Town of Pilgrim now faces long lasting problem of dangerous nuclear wastes
What to do with nuclear waste remains a national problem with no solution, despite a promise by the federal government to have a facility ready to permanently store it ready by 1998.
About 80,000 tons of spent fuel is currently sitting on nuclear plant properties across the country. To give the number perspective, if existing radioactive fuel assemblies were stacked end-to-end and side-by-side, they would stand over two stories high and cover a football field.
And like those other communities that have hosted nuclear plants during the last 50 years, residents and officials in Plymouth are crying foul. “The Department of Energy has absolutely dropped the ball on this for our communities and all the others, which are becoming de facto nuclear waste repositories,” said Kevin O’Reilly, former executive director of the Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce and current vice chairman of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel. “The federal government needs to step up to the plate and fulfill their promise.”
“Spent fuel” is nuclear fuel that has been used and removed from the reactor core. The Government Accountability Office calls the hot and highly radioactive stuff one of the most hazardous substances created by humans. Some components stay radioactive for tens of thousands of years.
“If not properly contained or shielded, the intense radioactivity of spent fuel can cause immediate deaths and environmental contamination, and in lower doses can cause long-term health hazards such as cancer,” according to a GAO study done at the request of Congress in 2012……….
Holtec International and Waste Control Services have submitted applications to operate interim storage facilities in New Mexico and West Texas that are under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But the review process hasn’t been smooth, as both proposed locations have drawn opposition.
Meanwhile, a small startup group in California is working on yet another alternative, which the company says would provide permanent storage right on current plant sites or close by.
The proposal from Deep Isolation calls for drilling a vertical access channel up to a mile or more down, then gradually running the hole horizontally along the line of the rock formation, where company officials say the nuclear waste would remain unaffected by surface impacts such as sea level rise.
While the debate over where to put spent fuel continues, owners of commercial plants are suing the federal government to recoup money they’ve spent on storing fuel. To date, the Department of Energy has paid out $6.1 billion in damages.
All payouts so far have gone to nuclear power companies. Towns that store the spent fuel have lobbied to be paid for being de facto waste sites. While no such bill has been filed during the current session, legislators in states hosting spent fuel have filed legislation during the past three years called Nuclear Waste Accountability Act. Its provisions require the Department of Energy to provide payments to host communities equal to $15 per kilogram of spent fuel stored there.
FUEL DANGERS
Spent fuel stored in pools has historically caused worry. A zirconium fire could release radiation over hundreds of miles if the water in them is drained away through a seismic event, operator error or act of malice.
Much of the fuel will still be in the pool when Plymouth celebrates its 400th anniversary in 2020, with events throughout the year that will attract crowds of tourists and dignitaries from around the world.
“Spent fuel is a misnomer,” said Mary Lampert, president of the citizens group Pilgrim Watch. “It will be highly toxic as far into the future as dinosaurs were in the past.”
Fuel pool storage is particularly dangerous, she said. “The pool is vulnerable to water loss resulting in a fire that could contaminate an area larger than Massachusetts and force the evacuation of millions.”
The casks, once loaded, will ultimately be situated on a spent fuel pad about 75 feet above sea level………
Holtec International, the company looking to buy Pilgrim and decommission it, has long been involved in the manufacture of dry casks. Entergy has used Holtec’s Hi-Storm 100 casks and plans to continue with that model.
Watchdogs like Lampert worry over what will happen if those casks give out over time. They could crack or corrode from the coastal salt air. “We will only know after the fact that a cask has leaked radiation,” she said…… https://www.capecodtimes.com/news/20190601/radioactive-waste-big-concern-for-now-closed-pilgrim-plant
Holtec’s involvement in the Ukraine’s Chernobyl’s dry store facility
Halting Holtec – A Challenge for Nuclear Safety Advocates, CounterPunch, 7 June 19 “……….The California – Chernobyl Connection
Holtec and its client Edison would have the public believe that the San Onofre ISFSI is top of the line, up to date and state-of-the-art spent fuel handling. But that image seems to be contradicted by a recent Holtec press release and accompanying animated video that may seem to describe something like the kind of waste storage system many are advocating for at San Onofre.
On May 6, 2019, Holtec was “pleased to announce the start of final system-wide trials for Chernobyl’s dry store facility….” In the next two months, Holtec expects to complete “stem-to stern functional demonstrations of the [SF-2] spent fuel handling and storage processes before handing over the facility to Ukraine’s State owned enterprise Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP).”
The Holtec press release boasts, “Dismembering more than 21,000 RBMK spent fuel assemblies in a special purpose “hotcell,” packaging those fuel assemblies in double walled canisters(DWCs), and transferring them from (open) water-cooled pools into hermetically sealed rugged helium-filled storage systems inside ventilated modules will mark a huge safety milestone for Ukraine.” https://youtu.be/GYR3GmkRZV0
Holtec is also building a project called a Central Spent Fuel Storage Facility (CSFSF) for the Ukrainian company Energoatom. Holtec says the “CSFSF will employ double-confinement DWCs, the world’s first double-walled, double-lid multi-purpose canister system for dry storage of spent nuclear fuel.”
Many may now be asking, “Why isn’t what’s good for Ukraine, also good for California?” But, Donna Gilmore points out that, “It’s a thin-wall canister system. Exterior wall is 3/8″ thick. Interior wall is 1/2″ thick. Both welded shut. Still must be stored in Holtec concrete cask with air vents. Still cannot be inspected, maintained, monitored or repaired inside or out.” …………https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/07/halting-holtec-a-challenge-for-nuclear-safety-advocates/
Someday the U.S. Will Have to Actually Deal With Its Nuclear Waste Problem
Someday the U.S. Will Have to Actually Deal With Its Nuclear Waste Problem, The Department of Energy has made a move in that direction. Slate, By JANE C. HU 7 June 19, “………… the Department of Energy announced Wednesday that they are reclassifying the definition of “high-level,” or highly radioactive, waste stored in underground tanks at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state, the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina, and the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls. The DOE hopes that the redefinition will expedite cleanup of the waste. Currently, the high-level waste stored at these sites is waiting for the government to open a secure waste repository (like Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which has been in limbo for decades). But if some of the less radioactive waste qualifies under the new definition, it might instead be shipped off to other sites, like one in Texas, where it could be
mixed with “concrete-like grout.” The cleanup at Hanford has already cost the country billions of dollars and is projected to cost billions more as we continue the search for the waste’s final home. (Adding some urgency to developing a new plan is the risk that containers could leak and contaminate the environment, especially if there’s an earthquake in Washington.)JUNE 07,
The DOE’s new plan could be cost-effective, sure, but the question is whether it’s safe. When the agency first announced reclassification plans in October 2018 and solicited public comment, the proposal received thousands of responses. And Washington state officials are not happy; Gov. Jay Inslee and Department of Ecology Director Maia Bellon have both sent letters of concern to the DOE. “I am gravely concerned with DOE forging ahead with a new interpretation of HLW that does not comport with federal law, despite objections from Washington state,” wrote Bellon.
In addition to the waste we already have sitting around at Hanford and other old nuclear weapons facilities (charmingly called “legacy waste”), nearly 100 commercial nuclear reactors at 60 facilities around the U.S. are creating new waste every day. The type of waste produced by those two types of facility contains different radioactive materials with varying half-lives, but the same storage issues remain: What will we eventually do with all this radioactive stuff?
The lack of solution is not from lack of discussion. There have been all sorts of wacky ideas floated about where to store nuclear waste. Some have proposed we shoot it all into space, maybe have it orbit Venus. But given how spacecraft are prone to explosions, which would effectively mean showering the world with bits of radioactive waste, that idea stalled. In the ’90s, the idea of burying waste in deep ocean seabeds seemed promising, but it never really got off the ground. And some countries tried storing barrels of waste in ice sheets, which turns out to be less than ideal given that ice both moves and melts. As the earth thaws out, old waste becomes uncovered.
Here in the U.S., we’re running out of space, and experts are concerned about the lack of long-term solutions. “Instead of a planned, coherent system, we have the confusion of an unplanned, less than optimal system,” nuclear experts wrote in a 2018 report on nuclear waste management strategy and policy, calling the U.S. program “an ever-tightening Gordian Knot” subject to technical, scientific, logistical, regulatory, legal, financial, social, and political challenges. “This is not a situation that builds public confidence.”……..https://slate.com/technology/2019/06/department-of-energy-nuclear-waste-reclassification-yucca.html
America’s largest radioactive clean-up operation – at Hanford – has stalled
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Nation’s most ambitious project to clean up nuclear weapons waste has stalled at Hanford, LA Times, By RALPH VARTABEDIANJUN 04, 2019
In a terse letter last week, state officials said the environmental project is at risk of violating key federal court orders that established deadlines after past ones were repeatedly missed.
Two multibillion-dollar industrial facilities intended to turn highly radioactive sludge into solid glass at the Hanford nuclear site have been essentially mothballed. Construction was halted in 2012 because of design flaws and Energy Department managers have foundered in finding alternatives, according to the letter that threatens new litigation. The department has stored 56 million gallons of radioactive sludge left over from the production of plutonium in 177 leaky underground tanks on a desert plateau a few miles from the Columbia River, raising concerns that the material has migrated into groundwater and eventually will reach the largest river in the West. The original idea was to chemically treat the sludge, mix it with sand and then melt the combination in furnaces to create glass that would be stable for centuries, but the plan was harder than expected because the sludge is so chemically and radioactively toxic. The process required the construction of a massive industrial complex.
Maia Bellon, Washington’s Department of Ecology director, said in the letter that federal officials have taken repeated unilateral actions that will make their cleanup unlikely to meet critical deadlines set up in a 2016 consent decree in federal court, which came after the department violated a 2010 legal agreement. The department has committed to removing and disposing all of the underground tank waste by 2047, though Bellon said the state doesn’t think that is possible at current funding levels. The six-page letter was addressed to Anne White, chief of environmental management at the Energy Department. The Times obtained the letter from Hanford Challenge, a watchdog group that has closely monitored the contaminated facility. “This is clearly setting the table for litigation,” said Tom Carpenter, executive director of the group. “The Energy Department is going to miss all of these deadlines.” Carpenter noted that in February, the Energy Department issued a new cost estimate to remediate the entire Hanford site, taking it from $110 billion to as much as $660 billion, a cost increase that has staggered Congress and has fueled sentiment to cut short the cleanup goals. “They are walking away from important elements of the cleanup,” he said. A spokeswoman at the Energy Department’s site office in nearby Richland said they had not seen the letter. A spokesman for White did not return calls seeking comment. White announced her resignation last week…… https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-hanford-nuclear-cleanup-20190604-story.html |
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Cleaning up of South Carolina’s high level nuclear waste- the plan involves reclassifying some of as “low level”
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Feds offer to speed cleanup of SC’s deadly nuclear waste. But plan isn’t that simple, The State, BY SAMMY FRETWELL
JUNE 06, 2019
According to plans, the energy department would classify some of the Savannah River Site’s high-level waste as low-level waste, a type of atomic refuse that is considered less toxic. That, in turn, would allow the material to be shipped to low-level nuclear waste disposal sites in the deserts of Utah and Texas. “We want to look at taking the waste stream in South Carolina and reclassifying it and moving it out of state,’’ said Paul Dabbar, the energy department’s undersecretary for science. The DOE’s plan for reclassifying and shipping waste from SRS is part of a larger proposal to change the definition of nuclear waste at weapons complexes in other parts of the country. The agency says it has historically considered much of the waste that resulted from Cold War weapons production to be high-level. Now, it will consider how radioactive the material is, the DOE said. In addition to the Savannah River Site, nuclear weapons sites in Washington and Idaho that also have high level waste could benefit from the department’s plan to change the definition of nuclear waste, the agency said. The SRS proposal and a companion plan for nuclear sites across the country, released Wednesday, drew immediate criticism from environmental groups, which said the plans are potentially dangerous. But the Department of Energy says reclassifying some of the high level waste would occur only after a thorough analysis and environmental studies. Federal records show the agency will look at whether 10,000 gallons of Savannah River Site wastewater should still should be classified as high level waste or downgraded to another category. For now, the DOE said it is only considering the 10,000 gallons for disposal at a licensed faciliity outside South Carolina, records show. The wastewater comes from the Defense Waste Processing Facility, an industrial plant that converts high-level waste into glass in an effort to neutralize its danger. Reclassifying waste would speed cleanup at the Savannah River Site, the agency said. The 310-square-mile weapons complex has tons of atomic refuse left over from Cold War weapons production. Much of that waste is held in about four-dozen aging tanks, some of which have cracked. A handful of tanks have been emptied, but most still contain waste…….. Geoff Fettus, who tracks nuclear waste issues for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said reclassifying waste might also allow officials at SRS to avoid cleaning up some material altogether. Fettus said that if some of the waste at SRS is no longer considered high level, the DOE could leave the material there and walk away. If that happens, it would not be the first time at SRS. In 2002, the energy department offered plans to reclassify waste so some residual material could remain in the tanks. “That is the big thing,’’ Fettus said. “I think this is just as much about what stays in the tanks, as to what comes out.’’ Fettus said the environmental group has serious reservations about the plan being advanced by President Donald Trump. “The Trump administration is moving to fundamentally alter more than 50 years of national consensus on how the most toxic, radioactive and dangerous waste in the world is managed and ultimately disposed of,’’ Fettus told The State newspaper. “No matter what they call it, this waste needs a permanent, well-protected disposal option to guard it for generations to come.’’ Tom Clements, who heads Savannah River Site Watch, also said the proposal is unwise and unsafe. “DOE’s questionable rewriting of the regulations is simply a cost-cutting measure designed to get thousands of HLW (high level waste) containers dumped off site,’’ he said in an email. Any waste that is reclassified would not be sent to South Carolina’s Barnwell County low-level nuclear waste site near SRS, but to commercial facilities near the Texas-New Mexico border and in Utah, energy officials said. The low-level Utah waste site is owned by the same company that runs the aging Barnwell County low-level waste dump, which has leaked. |
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Doubts on Holtec’s clean-up of Pilgrim nuclear power station
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Pilgrim Is Closing. So Then What Happens To The Radioactive Waste? wbur, Earthwhile, May 30, 2019, Barbara Moran This week, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station will power down for the last time.Over the next few years, workers will move the radioactive fuel into storage, dismantle the plant, and clean up the site. The process is called decommissioning, and a lot of people are worried about safety, cost and where the nuclear waste will finally end up.
All together, there are 4,114 fuel assemblies at Pilgrim. They’ll stay radioactive for thousands of years. And with nowhere to put them — for now, at least — they’ll stay in Plymouth indefinitely. “With no repository in sight, Plymouth — America’s hometown — will be a nuclear waste dump,” says Diane Turco, executive director of the watchdog group Cape Downwinders. “No one knows what to do with this waste. … So I think we need to prepare that it’s going to be in Plymouth for a long time.”
After the plant powers down, workers will move the fuel from the reactor into the spent fuel pool. It will take a few years for the fuel to cool off enough for workers to move it from the pool into steel canisters. Then they’ll put the canisters into enormous steel-and-concrete containers called “dry casks” for storage. Everybody wants the job done right, because an accident could release radioactive material into the environment. The worst-case scenario — a major fire in the spent fuel pool — could put thousands of lives at risk. “Decommissioning is a very dangerous time at Pilgrim. The spent fuel will be moved from the pool to the dry casks; the dry casks will be moved on the property,” says Turco. “To do it quick and fast doesn’t necessarily mean safe — let’s do it right.” The fuel storage casks are made by New Jersey-based Holtec International. Holtec produces storage components for more than half of the nuclear power plants in the United States. And with nuclear plants shutting down across the country, business is booming.
It seems like a surprisingly low-tech way to hold highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. That’s the beauty of it, says Allen Hickman, vice president of manufacturing for Holtec. ……… Not everyone shares Hickman’s confidence, including Plymouth resident Sean Mullin, chair of the state’s Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel. “What happens if a crack emerges? There is a lot of salt in the air, and there’s a lot of other things that could deteriorate it,” says Mullin. At a public meeting in March, NRC Reactor Decommissioning Branch Chief Bruce Watson said the NRC is currently working with industry to develop surveillance and testing requirements, and that the storage facility at Pilgrim would be inspected “at least annually.” If workers detect a serious leak or crack in a cask — an event the Watson called “extremely unlikely” — it will be “encapsulated” in another cask. Mullin is skeptical of the encapsulation plan. “There should be something better,” he says. Holtec wants to do more than build nuclear storage casks. The company plans to buy Pilgrim and handle the whole decommissioning process: move the fuel to storage, tear down the plant, and clean up the site. But Holtec has never fully decommissioned a nuclear plant before. And unlike Entergy, which proposes decommissioning the site in 60 years, Holtec says it can be done in eight. ….. Holtec’s proposal worries critics like citizen’s group Pilgrim Watch and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. Both have filed petitions to intervene with the NRC. “Holtec has never actually cleaned up a nuclear power plant before, and it’s proposing to do so at what’s really a record pace,” says Healey. “What we want is for the closure to be done safely. We want the site cleaned up and we need to make sure that there’s enough money there to make that happen well.” Holtec also wants to buy Indian Point nuclear plant in New York, and build an interim storage site in New Mexico, where the company hopes to eventually ship spent fuel from Pilgrim and other sites. Critics say Holtec is stretched thin. We fear that they have bitten off far more than they can chew, negatively impacting the quality of oversight and attention to properly decommission Pilgrim Station,” wrote Pilgrim Watch director Mary Lampert in an email. In April the NRC issued two safety violations against the company for an incident involving dry casks at the San Onofre nuclear plant in California. Although no radioactive material was released and the NRC did not issue a fine, Holtec’s Russell says the company takes the violations “very seriously” and is scrutinizing technology, training and procedures…… Cost Concerns If Holtec purchases Pilgrim, the company will receive the plant, the surrounding land and a decommissioning trust fund currently valued around $1 billion. Holtec might also get additional money by suing the federal Department of Energy for failing to build a permanent nuclear waste repository. But an old plant like Pilgrim will likely have cleanup problems beyond nuclear waste, like asbestos and lead paint. And other nuclear plants, like Connecticut Yankee and Yankee Rowe, cost far more to clean up than expected. “We think that Holtec is seriously underestimating what it’s going to cost to get this done — underestimating to the tune of millions of dollars,” state AG Healey says. “And at the end of the day, if Holtec begins this project and doesn’t have the money to finish it, it’s going to be the state, our residents and taxpayers that are going to be on the hook, and we want to make sure that doesn’t happen.” Critics are also concerned about Holtec’s formation of a limited liability company with Canadian engineering and construction company SNC-Lavalin called Comprehensive Decommissioning International, which will handle Pilgrim’s decommissioning. Dan Wolf, a former state senator from the Cape and Islands — and the founder and CEO of Cape Air — says the move insulates the parent company and makes it unclear who is ultimately financially responsible for the cleanup. “My concern is, if there’s not enough money and the job doesn’t get completed, it’s going to fall both on our government and on the ratepayers to make up any deficiencies,” says Wolf. “It’s one of the more egregious cases of socializing risk and privatizing profit.”…….. The Pilgrim site is already storing spent nuclear fuel in 17 dry casks near the reactor building. Eventually, there will be 61 casks, stored on a new pad, 75 feet above sea level, partly to safeguard against sea level rise. It’s expected they’ll be moved there by 2021 and protected by armed guards. While Congress has recently started talking about a new national repository for nuclear waste, and Holtec says it hopes to remove the spent fuel from Pilgrim by 2062, there’s a chance that waste could remain at Pilgrim (or rather, the former Pilgrim) indefinitely, a silent monument to the nuclear age.https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2019/05/30/plymouth-nuclear-plant-decommissioning |
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Map drawn of 80 USA nuclear waste sites
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New Map Shows Expanse Of U.S. Nuclear Waste Sites https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/05/31/new-map-shows-expanse-of-u-s-nuclear-waste-sites/#5f0a293fc2cf
Jeff McMahon, The United States is home to 21 “stranded” nuclear-waste storage sites, according to a congressional researcher who was quick to add that “stranded does not imply that the waste has been abandoned or lacks regulatory oversight.”It means those 21 sites are no longer attached to reactors that are producing electricity or revenue, environmental policy analyst Lance N. Larson writes in a May report to members of Congress. The stranded sites are costly for the federal government, which has spent $7.4 billion to nuclear utilities and other reactor owners, according to CRS, to offset its responsibility to store the waste. The 21 are among 80 sites Larsen drew together in a map that shows where the country’s nuclear waste is distributed while it awaits construction of a permanent repository. The United States is home to 21 “stranded” nuclear-waste storage sites, according to a congressional researcher who was quick to add that “stranded does not imply that the waste has been abandoned or lacks regulatory oversight.” It means those 21 sites are no longer attached to reactors that are producing electricity or revenue, environmental policy analyst Lance N. Larson writes in a May report to members of Congress. The stranded sites are costly for the federal government, which has spent $7.4 billion to nuclear utilities and other reactor owners, according to CRS, to offset its responsibility to store the waste. The 21 are among 80 sites Larsen drew together in a map that shows where the country’s nuclear waste is distributed while it awaits construction of a permanent repository. |
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Laundry in UK permitted to take radioactive materials from Sellafield!!
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A Quick & Dirty Look At Energy Coast Laundry’s Radioactive Materials Permit (Starting With Caesium 137 Discharges to Air) https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2019/05/30/a-quick-dirty-look-at-energy-coast-laundrys-radioactive-materials-permit-starting-with-caesium-137-discharges-to-air/ |
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Duke plans to decommission nuclear plant ahead of schedule
Duke Energy wants to tear down its Crystal River nuclear power plant about 50 years earlier than planned, the company announced Thursday.
In 2013, Duke decided to keep the facility idle until 2074 and then demolish the physical plant after removing all radioactive material. But a recent review of the cost to accelerate the timeline found the company had enough money in their decommissioning trust fund to cover the accelerated plan, said Heather Danenehower, Duke communications manager.
They need approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to change plans and that process will take at least a year.
The accelerated process, which will take until 2027 to complete, would cost $540 million. The trust fund balance stood at $717 million on March 31. Whatever remains will go back to Duke’s customers. Customers, including the more than 66,000 in Marion County and the more than 4,000 in Alachua County, will not see their electricity bills increase because of the move, she said…… https://www.gainesville.com/news/20190530/duke-plans-to-decommission-nuclear-plant-ahead-of-schedule
France’s many nuclear waste locations revealed in an interactive map
Nuclear waste map of France published by Greenpeace, https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Nuclear-waste-map-of-France-published-by-environmental-activists-Greenpeace-on-issue 29 May, 19, Nuclear waste is becoming a hot topic of discussion, as Greenpeace publishes a map of waste across France
A new interactive map showing the locations of nuclear waste across France has been published by environmental group Greenpeace, as part of its forthcoming campaign on the issue.
The map was published online this week, with the NGO aiming to “compile in a single place” all of the information it has on the location of radioactive material, to let people know how close they may be living to the waste.
The map categories include storage centres (at which the waste will be stored for 300 years minimum); nuclear centres that generate all forms of nuclear waste; more than 200 old uranium mines, operational up to 2001; factories and other plants; and radioactive waste from more than 70 military sites.
The data was collected from records of radioactive waste agency l’Agence Nationale pour la Gestion des Déchets Radioactifs (Andra).
The map does not include waste from medical use or research.
The map allows you to search by post code (Greenpeace.fr / Screenshot)Greenpeace is hoping to raise awareness and prompt debate over the extent of nuclear waste, and ask questions on the potential impact it may have. This also includes the impact of transporting nuclear waste by road or rail.
The group is also seeking to gather signatures and support for its national campaign on the issue, which it will later address to French ecology minister François de Rugy.
The map features a button saying “Agir! (Act!)”, allowing members of the public to add their support.
A public debate is set to be held on September 25 on this exact question – the issue of nuclear waste in France. It will be held on a platform via which the public will be able to ask for further information and have their say.
Nuclear waste disposal is also expected to be on the agenda at the G20 summit being held in Japan next month.
Radioactive shellfish – giant clams in Marshall Islands near USA nuclear dump
High radiation levels found in giant clams near U.S. nuclear dump in Marshall Islands, By SUSANNE RUST and CAROLYN COLE,
Researchers have found high levels of radiation in giant clams near the Central Pacific site where the United States entombed waste from nuclear testing almost four decades ago, raising concerns the contamination is spreading from the dump site’s tainted groundwater into the ocean and the food chain.
The findings from the Marshall Islands suggest that radiation is either leaking from the waste site — which U.S. officials reject — or that authorities did not adequately clean up radiation left behind from past weapons testing, as some in the Marshall Islands claim.
The radioactive shellfish were found near Runit Dome — a concrete-capped waste site known by locals as “The Tomb” — according to a presentation made by a U.S. Department of Energy scientist this month in Majuro, the island nation’s capital. The clams are a popular delicacy in the Marshall Islands and in other nations, including China, which has aggressively harvested them from vast swaths of the Pacific.
According to Terry Hamilton, a veteran nuclear physicist at the Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Runit Dome is vulnerable to leakage by storm surge and sea level rise, and its groundwater, which is leaking into the lagoon and ocean, is severely contaminated.
But the radiation in the shellfish and surrounding lagoon is not coming from the 40-year-old dome, said Hamilton in a slide he presented May 15 to an audience assembled in a hotel conference room in Majuro.
He said isotopic analyses indicated the lagoon contamination was from residue from the initial nuclear weapons testing.
The Los Angeles Times was not at Hamilton’s presentation, and the Energy Department did not make him available to comment. But the following day, residents and officials informed The Times about the findings, which were later confirmed with others.
Between 1946 and 1958, the United States tested 67 nuclear devices in the Marshall Islands, including 44 in Enewetak Atoll, one of the nation’s 29 coral atolls. Although the Marshall Islands were home to only 6% of the total number of tests conducted by the United States, it bore the brunt of more than half the total energy yield of all U.S. nuclear weapons testing.
Much of the fallout from those events is now entombed within Runit Dome. According to a photograph taken of Hamilton’s presentation slides, the 377-foot-wide crater in Enewetak Atoll contains groundwater samples with radiation levels 1,000 to 6,000 times higher than those found in the open ocean.
Some Marshallese who attended the presentation are skeptical about the agency’s conclusion that the dome is not leaking into the lagoon.
“What they’re saying is, here is the dome. And here, in the lagoon area, there is radiation. … But as far as leaking from the dome, we don’t think that’s the case?” said James Matayoshi, mayor of Rongelap Atoll, one of the atolls contaminated by fallout from the nuclear testing program. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Extending the incredulity further, Matayoshi and others noted that Hamilton presented a short animation of the dome, showing it rise and fall with the tide — suggesting seawater
is freely flowing in and out of the containment zone.
Between 1977 and 1980, the United States enlisted roughly 4,000 U.S. soldiers and subcontractors to clean the site. Many said they were inadequately protected. They excavated soils from Enewetak and elsewhere and turned the soil into a concrete slurry, which they poured into an unlined crater on Runit Island, left behind by the Cactus bomb. They sealed it with a clean concrete top 18 inches thick, creating what is now called the Tomb.
In 1980, the people of Enewetak were told by the U.S. government it was safe to return home.
But there have been lingering worries about the atoll’s safety. The U.S. government told the Marshallese the dome was a temporary fix. It’s now been nearly 40 years. This latest news didn’t alleviate any of those concerns, said Holly Barker, a professor of anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Barker is a member of the Marshall Islands’ three-person National Nuclear Commission — a government-mandated committee charged with seeking justice for nuclear-related injuries and damage.
The basic takeaway from the presentation, said Barker, is the lagoon is so contaminated, any leakage from the dome is negligible.
Which raises the question, “in what way was Runit a cleanup?” Barker said………
Lucinda Anitok, 35, from Sedro-Woolley, Wash., is a descendant of Runit landowners. She said the U.S. testing program in Enewetak had devastated her family. Her grandmother, who was raised on Enewetak, had thyroid cancer. Her mother, who was born there, had cervical cancer. And her sister had leukemia.
“What happened there was wrong,” she said. “It ruined, and is still harming, many people’s lives.”…….https://www.latimes.com/science/environment/la-me-marshall-islands-dome-is-leaking-radiation-20190528-story.htm
Canada’s plans for nuclear waste disposal
Canada’s nuclear waste to be buried in deep underground repository, By Eric Sorensen, Global News, 29 May 19, “……..While the nuclear creating heat and electricity has been well contained in reactors, ceramic pellets and fuel bundles, we have been left with big a problem that everyone saw coming: the hazard posed by nuclear waste.
Ontario Power Generation has slowly made headway for a plan to bury this waste in a deep underground repository next to the Bruce plant. Much of it now sits in large tanks with row upon row of cement lids poking above the surface.of the ground.
Fred Kuntz, wearing an OPG hard hat, gazed over the containers: “This is all safe storage for now, but it’s not really the solution for thousands of years. The lasting solution is disposal in a deep geologic repository.”
He pointed to a stand of trees. “The DGR would be built here.”
“There isn’t a magic bullet. It’s not like we can put it out of sight and we’ve solved the problem.” said Theresa McClenaghan of the Canadian Environamental Law Association.
The nuclear plant was built on the traditional land of the Saugeen Ojibway. OPG says it has come to recognize the “historic wrongs of the past” and is negotiating compensation for those wrongs. And moving forward, OPG has given its assurance that the repository will only be built if the Saugeen Ojibway approve – from an afterthought to the power of veto over a multibillion-dollar enterprise……….
Remarkably, this is the relatively easy stuff to deal with: low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste. An even bigger problem is high-level radioactive used fuel. It too is piling up, primarily at the three big Ontario plants. It may be toxic for a million years. ……..
Ultimately they need to find one particular community to be a “willing host” for what amounts to 57,000 tonnes of used nuclear fuel……..
The plan is to pack the bundles into carbon steel tubes coated in copper – 48 bundles per container. They look like a big torpedoes. Each one will be packed snugly into what look like coffins made of a special clay called bentonite.
Thousands of bentonite boxes will be moved by robotic machines into hundreds of long placement rooms deep underground. Dried slightly, the clay will expand and plug every last space, ultimately sealing the repository. ……
Picking a host community, getting regulatory approval, building the repository, and transferring high-level waste will take the next 50 years.
It is separate from the OPG plan for low- and intermediate-level waste, which could have an answer from the Saugeen Ojibway Nation by the end of this year, and federal approval in 2020.
As it turns out, two of the NWMO sites for high-level waste – South Bruce and Huron-Kinloss – are also on Saugeen Ojibway land, so they may ultimately have to decide on separate nuclear waste projects on their land………https://globalnews.ca/news/5329835/canadas-nuclear-waste-to-be-buried-in-deep-underground-repository/
As Pilgrim nuclear plant closes, Holtec moves in to make a tidy profit
Closure of Pilgrim nuclear plant is part of a shifting energy industry, Boston Globe, By David Abel Globe Staff,May 28, 2019, “…….. If all goes right, the last of 145 crucifix-shaped control rods will be inserted into the reactor, shutting down operations for good.
“For many of us, it’s the end of an era,” said Joe Frattasio, 56, a control room shift manager who has been working for Pilgrim for 19 years and expects to remain at the plant until March. “Unfortunately, this is the reality of the industry.”
When Pilgrim shuts down, there will be 97 nuclear reactors left in the United States, down from a peak of 112 in 1990. Another 10 reactors are slated to close by 2025.
Concerns about the safety of nuclear power — especially after the disasters at plants in the former Soviet Union and Japan — have contributed to the industry’s decline. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in recent years had designated Pilgrim one of the nation’s three least-safe reactors, forcing the plant to spend tens of millions of dollars on upgrades and inspections.
……. But the changing nature of the larger energy industry, and the resulting economics, has played an even larger role.
…… By next April, when Entergy expects to complete the first phase of the decommissioning process, only about half as many workers will remain.
“It’s a sad time, but also a time of reflection,” said Patrick O’Brien, a spokesman for Pilgrim, before a simulation of the shutdown on Tuesday at a testing facility near the plant.
As part of the process, the company will reduce the evacuation zone to the perimeter around the plant.
….. The future of the property may be left to Holtec International, a New Jersey company that’s seeking to buy Pilgrim. Although it has never owned or decommissioned a nuclear plant, Holtec has promised to complete the process in just eight years, well ahead of the 60 years allowed by federal rules. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/05/28/pilgrim/p00dL7Ju623l3VZDiUvMJO/story.html
San Onofre Task Force Questions Edison About Nuclear Waste Canisters
The Task Force was created to increase public involvement in the decommissioning of the plant, which shut down in 2012 after a small radioactive leak was discovered in the steam generators.
Levin said several Task Force members are concerned about burying spent nuclear fuel in stainless steel canisters encased in concrete, next to the beach.
“Our task force members had specific questions about those canisters,“ Levin said, “their safety, their design and the wear and tear that the coastal environment takes on them. Those questions were not answered sufficiently. Edison said, ‘We’ll have to have another meeting to discuss that,’ so we took them up on that, and we’re having another meeting.”
Levin said he has introduced legislation to put San Onofre’s nuclear waste at the top of the list to be moved if Congress decides on a location to store the nation’s spent fuel longer term.
His bill to earmark $25 million to identify and develop what’s called consolidated interim storage site recently passed the House Appropriations Committee.
Church should oppose nuclear waste in Utah
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https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/letters/2019/05/29/letter-church-should/ By Leslie and Gail Ellison | The Public Forum, Dear Russell M. Nelson, Dallin H. Oaks and Henry B. Eyring,
On May 5, 1981, the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a bold and important statement opposing the placing of the MX missile train system in Utah and Nevada. Our state is confronted with a similar situation today that simply cannot be ignored. Our legislators in the last session passedHB220 potentially allowing Class B and Class C nuclear wastes (including depleted uranium) to be transported to and stored at the Envirocare Skull Valley repository. These long-lived wastes increase in toxicity over hundreds of thousands of years. Every legislator that voted in favor of this legislation received donations from Envirocare. Imagine the thousands of trains and trucks transporting these nuclear poisons, sloshing in their holds … forever. Insane! There is so much wrong here, not only the dangers of transportation through population centers and the Envirocare site itself (open pit, shallow aquifer, etc.), but so many unknowns. This is a Utah state issue. Other states and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) cannot believe our state will actually welcome these toxic wastes. This should not be a political issue. It is an extremely serious health concern for our families, our children and our children’s children. We call upon the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to take a stand in reversing this bill, similar to the brave and righteous position they took against the MX missile system in 1981. |
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1 This Month
26 September – International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
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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