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Nuclear waste storage? There’s no real money in it for Wyoming.

Kessler: Nuclear waste storage provides no benefit for Wyoming, https://trib.com/opinion/columns/kessler-nuclear-waste-storage-provides-no-benefit-for-wyoming/article_4267cc9f-a2f8-54e5-a2d6-7ebe2fe9f9eb.html, Nov 2, 2019 

There’s no doubt that Wyoming needs to find new revenue sources to fund our schools and state budget, but storing nuclear waste is not the answer. It’s a far-fetched proposal riddled with legal roadblocks. And even if we ignore those roadblocks — along with the many safety and political risks of storing high-level radioactive waste — there’s no real money in it for Wyoming.

For starters, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which regulates the storage of spent fuel rods from commercial nuclear reactors, makes available just $5 million per year to states willing to host a “monitored retrievable storage” facility during the construction phase. Once such a facility starts accepting the waste, that amount increases to just $10 million per year. This is a far cry from the $1 billion per year proponents claim Wyoming would see.

That’s assuming such a facility can even legally be constructed. The act also prohibits building a temporary facility until a permanent disposal repository, such as the one proposed for Yucca Mountain in Nevada, starts construction. But licensing work on Yucca Mountain has stalled; Congress hasn’t authorized any funding for it in recent years.

To build a storage facility in Wyoming, we’d have to get Congress to change the law in our favor and give us 100 times the amount of cash authorized in the act. That’s not likely. In the last three years, more than a dozen bills have been introduced in Congress to amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and address this topic. They’ve all failed. Nuclear utilities are likely the biggest opponents: Fees collected for the act’s Nuclear Waste Fund are predominantly meant to fund a permanent disposal solution — not something temporary.

But assume we could actually convince Congress to change the law to allow a monitored retrievable storage site here. Then what? Chances are we’d be stuck with those spent fuel rods for good. That’s because there are no legal, political or financial mechanisms to ensure that, once accepted, high-level radioactive waste would ever be removed. Wyoming would likely become the new Yucca Mountain – not a place to hold nuclear waste temporarily, but a de facto permanent disposal site.

The proposal also ignores serious transportation safety concerns. At no time in our nation’s history would so much high-level radioactive waste be on our roads and rails — and traveling such great distances. So far, the federal government has failed to adopt the enhanced transportation safeguards suggested by the Western Governors’ Association, the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission on American’s Nuclear Future, the National Academy of Sciences and the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. There is much work to be done ahead of any attempt to safely ship spent fuel rods across the country. As a recent government report concluded: “The transportation of large amounts of spent fuel to an interim storage or permanent disposal location is inherently complex and the planning and implementation may take decades to accomplish.”

It’s especially curious that our legislators suddenly seem so trusting of the federal government in this matter. Our nation’s nuclear waste policy has a 50-year history of broken promises, missed timelines, shifting policies, unreliable funding, changing scientific criteria and running roughshod over states’ rights. In fact, when Gov. Mike Sullivan vetoed this same proposal in 1992 he wrote:

“Can we trust the federal government or the assurance of negotiation to protect our citizens’ interests? To do so would disregard the geographical voting power in Congress and 100 years of history and experience… Are we willing to ignore the experience history would provide us for the siren song of promised economic benefits and a policy that is clearly a moving target? As Governor, I am not.”

In Wyoming, we need a vision for our future that embraces the assets that truly make us a place where people want to live, move to and do business: our strong public schools, workforce, wildlife, open spaces, livable communities, agricultural legacy and outdoor way of life. This is what makes Wyoming the envy of many other places. Instead of jeopardizing our heritage and tarnishing our state’s image, we need to protect and build upon these assets. Storing nuclear waste invites regulatory, political, safety and economic diversification risks — while providing Wyoming no real benefits. We urge the Legislature to reject spending any more time or resources on such a misguided idea.

November 4, 2019 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, wastes | Leave a comment

Residents of Gillingham UK unaware of proximity of nuclear waste dump

Kent Live 30th Oct 2019, Gillingham Asda shoppers have no idea they’re parked metres away from a  nuclear waste dump. Householders in Gillingham might be surprised to know that they live, work and sleep in the vicinity of vast tonnes of nuclear waste.
Just off Pier Approach Road lies a small, unmarked and fenced-off
wooded area where the Ministry of Defence deposited more than 3,000 cubic
metres of radioactive waste between 1968 and 1986. That’s enough to fill
an Olympic swimming pool. Householders in Gillingham might be surprised to
know that they live, work and sleep in the vicinity of vast tonnes of
nuclear waste. Just off Pier Approach Road lies a small, unmarked and
fenced-off wooded area where the Ministry of Defence deposited more than
3,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste between 1968 and 1986. That’s
enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool.

https://www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/gillingham-asda-shoppers-no-idea-3484975 

November 2, 2019 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

World Nuclear Waste Report (WNWR) to be launched 11th November

October 29, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, wastes | Leave a comment

National nuclear commission strategy for Marshall Islands

Marshalls endorses nuclear commission strategy,  https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/401921/marshalls-endorses-nuclear-commission-strategy    The Marshall Islands government has endorsed the adoption of a national nuclear commission strategy for the next three years.

The strategy honours the legacy of Marshallese nuclear heroes and heroines who fought and continue to demand accountability for their communities.

The strategy was mandated in the Marshall Islands parliament, or Nitijela, as part of the National Nuclear Commission Act of 2017.

It focuses on five broad themes for nuclear justice: compensation, health care, the environment, national capacity, and education and awareness.

From 1946 to 1958, the US used the Marshall Islands to test its nuclear weapons.

The commission also aims to establish an independent panel of scientists and specialists in fields related to radiation exposure, to provide the republic’s citizens access to trusted, independent science.

The commission’s chair, Rhea Moss-Christian, said the NNC strategy was a tool for all Marshallese, whether living in the islands or overseas, to use in their individual and collective efforts to respond to the devastation resulting from the US nuclear weapons testing program in the Marshall Islands.

“It is also a resource for our partners and friends outside the Marshall Islands to understand the nuclear testing impacts that persist today and how they can support the Marshallese people,” Ms Moss-Christian said.

October 28, 2019 Posted by | OCEANIA, politics, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

340,000 to evacuate Fukushima, landslide fears(- and what about the nuclear waste bags?)

Why doesn’t the news media explore the question of what is happening to Fukushima’s bags of radioactive nuclear debris?

October 26, 2019 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, wastes | 1 Comment

The failure of nuclear reprocessing and the “Plutonium Economy”

Paul Richards The Plutonium Economy failed.  nuclear fuel cycle watch australia, 25 Oct 19, 

No one on the planet has been able to run unspent nuclear fuel through twice, and make it economically viable, let alone the countless times needed to make it ecologically viable.

It costs more to run unspent fuel through once more than to

• mine uranium,
• process for shipping
• process into yellowcake
• make into rods
• ship rods onsite to reactors

There is little to NO CHANCE of doing that again, and again.

Business history shows this wasn’t possible when;

• uranium was at its peak in price in 1980

2019, about to enter the third decade of the 21C, where commodities exchanges show nuclear fuel it is;

• LOWEST PRICE than in all of economic history,

and yet it still can’t compete with any other energy sources.

Nuclear apologists are a joke, delusional.

The nuclear sales executives of the nuclear estate have been busy rebranding, white and greenwashing their product is ever since Ronald Reagan announced The Plutonium Economy failed.

In point of fact, carbon fuel, gas spinning a turbine, has been producing cheaper energy fully levelized for three decades than any nuclear reactor.

Large scale

• solar PV and
• on-offshore wind turbines
• reached PARITY with
• carbon fuel NATURAL GAS

late last decade on an LCOE basis.

For this whole decade these;

• renewable systems
• fully lifecycle factored
• are cheaper than even carbon fuels
• NATURAL GAS

October 26, 2019 Posted by | - plutonium, 2 WORLD, reprocessing | Leave a comment

USA’s nuclear wastes can’t stay in above-ground canisters forever

Who will be the ultimate bearer of the nation’s nuclear waste? Mashable
by Mark Kaufman, Editors Nandita Raghuram and Brittany Levine Beckman  Illustrations Vicky Leta, 25 Oct 19,  In Mashable’s series Wasted, we dig into the myriad ways we’re trashing our planet. Because it’s time to sober up.When future tourists journey through a desolate, sun-baked patch of the southeastern New Mexico desert, some 20 miles outside of the 21st-century oil boomtown of Carlsbad, they’ll spot dozens of giant pillars on the flat terrain, somewhat like the great stone heads looming on the treeless hills of Easter Island. If the intrigued desert visitors wander close enough to the 25-foot high granite monuments, erected by the United States Department of Energy, they’ll see inscriptions written in seven different, perhaps archaic, languages.

And if they dare wander past the perimeter of the grandiose columns, the travelers will find an open-air structure made of 15-foot high walls, emblazoned with frightening pictographs and symbols. Taken together, the U.S. agency hopes to convey a clear message to anyone who enters.Keep out. Leave. Don’t dig. Something bad lurks beneath the ground. “This ‘stay out’ sign warns future generations of the danger of intrusion,” the Department of Energy wrote in its blueprint of this imposing message.

In 1990, the agency convened a group of linguists, writers, anthropologists, and an assortment of other scientists to think about how, in centuries or thousands of years (perhaps long after the fall of the U.S. empire), they might discourage people from revealing what lay 2,000 feet below the rocky soil and dashing roadrunners: hundreds of thousands of containers filled with radioactive sludge, soil, mops, brooms, and gloves from the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons program. The sealed casks would be a danger for at least 10 millennia.

Today, the edifices in this corner of southeastern New Mexico are profoundly less romantic than the government’s designs for foreboding temple-like grounds. Here lies the fenced compound of the beige, block buildings of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, where the federal government has trucked in radioactive waste for 20 years and counting, and where the waste will stay, forever.
Of course, most of the radioactive waste in the U.S. today isn’t stored in New Mexico [illustration by Vicky Leta, Mashable). Rather, much of the nuclear rummage is the spent radioactive fuel from power plants  ……..the waste is scattered around the country at the very nuclear power plants where it was used, because the U.S. hasn’t decided on a place to permanently deposit the deadly dross. But the concrete and metal storage casks, often stockpiled directly on the surface in places like the idyllic California coast, age, crack, and decay over time. The waste can’t stay there forever.
Today, nobody knows where America’s commercial nuclear waste will ultimately find its radioactive grave. ……

It’s got to go somewhere,” said Allison Macfarlane, the former chairman of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and professor of science and technology policy at George Washington University.

“The worst option is leaving it above ground indefinitely,” stressed Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist and expert in nuclear weapons policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy group…..  there’s no good place to store the forever waste. “There’s no best option. There’s only the least bad option,”………

One day, WIPP might be joined by another nuclear waste site — but this one exposed on New Mexico’s desert surface.

Between the cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs, about 70 miles apart, lies 1,000 acres of rough desert scrub. Holtec International, a company that sells sturdy containers for storing nuclear waste, has a scheme for these 1,000 acres that would make them a lot of money. The company wants to transform this forsaken desert into a concrete field holding 10,000 containers of spent fuel from all the nation’s nuclear power plants, collectively called the HI-STORE Consolidated Interim Story Facility. “Interim” is a somewhat deceiving word here. Taxpayers would essentially rent these thick casks until our underperforming Congress finds a truly permanent place to store the spent fuel from nuclear plants. The waste could stay there for 40 years. Or, if the casks are continually restored, much longer……..

For now, Holtec’s waste depository is not close to becoming a reality. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is in the initial stages of “scoping” the project. And even if the agency approved it, Holtec would have to contend with a regulatory fortress vigilantly guarded by the Environmental Protection Agency, the state of New Mexico, and not least the ruthless watch of Hancock, who’s well known in nuclear policy circles. “We’re not going to let [Holtec] happen,” he scoffed. “That’s just absurd.”  ……..
NEVER NEVADA The U.S. has nuked the hell out of Nevada………

The waste must eventually go deep, deep underground, said Lyman, the nuclear expert. The irradiated can can’t be punted down the road all century. Nuclear plants are brimming with this stuff. “The Department of Energy is on the hook to produce some type of a solution as the reactor facilities are filling up,” emphasized Notre Dame’s Burns.

There’s only one way that can happen: not forcing, not dictating, but collaborating with a community, somewhere, to allow a geologic depository, stressed Macfarlane. The site would need to be heavily guarded in perpetuity. “The question is can they be compensated enough and their concerns be mitigated enough that they’re willing to accept it,” said Lyman.

There’s only one way that can happen: not forcing, not dictating, but collaborating with a community, somewhere, to allow a geologic depository, stressed Macfarlane. The site would need to be heavily guarded in perpetuity. “The question is can they be compensated enough and their concerns be mitigated enough that they’re willing to accept it,” said Lyman……..

while the waste can’t just sit exposed on the surface forever, it could be some 50 years before the casks become an imminent threat.

Indeed, nuclear waste is “out of sight out of mind,” noted Lyman. This is in stark contrast to an environmental threat like relentlessly rising global temperatures, wherein the well-predicted consequences of a warmer globe are conspicuously unfolding today: wildfires torching more land, the melting of the great ice sheets, unprecedented deluges, overheated infrastructure, an incessantly warming ocean, and beyond……..

If New Mexico’s nuclear heritage is somehow ever lost, perhaps by the passage of millennia and ravages of time, tall monuments will stand in the windswept desert for thousands of years, hopefully warding off any curious pilgrims, explorers, or future industrialists from the decaying consequences of war, weaponry, and defense. Whatever symbols the Department of Energy ultimately etches into the walls of the roofless, sunlit temple where WIPP once stood, they better be damn scary.https://mashable.com/feature/most-radioactive-state-in-us-nuclear-waste-new-mexico-nevada/?fbclid=IwAR3hb7-ZZjWxaF863zuHqueEHeA8VjhLwrWVm2sA849Kvcb5D6OAQ00SmdI

October 26, 2019 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

20 sovereign nations in New Mexico and Texas oppose nuclear facility near Carlsbad

Native American Pueblo leaders oppose nuclear facility near Carlsbad, Hobbs,   https://www.oilandgas360.com/native-american-pueblo-leaders-oppose-nuclear-facility-near-carlsbad-hobbs-2/  in Press   by— 360 Feed Wire

Native American Pueblo leaders oppose nuclear facility near Carlsbad, Hobbs

Oct. 24– Oct. 24–A group of Native American leaders opposed a plan to temporarily store nuclear waste at proposed facilities in southeast New Mexico and West Texas before a permanent repository is available.

The All Pueblo Council of Governors, which represents 20 sovereign nations in New Mexico and Texas held a meeting on Thursday where members affirmed their opposition to the projects, read a Monday news release from the group.

Concerns with the transportation of spent nuclear fuel rods drove the group’s opposition to two proposed consolidated interim storage (CIS) sites, one near the border of Eddy and Lea counties in New Mexico and another in Andrews, Texas. Continue reading →

October 26, 2019 Posted by | indigenous issues, opposition to nuclear, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Rick Perry, as Energy Secretary, “solved” nuclear waste problem by reclassifying high level waste as low level

October 24, 2019 Posted by | politics, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Highly toxic nuclear waste being imported into Russia, from Germany

October 24, 2019 Posted by | Germany, Russia, wastes | Leave a comment

8-10 years for Southern California Edison to demolish San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station

Coastal Commission OKs permit to dismantle the San Onofre nuclear plant,Southern California Edison will begin demolition in coming months but entire process will take 8-10 years to complete, San Diego Union Tribune, By ROB NIKOLEWSKI, OCT. 17, 2019

 The California Coastal Commission, on a 9-0 vote, gave approval Thursday for Southern California Edison to proceed with plans to dismantle the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, known as SONGS, where canisters loaded with nuclear waste are being moved from “wet storage” to a newly constructed “dry storage” facility on site.

The permit will allow Edison contractors to begin removing major structures at the facility, located on an 85-acre chunk of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton owned by the Department of the Navy. SONGS is home to 3.55 million pounds of used-up nuclear fuel, between the Pacific and Interstate 5…..

Ultimately, the federal government has the final say about where used-up commercial nuclear fuel should go. But since a permanent site has not been found, nuclear waste at plants like SONGS have been piling up for decades. …….

A provision within the commission’s vote added a special condition to the permit concerning the demolition of two spent fuel pools where used-up nuclear waste is stored.

Under the provision, Edison will not get rid of the pools until it funds an independent third-party review of an inspection and maintenance plan regarding the condition of canisters in dry storage and forwards the findings to the Coastal Commission. Edison also agreed to start the plan by March 31, 2020 — seven months earlier than scheduled.

In return, the commission agreed to not sit on the report and vote on a recommendation by Coastal Commission staff by July 2020.

The proposed demolition of the pools at Units 2 and 3 dominated much of the discussion that dragged out for most of the day.

While fuel inside a nuclear reactor typically loses its efficiency after about four to six years, it is still thermally hot and emits a great deal of radiation. To keep the fuel cool, nuclear plant operators place the used-up waste in a metal rack and lower it into a deep pool of water, typically for at least five years. Once cooled, the fuel is often transferred to a dry storage facility.

Some speakers supported removal of the pools but others insisted they must remain to make sure the canisters holding the waste can be retrieved and inspected.

While fuel inside a nuclear reactor typically loses its efficiency after about four to six years, it is still thermally hot and emits a great deal of radiation. To keep the fuel cool, nuclear plant operators place the used-up waste in a metal rack and lower it into a deep pool of water, typically for at least five years. Once cooled, the fuel is often transferred to a dry storage facility.

Some speakers supported removal of the pools but others insisted they must remain to make sure the canisters holding the waste can be retrieved and inspected………

The dismantlement will be carried out by a general contractor selected in December 2016 — a joint venture of AECOM and Energy Solutions called SONGS Decommissioning Solutions. The decommissioning will be paid for by $4.4 billion in existing trust funds, The money has been collected from SONGS customers and invested in dedicated trusts. According to Edison, customers have contributed about one-third of the trust funds while remaining two-thirds has come from investments by the company.

Some of the work can begin before the waste transfers are completed, provided they are “geographically separate from locations where fuel storage and transfer operations occur,” Dobken said.

After transfers were suspended for a little more than one year after the August 2018 incident involving the 50-ton canister, Edison resumed moving canisters in July. Workers have moved 35 canisters to dry storage thus far, with 38 more to go. Transfer operations are expected to be completed by mid-2020…….

SONGS is far from the only nuclear plant with waste on-site. About 80,000 metric tons of used commercial fuel has piled up at 121 sites in 35 states because the federal government has not found a repository where it can be stored. Federal authorities were supposed to begin taking custody of spent fuel in 1998. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/story/2019-10-17/coastal-commission-oks-permit-to-begin-dismantlement-at-san-onofre-nuclear-plant

October 19, 2019 Posted by | decommission reactor, USA | 1 Comment

Nuclear power to combat climate change? This cure is worse than the disease

October 17, 2019 Posted by | 2 WORLD, wastes | 1 Comment

Removal of highly radioactive material from 60 year old Dounreay Fast Nuclear Reactor (DFR).

BBC 15th Oct 2019, Radioactive material jammed inside a Scottish nuclear reactor since the 1970s has been removed for disposal. Remotely-operated tools were specially made to extract the breeder elements from the Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR).

The DFR and its dome-shaped housing are to be demolished as part of the
wider decommissioning of the former nuclear power site near Thurso.
Dismantling the 60-year-old DFR is among the most challenging of the
decommissioning work.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-50055003

October 17, 2019 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Typhoon Hagibis floods carry away Fukushima nuclear waste bags in their thousands

Ed. note. Since we published  the article below, Nuclear Hotseat has corrected the misleading information about 2667 bags of radioactive debris being washed away.

2,667 Radioactive Bags From Fukushima Swept Away By Typhoon Hagibis   https://newspunch.com/1667-radioactive-bags-fukushima-swept-away-typhoon-hagibis/, October 14, 2019 Baxter Dmitry   As Typhoon Hagibis hammered Japan on Saturday, thousands of bags containing radioactive waste at Fukushima were reportedly carried into a local stream by floodwaters.Experts warn the radioactive bags could have a devastating environmental impact across the entire Pacific region, reports Taiwan News.

According to Asahi Shimbun, a temporary storage facility containing 2,667 bags storing radioactive contaminants from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster were “unexpectedly inundated by floodwaters brought by Typhoon Hagibis.“

Torrential rain flooded the storage facility and released the bags into a waterway 100 meters from the site.

Officials from Tamara City in Fukushima Prefecture said that each bag is approximately one cubic meter in size.

Authorities were only able to recover six of the bags by 9 p.m. on Oct. 12 and it is uncertain how many remain unrecovered while the potential environmental fallout is being assessed.

The radioactive waste swept away by Typhoon Hagibis represents the latest setback for Fukushima officials who have struggled to adequately quarantine the radiation.

StatesmanJournal reports: Seaborne radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected on the West Coast of the United States.

Cesium-134, the so-called fingerprint of Fukushima, was measured in seawater samples taken from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach in Oregon, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are reporting.

Because of its short half-life, cesium-134 can only have come from Fukushima.

Also for the first time, cesium-134 has been detected in a Canadian salmon, the Fukushima InFORM project, led by University of Victoria chemical oceanographer Jay Cullen, is reporting.

In both cases, levels are extremely low, the researchers said, and don’t pose a danger to humans or the environment.

Massive amounts of contaminated water were released from the crippled nuclear plant following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. More radiation was released to the air, then fell to the sea.

October 15, 2019 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, wastes | Leave a comment

The million year problem – deep burial of nuclear wastes

Quite apart from the technological challenges and ethical issues these solutions present, both have one major drawback: to be successful they rely on external, uncontrollable factors. How could the knowledge required to interpret these things this be guaranteed to last?

Semiotician Thomas Sebeok recommended the creation of a so-called Atomic Priesthood. Members of the priesthood would preserve information about the waste repositories and hand it on to newly initiated members, ensuring a transfer of knowledge through the generations.

Buried nuclear waste stays dangerous for a million years — here’s how scientists plan to stop a future disaster 

In thousands of years’ time, will they even understand the language written on our ‘keep out’ signs? https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/buried-nuclear-waste-danger-underground-future-disasters-814704

By Helen Gordon, Monday, 14th October 2019  The red metal lift takes seven juddering minutes to travel nearly 500 metres down. Down, down through creamy limestone to reach a 160-million-year-old layer of clay.

Here, deep beneath the sleepy fields and quiet woods along the border of the Meuse and Haute-Marne departments in north-east France, the French National Radioactive Waste Management Agency (Andra) has built its underground research laboratory.

The laboratory’s tunnels are brightly lit but mostly deserted, the air dry and dusty and filled with the hum of a ventilation unit.

Blue and grey metal boxes house a series of ongoing experiments – measuring, for example, the corrosion rates of steel, the durability of concrete in contact with the clay. Using this information, Andra wants to build an immense network of tunnels here.

It plans to call this place Cigéo, and to fill it with dangerous radioactive waste. It is designed to be able to hold 80,000 cubic metres of material.

Long-term risks of nuclear waste Continue reading →

October 15, 2019 Posted by | France, Reference, wastes | Leave a comment

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