduit-Le Clercq, analyst at S&P GlobalInc.
The plan could allow EDF to separate its nuclear plants—it currently operates 58—from the rest of the business, a move that would enable the company to focus on investments in renewable energy. A large part of the company’s energy production comes from nuclear reactors…….
Analysts say the challenge for EDF will be to fund the turnaround given its hefty debt load. EDF’s net debt—a measure of total loans and financial liabilities less cash and liquid assets—was €33.38 billion at the end of 2018, up from €33.01 billion at the end of 2017.
Further complicating the picture is EDF’s large capital spending program. The company committed in 2014 to spending up to €45 billion by 2025 to extend the lifespan of its nuclear reactors fleet from around 40 to 50 years. The average age of an EDF nuclear power plant currently stands at 33 years.
New plants under construction, for example in Britain’s Hinkley Point, are adding to that cost burden. Total capital expenditures were about €14 billion in 2018. “EDF would not have to sell business after business to fund new investments if this was a viable business model,” AB Bernstein’s Ms. Becker said.
Meanwhile, the company’s net income slumped to €1.17 billion in 2018 from €3.17 billion a year earlier. Fluctuating energy prices, mean “the company lacks visibility into its future earnings,” said Ms. Mauduit-Le Clercq.
“You have a company that faces major investment needs, that has a negative cash flow equation and that has high debt levels—this creates tension in the balance sheet,” she said.
But the company’s financial standing is more vulnerable when other obligations, such as pension liabilities, future obligations to retire certain assets and costs for managing nuclear waste, are factored in. Adjusted net debt was €70 billion at the end of 2018, S&P Global said. https://www.wsj.com/articles/french-nuclear-power-producer-edf-plans-a-turnaround-11560526991
“My position and that of the state of Nevada remains identical to the position of Nevada’s past five governments,” the letter says. “I am totally opposed to any legislative effort to restart the Yucca Mountain project.”
He said this latest piece of legislation, “would seriously weaken Nevada’s current due process rights to challenge documented safety concerns and adverse environmental impacts in the legally-mandated licensing proceeding.”
The result, he said, will be to waste billions of additional ratepayer and taxpayer dollars in an attempt to, “force an unsafe site on an unwilling state.”
“The proposed legislation only exacerbates the erosion of trust and confidence caused by the federal government’s recent secret shipments of weapons-grade plutonium into our state,” Sisolak wrote.
He said he intends to keep his promise to Nevadans not one ounce of nuclear waste will be delivered to Yucca Mountain while he’s governor.
The letter was sent to committee Chairman Frank Pallone, D-New Jersey, and Ranking member Greg Walden, R-
In written testimony prepared for that hearing, Bob Halstead, director of Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects, reiterated Nevada’s long standing conclusion Yucca Mountain is unsuitable because of its geology and hydrology, its proximity to military aircraft training and testing (Nellis Air Force Base) and its distance from existing railroads.
“The proposed repository emplacement drifts would be located in fractured rock above the water table and would inevitably leak dangerous radionuclides into the groundwater where they would be transported to an aquifer,” Halstead wrote.
He said that aquifer provides water for drinking, agriculture, food processing and Native American religious ceremonies.
Halstead also charged the proposed legislation, “fails to honestly address the cost of Yucca Mountain.” He said Nevada’s estimate for future costs of the dump are “at least $100 billion in 2019 dollars.”
Dave Toke’s Blog 15th June 2019 Labour’s proposals to take the national and regional energy grid back
into public ownership may give a boost to workers’ interests over
shareholder profits, but the way the proposals are set out produces an
increased risk of nuclear power being given priority over renewable energy.
Put simply that is because the way the proposals are structured means more
power to the GMB in particular, a body which is very pro-nuclear and which
is relatively hostile to renewable energy and a smart energy network.
Labour announced the plan, in May, to take the transmission and
distribution energy structure into public ownership, as well as plans to
set up a ‘National Energy Agency’ (to run the National Grid), Regional
Energy Agencies (to run regional distribution), and give opportunities for
municipal ownership of distribution on a local basis.
This plan can achieve traditional Labour Movement objectives, but its impact on pushing forward a
green agenda is doubtful. Put bluntly, the more that power is given to
bodies that will be influenced by organisations like the GMB (who favour
centralised power station solutions), the less useful will be the outcome.
The proposals make a gesture in favour of municipalisation, but for most
places the reality will be central control.
Control over the grid should be
given to local authorities as a matter of course, perhaps in consortia
(certainly at a national, transmission, level). Local authorities are
influenced by the local electorate and local citizen groups. They will be
sympathetic to green energy priorities. On the other hand centrally owned
quangos will be insulated from such democratic input and will be under the
thumb of the existing industrial establishment. Innovation will go out of
the window.
Janet Tauro June 14, 2019 After decades of warning that the continued operation of the nation’s nuclear plants would leave behind mountains of atomic waste that would remain highly radioactive for tens of thousands of years, the day of reckoning has arrived.
As older nuclear plants around the country close for economic and age-related reasons, we are moving away from the age of nuclear generation to the age of handling and storing nuclear waste.
Private companies are emerging, like Camden-based Holtec International, which apparently view dinosaur nuclear plants and atomic waste as a good business opportunity. They are buying shuttered nuclear reactors, and the purchase includes hefty decommissioning funds.
The Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lacey is one of those dinosaurs whose day is done, but its toxic legacy of over 1.2 million pounds of highly radioactive waste lives on.
Its decommissioning fund, generated through surcharges on ratepayer bills, contains about $980 million. The fund would be transferred from Exelon Corp. to Holtec International if the pending sale is approved by federal officials.
Congress has taken notice. Bills are pending for transportation of nuke waste to consolidated interim storage (CIS) facilities. Discussions also have been revived about a central repository at Yucca Mountain. One proposed CIS facility would be owned and operated by Holtec in New Mexico. Holtec’s board of directors includes former Republican Congressman James Saxton and South Jersey Democratic party leader George Norcross III. The other CIS is in Texas.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham reportedly opposes the proposed Holtec project.
Holtec has put together a complex, layered limited liability corporate structure to take it through the Oyster Creek decommissioning, which would happen on an accelerated time frame. The speedy timetable seems attractive for redevelopment of the site. But, is haste safe? Will safety corners be cut to get the job done quickly? With limited liability in place, who will take care of emergency response and planning if there is a mishap? Who will be financially responsible?
Holtec has proposed removing the radioactive waste from the elevated fuel pool within three and a half years rather than the usual five, packing it into concrete casks, and eventually shipping it offsite to the company’s proposed storage facility thousands of miles away.
Holtec has been cited by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for safety problems at the San Onofre nuclear plant in California. In New Jersey, a state task force is reportedly investigating economic development awards to the company. It might be prudent for the NRC to delay a license transfer until any investigation and cask safety considerations are fully vetted and completed.
A permanent solution to nuclear waste storage has never been found and is unlikely to occur in the near future. We are left with choosing a least=bad option, which could be hardened on-site storage to higher ground, away from rising seas and worsening storm surges until a permanent repository is established. Moving the waste by truck, barge and rail thousands of miles out west to a temporary facility from which it would have to be moved again doubles the risk of a catastrophic accident.
On-site storage includes a berm around storage casks, concealing them from possible terrorist attack, which makes sense and increases public safety. The current plan at Oyster Creek calls for about 30 casks to be lined up like bowling pins near Route 9.
Maximizing safety must be a congressional focus, particularly since the NRC has allowed Exelon, or any future owner of Oyster Creek, to discontinue emergency planning around the plant once the fuel pool is emptied. Exelon tested its warning sirens for the last time only two weeks ago.
Local, state, and federal representatives should determine whether the emergency planning reductions include disbanding the plant’s fire brigade, leaving a nuclear fire to local volunteer fire departments unequipped and untrained to handle such a catastrophe. If that’s the case, Lacey’s elected representatives should use every ounce of their authority and power to reverse it.
Congress should also scrutinize whether it is a national security risk for any private company to be in possession of vast quantities of nuclear materials, rather than the federal government.
The unadulterated, unfortunate truth is that a permanent solution for storage of deadly, highly radioactive nuclear waste does not exist. It never did during the past half century it was being produced and generating corporate profits.
Janet Tauro is New Jersey board chair for Clean Water Action.
The miniseries follows the power plant workers, first responders, Soviet Union officials, scientists, soldiers and the locals of Pripyat, Ukraine (formerly the Soviet Union) in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploding.
As with most historical dramas, the show has been critiqued for taking liberties with the truth in service of the story. And these departures are somewhat ironic for a show whose tagline is “the cost of lies”.
But the function of historical dramas isn’t pinpoint accuracy: the best ones work as allegories.
And as an allegory for our times, Chernobyl could not be more fitting.
Moscow has a long history of ‘fake news’
The lies start early on. While most of the town sleeps through the nuclear explosion, in the control room of the power plant, denial is in full swing.
The assistant chief engineer, Anatoly Dyatlov (Paul Ritter), tells his men to pump water to the core, insistent the problem can be fixed.
An engineer tells Dyatlov: “there is no core”.
Dyatlov insists the core is intact. From the earliest moments, the truth is in flux.
The radiation leak has already begun to kill these workers; we’re in the company of the living dead.
But despite the horror of watching these men slowly die, as if a needle is untethering the fabric of their DNA, it’s the words of a Soviet Union official (Donald Sumpter) that shock the most.
“When the people ask questions that are not in their own best interests,” he tells his men, “they should simply be told to keep their minds on their labour and leave matters of the state to the state.”
The next step is to seal the city and cut the phone lines to prevent the spread of misinformation.
The speech is met with applause.
Over the course of the series it becomes clear the Chernobyl disaster was caused by the cost-cutting measures of the Soviet Union, but the state was structured perfectly to work their way out of the problem and contain the truth.
Miners and soldiers are conscripted to clean-up the mess, despite the risk to their health. Scientists are told to do their job and not ask any questions.
All the while, Soviet officials work to compartmentalise the tragedy to hide the horrors of a nuclear meltdown.
For scientists Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) and Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson) to understand what caused the meltdown they must be critical of the Soviet Union.
The most intense moments are the conversations where characters weigh up the risk of telling the truth.
The war on the truth continues
Decades later, Moscow continues to tightly control the flow of information both at home and abroad — its “troll farms” set up to spread misinformation and propaganda are just the latest iterations.
But Australia is not immune to attempts by government to conceal and manipulate the truth.
Chernobyl focuses on what happens when government policy is put before human lives.
The scientists investigating Chernobyl repeatedly attempted to sound the alarm, warning Soviet Union officials that the problem was bigger than one reactor as poison spread across Eastern Europe (one study predicts by 2065 the disaster could cause 16,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 cases of other cancers).
Today, scientists are trying to warn us of an existential threat to our health and safety: climate change. Once again, government drags its feet.
If we take anything from Chernobyl, it should be this: put science before politics.
In 2019, we may have grasped the extreme dangers of radiation, but the war on the truth is ongoing — it’s eternal.
As we face another environmental catastrophe, the question will be: what is the cost of lies?
nuclear-news 