Public Should Comment on New “WIPP Forever” Strategic Plan, http://nuclearactive.org/August 22nd, 2019The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is the nation’s first geologic disposal site for radioactive and hazardous waste. https://wipp.energy.gov/ But WIPP should not be the only repository. For decades, federal laws and state agreements and permits have established a limited mission for both the amount of waste allowed and how long the site can operate. Other repositories are necessary since the nation has no plans to stop production of nuclear weapons that generate the plutonium waste. Other repositories also are required for commercial spent fuel and military high-level wastes.
In recent years, officials with the Department of Energy (DOE) have discussed various ideas to keep WIPP open for at least 50 years – twice as long as the original schedule – and to expand the types and amounts of waste. One reason for the “WIPP Forever” plan is to avoid telling Congress and the public that it is time to develop other repositories – since no state is asking for those dump sites.
DOE announced the upcoming release of a Draft Five-Year Strategic Plan and public comment meetings in Santa Fe on Monday, August 26th from 3 to 5 pm at the Hotel Santa Fe, and in Carlsbad on Wednesday, August 28th from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm at the Skeen-Whitlock Building. While WIPP officials acknowledge that more informed public comment happens if the draft plan is released several days in advance, the document may not be available until just before the Santa Fe meeting.
Thus, what exactly is in the five-year plan is uncertain. But it likely will presume that WIPP continues to operate until at least 2050 and the amount of waste totals at least thirty percent more than the legal limit of 175,564 cubic meters. It will certainly include adding at least one new shaft and numerous underground disposal rooms beyond those ever included in past designs. That additional space is for plutonium-contaminated waste previously designated for WIPP that doesn’t fit because of the underground contamination that makes some areas of the underground unusable. The Plan also could include tons of weapons-grade plutonium and high-level waste that has always been prohibited by federal law and the state permit.
Don Hancock, of Southwest Research and Information Center, said, “Whatever the specifics of the WIPP Strategic Plan, the public can tell DOE that we do not agree with operating WIPP forever. People can also tell State officials to enforce the legal limits on the amount and types of waste and set a closing date so that DOE and Congress know that it’s time to plan for either long-term storage at generator sites or new repositories in other states.” http://www.sric.org/
Spectacular Video Shows Nuclear Power Plant Demolition in Germany
How to demolish a nuclear power plant without blowing it up, By Sheena McKenzie, CNN August 16, 2019 London(CNN Business)This is how you demolish a nuclear power plant German-style. No big red button. No dramatic countdown. No “kaboom!”
The engineers who brought down a disused power plant on the River Rhine last week did so without an explosion. Instead they used robots to gently collapse it like a house of cards.
Or at least, as gently as you can flatten an 80-meter (262-foot) concrete cooling tower.
The tower was part of the Mülheim-Kärlich power plant, which was in operation for just over a year in the 1980s. The plant was shut down in 1988 following licensing issues and concerns about the risk of earthquakes in the area. The hefty task of dismantling began in 2004.
Germany decided to phase out all its nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011. And it’s also planning to close all its coal power plants by 2038 in an effort to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, which are currently the largest in Europe. That means there are likely to be many more such demolitions in the coming years.
Decades ago, Germany’s power plants were a symbol of its engineering prowess. Today the country has become a world leader in taking these complex buildings apart.
Robot power
n May last year, engineers began shortening what was then the 162-meter-tall cooling tower at Mülheim-Kärlich. They attached a robot to the lip, and for the past year it’s been munching its way down the building -— a bit like a caterpillar devouring a leaf.
By June this year, the tower was half its previous height.
Engineers still needed to finish the job. But as project manager Olaf Day explained, they didn’t have permission from authorities for an explosion, so instead came up with a different plan.
The tower was supported by 36 V-shaped pillars. Last week, the team of experts used a giant robotic “hammer” to weaken some of the pillars, and then another high-tech pair of “scissors” to cut them until the tower collapsed, said Day.
“It was the first time in the world this demolition method has been used [on a nuclear plant],” he said, adding that the entire “hammer and scissors” process took just under four hours.
There was another benefit to this unique method.
Explosives cause “huge amounts of dust that fly everywhere,” explained Professor Miranda Schreurs, chair of environmental and climate policy at the Technical University of Munich. The Mülheim-Kärlich tower, however, just “fell in on itself,” producing minimal dust.
While the tower was not deemed radioactive, there’s still an interest in “minimizing potential spread of any harmful materials,” she said.
The new nuclear experts
For more than three decades, the cooling tower dominated the skyline in this small town in western Germany, the legacy of an era when the country generated around 30% of its electricity from nuclear power, according to Schreurs.
Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, nuclear energy was seen as a “sign of Germany’s engineering prowess,” Schreurs said.
But when the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in nearby Ukraine caused radioactive clouds to drift over western Europe, concerns about the safety of nuclear energy “took on a whole new dimension,” she said.
Following the reunification of Germany in 1990, more Soviet nuclear plants in the former East Germany were decommissioned that “did not meet the West German safety standards,” said Schreurs.
Germany has been cooling on nuclear power since 2000, but it was Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011 that really swung the government into action.
Chancellor Angela Merkel quickly set new deadlines. Of the country’s 17 reactors, eight were immediately shut down. The seven reactors still in operation today are due to close by 2022.
As the plants closed down, a new industry has emerged.
Even after a power plant shuts, “you still need people who are experts in radioactive materials, you still need people who know how to deal with the robots that operate inside nuclear facilities,” said Schreurs.
That know-how could be exported to other countries. There are about 450 nuclear power plants in the world, many of them approaching the end of their lifetimes.
“So you’re not going to have the same level of expertise as you have here in Germany,” said Schreurs. “That means Germany will probably play quite an important role in helping other countries to also deal with decommissioning.” …….
BERLIN — The cooling tower of a former nuclear power plant next to the Rhine River in Germany that was online for just 13 months has been demolished, 31 years after it stopped producing electricity.
Remote-controlled excavators on Friday removed pillars that supported the tower at the Muelheim-Kaerlich plant, near Koblenz. The tower, whose top half had already been removed by a specially designed robot, collapsed under its own weight in a cloud of dust a couple of hours later.
Muelheim-Kaerlich was switched off in September 1988 after 13 months in service when a federal court ruled the risk of earthquakes in the area hadn’t been taken into account sufficiently. After a lengthy legal battle, demolition started in 2004. Operator RWE says nearly all radioactive material had already been removed by then.
The Savannah River Site has been in the state since the late 1950’s and was originally home to a nuclear bomb making facility, but over the years the site has taken on the role of several different operations, including the storage of plutonium.
Savannah River Site is now home to a nuclear laboratory and facility to reuse the nuclear material left behind from the Cold War. Over the years the storage of that plutonium has become a concern.
“A lot of pollution left over from that so the main mission of the Savannah River Site for a long time has been the cleaning up of the contamination that exists,” explained Tonya Bonitatibus, the Executive Director of Savannah Riverkeeper. Savannah Riverkeeper monitors the quality of the Savannah River, which is used for drinking water for more than 1 million residents.
The United States Department of Energy notified the state’s attorney general of the removal of one metric ton of plutonium from the Savannah River Site.
In 2016, Congress passed a law to remove the plutonium if production goals to reuse the material were not met.
The plutonium removed so far is the first step in a wider cleanup after the state won a lawsuit against the DOE.
Bonitatibus continued, “The Savannah River Site has been the dumping ground for nuclear waste. It just has because nobody wants it. So it ends up being stored here leaking into the coastal plain and groundwater.”
The National Nuclear Security Administration says, “The material removed from the Savannah River Site (SRS) in Aiken, South Carolina, will be used for national security missions and is not waste.”
NNSA also released a removal plan that designated Texas and New Mexico as the destinations for the removed plutonium.
The ruling outlined that one metric ton of the plutonium would be removed each year. The process could take another 5 to 7 years to remove the plutonium being stored.
The removal was supposed to be completed by January 1, 2020. The process is 6 months ahead of schedule, according to NNSA.
Savannah River Site is located on land in Aiken, Allendale and Barnwell counties.
Official: China buried nuclear waste in Sudan desert, Dabanga Sudan, November 12 – 2015KHARTOUMChina has buried dozens of containers with toxic waste in the desert of Northern Sudan, according to a high-ranking official. The waste was most probably coming from nuclear plants in China.
According to the former director of the Sudan Atomic Energy Commission in Sudan, Mohamed Siddig, 60 containers have been brought to Sudan together with construction materials and machinery for the building of the Merowe Dam (Hamdab Dam) in the Northern part of Sudan. He did not mention the exact year of the import and the date the nuclear waste was disposed. China worked on the dam between 2004 and 2009.
During a conference held by the Sudanese Standards and Metrology Organisation (SSMO) in Khartoum on Tuesday, he disclosed how the Sudanese authorities allowed the import of the waste ‘without inspection’. He told the audience that 40 containers were buried in the desert not far from the Merowe Dam construction site. Another 20 containers were also disposed in the desert, though not buried…..
Mohamed Siddig was responsible for the Sudan Radioactive Waste Management programme that started in 1995, a central radioactive waste management facility was established in Soba near Khartoum. The Atomic Energy Committee is responsible for overseeing the safety in activities that involve the use of atomic energy in Sudan, and promoting the use of nuclear techniques.
Gold miners complain
In 2010, the government was already confronted by complaints of local gold diggers, according to the Sudanese newspaper El Tariq. Several gold workers approached the government complaining about many of the worker suffering from cancer and skin diseases. The Sudan authorities downplayed the questions saying the waste they dug up were remnants from earlier times. However witnesses told El Tariq that 500 sealed barrels were discovered in the El Atmur desert area in River Nile State…….https://www.dabangasudan.org/en/all-news/article/official-china-buried-nuclear-waste-in-sudan-s-desert
An excellent article, explaining Deep Isolation, and thoroughly outlining the global problem of radioactive trash. What a pity, then, that this article, and its title, mindlessly accept the current dogma about nuclear power being the solution to climate change!. To believe this is to ignore nuclear’s serious problems, and especially the fact that the thousands of nuclear reactors required would never be built in time to have any effect on global warming – even if that claim were true – which it isn’t.
WHAT TO DO WITH THE DEADLY RADIOACTIVE WASTE? ensia, 31 July 19
The Deep Isolation Texas demonstration
“………Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4 site will remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years. In July 2019, 33 years after the explosion, 200 metric tons (220 tons) of uranium, plutonium, liquid fuel and irradiated dust was finally encased below an enormous 36,000-metric-ton (40,000-ton), €1.5 billion steel and concrete structure taller than the Statue of Liberty. The new sarcophagus will last about 100 years — after which it will deteriorate and future generations will have to decide how to dismantle and store it permanently.
Skip forward to Cameron, Texas, on January 16, 2019. This was a nerve-wracking day for Liz Muller, co-founder of California startup technology company Deep Isolation and her father, Richard Muller, professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and now chief technology officer at Deep Isolation.
The father-daughter team had invited 40 nuclear scientists, U.S. Department of Energy officials, oil and gas professionals, and environmentalists to witness the first-ever attempt to test whether the latest oil-fracking technology could be used to permanently dispose of the most dangerous nuclear waste.
At 11:30 a.m., the crew of oil workers used a wire cable to lower a 30-inch (80-centimeter)-long, 8-inch (20-centimeter)-wide 140-pound (64-kilogram) canister — filled with steel rather than radioactive waste — down a previously drilled borehole. Then, using a tool called a “tractor” invented by the industry to reach horizontally into mile-deep oil reservoirs, they pushed it 400 feet (120 meters) farther away from the borehole through the rock.
Five hours later, the crew used the tractor to relocate and collect the canister, attach it to the cable and pull it back to the surface — to the cheers of the workers. Until then, few people in the nuclear industry believed this could be done.
By avoiding the need to excavate large, expensive tunnels to store waste below ground, the Deep Isolation team believes it has found a solution to one of the world’s most intractable environmental problems — how to permanently dispose of and potentially retrieve the hundreds of thousands of tons of nuclear waste presently being stored at nuclear power plants and research and military stations around the world.
“We showed it could be done,” Elizabeth Muller says. “Horizontal, directional drilling has come a long way recently. This is now an off-the-shelf technology. Using larger canisters, we think about 300 boreholes with tunnels up to 2 miles (3 kilometers) long would be able to take much of the U.S.’s high-level nuclear waste. We think we can reduce by two-thirds the cost of permanent storage.” ……In 80-odd years of nuclear power, in which more than 450 commercial reactors, many experimental stations and tens of thousands of nuclear warheads have been built, great stockpiles of different levels of waste have accumulated.
Depending on how countries classify waste, only about 0.2–3% by volume is high-level waste, according to the World Nuclear Association, a London-based industry group that promotes nuclear power. Mostly derived from civil reactor fuel, this is some of the most dangerous material known on Earth, remaining radioactive for tens of thousands of years. It requires cooling and shielding indefinitely and contains 95% of the radioactivity related to nuclear power generation.
A further 7% or so by volume, known as intermediate waste, is made up of things like reactor components and graphite from reactor cores. This is also highly dangerous, but it can be stored in special canisters because it does not generate much heat.
The rest is made up of vast quantities of what is called low-level and very low level waste. This comprises scrap metal, paper, plastics, building materials and everything else radioactive involved in the operation and dismantling of nuclear facilities.
The consensus is that around 22,000 cubic meters (29,000 cubic yards) of solid high-level waste has accumulated in temporary storage but not been disposed of (moved to permanent storage) in 14 western countries, along with unknown amounts in China, Russia and at military stations. A further 460,000 cubic meters (600,000 cubic yards) of intermediate waste is being stored, and about 3.5 million cubic meters (4.6 million cubic yards) of low-level waste. Some 34,000 cubic meters (44,000 cubic yards) of new high-level and intermediate waste is generated each year by operating civil reactors, says another nuclear industry group, the World Nuclear Association (WNA).
The U.S., with 59 nuclear power plants comprising 97 working civil reactors each generating at least several tons of high-level waste per year, has around 90,000 metric tons (99,000 tons) of high-level waste awaiting permanent disposal, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Although it’s impossible to come up with a global total because of differences in how quantities are measured and reported, and with some inventories kept secret, other countries harbor significant amounts of waste as well.
Many Ideas
In the early days of nuclear power, waste of any sort was barely considered. British, U.S. and Russian authorities, among others, dumped nuclear waste, including more than 150,000 metric tons (160,000 tons) of low-level waste at sea or in rivers. Since then, billions of dollars have been spent trying to identify how best to reduce the amount produced and then store it for what may be eternity.
Vertical boreholes up to 5,000 meters (16,000 feet) deep have also been proposed, and this option is said by some scientists to be promising. But there have been doubts because it is likely to be near impossible to retrieve waste from vertical boreholes…….
Only Finland is close to completing a deep repository for high-level waste. In May, work started on an “encapsulation” plant where waste will be packed inside copper canisters that will be transferred into 400- to 450-meter (1,300- to 1,500-foot)-deep underground tunnels. But doubt has been cast on the long-term safety of the canisters.
“The problem is intractable,” says Paul Dorfman, founder of the Nuclear Consulting Group, a group of around 120 international academics and independent experts in the fields of radiation waste, nuclear policy and environmental risk. “The bitter reality is that there is no scientifically proven way of disposing of the existential problem of high- and intermediate-level waste. Some countries have built repositories, some plan them. But given the huge technical uncertainties, if disposal does go ahead and anything goes wrong underground in the next millennia, then future generations risk profound widespread pollution.”
But is interim storage really interim?……. the communities that give the OK to build an interim storage facility may end up having the waste stuck in their backyards for decades to come.
“Until there is an idea of a long-term repository,” said Maria Korsnick, CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, at a recent Senate hearing, “anybody that raises their hands for that consolidated interim storage [site] is, de facto, the long-term” site.
Finding a repository for San Onofre plant’s nuclear waste is a difficult task L A Times,ROB NIKOLEWSKI
JULY 27, 2019, SAN DIEGO — Earlier this month, Southern California Edison — the operators of the now-shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant — resumed transferring heavy canisters filled with spent fuel assemblies from wet storage pools to a newly constructed dry storage facility on the plant’s premises. Continue reading →
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. will decommission the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant, its president, Tomoaki Kobayakawa, told Fukushima Gov. Masao Ochibori at a meeting Wednesday.
The facility is the second nuclear plant that the utility company has decided to decommission after accepting it would need to shutter the nearby Fukushima No. 1 plant, which was crippled by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster in the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.
Tepco’s decision to scrap Fukushima No. 2, which is expected to cost some ¥280 billion ($2.6 billion), will be formally approved at the company’s board meeting later this month if local municipalities accept the plan.
The prefecture has demanded the utility scrap the reactors at Fukushima No. 2, saying their existence would hamper its reconstruction efforts. The plant has been offline since its operations were suspended due to the 2011 disaster.
If the plan goes ahead, all 10 nuclear reactors in the prefecture — four at the No. 2 plant and six at the No. 1 facility — will be scrapped.
It will also leave the utility company with only the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture and the planned Higashidori nuclear plant in Aomori Prefecture.
Kobayakawa said at the meeting, also attended by the mayors of the two towns — Naraha and Tomioka — that host the plant, that Tepco plans to build a new on-site storage facility for spent nuclear fuel from the reactors at the Fukushima No. 2 plant.
The fuel will be placed in metallic containers and cooled using a dry storage approach, according to the operator.
No decision has been made regarding final disposal of the spent fuel, raising concerns that the radioactive waste may remain on-site for a long time.
The Fukushima No.2 plant currently has around 10,000 assemblies of spent fuel cooling in pools.
Using Commercial Satellites To Control Nuclear Weapons Is A Bad Idea — But It’s Being Discussed Forbes, Loren Thompson 24 July 19, “……. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the appearance of new
threats, though, the sense of urgency about nuclear security has waned. The
infrastructure supporting nuclear deterrence has decayed to a point where all three
legs of the strategic “triad”—land-based missiles, sea-based missiles and long-range
bombers—need to be replaced. Meanwhile, the architecture used to command and
control nuclear forces has changed little since the Reagan era.
Against this backdrop, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force said something curious at a meeting of
the Mitchell Institute on June 26. The institute recently produced a report focused on the need to
modernize technology for nuclear command and control. General David Goldfein opined that ongoing
efforts to network the Air Force were as relevant to control of nuclear forces as conventional forces.
In particular, he mentioned the “rapid and exciting expansion of commercial space”
as a trend that might facilitate the creation of resilient links for communicating with
nuclear forces. I was unaware of the chief’s comments until I saw a story by Mandy
Mayfield of National Defense Magazine entitled, “Air Force Wants To Utilize
Commercial Satellites For Nuclear Command, Control.” The Air Force is responsible
for most of the 200 systems comprising the nuclear command and control system, so
General Goldfein’s thoughts have to be taken seriously even if they are just random
musings.
This particular idea is dangerous.
Commercial satellites lack virtually all of the security features that would be
necessary to assure control of the nuclear arsenal in a crisis. First of all, they are not
survivable against a wide array of threats that China and Russia have begun posing
to U.S. orbital assets, ranging from kinetic attacks to electronic jamming to
electromagnetic pulse. Second, they are susceptible to cyber intrusion via their
ground stations that could impede their performance. Third, they frequently contain
foreign components, including in-orbit propulsion technology made in Russia, which
might be manipulated in a crisis or simply become unavailable during wartime.
Air Force planners presumably know all this, so why would General Goldfein suggest
relying on commercial satellites to execute the military’s most fateful decisions?
Perhaps for the same reason that the Army is backing into reliance on commercial
satellites for its next-generation battlefield networks. There are so many commercial
constellations in operation that it seems unlikely America’s enemies could shut them
all down in wartime, and they are a lot cheaper to use than orbiting dedicated military
satcoms with the requisite capacity and redundancy.
“Resilience” has become the watchword for modernizing military space activities, and
one way of creating resilience is to proliferate the pathways available for vital
communications to a point where adversaries can’t keep up with all the possible
options available to U.S. commanders. The same logic is leading technologists to
propose large numbers of cheap satellites in low-earth orbit as an adjunct to existing
military satcoms.
These “cheapsats” wouldn’t be anywhere near as capable as the secure
communications assets that Washington has placed in geostationary orbits, but there
would be so many that links could be sustained even in highly stressed
circumstances, such as the “trans-attack” phase of a nuclear war.
Or at least, so the reasoning goes.
……But the idea of relying on commercial satellites for command and control of
nuclear forces takes this reasoning a step too far, because market forces preclude
any of the hardening and other protective features that might be required in dedicated
military birds
……… think of all the ways an adversary like China might seek to interfere with
commercial satellites through their ground stations and uplinks, such as insertion of
malware via hacking and jamming of signals. ……..
This Texas Oil Town Actually Wants the Nation’s Nuclear Waste, BloombergBy Ari Natter and Will Wade July 24, 2019,
Andrews, pop. 13,000, seeks to diversify from oil drilling
Foes fear becoming ‘the Chernobyl of West Texas’ if it leaks
As Blake Roberts bounced along a single-lane dirt road in his red Ford Super Duty pickup he pointed to a pumpjack bobbing in the West Texas heat.
“Everything we do revolves around oil,” Roberts said as he neared his home outside the town of Andrews in the heart of the booming Permian Basin oil field.
But Roberts, 29, has his eye on what he hopes will be the next big thing for the area: nuclear waste. As president of the local chamber of commerce, knows that oil booms are inevitably followed by busts.
He is supporting a plan to establish a repository in the desert about 30 miles outside of town for as much as 40,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel and waste from power plants…….
Local support for the project is strong, said County Judge Charlie Falcon, who presides over the four-member Andrews County Commissioners’ Court, which functions as the county’s board of commissioners.
The panel approved a resolution in 2015 backing the idea to accept high-level nuclear waste at the designated site, and is likely to reiterate its support with a letter in the near future, Falcon said during an interview in his chambers in the brick courthouse on Main Street.
…….. The plan by Interim Storage Partners LLC, a joint venture between Orano CIS LLC and Waste Control Specialists LLC, calls for waste to be shipped by rail from around the country. Then it would be sealed in giant concrete casks and stored above ground for as long as 100 years, or at least until a permanent repository is built.
Opponents say that could be never…….
In the meantime, the U.S. has no permanent place of its own to store radioactive material that will remain deadly for several thousand years. …
Not everyone in Andrews is on board with the idea of storing waste that can remain radioactive for thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years.
“We don’t need to put it right in the middle of the biggest oil field in the world,” said Tommy Taylor, director of oil and gas development for Fasken Oil and Ranch Ltd. of Midland, Texas, which is part of a coalition of oil and gas producers and landowners opposed to the nuclear dump.
More than 4 million barrels of crude are produced every day in the Permian Basin and drillers say a leak or terrorist attack could put the oil boom at risk. “It would shut the whole Permian down. The result would be catastrophic for us,” he said.
Said Andrews resident Elizabeth Padilla: “It only takes one accident and we would become the Chernobyl of West Texas.”
Some surrounding counties and cities have adopted resolutions against the plan. It’s also drawn opposition from national environmental groups……….
A panel of administrative judges from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently convened a hearing at the neighboring Midland County Courthouse and heard arguments from environmentalists, oil industry representatives and other groups. Outside, protesters gathered around an eight-foot-tall, green-and-black inflatable replica of a storage cask bearing a sign reading “Say No To Radioactive Waste.”
Kevin Kamps, an official with Takoma Park, Maryland-based group Beyond Nuclear, who drove to Midland for the hearing, said in an interview that high-level nuclear waste bound for Andrews would travel through major cities.
“The transport risks are for the entire country and they haven’t even been alerted,” Kamps said.
Other opponents expressed worry about the site’s proximity to the Ogallala Aquifer, a underground reservoir that spans eight states that supplies water for drinking and irrigation to millions of people. …..
The project has powerful backers. As Texas Governor, Rick Perry encouraged storing high level nuclear waste in the state and, as U.S. Energysecretary, he has been supportive of interim nuclear waste storage. The current governor, Greg Abbott, is opposed.
Scott State, the chief executive officer of Waste Control Specialists, which is owned by J.F. Lehman & Co., said he was optimistic the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would approve the license for the project, though additional approvals, such as plans for transporting waste, need to be approved before storage can begin, he said.
Rose Gardner, a 61-year-old grandmother who owns a floral shop in Eunice, N.M., about five miles away from the proposed nuclear dump, said she will do everything in her power to stop that from happening.
BY KATHLEEN O’BRIEN, TIMES RECORD KOBRIEN@TIMESRECORD.COM 24 July 19, WISCASSET — Wiscasset could collect more than $8 million for the 64 containers of nuclear waste stored at the former Maine Yankee power plant site.
U.S. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, introduced the Sensible, Timely Relief for America’s Nuclear Districts Economic Development (STRANDED) Act earlier this month, aimed at providing financial relief to communities like Wiscasset stuck with storing nuclear waste.
Should the Stranded Act pass, Wiscasset, home to decommissioned Maine Yankee, would be eligible to receive $15 per kilogram of nuclear waste currently being housed at the site, which is the rate for impact assistance established under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
There are about 542 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at Maine Yankee, meaning Wiscasset would collect over $8 million from the government. According to Maine Yankee, it costs roughly $10 million per year to maintain the 64 canisters of radioactive waste.
“In the absence of a permanent (disposal) site, this will help alleviate the burden communities face and may help encourage Congress to take action on a long-term solution for nuclear waste, which is something Collins supports,” said Christopher Knight, a spokesperson for Collins.
Maine Yankee operated from 1972 to 1996. The company’s board voted to cease operations rather than invest in fixing expensive safety-related problems to keep the plant running.
The spent nuclear fuel is housed in 64 dry storage casks, which stand on 16 3-foot-thick concrete pads. Each concrete cask is comprised of a 2.5-inch thick steel liner surrounded by 28 inches of reinforced concrete.
The federal government was contractually obligated to remove the radioactive waste by 1998, but that commitment was never fulfilled.
Plans to build a permanent disposal site in the Yucca Mountains in Nevada were scrapped in 2009 by the Obama Administration. The Trump Administration has made no plans to revive the Yucca Mountains project.
A federal judge has awarded the owners of three nuclear power plants millions of dollars. This money pays for the operation of the fuel storage site so local taxpayers, including those in Wiscasset, aren’t left to foot the bill.
“The Yankee companies collectively have to date recovered about $575 million on behalf of our ratepayers in the ongoing litigation with the Department of Energy,” said Eric Howes, Maine Yankee director of public and government affairs. “Maine Yankee’s portion of the $575 million total is about $176.5 million.”
This money was amassed as a result of four separate lawsuits against the Department of Energy. When the U.S. government loses a lawsuit, the money lost comes from a Judgment Fund, which is funded by taxpayers.
“The Nuclear Waste Policy Act says those who benefit from nuclear power would be responsible for the removal of the spent nuclear fuel,” Howes said. “The cost of disposing Maine Yankee’s fuel has been fully paid for by the ratepayers. The government, however, has not met its obligation to remove the material from the site, and that’s true at every nuclear waste site in the country.”
Howes said Maine Yankee’s goal is to go out of business.
“It’s our responsibility to store this material in accordance with all the federal regulations,” Howes said. “When the government finally removes the spent nuclear fuel, we’ll go out of business, but I don’t know when that will be.”
There are 24 permanently and announced shutdown nuclear sites across the U.S. Five are in New England.
As jarring as the closure of the Three Mile Island One nuclear power station is to longtime Harrisburg-area residents, a cadre of them told Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials Tuesday they’d like the plant’s planned decommissioning to take a faster track.
It’s known in NRC lingo as DECON, and it can allow for the deconstruction, clean-up and re-use of closed nuclear plants in less than a decade, as opposed to the six decade-plus track Three Mile Island Unit One’s owners, Exelon Generation, has started planning for.
“How many dog and pony shows can you (the NRC) bring to Harrisburg over the last 40 years?” asked longtime TMI activist Gene Stilp, bemoaning the fact that under the current safe storage plan the island would be a nuclear waste dump long past the lifetimes of any current residents.
“You could start getting jobs for clean-up right now,” Stilp said. “Get retrained in some fashion and set up things for that. But you could actually have jobs right now and start on that. Not just monitoring the site… Start providing jobs right now, by starting the clean-up right now.
“This bargain with the devil to store it (spent nuclear fuel) on the Susquehanna River is an abomination to the river, an abomination to the citizens who live here…. and it provides more terrorist targets in a big way.”
NRC officials noted Tuesday it is ultimately the licensee’s decision whether to put a plant into safe storage or rapid decontamination.
Exelon’s current timeline calls for the site to spend most of the next 60 years in a “dormancy” stage, in which most activity will center around storage of spent fuel, and a wait for residual contamination levels to naturally break down until major reactor buildings and components can be dismantled.
Exelon, however, has recently changed paths with other retired nuclear plants – including one in New Jersey this year……..
There are other ways to join the TMI decommissioning conversation. Written comments on the report can be submitted through Oct. 9 either:
online to the NRC using Docket ID NRC-2019-0142 on the Regulations.gov website;
Tepco to retire remaining reactors in Fukushima https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Tepco-to-retire-remaining-reactors-in-FukushimaDecommissioning is expected to take 40 years and cost $2.5bn SUGURU KURIMOTO, Nikkei staff writer, JULY 20, 2019 TOKYO — Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings will scrap the four Fukushima Prefecture reactors that escaped damage in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, moving to decommission all of the nuclear power plants the public utility owns in the disaster-stricken region.
The shutdown of the Fukushima Daini plant, which is located just 12km away from the Daiichi Plant crippled by fuel meltdowns, will be formally authorized at the company’s board meeting at the end of the month. This marks the first decision by the utility, known as Tepco, to decommission nuclear reactors apart from the Daiichi facilities.
Costs for decommissioning Fukushima Daini are estimated to exceed 270 billion yen ($2.5 billion). While Tepco’s reserves are not enough to cover them, the government adopted new accounting rules allowing operators to spread a large loss from decommissioning over multiple years. The company also believes it has secured enough people with necessary expertise to move forward.
Tepco soon will inform Fukushima Gov. Masao Uchibori of its decision. The utility intends to submit the decommissioning plan to Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority by March next year.
The decision means all 10 reactors in Fukushima will be scrapped. The Daini reactors will be decommissioned in roughly 40 years, sharing the same timetable as the Daiichi site. Tepco owns one other nuclear plant, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility in Niigata Prefecture.
The Daini plant, where each reactor produced 1.1 gigawatts of power, served the Tokyo area for about three decades. Japan’s central government sought to restart the complex but faced withering opposition from local residents in Fukushima.
Including the Fukushima Daini facilities, a total of 21 reactors across Japan are now slated for decommissioning. Recent additions include two units at the Ikata plant in Ehime Prefecture and one reactor at the Onagawa facility in Miyagi Prefecture.
Earthquakes repeatedly striking proposed US nuclear waste site
Officials fear deadly radioactivity could seep into earth if another high-magnitude quake strikes Nevada desert, Independent, Emma Snaith, 19 July 19
Repeated earthquakes could risk releasing deadly radioactivity into the earth if plans for a nuclear waste site in go ahead in Nevada’s desert, the state’s governor has warned.
Tens of thousands of tons of highly radioactive used nuclear reactor fuel are due to be transferred from 35 US states to a new facility in the Mojave Desert.
The Yuka Mountain nuclear waste repository is set to store this material deep within the earth.
But a series of recent earthquakes in the Mojave Desert has raised concerns about the safety of storing radioactive waste at the facility.
On 4 July, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake ruptured the earth in the desert, which stretches across the California-Nevada border.
The force of the quake cracked buildings, sparked fires, damaged roads and caused several injuries in southern California. It was followed by a 6.4-magnitude temblor two days later.
In the wake of the earthquakes, the governor of Nevada Steve Sisolak said he was committed to “fighting any continued federal effort to use Nevada as the nation’s nuclear dumping ground”.
“These significant recent earthquakes so near to Yucca Mountain show one of the many geologic problems with the site as a nuclear waste repository,” he said.
Mr Sisolak sent a letter to the energy secretary, Rick Perry, urging him to reconsider the location of the facility.
………. In governor of Nevada’s letter to Mr Perry, he included the opinions of James Faulds at the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology and Graham Kent at the seismological laboratory at the University of Nevada.
They urged for more research to be conducted into the seismic activity at the Yuka Mountain site. “The Ridgecrest earthquake sequence, which began July 4 and has yet to subside, clearly highlights the importance of such studies,” Mr Faulds and Mr Kent said.
A recent ranking compiled by the US Geological Survey found Nevada was the US state with the fourth highest level of seismic activity after Alaska, Wyoming and Oklahoma.
Nuclear waste moves from wet pools to dry storage at San Onofre
1 down, 43 to go before the plant’s cooling pools are empty and its dry storage system is full By TERI SFORZA | tsforza@scng.com | Orange County Register July 18, 2019 It took the better part of two days, but Canister No. 30 — a 50-ton behemoth full of spent nuclear waste — was successfully moved from a fuel-handling building, rolled across the bluff on a giant transporter, then inserted into its steel-and-concrete vault in the Holtec Hi-Storm UMAX dry storage system at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.
The delicate, deliberate dance was originally projected to wrap up by early morning Wednesday, July 17, but finished up about 6 a.m. Thursday. And as far as majority owner and operator Southern California Edison is concerned, that’s just fine and dandy……..
Critics continue to worry about the integrity of those canisters — which have scratches from their descent into the vaults — over what could be decades in the San Onofre’s salty seaside atmosphere. They demand that the waste be moved from what they deride as a “beachfront nuclear waste dump” immediately, but that requires action from a federal government that has dithered on the issue for some 70 years.
The road to here
San Onofre’s reactors powered down in 2012 after tubes in its brand-new steam generators cracked, resulting in a small radiation leak. After local opposition to restarting it appeared insurmountable, San Onofre was shuttered for good in 2013.
