Nuclear Power: ‘They only tell part of the truth’
Nuclear Power: ‘They only tell part of the truth’ VUE WEEKLY Community activists charge bias in government’s nuclear report by Jan Buterman April 2, 2009
Opponents of nuclear power in Alberta say a “balanced and objective” report prepared at the request of the provincial government to look at the “factual issues pertinent to the use of nuclear power to supply electricity in Alberta” relies on a select group of experts with ties to the nuclear industry and omits or glosses over key information.“In one word? Fraudulent,” charges Pat McNamara, a Grande Prairie carpenter and founding member of the grassroots group Nuclear Free Alberta, pointing to the lack of representation of heath or environmental experts on the panel which prepared the report. “The thing that’s wrong with it is that they only tell part of the truth,” McNamara says. While the report, which the province will use to guide public consultations on the issue starting in April, deliberately uses non-technical language throughout, McNamara says it fails to elaborate on key issues which Albertans need to understand if they are to make an informed decision on bringing nuclear power to the province. The issues are complex but not impossible to learn, argues McNamara……………
……………….Despite the report’s claim of focusing on factual issues, the section dealing with fuel disposal relies heavily on language describing work to be developed or still in research, with theoretical outcomes posed as “could be” and “likely.” At the end of the day—or in the case of nuclear power stations, the end of several human generations from now—nuclear power stations leave behind highly toxic waste that cannot be completely recovered or recycled and must be stockpiled well into the timeline of those future generations. As the waste materials decay, they remain toxic—some of the the breakdown products are even more radioactive than the original material.
Vue Weekly : Edmonton’s 100% Independent Weekly : Nuclear Power: ‘They only tell part of the truth’
New Book on Hiroshima. Author’s Comments Cast Shadow Over President Truman.
Aquinine Books to Publish New Book on Hiroshima. Author’s Comments Cast Shadow Over President Truman.
A new novel entitled ‘Hiroshima Sunset’ by Australian author John Kelly, questions the morality and military need behind the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. The author highlights disturbing evidence behind President Truman’s decision to proceed, against strong military advice at the time.
………………………… The theme of the book goes beyond that of a simple love story to where author Kelly questions the morality of the decision to drop the bomb, and debunks the theory that it avoided the need for a land invasion of Japan.
The book is available on-line through the Lulu.com publishing service. http://www.pr.com/press-release/142007
Political Habitat: The lie of Three Mile Island
Political Habitat: The lie of Three Mile Island Thirty years after its near-calamity, the American nuclear industry is still paying for its inability to tell the truth on its worst day. By Peter Dykstra Mar 25 2009 “…………………..
Today, the industry is ready for its comeback: Gone are the days of too-cheap-to-meter propaganda. (My favorite is a 1966 short film by Northeast Utilities: The Atom and Eve shows an alluring dancer, pirouetting around household appliances and fondling a refrigerator — all brought to you by clean, safe nuclear energy.) In its place is a global warming-based sales pitch: Carbon-free nukes, now providing about 20 percent of the nation’s electric supply, could replace a big chunk of the 50 percent provided by coal, and several utilities have plants on the drawing board.All that remains to be conquered are the environmental risks throughout every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle: Uranium mining is inalterably destructive; its legacy was reported in a remarkable series in the Los Angeles Times two years ago; and the end of the cycle — dealing with nuclear waste — is barely closer to resolution than it was 30 years ago. Then there’s winning the faith of Wall Street — and the public. That’s all that’s left to do after the lie of TMI.
Political Habitat: The lie of Three Mile Island | MNN – Mother Nature Network
NRC racing to answer questions on depleted uranium
NRC racing to answer questions on depleted uranium chron.com By BROCK VERGAKIS Associated Press Writer © 2009 The Associated PressMarch 25, 2009,
SALT LAKE CITY — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is rushing to meet an April 2 deadline to turn over stacks of internal documents that could shed light on why it recently decided to classify large quantities of depleted uranium as the least hazardous type of low-level radioactive waste.
The NRC’s decision, which still must undergo a rule-making process that could take up to two years, would open the door for federal facilities and companies around the country to dispose of more than 1 million tons of depleted uranium in Utah and Texas.
Democratic Reps. Jim Matheson of Utah and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, who is chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the NRC, have demanded the documents because they believe the agency’s March 18 decision disregards the risk depleted uranium poses to public health and safety.
They called the NRC’s decision an “arbitrary and capricious mischaracterization” of the waste…………………………………..
Depleted uranium is unique in that unlike other waste, it becomes more radioactive over time, leading to criticism from environmental groups that the NRC is downplaying the long-term risks of radiological exposure.
“It’s kind of like saying someone isn’t a drunk driver because he passed a breathalyzer test before he started drinking,” said Christopher Thomas, public policy director for the nuclear waste watchdog group Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah………………………………
Matheson and Markey’s letter questioned how the NRC could make the ruling when in the 1980s it was considering higher classification.
“The depleted uranium waste stream which will flow from commercial uranium enrichment facilities is expected to be … ten times greater than what the commission believed was safe,” the letter says.
NRC racing to answer questions on depleted uranium | AP Texas News | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle
Green lobby and nuclear groups clash over role of renewable energy
Guardian.co.uk by Terry Macalister 16 March 2009
Greenpeace dismisses EDF for protecting its ‘vested nuclear interests’ by undermining the future of renewable fuels
EDF and E.ON have warned the government they may be forced to drop plans to build a new generation of nuclear power plants unless the government scales back its targets for wind power.
The demands – contained in submissions to the government’s renewable energy consultation – reinforces the worries of wind developers that the two sectors cannot thrive simultaneously.
…………………….. “We’ve always said that nuclear power will undermine renewable energy and will damage the UK’s efforts to tackle climate change – now EDF agrees,” said Nathan Argent, head of Greenpeace’s energy solutions unit.
“The National Grid shows that there is capacity to take well over 30% percent of our electricity from renewables. EDF are trying to block efforts to deliver on the most important technology to the UK to tackle climate change and keeps the light on in order to protect their own vested nuclear interests.”
Friends of the Earth agreed. “The UK is the windiest country in Europe with the best wave and tidal resources,” said Andy Atkins, the group’s executive director. “We should be maximising renewables and harnessing as much of that clean, safe energy as we possibly can – not propping up the French nuclear industry.
“Nuclear power is no green alternative – it leaves a legacy of deadly radioactive waste that remains dangerous for tens of thousands of years. And nuclear power plants simply cannot be built in time to deliver the cuts in carbon dioxide emissions that science says are needed.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/mar/16/nuclear-power-renewables-edf
Court papers reveal nuclear feud at Turkey Point
Court papers reveal nuclear feud at Turkey PointThe top nuclear operator at Turkey Point resigned after a huge outage because he felt his bosses were demanding an unsafe restart.
Miami Herald BY JOHN DORSCHNER 13 march 09
At 1:09 one afternoon last year, 90 metal rods slid into the cores of the two nuclear reactors at Turkey Point, part of an automatic shutdown that had been triggered by a utility worker’s blunder moments earlier at a substation miles away. A million customers lost power.
Florida Power & Light executives ordered that the reactors be back online within 12 hours, according to court documents. The plant’s top nuclear operator, David Hoffman, said that would be dangerous. When FPL executives disagreed with him, he walked out at 8 p.m., refusing to participate in actions he felt were unsafe
At 11:49 that night, Feb. 26, 2008, he submitted a heated resignation letter, blasting FPL for constantly putting cost savings ahead of safety and creating a horrible morale problem. ”People are not valued and are treated like equipment and numbers,” Hoffman wrote.
Hoffman’s charge offers a rare insight into safety complaints made by nuclear workers, who are often forbidden by contract from saying anything negative about their bosses. The information came to light because FPL is suing him for the return of a bonus, and he’s charging in a countersuit that the utility is improperly trying to silence his complaints about safety.
The information is being revealed at a crucial time as FPL is planning to build two new reactors at Turkey Point, part of a national resurgence of more than 20 new plants planned to reduce dependence on foreign oil and the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
Court papers reveal nuclear feud at Turkey Point – Front Page – MiamiHerald.com
Silence clause aims to keep Turkey Point workers quiet
Silence clause aims to keep Turkey Point workers quiet Miami Herald BY JOHN DORSCHNER 13 March 09
Licensed nuclear operators at Turkey Point sit at control panels staring at meters that generally don’t do much. For this, they can earn up to $150,000 a year, including plentiful overtime, plus another $50,000 or so in bonuses. So why complain about their bosses at Florida Power & Light?
”The work atmosphere there is horrible,” says Thomas Saporito, a Turkey Point worker who was fired in 1988 but has stayed in touch with many workers since then. “No one wants to work at the plant because of the retaliatory atmosphere there. People are afraid to make complaints about safety.”
Nuclear operator complaints generally are made public only in public documents, such as lawsuits involving overtime or bonuses. Virtually all operators are reluctant to talk to journalists.
One reason is that many signed bonus agreements in which they promise not to say anything bad: ”The employee shall not, at any time in the future and in any way . . . make any statements that may be derogatory or detrimental to the company’s good name,” was the way it was phrased in the contract of David Hoffman.
Silence clause aims to keep Turkey Point workers quiet – Business – MiamiHerald.com
Truth short-lived at EnergySolutions
Truth short-lived at EnergySolutions
Deseret News By Vanessa Pierce March 10, 2009 If truth were a type of nuclear waste, it might have a very short half-life. At times, anyway, it seems to decay faster in the hands of Energy-Solutions.
Take, for instance, the proclamation CEO Steve Creamer made to this newspaper in 2005 when asked what he would ask in return for giving up his company’s push to bring hotter classes of waste to Utah: “Not a thing. . . . We’re not going to be back asking for anything else. We’re happy.”
Two weeks later, the company quietly announced plans to double the size of its commercial radioactive waste dump—already the country’s largest. How long did it take for truth to decay in that instance? Two weeks.
Sometimes the truth at Energy?Solutions takes a little longer to decay. The company now wants to bring the world’s nuclear waste to Utah. But eight years ago, the state of Utah was given the company’s promise by then-Vice President Ken Alkema “that it will not take out-of-country wastes.” Not only has the company reneged on that commitment, apparently, it reneged on its word that same year.
Company spokeswoman Jill Sigal announced last week on RadioWest that EnergySolutions has been accepting “internationally generated material at Clive for over eight years.”
Do the math and you realize that EnergySolutions has been accepting foreign waste since 2001 — the same year the company informed the state that it would not be accepting such waste streams.
But even though it can be hard to determine how long the truth will last at EnergySolutions, we’re now being asked to take the company’s word that foreign nuclear waste is harmless, will take up the tiniest portion of its dump site and bring us billions.
Nuclear reactor from HMS Vanguard being dismantled in Plymouth’s Devonport Dockyard
Nuclear reactor being dismantled in Devonport The Herald (UK) March 04 2009
A massive section of the reactor from HMS Vanguard – which was refitted and refuelled at Devonport dockyard between 2002 and 2004 – is being dismantled at the city dockyard.
Royal Navy sources have said it was the first time a submarine reactor had been cut up in the UK.
And campaigners against the storage of nuclear waste at the naval base claimed they knew nothing of the scheme and accused the Ministry of Defence of ignoring public opposition to reactor disposal work in the city.
They fear it is a precursor to the reactors aboard seven redundant submarines stored in the naval yard being cut up at Devonport…………………….an Avent, of the Campaign Against Nuclear Storage and Radiation (Cansar), said: “This is the first phase in Plymouth becoming a nuclear scrapyard.
“The Ministry of Defence are going to use this project to justify doing all the other submarines here. What makes it worse is that they are doing it behind our backs.”………………………Five years ago, the public rejected any plans to manage or store nuclear waste at Devonport after consultation on the Ministry of Defence’s controversial Interim Storage of Laid Up Submarines (ISOLUS) project.
Nuclear reactor from HMS Vanguard being dismantled in Plymouth’s Devonport Dockyard
IG Energy cannot account for nuclear materials at 15 locations
IG: Energy cannot account for nuclear materials at 15 locations GOVERNMENT EXECUTIVE by Katherine McIntire Peters February 23, 2009 A number of institutions with licenses to hold nuclear material reported to the Energy Department in 2004 that the amount of material they held was less than agency records indicated. But rather than investigating the discrepancies, Energy officials wrote off significant quantities of nuclear material from the department’s inventory records.That’s just one of the findings of a report released on Monday by Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman that concluded “the department cannot properly account for and effectively manage its nuclear materials maintained by domestic licensees and may be unable to detect lost or stolen material.”Auditors found that Energy could not accurately account for the quantities and locations of nuclear material at 15 out of 40, or 37 percent, of facilities reviewed. The materials written off included 20,580 grams of enriched uranium, 45 grams of plutonium, 5,001 kilograms of normal uranium and 189,139 kilograms of depleted uranium.
“Considering the potential health risks associated with these materials and the potential for misuse should they fall into the wrong hands, the quantities written off were significant,” the report stated. “Even in small quantities normally held by individual domestic licensees, special nuclear materials such as enriched uranium and plutonium, if not properly handled, potentially pose serious health hazards.”
Auditors also found that waste processing facilities could not locate or explain the whereabouts of significant quantities of uranium and other nuclear material that Energy Department records showed they held
Did France’s Secrecy Cause a Nuclear Submarine Collision?
TIME by Eben Harrell 17 Feb 09
A collision between a British nuclear-powered submarine carrying multiple nuclear warheads and a French nuclear submarine armed with a similar payload may have been the result of lack of communication between France and NATO nations, according to a former British submarine commander whose revelations were partially corroborated by an official at the French navy.
Sometime on Feb. 3 or 4, the British HMS Vanguard and France’s Le Triomphant collided in the mid-Atlantic. The accident probably happened because the two submarines were not aware of each other. NATO operates a traffic control system that alerts allied nations to the deployment zones of friendly submarines. The system is designed to avoid collisions. But because France is not part of NATO’s military command structure, it does not provide information on the location of its mobile nuclear arms to that system,………………………….French are particularly secretive due to their position outside NATO’s command structure. And past policy-level discussions suggest a concern over a lack of communication…………………………………While the intersection of two sonar-equipped nuclear submarines in a vast ocean may seem an unlikely event even without communication, there are environmental anomalies in the Atlantic that make a collision more likely……………………………………
…………..had a nuclear reactor been damaged on either boat, it could have poisoned the crew and spread radioactive waste for miles across the Atlantic………………………
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1879777,00.html?iid=tsmodule
UK scraps advisory body that warned of nuclear risks
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) disbands nuclear body that warned of risks
The Guardian Rob Edwards and Terry Macalister 17 Feb 09
An expert advisory committee has been quietly scrapped after it warned that the safety of Britain’s ageing nuclear plants was being put at risk by poor performance, delays and budget cuts.
The Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee (NuSAC), which has been offering critical advice to Britain’s health and safety watchdog for nearly 50 years, was disbanded without any public announcement.
Former members of NuSAC are now worried about the lack of independent safety advice at a time when the government is embarking on a big expansion and clean-up of nuclear power.
Some former members privately suspect that NuSAC was shut down in October because it could have hampered government plans for a new programme of nuclear reactors. “This was just the time to get rid of a potential pest and spanner in the works of the brave new world of nuclear regulation and build,” said one.
Some of NuSAC’s recent criticisms, particularly on potential shortfalls in the funding of nuclear decommissioning and radioactive waste management, were forthright………………………NuSAC consisted of 19 safety experts, including scientists, academics, trade unionists and business executives, none of whom were paid. It reported to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and was chaired for the past four years by Stephen Vranch, a chemical engineer from Jacobs Engineering……………………………
In an unpublicised report last July, NuSAC warned that programmes to deal with radioactive waste from decommissioning the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria and other old nuclear plants had suffered “substantial slippages”.
The slippages were caused by the “poor performance” of nuclear plants, delays in developing waste processing and budget restrictions, the report concluded. “There remains a lack of confidence that the high hazards are being tackled to a robust programme,” it said.
Japanese firms played key role in Pakistan’s nuclear programme
| Press Trust of India 17 Feb 09 | |||||||
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This supply “knowingly or unknowingly” helped Islamabad to acquire nuclear capability and were incorporated in its supply framework, it emerged today.
“Japanese companies played a key role in supplying equipment used for Pakistan’s nuclear development,” Japan’s Kyodo News reported, quoting the outcome of its investigations in Islamabad and Tokyo.
Comments by Khan and former employees of the companies reveal in detail for the first time how leading Japanese manufacturers knowingly and unknowingly helped Pakistan acquire nuclear capability and were incorporated into its supply framework.
Investigations revealed that both Khan and the head of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission visited Japan at least once in the 1980s to shop for their respective programmes.
Khan, dubbed the “father of Pakistan’s nuclear programme,” told Kyodo in a written interview that Khan Research Laboratories acquired a wide range of machines, laboratory equipment and metal products from Japan. PTI
Areva Fails to Block Television Exposé
Areva Fails to Block Television Exposé
Beyond Nuclear 14 Feb 09 Areva was unsuccessful in its attempt to block the transmission of a television expose that revealed high levels or radioactive contamination around France’s abandoned uranium mine sites. The program – Uranium, the scandal of contaminated France – aired on France 3 and featured the findings of the CRIIRAD independent laboratory led by Dr. Bruno Chareyron.
Los Alamos Lab Missing Almost 100 Computers
Los Alamos Lab Missing Almost 100 Computers eweek.com By Roy Mark2009-02-12 The nation’s primary nuclear weapons testing lab is again involved in an embarrassing security gaffe. Watchdog group reveals the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has lost 13 computers in 12 months and that 67 other computers are currently missing.
1 This Month
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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