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U.S. Energy Dept plans to reclassify Hanford nuclear sludge – from “high level”to “low level”

Stripes 29th Nov 2018 After spending billions of dollars over several decades to remove
radioactive waste leaking from a plant where nuclear bombs were made, the
Energy Department has come up with a new plan: leave it in the ground.
The shuttered Hanford Nuclear Reservation, which produced plutonium for U.S.
atomic weapons from World War II through the Cold War, is the nation’s
largest nuclear cleanup site with about 56 million gallons of waste stored
in leak-prone underground tanks in south-central Washington State.
The Energy Department has proposed to effectively reclassify the sludge left in
16 nearly empty underground tanks from “high-level” to “low-level”
radioactive waste. The re-classification would allow the department to fill
the tanks with grout, cover them with an unspecified “surface barrier,” and
leave them in place.
But environmental groups and others say the plan
amounts to a semantic sleight of hand that will leave as much as 70,000
gallons of remaining nuclear sludge — some of which could be radioactive
for millions of years — in the ground.
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/plan-to-leave-buried-nuclear-bomb-waste-underground-draws-fire-1.558527

December 1, 2018 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

San Onofre plant aims to resume transfers of nuclear waste in January 

 San Diego Tribune,  Rob NikolewskiContact Reporter, 30 Nov 18

Southern California Edison, the operator of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, plans to resume transferring canisters filled with spent nuclear fuel in mid-January to a newly constructed storage facility at the plant.

The restart would mark the first transfers since a “near-miss” incident in August in which a 50-ton canister containing nuclear waste was accidentally left suspended on a metal flange, nearly 20 feet from the floor of a storage cavity for as much as one hour.

A specific date for the restart has not been set, and Edison officials emphasized it will only begin after roughly 60 workers have gone through “more detailed and improved training” that includes practice runs and employing an independent assessment team.

“We have not rushed to resume this,” said Tom Palmisano, vice president of external engagement at the plant, or SONGS. “We’re going to be very slow and deliberate so that we fully understand this and fully correct the underlying deficiencies that got us here.”

The company also said transfers will resume only after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has completed on-site inspections next month.

All canister transfers have been suspended since the Aug. 3 incident came to light………

“The NRC is concerned about apparent weaknesses in management oversight” of the operations connected to the transfers, the agency’s report said.

Holtec International is the contractor responsible for transferring the canisters at SONGS, with Edison providing oversight. Based in New Jersey, Holtec also designed the canisters and the new storage facility where they are placed……….

San Onofre has not produced electricity since the plant shut down following a leak in a steam generator tube in 2012. The following year the plant officially closed. It is now in the process of being decommissioned.

SONGS is located on an 85-acre chunk of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, owned by the Department of the Navy. The plant sits between the Pacific and one of the busiest freeways in the country — Interstate 5. About 8.4 million people live in a 50-mile radius of the plant in an area with a history of seismic activity.

The dry cask storage facilities are about 100 feet from the ocean, protected by a seawall 28 feet high.https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/energy-green/sd-fi-nrc-songs-inspection-20181129-story.html

December 1, 2018 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste finally removed from Sequoyah Fuels site

Nuclear waste removed from Sequoyah Fuels site   Cherokee Nation, GORE, Okla. 30 Nov 18— A semitrailer quietly left the former Sequoyah Fuels Corporation site near Gore this week, hauling away the last of 511 loads of nuclear waste that has plagued Sequoyah County and its citizens for decades.

The Cherokee Nation and Oklahoma attorney general’s office worked for 18 months to ensure the off-site disposal of 10,000 tons of radioactive material were removed from the Sequoyah Fuels site. The waste was transported to a disposal site in Utah where the uranium will be recycled and reused, leaving the area near the Arkansas River free of this nuclear waste for the first time in nearly 50 years.

“It is a historic day for the Cherokee Nation and the state of Oklahoma. Our lands are safe again, now that we have removed a risk that would have threatened our communities forever,” Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. said. “This would not have been possible if the tribe and state had not worked tirelessly together in court to ensure removal of this material.”

The uranium processing plant was opened by Kerr-McGee in 1970. It converted yellowcake uranium into fuel for nuclear reactors. The plant changed ownership more than once and was eventually sold to General Atomics under the name Sequoyah Fuels Corporation.

An accident at the plant killed one worker and injured dozens of others in 1986. Another accident in 1992 injured about three dozen workers. Following that accident and years of violating numerous environmental rules and nuclear safety standards, the plant was closed in 1993.

Tons of radioactive waste remained at the facility when it closed, so in 2004 the Cherokee Nation and state of Oklahoma entered into a settlement agreement that required the highest-risk waste be removed from the site. The owners of Sequoyah Fuels Corporation announced in 2016 their intention to bury the waste on site, but a judge forced the company to comply with the original agreement. Removal of the material is now complete.
“The Cherokee Nation has been in and out of court with Sequoyah Fuels since 2004, and now this material is no longer a ticking time bomb on the banks of the Arkansas River, one of our most precious natural resources,” Cherokee Nation Secretary of Natural Resources Sara Hill said. “Decommissioning this plant was never enough to satisfy our goals for a clean and safe environment. Removal of this highly contaminated waste was our goal, and we’re pleased that goal has finally been achieved.”

The plant is located where the Arkansas River and Illinois River meet.

“Today’s announcement is another example of the strength behind the continued partnership between the state of Oklahoma and the Cherokee Nation,” said Attorney General Mike Hunter. “The successful outcome is also affirmation of my office’s commitment to finding avenues of collaboration with tribal governments to ensure our state’s natural resources remain protected and our citizens and communities remain safe.”

Sequoyah County is home to 41,000 residents. Many of those residents are Cherokee and were once employed at the plant, where dozens of workers were injured over the years…….http://webtest2.cherokee.org/News/Stories/20181130_Cherokee-Nation-state-of-Oklahoma-city-of-Gore-announce-nuclear-waste-removed-from-Sequoyah-Fuels-site

December 1, 2018 Posted by | indigenous issues, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Robots in effort to clean highly radioactive Thorp nuclear reprocessing plant

Sellafield: Europe’s most radioactively contaminated site

Inside Sellafield’s death zone with the nuclear clean-up robots, By Theo Leggett, Business correspondent, BBC News, 27 November 2018

The Thorp nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield, Cumbria, has recycled its final batch of reactor fuel. But it leaves behind a hugely toxic legacy for future generations to deal with. So how will it be made safe?

Thorp still looks almost new; a giant structure of cavernous halls, deep blue-tinged cooling ponds and giant lifting cranes, imposing in fresh yellow paint.

But now the complex process of decontaminating and dismantling begins.

It is a dangerous job that will take decades to complete and require a great deal of engineering ingenuity and state-of-the-art technology – some of which hasn’t even been invented yet.

This is why.

Five sieverts of radiation is considered a lethal dose for humans. Inside the Head End Shear Cave, where nuclear fuel rods were extracted from their casings and cut into pieces before being dissolved in heated nitric acid, the radiation level is 280 sieverts per hour.

We can only peer through leaded glass more than a metre thick at the inside of the steel-lined cell, which gleams under eerie, yellow-tinged lighting.

This is a place only robots can go.

They will begin the first stage of decommissioning – the post-operative clean-out – removing machinery and debris……….. Cleaning up other parts of the plant will also need robots and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs).

Some will need to be developed from scratch, while others can be adapted from systems already used in other industries, such as oil and gas, car manufacturing and even the space sector……..

The site in Cumbria contains a number of other redundant facilities, some dating back to the 1950s and many of them heavily contaminated, which are currently being decommissioned………

Remote submarines have explored and begun cleaning up old storage ponds. Other remote machines are being used to take cameras deep inside decaying bunkers, filled with radioactive debris.

The job of developing machines like these is shared with a large network of specialist companies, many of them based in Cumbria itself. They form part of a growing decommissioning industry within the UK, as the country grapples with the legacy of its first era of nuclear power.

The NDA believes that these companies can use what they learn at Sellafield, and other plants, to attract further business from overseas……..https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46301596

November 29, 2018 Posted by | reprocessing, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Uncertainty and delay, as UK struggles with plans for dealing with radioactive trash

November 24, 2018 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority concerned about risks of radioactive leaks from facility near Tokyo

Low-level radioactive waste stored at Tokai research facility near Tokyo may leak, agency says, Japan Times, 
KYODO, 23 Nov 18 The Japan Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday that some of the low-level radioactive waste stored underground at a facility near Tokyo may leak from its containers due to inadequate disposal procedures.

The government-backed agency keeps 53,000 drums of low-level radioactive waste, or about 10,600 kiloliters, in a concrete pit in the basement of a building of the Nuclear Research and Science Institute in the village of Tokai, Ibaraki Prefecture.

Some of the waste did not undergo the proper water removal process when placed in the pit, and leakage and corroded containers in the pit were found during inspections between 1987 and 1991, according to the agency.

The nuclear research body planned to inspect the drums over the next 50 years to check for leakage. But the Nuclear Regulation Authority said at a meeting Wednesday that the agency needs to check them more quickly……..https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/11/22/national/low-level-radioactive-waste-stored-tokai-research-facility-near-tokyo-may-leak-agency-says/#.W_hm2IczbGg

November 24, 2018 Posted by | Japan, safety, wastes | Leave a comment

U.S.senator joins call from 75 organisations to scrutinise plan to reclassify some High Level Nuclear Wastes

U.S. senator joins nationwide call for caution on Hanford waste change  https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article221916070.html BY ANNETTE CARY acary@tricityherald.com  November 19, 2018 RICHLAND, WA 

The public needs more time to comment on an issue as important as reclassifying high level radioactive waste at Hanford and other Department of Energy sites, says 75 organizations nationwide.

On Monday, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., added his support to their call for more additional time on the DOE proposal.

DOE is considering a change to how it interprets the legal definition of high level radioactive waste, which would allow more flexibility in how it disposes of some waste at the Hanford site.

Defining less of the nation’s nuclear waste as high level could speed up environmental cleanup and save billions of dollars.

But it also could mean more toxic waste allowed to remain in the ground at Hanford, say critics.

Wyden wrote in a letter to Anne Marie White, DOE assistant secretary for environmental management, that the proposed definition change could provide less protection for future generations and the environment.

“ . . . (C)hanging the definition of what has always been considered high level waste requiring permanent disposal is a significant change and could lead to dramatically different clean-up practices and outcomes,” he wrote.

He called for a 120-day extension to the public comment period, which now is 60 days ending Dec. 10.

A letter signed by leaders of 75 organizations was sent Wednesday to White making the same request.

Among organizations backing the letter were Hanford Challenge, Columbia Riverkeeper, Heart of America Northwest and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The new interpretation would be “a drastic and controversial change” to DOE environmental cleanup policy, the letter said.

“We believe all interested stakeholders — and the DOE — agree that this decision requires thorough and thoughtful consideration by all affected parties,” the letter said.

Congress has passed laws that define high level radioactive waste as waste that results from processing irradiated nuclear fuel if the waste is “highly radioactive.”

At Hanford, chemicals were used to separate plutonium from irradiated fuel at huge processing plants. The plutonium was produced from World War II through the Cold War for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

The fuel processing left 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical waste in underground tanks until it can be treated for disposal. It now is considered high level waste.

DOE is proposing that waste from fuel processing not be classified as high level if it can meet the radioactive concentration limits for low level radioactive waste.

While high level waste is defined mostly by the processes that created it, low level waste is defined mostly by its radioactive content.

DOE also would consider a second way to determine that waste from chemical reprocessing not be consider high level. It could be disposed of as low level radioactive waste if an assessment shows it can be safely dispose of without sending it to a deep geologic repository, such as the repository proposed for Yucca Mountain, Nev.

The Energy Communities Alliance — which includes Hanford Communities, a coalition of small governments near the Hanford nuclear reservation — supports the proposal to change the definition.
It has the potential to save $40 billion across the DOE complex, said Richland Mayor Bob Thompson.

DOE has declined to discuss how changing the definition would impact different Hanford waste.

However, it could make it easier to send waste held in up to 20 of Hanford’s 149 single-shell tanks to a national repository for transuranic waste in New Mexico, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

Transuranic waste contains certain levels of plutonium or other isotopes heavier than uranium.

DOE also is in the early steps of considering how to close underground tanks at Hanford that have had most, but not all, of their radioactive waste removed.

Changing the classification of tank waste might help a plan to use concrete-like grout to fill the tanks rather than trying to remove additional waste.

Hanford Challenge opposes the change in defining high level radioactive waste, saying it could leave more waste at Hanford, including soil contaminated from past leaks and spills of 1 million gallons of tank waste.

It also gives DOE far too much discretion in the factors it could consider if it is allowed to determine whether waste does not need to go to a deep repository like Yucca Mountain, said Tom Carpenter, executive director of Hanford Challenge, when DOE announced the proposal.

Comments may be emailed to HLWnotice@em.doe.gov.

Annette Cary; 509-582-1533; @HanfordNews

 

November 22, 2018 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Call to Texans to oppose nuclear waste transport and dumping

Public Citizen, SEED ask for input on nuclear waste site https://www.oaoa.com/news/business/article_85d89190-e9f6-11e8-a78f-fbf0d8a1b844.html N ovember 16, 2018  By Royal McGregor rmcgregor@oaoa.com    Members of Public Citizen and Sustainable Energy and Economic Development have encouraged the public to voice their opinion on nuclear waste traveling through the state of Texas and being dumped in Andrews County.

In 2017, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted Waste Control Specialists’ application to begin an interim storage facility for nuclear waste at an Andrews County dump.

The public can submit their opinion to the NRC at nonuclearwaste.org. The deadline for comments is midnight on Monday.

WCS initially hoped to break ground in 2020, but that timeline has been pushed back due to a change in ownership. The license decision from the NRC could be made as early as 2020 and according to NRC spokesperson David McIntyre, the NRC is currently working on an environmental safety and security reviews that won’t be completed until the fall of 2019.

In March, Orano, a French company specializing in nuclear power and renewable energy, and WCS formed a joint venture to license the interim storage facility.

Public Citizen and SEED have intervened in that license application citing a variety of hazards in transporting and storing that nuclear waste. Seven of the eight radioactive waste sites that have been proposed over the last 40 years in Texas have been stopped — the only one to pass is in Andrews County.

“There’s no benefit to Texas taking the nation’s high-level radioactive waste,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, who was the former director of Public Citizen. “This is waste that nobody else wants that other states have said, ‘We don’t want it in our borders.’ It’s waste that people who live around nuclear reactors have organized to politically to send it somewhere else.

“Here in Texas it’s believed because of former governor (Rick) Perry and because Andrews County said, ‘we would like bring this waste to us,’ that somehow we have expressed consent. More than five million people that live in cities have expressed their opposition.”

SEED Director Karen Hadden said one of the reasons behind submitting opinions online is due to the lack of public meetings by the NRC. There was one meeting in Andrews that took place in 2017, one public meeting in Hobbs, N.M. and two meetings were in Rockville, Md.

McIntyre said after the environmental safety and security reviews is completed in 2019, the NRC will return to Texas for the public to voice opinions and concerns.

The interim storage facility could hold up to 40,000 tons of irradiated nuclear reaction fuel over the life of the 40-year permit. There are no restrictions on how many times WCS could renew its permit.

Hadden is concerned the interim nuclear waste site could stay permanently.

“We risk the waste could stay forever,” Hadden said.

The current application states the nuclear waste would be transported by railroads.

Yet, Dallas, San Antonio and Midland have already opposed the transport of nuclear waste in and around the city

Activist attorney Terry Lodge, who resides in Toledo, Ohio, said over the phone there’s an interim storage already in place — onsite storage.

Lodge continued to explain on a daily basis, it’s overseen by the NRC. It means there’s an alternative that’s taking place instead of the plan to ship everything to the middle of the desert — in some instances thousands of miles — through cities and risk accident, sabotage or terrorism.

“A lengthy petition has been filed to intervene rising 14 various technical points including objections to the legality and odd financing scheme that’s being proposed by WCS when there’s no federal law even allows it,” Lodge said.

The concern also arises when the nuclear waste is transported through neighbors.

Adrian Shelley, current Public Citizen director, said over last several weeks the company used EJSCREEN to look at communities along Class I rail routes across Texas. EJSCREEN can see age, race, education level, income level and language along rail routes.

Shelley said some of the urban areas along those routes have as high as 90 percent of minority residents and in other areas that number is closer to 70 percent. A majority of the people that live along these rail routes don’t speak English, Spanish being the most common.

Lodge said there are also safety concerns for thousands of trips — 3,000 minimum — and there are some Department of Energy policies under consideration that would double, triple or quadruple the number of shipments because of the need to reload the fuel rods into smaller canisters, so they could ultimately be disposed in a geological repository.

“It’s a massive transportation campaign, increasing risk with the number of trips and potential for a serious accident in transit that could have effects according to federal agencies as far as 50 miles downwind,” Lodge said.

Smith added that a 10-year survey from the U.S. Department of Transportation website discovered there have been more than 10,000 railroad accidents in Texas. Many of those involved hazardous cargos. During that 10-year period of time, 25 of the cars carrying hazardous materials had some sort of rupture or leak.

Smith said a report submitted that’s part of the Yucca Mountain licensing process stated an accident could cost $3.5 to $45 billion if the casks were penetrated, but not perforated. If there was a sabotage event and the casks were fully perforated, the cleanup costs could be somewhere between $300 and $648 billion dollars.

“The risk of a train accident is not insignificant,” he said.

November 19, 2018 Posted by | USA, wastes | 2 Comments

Rocky Flats still radioactively polluted

CNN Planet Earth: Poisoned Earth – Rocky Mountain Arsenal

 

The Dangers of Rocky Flats Are Forgotten but Not Gone, Westword, RON BAXENDALE II | NOVEMBER 17, 2018 “……..After nearly forty years of producing plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs, Rocky Flats was closed in 1992 after an endless series of fires, leaking storage containers and other accidents. At that time, it was said that Rocky Flats was likely to become a “national sacrifice zone” — a place so toxic it would never be fit for human habitation.

The Department of Energy projected it would take at least until 2065 (seventy years) and cost more than $40 million to marginally clean up Rocky Flats. U.S. Representative David Skaggs said that Rocky Flats would be a “problem for society that no society in history has ever had to deal with before. [H]ow do you build, maintain, and monument a site that is going to have to be clearly demarcated for generations to come beyond the scope of recorded history?”

Then in 2000, only a few years later, Kaiser-Hill was given a contract to complete the closure of Rocky Flats, agreeing to clean up the entire 6,245-acre site in less than six years on a budget of $4 billion.

Really? From “sacrifice zone” to “70-year marginal clean up” to “perfectly safe” in less than six years? How is this possible?

The cleanup of Rocky Flats was declared complete in 2006 and, even more astonishing, new homes in the Candelas development began to appear in 2012, immediately south of Rocky Flats, near the buffer zone. Now, despite continuing protest, the Deputy Secretary of the Interior has ruled that the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge (the innocuous new name for the plant) is safe enough for visits by children on school field trips.

The efforts to hide the dirty secrets of Rocky Flats are nothing new, and neither is the willingness of people to ignore the truth in order to lead lives free of worry. Newbies to Colorado, many of whom have invested much to make major life changes, are the biggest naysayers, wearing blinders to avoid the unsettling truth about their new choice of residence………..

We all lived in the Broomfield area of the Front Range from the early ’60s onward, I told the woman. For more than twenty years, I said, we all drank water from the Great Western Reservoir, Broomfield’s plutonium-laden water supply, and began suffering our health problems in the mid- to late ’80s. And this is just one family, I told her. One little family out of tens of thousands of families, all of which can tell their version of the same horror story. (When the members of a family or multiple families within a community contract this much cancer, says my primary care doctor, the cause is nearly always environmental.)……….

if Rocky Flats is so safe, why did an independent sample of soils east of Rocky Flats along Indiana Street in 2012 show plutonium contamination 100 times greater than allowable background levels? Why did a 2016 study led by Metropolitan State University of Denver find that those living downwind from Rocky Flats have unusually high rates of breast, thyroid, prostate, colon and rare cancers? And why do veterinarians in the Arvada-Westminster area report that dogs that frequent the Westminster Hills Dog Park — located just east of Rocky Flats and adjacent to the contaminated Great Western Reservoir — have abnormally high rates of bone and foot cancers?

More important, if Rocky Flats is so safe, why are home buyers immediately south of ground zero presented with advisory notices only at closing and told not to plant root-bound vegetables in gardens? One would think buyers would pay serious attention to such red flags, especially those buyers with young children……..

“In less than a generation we have almost forgotten what happened at Rocky Flats, and why it must never happen again,” says Kristen Iversen in Full Body Burden , her landmark exposé/history of Rocky Flats. ……..https://www.westword.com/news/op-ed-rocky-flats-dangers-are-forgotten-not-gone-11001314

November 19, 2018 Posted by | environment, USA, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

U.S. Appeals Court upholds order for Federal Government to remove plutonium from South Carolina

U.S. government ordered to remove deadly nuclear substance from South Carolina, BY EMILY BOHATCH  ebohatch@thestate.com, October 26, 2018

South Carolina officials celebrated a victory Friday after a U.S. court ruled the federal government must remove a metric ton of plutonium from the state, according to a statement from the S.C. Attorney General’s Office.

The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an earlier ruling ordering the U.S. Department of Energy to remove the element from the Palmetto State by the beginning of 2020, according to the statement. …..https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article220680625.html

November 17, 2018 Posted by | - plutonium, Legal, USA | Leave a comment

Army Corps of Engineers to resume clean-up of n uclear site at Parks Township.

Army Corps of Engineers: $500 million Parks Township nuclear waste removal project is a ‘go’, TRIB LIVE, 

MARY ANN THOMAS  | Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2018, The Army Corps of Engineers released test results and announced to residents Wednesday it is ready to resume the $500 million cleanup of the nuclear waste dump in Parks Township.

The 44-acre dump, officially known as the Shallow Land Disposal Area, is off Route 66 near Kiskimere Street. It was owned in the 1960s by the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. (NUMEC) which had plants in Apollo and Parks Township that produced nuclear fuels for Navy submarines, power plants and other government programs.

About 80 people attended the public meeting Wednesday at the Parks Township volunteer fire hall.

It featured a review of the project, which stalled seven years ago amid environmental test results.

The recent slowdown was an almost 18-month delay over a contract bid protest from the four bidders that didn’t win the $350 million contract to excavate the nuclear waste dump.

But the Army Corps reviewed the bids and recently lifted a stop-order on the federal contract that had been awarded to Jacobs Field Services to clean up the nuclear waste dump. …….

the recent groundwater tests show that beryllium, a metal used by the nuclear plants and buried on site found its way into the underground coal mines, which lie beneath the site.

The catacomb of mines has been a longtime concern as a pathway for the dump site’s contamination. https://triblive.com/local/valleynewsdispatch/14294779-74/army-corps-of-engineers-says-500-million-parks-twp-nuclear-waste-removal

November 17, 2018 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Oil industry worried about safety risks of New Mexoco’s high level nuclear storage

Fasken executive: High level nuclear storage could threaten area’s oil industry mrt, By Mella McEwen, MRT.com/Midland Reporter-Telegram, November 14, 2018 Two applications for sites to serve as interim storage locations for high level nuclear waste in Andrews County and in Lea and Eddy counties, New Mexico, are drawing concern about the risks they pose.

“There is as much nuclear radiation in one cask as was released in Chernobyl in 1986, and they want to eventually bring 20,000 casks here,” said Tommy Taylor, director of oil and gas development for Fasken Oil and Ranch. “One cask has as much radiation as the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki.”

Taylor addressed the Midland chapter, Society of Independent Professional Earth Scientists Wednesday in an effort to raise

awareness of the impact the sites could have, not just on Permian Basin communities but on the region’s oil and gas industry.

The Permian Basin is the No. 1 oil producing region in the U.S. It has changed the geopolitical environment around the world,” he said. “This region is too important to U.S. security to allow this.”

SIPES member Stephen Robichaud agreed, pointing out that a serious leak from one of the casks could shut in 100 percent of the nation’s oil and gas production as well as the Ogallala Aquifer, a main source of water for the middle of the country.

Beyond the environmental impact, “we’re talking about monetary damages in the many trillions of dollars. The impact could be enormous,” Robichaud said……..

The applications are for interim storage sites, which Taylor said is between 40 and 100 years.

“What we’re worried about is, it could be stored here permanently,” he said. “The government has been looking for a permanent site for 40 years and hasn’t found one yet. This waste could be for our lifetime, our children’s lifetimes, maybe even our grandchildren’s lifetimes.”……https://www.mrt.com/business/oil/article/Fasken-executive-High-level-nuclear-storage-13393012.php

November 15, 2018 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Strong ctiticism of plan to close initial group of Hanford nuclear wastetanks.

2,000 people agree: DOE plan for Hanford tank waste is not good, Tri City Herald, BY ANNETTE CARY, acary@tricityherald.com – 14 Nov 18, RICHLAND, WA 

More than 2,000 people submitted comments or signed petitions critical of a proposal for closing Hanford’s underground radioactive waste storage tanks, according to a coalition of environmental and Hanford watchdog groups.

The Department of Energy sought comments on a draft evaluation that concluded no significant threat to the environment would be posed by its plan to close an initial group of Hanford tanks.

The 16 single-shell tanks that make up the group called the C Tank Farm have been emptiedof about 96 percent of the radioactive and hazardous chemical waste they once held. The waste was left from the past processing of irradiated uranium fuel to remove plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

DOE has proposed stabilizing the tanks, which still hold about 64,000 gallons of nuclear waste, by filling them with concrete-like grout and leaving them in the ground in central Hanford…….

Hanford Challenge, Columbia Riverkeeper and the Nuclear Resources Defense Council submitted comments jointly, challenging the legality of reclassifying the waste as low level waste and calling the proposal not protective of human health and the environment.

The proposal must be withdrawn, they said.

DOE has said it is committed to an open, transparent process and will consider comments from states, tribal nations and the public before making a final determination.
The public comment period on the draft evaluation closed last week, but there will be other chances for public comment before a final decision is made.

DOE has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do a technical review and a public meeting will be held with DOE and NRC, likely in early 2019.

DOE could issue a final evaluation and determination, including a response to the NRC

review and public comments, in the spring.

Additional regulatory steps would be needed before grouting the C Farm Tanks would be allowed to proceed. A separate public comment period would be required to modify DOE’s dangerous waste permit issued by the Department of Ecology.

Annette Cary; 509-582-1533; @HanfordNews https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article221624605.html

November 15, 2018 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Massive fans being built to ventilate underground nuclear waste dump in new Mexico

Work underway on massive fans for nuclear waste repository https://apnews.com/2cefc1ad7dd34f22a8dd7e1ee86aaabc  CARLSBAD, N.M. (AP) 14 Nov 18— The U.S. Energy Department says a New York-based company is building several massive fans to be used in a new multimillion-dollar ventilation system for the federal government’s only underground nuclear waste repository.

Officials say the six fans being made by the Encorus Group will significantly increase the amount of air in the underground portion of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico.

Each fan will stand 20 feet tall and weigh 44,000 pounds.

Construction of the ventilation system is expected to wrap up in early 2021.  he ventilation overhaul was prompted by a radiation release in 2014 that contaminated portions of the repository and forced its closure for nearly three years. The release resulted from an inappropriately packed drum of waste that came from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

November 15, 2018 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Russia now offering to help Norway to deal with the inappropriate storage of radioactive waste.

Barents Observer 9th ~Nov 2018 , On Thursday, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a surprise move said
it was ready to assist Norway in dealing with the inappropriate storage of  radioactive waste. Norway’s nuclear and radiation watchdog, the NRPA, now tells the Barents Observer that a cooperation with Russia is possible, but no formal inquiry has yet come from Moscow to the radiation authority in Norway.
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2018/11/norway-keeps-door-open-russian-assistance-secure-spent-nuclear-fuel-research

November 12, 2018 Posted by | EUROPE, Russia, wastes | Leave a comment

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