Niger’s uranium, poverty and France’s growing wealth
The $1.5 billion new uranium mine in Niger that is expected to yield 5,000 tonnes of uranium a year once opened will follow in the tradition of the existing two Areva-owned mines. Areva currently operates two uranium mines in Niger that have left poverty in place and radiological contamination behind. The new Imouraren mine – that will be the second largest uranium mine in the world – will continue to deliver most of the profits to France (Areva is 90%-owned by the French government.) The Niger government has only a 33% share in the mining operation but historically any domestic profit has in any case been fed back into the richer southern half of the country
Niger’s uranium, poverty and France’s growing wealth AFRIK.COM 5 May 2009, by Konye Obaji Ori, Patrick K. JohnssonNiger to get the world’s 2nd largest uranium mineThe President of Niger, Mr. Mamadou Tandja has sought peace-talks with rebel groups in the country to reach terms of agreement to share the country’s impending rise of Uranium wealth. According to estimates, Niger will become home to the world’s second largest uranium mine by 2012. To benefit from this development, the president has promised amnesty to rebels who will lay down their weapons. But will the mines profit Nigeriens?…………….……….Areva, French nuclear energy giant formerly known as Cogema, is building the mine and will take a majority share in it. France has kept close ties with its former colony for its uranium; a relationship which is vital to France’s nuclear energy program. Areva’s uranium mines have helped in shaping France’s place as the world’s fourth uranium producer and the first producer of nuclear power…………………In 2007, anti-Areva protests rocked the country as thousands of Nigeriens marched on the streets against the presence of the French company, following a nearly 40 year Areva operation in Niger that had yielded little development in the lives of the local people and the country………………..
……………Activists from the local branch of the Greenpeace lobby group claim that the potential pollution from the Uranium mines will bring about the forced displacement of the local people……..
……………the fluctuating price in uranium created by the big consumers in a profit maximization system, has brought repeated instability to Niger’s economy as the world’s fourth biggest producer of uranium.
State Sues Over Nuclear Waste
State Sues Over Nuclear Waste
3WCASX-TV NEWS Montpelier, Vermont – May 5, 2009
The state of Vermont is suing the federal government over nuclear waste at Vermont Yankee.
Highly-radioactive spent fuel from the reactor is stored at the nuclear plant in Vernon. The safety of spent fuel is governed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but it is not one of the factors the NRC will review as it considers whether to grant Vermont Yankee a license extension. The state wants to change that and is joining a federal lawsuit to force the NRC to consider spent fuel safety in the relicensing process.
State Sues Over Nuclear Waste – WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-
Nuclear power foes not stilled in N.E.
Nuclear power foes not stilled in N.E.
Boston.com 4 May 09 “………………….A march in Montpelier last week was only the latest reminder of ongoing opposition to Vermont Yankee’s bid to extend its operating license 20 more years.
The Vermont Public Interest Research Group wants the Vermont Yankee plant shut down, and assurances that its owner, Entergy Corp., will pay the full cost of decommissioning it. “There are millions of people that live within a dangerous distance of this facility,” said James Moore, clean energy advocate for the group, known as VPIRG…………………… A cadre of activists who oppose Vermont Yankee have built a statewide coalition to oppose the 20-year renewal of the plant’s current license, which expires in 2012. The issue will be subject to a vote by the Vermont Legislature in the coming year.
At last week’s demonstration, activists marched from Montpelier’s City Hall to the State House to urge lawmakers to back development of clean sources of energy such as wind and solar. The marchers also announced they had gathered 12,000 signatures in support of closing Vermont Yankee……………………. Environmentalists and others remain concerned that there is no national plan for long-term storage of nuclear waste.
Russia To Ring The Arctic With Floating Nuclear Power Stations
GIZMODO
Jack Loftus (information from The Guardian) May 4, 2009
Mr. Polar Bear and his brethren will be sharing real estate with a ring of floating, self-sustained nuclear power stations. It’s all part of Russia’s—and the world’s—ongoing thirst for energy.Environmentalists are understandably outraged over the impact said stations could have on an already endangered area of the globe, and if polar bears could talk, I imagine they’d be outraged too.
Said a rep from Bellona, a Scandinavian environmental watchdog group, “[The plan] is highly risky. The risk of a nuclear accident on a floating power plant is increased. The plants’ potential impact on the fragile Arctic environment through emissions of radioactivity and heat remains a major concern. If there is an accident, it would be impossible to handle.
“Oh, and there’s this fear that Russia will simply dump the radioactive waste into the Arctic Sea anyway, which they’ve done before on several occasions. To date at least 12 nuclear reactors from decommissioned Russian submarines have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid waste.Pretty soon the ocean will be like a 24/7 aurora borealis up there. A wonderful, cancer-causing aurora borealis.
Russia To Ring The Arctic With Floating Nuclear Power Stations – Gizmodo Australia
Olympic Dam EIS: Impact of the world’s biggest mine
Incomparable and unimaginable are not synonymous, but Olympic Dam is both. It will be the world’s biggest hole-in-the-ground, the largest copper and uranium quarry on the planet, the highest artificial mountain range on Earth and the richest mine since King Solomon………………….
The company will ultimately dig a hole 7.5 kilometres long, five kilometres wide and more than a kilometre deep.
Stacked up, the 44 billion tonnes or so of overburden would effectively create a new mountain range. Depending on its shape, it might be 20 kilometres wide in each direction and almost as high as Mt Lofty’s 720 metres………………………BHP has said it will not comment on the EIS after the weekend even though reporters can’t possibly read all the documents in the time available………..
………….The Independent Weekly understands that the Federal Government is planning much tougher safeguards relating to uranium sales to China, even if it’s gift-wrapped in copper concentrate. BHP does not yet have export permits for that uranium. In May next year nuclear non-proliferation nations, Australia included, will meet in New York. Australia may want a new international treaty to make sure Olympic Dam uranium does not end up in Chinese bombs………….
…………….here’s a prediction. Tomorrow’s EIS will say the project can go ahead on environmental grounds. The company will start moving to begin expansion and hope for a global economic recovery to coincide with increased production. BHP will pass the break-even point on its multi-billion investment within the first two decades, and after that it’s money in the bank all the way down to the year 2100.
But first, there’ll be new legislation presented in State Parliament to legalise the process. It will be a new form of the 1982 Roxby Downs Indenture Ratification Act. It will, once again, over-ride every other Act of Parliament passed up to now and into the future. The first that South Australians see of that legislation will be after the state election.
And BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam will have an economic and environmental impact that is synonymous with mining on this scale: incomparable and unimaginable.
A cautionary history of the nuclear age | Cautionary tales
The nuclear age Cautionary tales
Apr 30th 2009 The Economist …………….The expectation of electricity “too cheap to meter” brought hopes in some quarters of an end to world poverty. Yet nuclear power proved costly and far from risk-free. Some presumed that by the turn of the 20th century there could be more than 500 fast-breeder reactors, fuelled by expanding stockpiles of plutonium.
By the millennium’s end not a single fast-breeder was in commercial operation (the necessary experimental forerunners produce plutonium in quantities useful for bomb-making). The Bush administration’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership sought to revive the breeder idea (renaming it a fast-burner), but plans had to be shrunk due to cost, technological complexity and the danger of proliferation.
Whatever the nuclear technology used, the by-products thus far have been accidents (Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were among the worst but there have been plenty of others), pollution and piles of nuclear waste. Meanwhile technologies and materials acquired to keep the lights on can be misused in weapons.
Spread around generously in the 1950s and 1960s, “atoms for peace” helped get Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel, Pakistan, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan and others started in the bomb business. (Other secretive programmes—in Iran, Libya, North Korea—thrived mostly on black-market connections.)
Now, once again, nuclear suppliers are signing up governments with nuclear ambitions, arguing that co-operation will help ensure the technology is put to proper use. But history suggests that no one can be sure where all this will lead.
A cautionary history of the nuclear age | Cautionary tales | The Economist
Anger at plans for nuclear power station to replace wind farm
Anger at plans for nuclear power station to replace wind farm
The Guardian Terry Macalister 28 April 2009 • Threatened site is one of the most efficient
• Proposed atomic plant backed by government One of the oldest and most efficient wind farms in Britain is to be dismantled and replaced by a nuclear power station under plans drawn up by the German-owned power group RWE.
The site at Kirksanton in Cumbria – home to the Haverigg turbines – has just been approved by the government for potential atomic newbuild in a move that has infuriated the wind power industry.
Colin Palmer, founder of the Windcluster company, which owns part of the Haverigg wind farm, said he was horrified that such a plan could be considered at a time when Britain risks missing its green energy targets and after reassurance from ministers that nuclear and renewables were not incompatible.
…………………….. The British Wind Energy Association said the enormous speed with which nuclear plants appeared to be moving through the planning process – responsible for part of the anger around Haverigg – compared dramatically with all the problems being faced by dozens of windfarms. “We need a level playing field for all types of generation when it comes to planning regulation and government support,” said the association. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/28/haverigg-turbines-nuclear-power-plant
Nuclear issues can’t be ignored
Nuclear issues can’t be ignored
Times Argus Robert Lincoln April 26, 2009 A recent opinion perpetuated the myth about nuclear waste reprocessing. Few countries in Europe and Asia have such programs because these have been financially and environmentally catastrophic.
The Bush administration began the new push for a Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. In 1979, a United States naval nuclear engineer and future President Jimmy Carter ended this dangerous program.
Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel was supposed to be one alternative to lots and lots of mining forever and forever. The biggest experiment in reprocessing was at Sellafield in Britain. In 2005, after decades of contamination and leaks and general spewing of horrible matter into the ocean, air, and land around the reprocessing plant, Sellafield was shut down because a bigger-than-usual leak of fuel dissolved in nitric acid — some tens of thousands of gallons-was discovered. It contained enough plutonium to make about 20 nuclear bombs.
A nuclear dump site just six miles from the famous Champagne vineyards in France is leaking radioactive waste into the groundwater. According to the French nuclear safety authority, the “wall of a storage cell fissured” while concrete was being added to a recent layer of nuclear waste. It showed levels of radioactivity leaking from another dump site run by the same company in Normandy — at up to 90 times above European safety limits. That waste has seeped into underground water used by farmers, with contamination spreading into the countryside and threatening dairy production. The Champagne site will receive a total of 4,000 terabequerels of tritium — more than three times the amount of tritium waste as the dumpsite in Normandy………..………….Reprocessing will not solve our country’s nuclear waste problem because it will make more waste streams that must be managed and cannot eliminate the need for a geologic repository. The United States has not cleaned up the mess from past reprocessing. The only private commercial reprocessing facility in the United States, West Valley in New York, resulted in radioactive waste that is still threatening the Great Lakes watershed more than 30 years later and will cost $5.2 billion to clean up.
U.S. taxpayers are also on the hook for more than $100 billion to clean up the reprocessing waste at the U.S. nuclear weapons sites that reprocessed to get plutonium for nuclear weapons, as well as reprocessed naval fuel. Let’s all think about our children for once.
Rutland
Earthlife ridicules nuclear power generation plans
Earthlife ridicules nuclear power generation plans
Namibia Economist 24 April 2009 11:34Propagators of the myth that nuclear power being safe, clean and climate friendly are misleading Namibians, according to Bertchen Kohrs of Earthlife Namibia.Few people are properly informed about the real dangers of the nuclear industry, she added.Earthlife Namibia has repeated its concern over the possibility that government might opt for nuclear power generation in Namibia.Kohrs said instead of opting for a nuclear power plant or coal-fired plant, the country could play a leading role in the development of renewable energy in Africa.“This kind of clean energy production would put Namibia on the world map attracting energy experts and tourists alike. Namibia would receive carbon credits when opting for carbon-free power generation. This money could be used to subsidize power from renewable sources,” said Kohrs.
She also pointed out that Namibia does not have specialists who can run a nuclear power plant and that the country will make itself dependent on foreign experts, whereas there are people who are capable of maintaining a solar or wind power plant.
Another disadvantage such a nuclear power plant would pose for Namibia is the high level of waste as there is no solution for safe storage……………….………Earthlife and the Labour Research and Resource Institute (LaRRI) are working together on an ongoing awareness campaign, which aims to inform the public of the dangers of a nuclear power plant.
As part of this campaign, Earthlife produced a booklet “Uranium – Blessing or Curse” informing about general issues regarding the uranium industry, while LARRI published a booklet ‘Uranium Mining in Namibia: The mystery behind ‘low level radiation’, which focuses on the impacts of uranium on mine workers’ health
NRC turns over depleted uranium documents
NRC turns over depleted uranium documents
By BROCK VERGAKIS Associated Press Writer © 2009 The Associated PressApril 22, 2009, Houston Chronicle 23 April 09SALT LAKE CITY — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has turned over thousands of pages of documents that might help explain why it recently decided to classify large quantities of depleted uranium as the least hazardous type of low-level radioactive waste.
The NRC’s March decision could open the door for more than 1 million tons of depleted uranium to be disposed of in Utah and Texas at private disposal sites in the rural western parts of both states.
Depleted uranium is different from other low-level radioactive waste because it becomes more radioactive over time for up to 1 million years…………………….
Matheson and Markey contend the NRC erred in its 3-1 decision, which was made along party lines.
The two sit on the subcommittee that oversees the NRC and have called the ruling an “arbitrary and capricious mischaracterization” of the waste.
“The commission’s action to classify depleted uranium as Class A even though it poses more severe risks to health and safety, and requires much greater effort for disposal, seems to be unsupportable and inconsistent with the intent of the law,” they wrote to NRC Chairman Dale Klein.
NRC turns over depleted uranium documents | AP Texas News | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle
On Earth Day, Obama pushes ambitious climate agenda — chicagotribune.com
On Earth Day, Obama pushes ambitious climate agendaB Chicago Tribune y Jim Tankersley | Washington Bureau April 22, 2009 – “……………………A recent analysis by the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity estimated that 770 firms and interest groups hired some 2,340 climate lobbyists in the past year.
Intense negotiations are also under way among the House energy committee, the White House and a key group of moderate Senate Democrats. The outcome of those talks may determine the fate of what advocates and foes alike call the farthest-reaching attempt yet by Congress to limit the emissions scientists blame for global warming
On Earth Day, Obama pushes ambitious climate agenda — chicagotribune.com
Greens vow to stop nuclear power plant
Greens vow to stop nuclear power plant North West Evening Mail Tuesday, 21 April 2009
A NUCLEAR power plant near Millom would leave Cumbria open to “catastrophic accident or terrorist attack”, resulting in huge loss of life and leaving large parts of the county uninhabitable, green campaigners have warned.
Political group the Green Party has vowed to block plans to build a new plant a Layriggs Farm in Kirksanton.
The defiant stand was announced after a list of 11 potential sites across the country was released by the government on Wednesday (15).
The list also includes land at Braystones, near Egremont, and a plot near Sellafield……………………………
Green Party member Peter Cranie said: “The Green Party has long campaigned against nuclear power due to its high cost and the unsolved problems with radioactive waste and risks of radioactive discharges. There also remains a small, but real, risk of a catastrophic accident.
“New nuclear power stations should not be built on green field sites on the Cumbrian coast, and not at Sellafield either. Sellafield should devote itself to decommissioning and dealing with the radioactive waste already produced.”
The party has expressed concern that a final decision could also be snatched away from “local communities” and handed to a specialist government commission.
North West Evening Mail | News | Greens vow to stop nuclear power plant
Nuclear power Earth Day’s focus
Nuclear power Earth Day’s focusENERGY: Ontario Clean Air Alliance hosting meeting tomorrowPosted By DAN MCCAFFERY, THE OBSERVERP 22 April 09 Ontario’s controversial nuclear power proposals will be front and centre when Sarnia marks Earth Day tomorrow.That’s because Jack Gibbons of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance will address the subject while taking part in a Town Hall-style meeting at the Lochiel Kiwanis Centre at 7 p. m.
Gibbons will also discuss key features of the provincial government’s proposed Green Energy Act in a speech entitled ‘Ontario’s Green Future: How we can build a 100 per cent renewable electricity grid by 2027……………….
……………..Celebrated every April 22 since 1970, Earth Day has grown into the biggest environmental event on the planet. In fact, some six million Canadians took part in activities last year, including most of the country’s school children. Across the globe, an estimated one billion people staged various events and projects to mark the day.’
Nuclear power Earth Day’s focus – The Sarnia Observer – Ontario, CA
Nuke waste dumping: Are Somalia’s pirates reacting to international abuses?
Are Somalia’s pirates reacting to international abuses? Somali UK 21 April 09 “…………………………The coast remains an easy dumping ground for toxic and nuclear waste.
“It’s a real problem,” said Roger Middleton, a Somalia expert and researcher for the London-based think tank, Chatham House.
“There are very shady goings-on, mostly involving the Mafia.”
The force of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami pulled up dozens of toxic-waste containers, leaving a lethal trail along the Somali coast.
A UN report found as a result many residents suffered “acute respiratory infections, heavy coughing, bleeding gums and mouth, abdominal haemorrhages, unusual skin rashes, and even death.”
Two years later, a team of specialists discovered nine toxic waste sites along 700 km of coastline in southern Somalia.
“Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there,” Nick Nuttall of the UN’s Environment Program told the television channel Al-Jazeera, echoing similar findings from other reports.
“And the waste is many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals like cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, and there are hospital wastes, chemical wastes – you name it.”
The waste came from European companies, which paid shady intermediaries as little as $2.50 a tonne to dispose of it, compared with about $1,000 a tonne in Europe…………
………. http://www.somaliuk.com/Indepth1/Fullarticle.php?IndepthID=483
Taxpayers own nuclear problems
Muskogee Phoenix April 17, 2009 02:45 pm -THE PEOPLE SPEAK: Taxpayers own nuclear problemsOklahoma Republicans are being very hypocritical in supporting taxpayer guarantees in funding to build massively expensive nuclear plants………………..
We do not need nuclear plants. Solar thermal (not the same as solar panels) and wind could supply the energy without the dangerous polluting of uranium mining.
Who will pay for the medical expenses for the increased cancer rates around Muskogee if the plant is built here? Who will pay for the decommissioning of these plants when they age?
I think the people will pay and big corporations will benefit. What about contaminated nuclear groundwater as has happened in France? We need a town meeting about this important issue before the Republicans rush things through.
Jean McMahon
Fort Gibson
MuskogeePhoenix.com, Muskogee, OK – THE PEOPLE SPEAK: Taxpayers own nuclear problems
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23-25 October – on Zoom – World BEYOND War’s annual global conferenc
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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