How ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ At New Brunswick Nuclear Plant Could Affect Down East Maine, Maine Public, 12 May ByJENNIFER MITCHELL Point Lepreau is a nuclear power plant just across the border in St. John. Next month its operating license expires, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission is considering whether to renew it for another five years. While that’s not a long amount of time for a 30-year-old plant, there are passionate arguments for and against its operation and implications for an entire region.
This is the second of two parts. To read Part 1, a tour of Point Lepreau, click here.
Back in the 1950s, an U.S. Atomic Energy Commission film, “The Magic of the Atom,” was meant to ease the anxiety people might feel about living and working near a nuclear power plant.
“Today, if you were to take a trip in almost any direction across our great country, you might suddenly come upon a sign like this: Atomic City,” the film’s narrator says.
But after the 1979 disaster at Three Mile Island, nuclear plants developed a more sinister reputation, and ever since, facilities like Point Lepreau have been battling that legacy………
there are some who are speaking out against the facility’s license renewal.
“The health risks are too great. There is no way to make nuclear safe,” says Willi Nolan of Kent County, New Brunswick.
Nolan says she has made it her business to follow up on past major nuclear accidents, and she says the potential devastation to the environment is a deal breaker.
“I just spent some time with four survivors of Fukushima and I’m told, you know, after the worst-case scenario happened there, that there are now people dropping on the streets, 30 years old, 40 years old. We’re still not finished with Chernobyl. There are still human health effects, cancers, childhood conditions,” she says.
When it comes to a nuclear plant meltdown, there are two basic zones of concern: the critical emergency zone that extends for a 10-mile radius, and then what’s known as the ingestion pathway. That spans a 50-mile radius and, in the case of Lepreau, would include towns like Eastport, Calais, Lubec, and East Machias.
But how much do emergency responders in those towns know about nuclear events?
“Very little,” says Mike Hinerman, who runs Washington County’s Emergency Management Agency…….
the biggest problem, experts say, would come in the weeks, months and years after the event, because anything grown in or harvested from that 50-mile ingestion pathway could be tainted — for decades.
“What do you do with apples? What do you do with fish? What do you do with clams?” says Robert Gardiner, MEMA’s technological hazards manager……..a major Lepreau event would devastate the county’s economy, affecting everything from shipping at Eastport to aquaculture, forest products, fishing, tipping, hunting and tourism, and of course the region’s wild blueberries……..
Nuclear Waste From the Cold War Is Being Stored in Unsafe Conditions. Time to Fix the Problem is Running Out, TIME, Nicholas K. Geranios and Manuel Valdes / AP, May 11, 2017 (RICHLAND, Wash.) — The collapse of a tunnel containing radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear weapons complex underscored what critics have long been saying: The toxic remnants of the Cold War are being stored in haphazard and unsafe conditions, and time is running out to deal with the problem.
“Unfortunately, the crisis at Hanford is far from an isolated incident,” said Kevin Kamps of the anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear.
For instance, at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which opened in the 1950s and produced plutonium and tritium, the government is laboring to clean up groundwater contamination along with 40 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste stored in tanks that are decades past their projected lifespan. The job is likely to take decades.
In addition to the tunnel collapse discovered Tuesday, dozens of underground storage tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state — some dating to World War II — are leaking highly radioactive materials.
The problem is that the U.S. government rushed to build nuclear weapons during the Cold War with little thought given to how to permanently dispose of the resulting waste.
Safely removing it now is proving enormously expensive, slow-going, extraordinarily dangerous and so complex that much of the technology required simply does not exist. The cleanup has also been plagued with political and technical setbacks.
For example, the nation’s only underground nuclear waste repository, in New Mexico, closed to new shipments in 2014 after an improperly packed drum of waste ruptured. The site just recently reopened.
The U.S. Department of Energy spends about $6 billion a year on managing waste left from the production of nuclear weapons. “The temporary solutions DOE has used for decades to contain radioactive waste at Hanford have limited lifespans,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and frequent Hanford critic. “The longer it takes to clean up Hanford, the higher the risk will be to workers, the public and the environment.”
U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry acknowledged the problem with nuclear waste, saying the nation can no longer delay fixing the problem because lives are at stake.
During a tour Wednesday of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Perry said the federal government has failed to remove the waste in a timely manner and he pledged to make progress.
A recently approved bipartisan federal budget deal for this fiscal year includes $2.3 billion for the ongoing Hanford cleanup, which matches the amount that Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, worked to include last year. President Donald Trump is expected to release his 2018 proposal later this month.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said the state plans to issue an order making sure the federal government determines the cause of the tunnel collapse. The order will also require the Energy Department to assess if there’s an immediate risk of failures in any other tunnels and take actions to safely store waste in the tunnels until a decision is made about how to permanently handle the material.
Collapsed tunnel sealed at U.S. nuclear site after accident, Chicago Tribune, Nicholas K. GeraniosAssociated Press, 11 May 17, Workers at a Washington state nuclear site where a tunnel filled with nuclear waste in railroad cars partially collapsed have safely sealed off a large sinkhole that emerged as a result of the collapse, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Thursday.
Authorities also revealed that the 400-square foot (37-square meter) sinkhole they filled with soil could have been there since last weekend before it was discovered Tuesday. That’s because the area around the Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s waste-filled tunnels is not observed every day by workers who patrol the site’s sprawling grounds………
Washington state officials on Wednesday demanded that the federal Energy Department immediately assess the integrity of all the Hanford tunnels.
“The infrastructure built to temporarily store radioactive waste is now more than a half-century old,” said Maia Bellon, director of the state Department of Ecology, which oversees and regulates the federal government’s Hanford cleanup.
The 360-foot long (110-meter) rail tunnel that collapsed was built in 1956 from timber, concrete and steel and covered with 8 feet (2.4 meters) of dirt. Eight flatbed railroad cars loaded with radioactive material were parked there in 1965.
A much larger nearby tunnel built in 1964 has 28 railroad cars with radioactive waste.
The Energy Department was warned in a 2015 report it commissioned that both tunnels were vulnerable to a collapse from an earthquake or deterioration of tunnel building materials caused by intense radiation, the report said.
The nearby Yakama Nation said it has warned about the safety of the tunnels for several years.
“No preventative action was taken,” the tribe said in a statement.
The tribe also said the tunnels should be cleaned of radioactive waste and radiation long before a deadline of 2042 set by a cleanup agreement between the federal and state governments.
Nuclear Waste From the Cold War Is Being Stored in Unsafe Conditions. Time to Fix the Problem is Running Out, TIME, Nicholas K. Geranios and Manuel Valdes / AP, May 11, 2017 (RICHLAND, Wash.) “………Officials said they detected no release of radiation and no one was injured in the collapse, though thousands of workers were forced to take shelter for several hours as a precaution. The cause of the collapse was not immediately known.
A gravel road was built to the collapse site, and workers wearing protective suits and breathing masks planned to fill the hole with 50 truckloads of dirt, the Energy Department said.
The rail tunnel was built in 1956 out of timber, concrete and steel, topped by 8 feet of dirt. It was 360 feet long (110 meters). Radioactive materials were brought into the tunnel by railcars. The tunnel was sealed in 1965 with eight loaded flatbed cars inside.
Gerry Pollet, a Washington state legislator and longtime Hanford critic, said the collapse of a waste storage tunnel at Hanford had been feared for years.
“This disaster was predicted and shows the federal Energy Department’s utter recklessness in seeking decades of delay for Hanford cleanup,” he said.
He noted the Energy Department last year received permission to delay removing waste from the tunnels until 2042. The waste was supposed to be gone by 2024, Pollet said.
The radiation levels of the waste in the tunnel that collapsed would be lethal within an hour, Pollet said.
Hanford, a 500-square-mile expanse in remote interior Washington about 200 miles from Seattle, was created during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb.
Hanford made most of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons, including the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, during the war. It now contains the nation’s greatest volume of radioactive waste left over from the production of weapons plutonium.
The cleanup there has cost $19 billion to date and is not expected to be finished until 2060, at an additional cost of $100 billion.
The most dangerous waste at Hanford is 56 million gallons stored in 177 underground tanks, some of which have leaked.
Plans to embed the toxic stew in glass logs for burial have floundered. Construction of a $17 billion glassification factory has stopped because of design and safety issues.
The plan is to bury the glass logs at a nuclear waste dump carved inside Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, a project that has been on the drawing board for three decades but has run into resistance from Nevada politicians, including former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid.
President Donald Trump has proposed $120 million to restart the licensing process for the dump.
Tunnel collapses at Hanford; no radiation released, officials say http://www.king5.com/news/local/hanford/tunnel-collapses-at-hanford-no-radiation-released-officials-say/438227872Hundreds of workers were told to take cover at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation after a tunnel full of highly contaminated materials collapsed Tuesday morning. But officials say no radiation was released and no workers were hurt.Officials say a collapsed patch of ground above the tunnel was larger than first believed. The U.S. Department of Energy said the collapse covered about 400 square feet (37.1 square meters) instead of the 16 square feet (1.4 square meters) first reported.
Nuclear waste storage tunnel caves-in at Hanford
Hundreds of workers were told to go into a “take cover” position after the tunnel in a plutonium uranium extraction (PUREX) plant collapsed.
The agency says the rail tunnels are hundreds of feet long, with about eight feet (2.4 meters) of soil covering them. The U.S. Department of Energy says the incident caused the soil above the tunnel to sink between 2 and 4 feet (half to 1.2 meters).
“I would underscore this is confined to a small area of the Hanford site,” Destry Henderson, deputy news manager for the Hanford Joint Information Center, told NBC News. “The facility does have radiological contamination right now but there is no indication of a radiological release,” Henderson said.
A manager sent a message to all personnel telling them to “secure ventilation in your building” and “refrain from eating or drinking.”
A source said “take cover” status was expanded to the entire site at 10:35 a.m. The source also said that crews doing road work nearby may have created enough vibration to cause the collapse, and that Vit Plant employees were in cover mode as well.
NHK World, May 1, 2017 (emphasis added): Wildfire continues in Fukushima — A wildfire has been raging for more than 2 days near the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The area is part of a zone designated as “no-entry” due to high radiation levels… Fukushima and Miyagi prefectures and the Self-Defense Forces are using helicopters to fight the blaze. They are also looking at the possibility of using ground crews. Footage from an NHK helicopter on Monday morning showed smoke rising from wide areas and fires burning in several locations
Mainichi, May 1, 2017: Wildfire rages in highly radioactive Fukushima mountain forest — A fire broke out in a mountain forest near the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant on the evening of April 29, consuming an area approximately 20 hectares in size, according to prefectural authorities… As the fire continued to spread, however, helicopters from the GSDF, Fukushima Prefecture and other parties on May 1 resumed fire extinguishing operations from around 5 a.m. … As of May 1, there were no major changes to radiation levels in the heart of Namie and other areas near the fire scene, according to the Ministry of the Environment. “We will continue to closely watch changes in radiation doses in the surrounding areas,” said a ministry official.
Common Dreams, May 1, 2017: Sparking Fears of Airborne Radiation, Wildfire Burns in Fukushima ‘No-Go Zone’; Contaminated forests such as those outside fallout sites like Fukushima and Chernobyl ‘are ticking time bombs’ — A wildfire broke out in the highly radioactive “no-go zone” near the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant over the weekend, reviving concerns over potential airborne radiation… Local officials were forced to call in the Japanese military… In a blog post last year, Anton Beneslavsky, a member of Greenpeace Russia’s firefighting group who has been deployed to fight blazes in nuclear Chernobyl, outlined the specific dangers of wildfires in contaminated areas. “During a fire, radionuclides like caesium-137, strontium-90 and plutonium rise into the air and travel with the wind,” Beneslavsky wrote. “This is a health concern because when these unstable atoms are inhaled, people become internally exposed to radiation.” Contaminated forests such as those outside fallout sites like Fukushima and Chernobyl “are ticking time bombs,” scientist and former regional government official Ludmila Komogortseva told Beneslavsky. “Woods and peat accumulate radiation,” she explained “and every moment, every grass burning, every dropped cigarette or camp fire can spark a new disaster.”
Sputnik News, May 1, 2017: Japanese Authorities Fighting Wildfire in Evacuation Zone Near Fukushima NPP… There were no reports either about the wind direction or the changes in the background radiation level in relation to the fire.
The plant’s operator, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) said the Unit-II is likely to restart on May 11.
“The unit was shut down due to steam and water leakage. We have to first cool the reactor and then set right the system,” H.N. Sahu, Site Director, KNPP told IANS over phone from Kudankulam in Tirunelveli district around 650 km from here.
The NPCIL has two 1,000 MW nuclear power plants at KNPP built with Russian equipment.
The first unit was shut down on April 13, for annual maintenance and refuelling, a process that would take around two months.
Unviable economics of nuclear power catches up with Cameco, Independent Australia, Jim Green 9 May 2017 CAMECO’S INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS: 1981‒2016
This table lists many of Cameco’s accidents and controversies since 1981 — leaks and spills, the promotion of dangerous radiation junk science (in WA and elsewhere) appalling treatment of Indigenous people, systemic and sometimes deliberate safety failures and so on.
Date and Location
Description of Incident
1981−89:
Saskatchewan, Canada
153 spills occurred at three uranium mines in Saskatchewan from 1981 to 1989. Cameco was fined C$10,000 for negligence in relation to a 1989 spill of two million litres of radium- and arsenic-contaminated water from the Rabbit Lake mine.
1990, May 13:
Blind River Uranium Refinery
Leak shuts down the Canadian refinery. Approximately 178 kg of radioactive uranium dust leaked into the air over a 30-hour period.
1993:
Canada/US
Inter-Church Uranium Committee from Saskatchewan reveals export of at least 500 tons of depleted uranium to the US military by Cameco, despite several Canadian treaties to export uranium only for “peaceful purposes”.
1998:
Kyrgyzstan
A truck en route to a Cameco gold main spills 2 tons of cyanide into the Barskoon River, a local drinking water and agricultural water source. 2,600 people treated and more than 1,000 hospitalized.
2001−
onwards:
Ontario
A 2003 report by the Sierra Club of Canada provides details of 20 major safety-related incidents and unresolved safety concerns at the Bruce nuclear power plant.
2002:
Kyrgyzstan
Fatality at Cameco’s Kumtor Gold Mine. Death of a Kyrgyz national, buried in the collapse of a 200 meter-high pit wall.
2003, April:
McArthur River, Saskatchewan
Cave-in and flood of radioactive water at the McArthur River mine. A consultant’s report found that Cameco had been repeatedly warned about the water hazards right up until the accident happened.
2004:
Key Lake uranium mill, Canada
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission approves Key Lake license renewal, despite continuing pit sidewall sloughing into the tailings disposed in the Deilmann pit. One million cubic meters of sand had already slumped into the tailings.
2004, April:
Port Hope, Ontario
Gamma radiation discovered in a school playground during testing in advance of playground upgrades. Although the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and AECL tried to dismiss the findings, the material under the school had to be removed when it was converted to low-cost housing in 2011. The contaminated material came from the uranium processing facility in Port Hope, now owned by Cameco.
2006, April:
Cigar Lake, Saskatchewan
A water inflow began at the bottom of the 6-meter wide shaft, 392 meters below the surface. All the workers left the area and removed equipment. According to a miner, “the mine’s radiation alarm kept going off, but the radiation technician merely re-set the alarm, assuring us that everything was fine.”
2006, Oct.: Cigar Lake, Saskatchewan
Cameco said its “deficient” development of the Cigar Lake mine contributed to a flood that delayed the mine project by three years and would double construction costs.
2007:
Port Hope, Ontario
Substantial leakage of radioactive and chemical pollutants into the soil under the uranium conversion facility ‒ leakage not detected by monitoring wells.
2008:
US/Canada
Uranium mines owned by Cameco in Nebraska, Wyoming, and Canada have all had spills and leaks. Cameco made a settlement payment of $1.4 million to Wyoming for license violations, and $50,000 to Nebraska for license violations.
2008, January:
Rabbit Lake mill
Seepage underneath the mill discovered after a contract worker noticed a pool of uranium-tainted ice at an outdoor worksite.
2008, May:
Port Hope, Ontario
It was discovered during soil decontamination at the suspended Port Hope uranium processing facility that egress from degraded holding floors had contaminated the harbour surrounding the facility, which flows into Lake Ontario.
2008, June:
Key Lake
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission intends to approve the license renewal for Cameco’s Key Lake mill although CNSC staff assigned ‘C’ ratings (“below requirements”) in four out of 10 program areas assessed, including waste management, fire protection, environmental protection, and training.
2010:
Rabbit Lake
Uranium discharges from Rabbit Lake (highest by far in Canada) showed increase rather than the predicted decrease in 2010.
2011: Ship from Vancouver to China
A number of sea containers holding drums of uranium concentrate are damaged and loose uranium is found in the hold.
2012, August:
Port Hope, Ontario
Spill of uranium dioxide powder resulted in one worker being exposed to uranium and three other workers potentially exposed during clean-up.
2012:
Northern Saskatchewan
Draft agreement between Cameco, Areva and the Aboriginal community of Pinehouse includes extraordinary clauses such as this: “Pinehouse promises to: … Not make statements or say things in public or to any government, business or agency that opposes Cameco/Areva’s mining operations; Make reasonable efforts to ensure Pinehouse members do not say or do anything that interferes with or delays Cameco/Areva’s mining, or do or say anything that is not consistent with Pinehouse’s promises under the Collaboration Agreement.”
2012, June 23: Blind River refinery, Ontario
Three workers exposed to airborne uranium dust after a worker loosened a ring clamp on a drum of uranium oxide, the lid blew off and about 26 kg of the material were ejected into the air.
2013‒ongoing: Canada
Cameco is battling it out in tax court with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). Up to US$1.6 billion in corporate taxes allegedly went unpaid. Cameco also involved in tax dispute with the US IRS. According to Cameco, the IRS is seeking an additional $32 million in taxes, plus interest, and may also seek penalties.
2013: English River First Nation, Canada
English River First Nation sign deal with Cameco and Areva, agreeing to support Millennium uranium mine and drop a lawsuit over land near the proposed mine. Some English River First Nation band members reacted strongly to the agreement. Cheryl Maurice said. “I am speaking for a group of people who weren’t aware that this agreement was being negotiated because there was no consultation process.”
2013, June: Saskatchewan
Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations Chief Perry Bellegarde says the provincial government should not issue any new permits for potash, uranium or other resource development until First Nations concerns are addressed. Bellegarde said the province’s lack of a revenue-sharing deal with First Nations stemmed from “economic racism.” “Do not issue a licence to Cameco or Areva or BHP until indigenous issues are addressed,” he said.
2013, August:
Troy, Ohio, USA
A fire occurred on a truck carrying uranium hexafluoride which originated from Cameco’s refinery in Port Hope, Ontario. Nuclear regulators in Canada – where the cargo originated – and in the US were not informed of the incident.
2013, Sept.:
Northern Saskatchewan
Sierra Club Canada produces a detailed report on Cameco’s uranium operations in Northern Saskatchewan. It details systemic corporate failure by Cameco as well as systemic regulatory failure.
2014, Jan.:
Port Hope
About 450 Port Hope homeowners have had their soil sampled and properties tested in the first phase of the biggest radioactive clean-up in Canadian history. Some 1.2 million cubic metres of contaminated soil will be entombed in a storage facility. More than 5,000 private and public properties will undergo testing to identify places which need remediation. Port Hope is riddled with low-level radioactive waste, a product of radium and uranium refining at the Eldorado / Cameco refinery. The clean-up will cost an estimated US$1.3 billion.
2014, March
A statement endorsed by 39 medical doctors calls on Cameco to stop promoting dangerous radiation junk science. The statement reads in part: “Cameco has consistently promoted the fringe scientific view that exposure to low-level radiation is harmless. Those views are at odds with mainstream scientific evidence.”
2015
A uranium supply contract was signed by Cameco and India’s Department of Atomic Energy on April 15, 2015. Nuclear arms control expert Crispin Rovere said: “As with the proposed Australia–India nuclear agreement, the text of the Canadian deal likewise abrogates the widely accepted principle that the nuclear recipient is accountable to the supplier. This is ironic given it was nuclear material diverted from a Canadian-supplied reactor that led to the India’s break-out in the first place. It would be like the citizens of Hiroshima deciding it would be a good idea to host American nuclear weapons within the city – the absurdity is quite astonishing.”
2015: Saskatchewan
Cameco’s uranium operations in Saskatchewan are facing opposition from the Clearwater Dene First Nation. A group called Holding the Line Northern Trappers Alliance has been camping in the area to block companies from further exploratory drilling in their territory. The group set up camp in November 2014 and plans to remain until mining companies leave. Concerns include Cameco’s uranium deal with India and the health effects of Cameco’s operations on the Indigenous people of northern Saskatchewan.
2015:
Key Lake mill, Canada
Cameco personnel identify the presence of calcined uranium oxide within a building. Five workers receive doses exceeding the weekly action level of 1 mSv.
2016: Smith Ranch ISL uranium mine, Wyoming, USA
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission finds that a supervisor from Cameco subsidiary Power Resources deliberately failed to maintain complete and accurate records of workers’ exposure to radiation. The NRC issues a Notice of Violation to Cameco.
2016: Smith Ranch ISL uranium mine, Wyoming, USA
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a Confirmatory Action Letter to Cameco subsidiary Power Resources documenting actions that the company has agreed to take before resuming shipments of radioactive sludge to a Utah facility. The letter followed two incidents in which containers of radioactive barium sulfate sludge, a byproduct of uranium ore processing, arrived at their destination with external contamination from leakage during transport.
Nuclear-safety concerns linger at Westinghouse plant, The STate, 8 May 17 BY SAMMY FRETWELLsfretwell@thestate.comThe U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will increase scrutiny of a Columbia atomic fuel factory after nearly a year of concerns about safety and the buildup of uranium at the 48-year-old plant.
Since finding an accumulation of uranium in an air pollution control device last summer, the NRC has cited one additional violation related to the same piece of equipment in the Westinghouse nuclear fuel plant off Bluff Road, federal records show.
In the most recent case, the company potentially allowed uranium to build up for 23 hours late in 2016 in the pollution control device. Westinghouse did not properly restart nozzles on the device, known as a scrubber, that keep processed water flowing, a Jan. 27 NRC violation notice says.
That finding, to be discussed Tuesday night at a meeting in Columbia, follows the discovery months earlier that enough uranium had built up in the scrubber to have caused a small burst of radiation. No explosion occurred, but the issue was significant enough for Westinghouse to shut down part of the plant for several months while it worked to make improvements. The closed portion of the plant has since been restarted.
In 1961, a US nuclear bomber broke up over North Carolina farmland, killing three of eight crew members.
The accident dropped two powerful hydrogen bombs over the area, but they did not detonate.
The military fully recovered one of the bombs.
While the second bomb was mostly recovered, one of its nuclear cores is likely still buried in up to 200 feet of mud and dirt.
Disaster struck early in the morning of January 24, 1961, as eight servicemen in a nuclear bomber were patrolling the skies near Goldsboro, North Carolina.
They were an insurance policy against a surprise nuclear attack by Russia on the United States — a sobering threat at the time. The on-alert crew might survive the initial attack, the thinking went, to respond with two large nuclear weapons tucked into the belly of their B-52G Stratofortress jet.
Each Mark 39 thermonuclear bomb was about 12 feet long, weighed more than 6,200 pounds, and could detonate with the energy of 3.8 million tons of TNT. Such a blast could kill everyone and everything within a diameter of about 17 miles — roughly the area inside the Washington, DC, beltway.
But the jet aeroplane and three of its crew members never returned to base, and neither nor did a nuclear core from one of the bombs.
The plane broke up about 2,000 above the ground, nearly detonating one of the bombs in the process.
Had the weapon exploded, the blast would have packed about 250 times the explosive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
A major accident involving a nuclear weapon is called a “broken arrow,” and the US military has officially recognised 32 of them since 1950.
A mysterious fuel leak, which the crew found out as a refuelling plane approached, led to the broken arrow incident over North Carolina in 1961.
The leak quickly worsened, and the jet bomber “lost its tail, spun out of control, and, perhaps most important, lost control of its bomb bay doors before it lost two megaton nuclear bombs,” according to a two–part series about the accident by The Orange County Register newspaper. “The plane crashed nose-first into a tobacco field a few paces away from Big Daddy Road just outside Goldsboro, N.C., about 60 miles east of Raleigh.”
One bomb safely parachuted toward the ground and snagged on a tree. Crews quickly found it, inspected it, and moved it onto a truck.
However, the parachute of the other bomb failed, causing it to slam into a swampy, muddy field and break into pieces. It took crews about a week of digging to find the crumpled bomb and most of its parts.
The military studied the bombs and learned that six out of seven steps to blow up one of them had engaged, according to the Register. Only one trigger stopped a blast — and that switch was set to “ARM,” yet somehow failed to detonate the bomb.
It was only “by the slightest margin of chance, literally the failure of two wires to cross, a nuclear explosion was averted,” said Robert McNamara, the US secretary of defence at the time, according to a declassified 1963 memo.
“Had the device detonated, lethal fallout could have been deposited over Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and as far north as New York City — putting millions of lives at risk,” according to a 2013 story by Ed Pilkington in the Guardian. Here’s a Nukemap simulation of what might have been the blast radius and fallout zone of the Goldsboro incident: [on original]
The thermonuclear core no one recovered
Both bombs were a thermonuclear design. So instead of just one nuclear core, these weapons — the most powerful type on Earth — had two nuclear cores.
In the fleeting moments after the first core (called a primary) explodes, it releases a torrent of X-ray and other radiation. This radiation reflects off the inside of the bomb casing, which acts like a mirror to focus it on and set off the secondary core. The one-two punch compounds the efficiency and explosive power of a nuclear blast.
While the US military recovered the entire Goldsboro bomb that hung from a tree, the second bomb wasn’t fully recovered: Its secondary core was lost in the muck and the mire.
Reports suggest the secondary core burrowed more than 100 feet into the ground at the crash site — possibly up to 200 feet down.
The missing secondary is thought to be made mostly of uranium-238, which is common and not weapons-grade material (but can still be deadly inside a thermonuclear weapon), plus some highly enriched uranium-235 (HEU), which is a weapons-grade material and a key ingredient in traditional atomic bombs.
Business Insider contacted the Department of Defence (DoD) to learn about the current status of the site and the missing secondary, and a representative said neither the DoD, Department of Energy, or USAF has “any ongoing projects or activities with this site.”
The DoD representative would not say whether or not the secondary was still there. However, the representative forwarded some responses by Joel Dobson, a local author who penned the book “The Goldsboro Broken Arrow“.
“Nothing has changed [since 1961],” Dobson said, according to the DoD email. (Dobson did not return calls or emails from Business Insider.) “The area is not marked or fenced. It is being farmed. The DOD has been granted a 400 foot in diameter easement which, doesn’t allow building of any kind but farming is OK.”
When asked about the still-missing secondary, Michael O’Hanlon, a US defence strategy specialist with the Brookings Institution, said there should be little to worry about.
“Clearly, having a large part of a nuclear weapon on private land … is a bit unsettling. That said, I’m not suggesting anyone lose sleep over this,” O’Hanlon told Business Insider in an email.
“It would take a serious operation to get at it, requiring tunnelling equipment and a fairly obvious and visible approach to the site by some kind of road convoy, presumably,” O’Hanlon added. “Moreover, a secondary does NOT have a lot of HEU or plutonium … which makes it less dangerous because you can’t make a nuclear weapon out of it from scratch.”
But O’Hanlon at least hopes the DoD and others have thought through “the possibility of someone trying to steal it.”
“After all, digging and tunnelling equipment has continued to improve over the years — and there is apparently no secret about where this weapon is located,” O’Hanlon said. “On balance, I’d rather it not be there — but don’t consider it a major national security risk, either.”
Nuclear plant worker ‘deliberately’ tried to hide error, officials say, NJ.com 3 May 17 LOWER ALLOWAYS CREEK TWP.— A worker “deliberately” attempted to fix an error he had made while conducting tests at a New Jersey nuclear reactor causing the plant to shut down 2 years ago, federal officials say.
The now-former employee’s action prompted the Hope Creek generating station to automatically shut down on Sept. 28, 2015. The worker later lied about what he did, officials said Wednesday.
The unidentified PSEG Nuclear technician “made an error while performing a surveillance test and deliberately attempted to correct the error rather than comply with the procedural guidance to stop and inform management,” the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a letter outlining its findings in the case on Wednesday……
When it conducted its own investigation of the unplanned shutdown, PSEG Nuclear discovered it was human error, not mechanical failure that caused the plant to trip off line, officials said……
The plant was shut down for four days.
PSEG, as the operator of Hope Creek, takes responsibility for the actions of the worker and did not contest the NRC’s finding…
The plant is one of three nuclear reactors operated by PSEG at its Artificial Island generating complex in Lower Alloways Creek in Salem County.
Hope Creek, along with the other two reactors there — Salem 1 and Salem 2 –comprise the second-largest nuclear complex in the United States.
This compares to just 11 in 2015, 15 in 2014 and between six and eight in previous years. Critics suspect that the huge increase is because upgraded Mark 4A warheads were being fitted to Trident missiles carried by the nuclear submarine, HMS Vengeance.
The number of bombs on the move is likely to remain high in future years as the new warheads are installed on other Trident submarines, they say. On Wednesday 26 April 2017 a nuclear weapons convoy was filmed by a motorist driving through the countryside by the village of Croftamie near Loch Lomond – and the footage was published by the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
The revelations have prompted alarm from the SNP and the Scottish Greens, who accuse the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of “chilling complacency” and risking a “catastrophic terrorist incident”. The MoD has refused to say whether, or why, it is moving more nuclear bombs.
The UK-wide group, Nukewatch, has been tracking the 20-vehicle nuclear weapons convoys for 30 years. It says it can tell from security and operational arrangements how many bombs they are carrying, and when dummy runs are made for training purposes.
The group has evidence that in 2016 six loaded convoys travelled from the Burghfield bomb factory in Berkshire to Coulport, with a further five going in the opposite direction. The convoys carried 34 refurbished warheads to Coulport, and sent 28 warheads down south for modernisation, it estimates.
The number of road convoys carrying nuclear weapons has more than doubled compared to previous years, Nukewatch says, while the number of dummy runs has dropped. It also suggests that the transport of warheads to be dismantled at Burghfield under international disarmament agreements has paused.
The sharp rise in bomb movements coincides with the planned introduction of upgraded Trident Mark 4A warheads, and HMS Vengeance returning to service after a three-year refit.
“The evidence suggests that not only are there a greater number of these deadly cargoes on the roads, but that the government is introducing modernised and even more lethal Trident warheads into service,” said Nukewatch’s Jane Tallents.
“While the rest of the world is meeting at the United Nations to draw up a multilateral treaty to ban nuclear weapons, the UK government is unilaterally and illegally modernising its weapons of mass destruction.”
The SNP’s Westminster defence spokesperson, Brendan O’Hara MP, said that the figures confirmed that nuclear weapons convoys were increasing. “The MoD has always shown chilling complacency on the transportation of nuclear convoys,” he told The Ferret.
“Trucks filled with nuclear material can be on the motorway or on main roads at any time of day or night without residents on the route ever knowing and that the frequency is increasing so rapidly is troubling.”
He condemned the secrecy that surrounds the nuclear convoys. “To pull the wool over people’s eyes about the awful practice of nuclear convoys travelling through our towns and cities so frequently is completely unacceptable.”
The Green MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife, Mark Ruskell, has been receiving more reports of nuclear convoys passing through Stirling. “People are angry and are watching the roads with concern,” he said.
“Every extra warhead convoy is a massive security threat, increasing the risk of a catastrophic terrorist incident. The UK Government is trashing international agreements to reduce our nuclear warhead stockpiles and seems intent on re-arming its submarines for Armageddon.”
The MoD declined to comment on operational details. “The transportation of defence nuclear material is kept to the minimum required to support operational requirements,” said a spokesman.
U.S. lawmakers push Yucca nuclear dump facing transport crunch, Reuters, By Timothy Gardner| WASHINGTON, 29 Apr 17, Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday debated resurrecting the stalled Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel dump in Nevada, a project critics say is hindered by the lack of an easy transport route.
Representative John Shimkus, an Illinois Republican, has proposed draft legislation to restart the licensing of Yucca Mountain. The government has already spent billions of dollars for initial construction of the project, which has been pending since Ronald Reagan was president.
Former President Barack Obama opposed Yucca and stopped its licensing process in 2010. But President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget provides $120 million to restart licensing and for development of interim nuclear waste sites until Yucca can be completed.
More details about the Trump administration’s support of Yucca could come when a broader budget is released in May. Currently, spent nuclear fuel, which can be deadly if left unshielded, is stored at reactors across the country, first in cooling ponds and then in thick casks.
The Yucca site itself, about 100 miles (160 km) northwest of Las Vegas, faces a cumbersome and costly licensing process that could take years to complete and questions from critics about how long spent fuel can remain without radiation leaking into an aquifer.
Yucca supporters say there is little groundwater at the desert site and what is there is contained by barriers and does not flow to any river or drinking water supply.
An even trickier problem will be getting the spent fuel to Yucca Mountain safely by train and truck from nuclear reactors sites all across the country.
“Transportation is the Achilles heel of the Yucca Mountain repository site,” said Bob Halstead, the head of Nevada’s agency for nuclear projects.
One train route studied by the Department of Energy, known as Caliente, has been at least partially blocked by Obama’s 2015 designation of a national monument called Basin and Range.
Another route, known as Mina, is opposed by the Walker River tribe, which withdrew permission in 2007 for the government to ship waste through its reservation.
Many casino owners and gaming associations also oppose the transport of spent nuclear fuel near the city of Las Vegas, saying publicity about the shipments could harm property values and tourism…..
There are no nuclear power reactors in Nevada, and the state’s entire Congressional delegation, which includes members of both parties, opposes Yucca.
Representative Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Democrat, said a major accident would harm human health, cost hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup costs, and damage the Las Vegas economy. “Do you honestly believe that shipping over 5,000 truck casks of high-level nuclear waste over a span of 50 years won’t result in at least one radiological accident?” Rosen said at the hearing…….http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclearpower-yucca-idUSKBN17S08J
The final mission for Cassini, Enformable, 26 Apr 17, Karl GrossmanDespite protests around the world, the Cassini space probe—containing more deadly plutonium than had ever been used on a space device—was launched 20 years ago. And this past weekend—on Earth Day—the probe and its plutonium were sent crashing into Saturn.
The $3.27 billion mission constituted a huge risk. Cassini with its 72.3 pounds of Plutonium-238 fuel was launched on a Titan IV rocket on October 17, 1997 despite several Titan IV rockets having earlier blown up on launch.
At a demonstration two weeks before in front of the fence surrounding the pad at Cape Canaveral from which Cassini was to be launched, Dr. Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, warned of widespread regional damage if this Titan IV lofting Cassini exploded on launch. Winds could carry the plutonium “into Disney World, University City, into the citrus industry and destroy the economy of central Florida,” he declared………
on an Earth “flyby” by Cassini , done on August 18, 1999, it wouldn’t have been a regional disaster but a global catastrophe if an accident happened.
Cassini didn’t have the propulsion power to get directly from Earth to its final destination of Saturn, so NASA figured on having it hurtle back to Earth in a “sling shot maneuver” or “flyby”—to use Earth’s gravity to increase its velocity so it could reach Saturn. The plutonium was only used to generate electricity—745 watts—to run the probe’s instruments. It had nothing to do with propulsion.
So NASA had Cassini come hurtling back at Earth at 42,300 miles per hour and skim over the Earth’s atmosphere at 727 miles high. If there were a rocket misfire or miscalculation and the probe made what NASA in its “Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Cassini Mission” called an “inadvertent reentry,” it could have fallen into Earth’s atmosphere, disintegrating, and releasing plutonium. Then, said NASA in its statement, “Approximately 7 to 8 billion world population at a time … could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure.”
The worst accident involving space nuclear power occurred in 1964 when a satellite powered by a SNAP-9A plutonium system failed to achieve orbit and fell to Earth, breaking apart and releasing its 2.1 pounds of Plutonium-238 fuel, which dispersed all over the planet. According to the late Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, that accident contributed substantially to global lung cancer rates……….
the U.S. Department of Energy working with NASA has started up a new production facility at its Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to produce Plutonium-238 for space use. Other DOE labs are also to participate.
Says Gagnon of the Maine-based Global Network: “Various DOE labs are rushing back into the plutonium processing business likely to make it possible for the nuclear industry to move their deadly product off-planet in order to ensure that the mining operations envisioned on asteroids, Mars, and the Moon will be fully nuclear-powered. Not only do the DOE labs have a long history of contaminating us on Earth but imagine a series of rocket launches with toxic plutonium on board that blow up from time to time at the Kennedy Space Center. They are playing with fire and the lives of us Earthlings. The space and the nuke guys are in bed together and that is a bad combination—surely terrible news for all of us.”
Gov’t Taking Away Handguns From Guards At Nuclear Power Plants, Daily Caller, ANDREW FOLLETT, Energy and Science Reporter , 27 Apr 17, Security guards at nuclear power plants will soon be prohibited from carrying handguns, according to a Wednesday statement by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).
TVA claims that a recent regulatory review concluded handguns were obsolete compared to other security measures protecting the power plants, but would not clarify what these new measures were citing security concerns. TVA seemingly intends to remove handguns from their security system by the end of the year.
TVA’s own security officers have gone on record strongly objecting to the change.
“Radiological release, that’s what they’re after. Terrorists are after to kill as many as they can in the quickest way.” Paul Tackett, a veteran nuclear security officer at TVA’s Watts Bar reactor, told a local news station. “They’re [TVA] talking about taking away our handguns. I mean, if we’re utilities at night, we have no way of protecting ourselves.”
A successful theft of uranium from a nuclear power plant could have catastrophic consequences. The sort of low-quality uranium and plutonium used in nuclear reactors could be used to make low-tech nuclear explosives often called “dirty bomb.”
“The safety and security of our facilities and host communities is and will always be our top priority,” a spokesperson for the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Our security officers employ powerful weapons such as automatic rifles and shotguns, meaning that phasing out sidearms does not reduce our solid commitment to safety and security.”
“Anything is possible to happen at anytime,” Tackett said. “It was just a few years ago when we had an officer shot at out here.”
