So Called Small Modular Reactors Would Be Nuclear Nightmares
Stanford-led research found that small modular reactors would exacerbate challenges of highly radioactive nuclear waste “We found that small modular reactors will generate at least nine times more neutron-activated steel than conventional power plants. These radioactive materials have to be carefully managed prior to disposal, which will be expensive.”
Note they took the word “Nuclear” out rather like the Geological Disposal Facility, lets not scare the horses!
Marianne Birkby, Radiation Free Lakeland 16th Feb 2025
There was an excellent letter in the Westmorland Gazette this week, a newspaper covering the South Cumbria area.
The letter from Philip Gilligan of South Lakeland and Lancaster District CND points out that the so called Small Modular Reactors would produce nuclear waste. This is true and bad enough but only tells part of the story. The waste from these new reactors would be far more dangerous than from existing reactors. Stanford-led research found that small modular reactors would exacerbate challenges of highly radioactive nuclear waste “We found that small modular reactors will generate at least nine times more neutron-activated steel than conventional power plants. These radioactive materials have to be carefully managed prior to disposal, which will be expensive.”
The study also found that the spent nuclear fuel from small modular reactors will be discharged in greater volumes per unit energy extracted and can be far more complex than the spent fuel discharged from existing power plants. Along with the increased radioactive wastes each site would require the presence of armed police from the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. As Noel Wauchope writes on the Australian Independent Media Network …
‘New Civil Engineer brought up a few points that have escaped notice, following the publication of the draft National Policy Statement for nuclear energy generation (EN-7) They note that; “Despite EN-7 being 64 pages, just two lines are dedicated to specifically addressing the security of SMRs.”
The new regulations for SMRs would allow for many new nuclear sites near communities.………… https://radiationfreelakeland.substack.com/p/so-called-small-modular-reactors
Belgium’s oldest nuclear reactor shut down for good after 50 years
15 February 2025, https://www.belganewsagency.eu/oldest-nuclear-reactor-shut-down-for-good-after-50-years
The Doel 1 nuclear reactor was definitively shut down safely on Friday night, the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control (FANC) has confirmed. After 50 years of electricity production, Belgium’s oldest nuclear reactor, with a capacity of 445 megawatts, was disconnected from the high-voltage grid at 21.37.
The FANC said the operation was carried out in complete safety. “Technically, there is no difference from a temporary maintenance shutdown, except that the reactor will not be restarted to produce electricity,” it said in a press release.
A shutdown phase lasting approximately five years is now beginning, during which the fuel will be cooled in order to “significantly reduce the radiological risk to the environment”. The waste will also be removed and the pipes emptied and rinsed. Then the actual dismantling will begin, which could last up to 15 more years.
Lifespan extended
Doel 1 is the third reactor to be definitively decommissioned, after Doel 3 in 2022 and Tihange 2 in 2023. Tihange 1 will also be shut down in the autumn.
The shutdown phase for Doel 1 will be slightly different to that for the other reactors, as Doel 1 and 2 are “twin” reactors that share certain systems, such as the control room and the engine room. These parts will only be shut down when Doel 2 is definitively decommissioned on 30 November.
Belgium will then have only two active nuclear reactors: Doel 4 and Tihange 3. Their operating period has been extended by 10 years until 2035 and the new federal government hopes to extend them for another decade.
There really ARE necessary nuclear industry jobs – IN DEMOLISHING NUCLEAR REACTORS!
Dounreay to take on 23 new apprentices
One of Britain’s most complex environmental restoration projects is taking on 23 new apprentices.
Nuclear Restoration Services and Nuclear Decommissioning Authority 13 February 2025,
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/dounreay-to-take-on-23-new-apprentices
The decommissioning of the former centre of fast reactor research and development at Dounreay is continuing to create long-term opportunities for young people.
Applications are open for the next intake of apprentices, with 23 places in total available.
The apprenticeships are in engineering trades, engineering design, construction scaffolding, construction painting, business administration and project management, and vary in length from two years to four years.
The closing date for applications is 14 to 21 February, with start dates in August.
Dounreay’s operator, Nuclear Restoration Services, is also in the process of recruiting 9 health physics surveyor trainees.
Their 2-year training programme equips them with an NVQ Level 2 Diploma in Radiological Protection.
Dounreay also has 15 places this year for graduate recruitment. Applications for these posts closed on 6 January.
More information about the opportunities at Dounreay can be found at the site’s careers website at www.dounreaycareers.com.
Dounreay has a long and proud history of high-quality training for young people across a wide range of disciplines and I’m delighted we are able to continue this during the decommissioning phase of the site,
said Dave Wilson, managing director of NRS Dounreay.
The site is complex, its decommissioning is challenging and we can offer superb training and development opportunities at the cutting edge of science and engineering.
Japan to pick final disposal sites for Fukushima soil around 2030
The Environment Ministry plans to decide around 2030 or later where to finally dispose of soil removed from the ground during decontamination work after the March 2011 disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings’ Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant, it was learned Wednesday.
The plan was included in a draft timetable for the final disposal of such soil outside Fukushima Prefecture by March 2045, presented by the ministry at a meeting of a related expert panel on the day. The ministry will consider a process for selecting final disposal sites from fiscal 2025.
As of the end of December, about 14 million cubic meters of such soil had been transported to an interim storage facility straddling the Fukushima towns of Okuma and Futaba.
Three-quarters of the soil had radiation concentrations of 8,000 becquerels per kilogram or less and will be reused in public works, while the rest will be subject to final disposal.
Final disposal sites are estimated to require up to 50 hectares if the volume of the soil is not reduced, or 2 to 3 hectares if the volume is reduced. Meanwhile, radiation levels would be higher in the reduced soil.
The government is slated to draw up a basic plan as early as this spring for reusing some of the soil and finally disposing of the rest.
TEPCO takes on challenge of making space for Fukushima nuclear debris
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Japan) (AFP) – Workers at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have started dismantling water storage tanks to free up space for tonnes of nuclear debris, 14 years after the facility was hit by a devastating tsunami.…………………….
France24 15th Feb 2025, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250215-tepco-takes-on-challenge-of-making-space-for-fukushima-nuclear-debris
Trouble at t’mill: local Councils rebel over nuke dump plan
The NFLAs have welcomed today’s statement made by the Leader of East Lindsey District Council that he shall recommend to his Executive that they ‘unanimously withdraw’ the council from the Theddlethorpe Community Partnership and the GDF process at their next meeting.
Coupled with the withdrawal of Millom Town Council from the South Copeland GDF Community Partnership and condemnation by Seascale Parish Council of the imposition of an Area of Focus for Mid-Copeland east of the village, this demonstrates that there is increasing disaffection amongst politicians with the process.
In his statement, ELDC Council Leader Craig Leyland cited the change of prospective site for a possible GDF surface facility from the former Theddlethorpe Conoco gas terminal to a 4km square parcel of farmland between the inland villages of Gayton le Marsh and Great Carlton. This he describes as prime agricultural land that has not had any previous industrial use and that is ‘nestling close to the Lincolnshire Wolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’…………….
NFLA 12th Feb 2025,
https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/trouble-at-tmill-local-councils-rebel-over-nuke-dump-plan/
Nuclear waste plan ‘would scar Lincolnshire Wolds’
BBC UK Sharon Edwards, Political reporter, Lincolnshire, 12th Feb 2025
A council is set to withdraw from talks to bury nuclear waste in the countryside.
Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), a government body, has earmarked an area near Louth, Lincolnshire, to build a disposal facility.
However, East Lindsey District Council (ELDC) leader Craig Leyland said the scheme would “scar” agricultural land, and a consultation process had served only to “antagonise and distress” residents.
NWS thanked the district council for taking part in the talks and said it would continue working with Lincolnshire County Council.
In 2021, the district council joined a community partnership group with NWS to examine a previous proposal to bury waste at a former gas terminal in Theddlethorpe, near Mablethorpe.
Last month, NWS announced it had moved the proposed location of the facility to land between Gayton le Marsh and Great Carlton.
But Leyland said the new proposal would “scar several kilometres of Lincolnshire farmland on the margins of the Lincolnshire Wolds”.
He also said the consultation process had “not been effective” and the council had not been given all the information it needed from NWS.
East Lindsey councillors will be asked to formally vote to withdraw from the consultation.
‘A key role’
The move will not automatically kill the plan, which requires “community consent” to go ahead, as NWS is still working with the county council……………………………
Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) remains in the process, but leader Councillor Martin Hill said the authority shared some of ELDC’s concerns about the new location…………………………….
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cnvqljq77p0o
Kansai Electric to ship more spent nuclear fuel to France
Fukui Japan Times 9th Feb 2025 https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/02/09/japan/japan-more-spent-nuke-fuel-to-france/
Kansai Electric Power is working to double the amount of spent nuclear fuel it will ship to France, increasing it by about 200 tons, informed sources said.
The move comes as Fukui Prefecture, home to several nuclear plants, urges Kansai Electric to address shrinking storage capacity for spent nuclear fuel, the sources said.
In 2023, Kansai Electric announced a plan to ship about 200 tons of the fuel from its Takahama plant in Fukui to France starting in fiscal 2027. Based on the Japanese government’s policy, the spent fuel will be used for research on technology to reprocess uranium-plutonium mixed oxide, or MOX, fuel.
At the Takahama plant, about 90% of the spent fuel storage capacity has already been used, and that amount is expected to reach the upper limit in about three years.
About 200 tons of spent fuel will be generated if the No. 1 to No. 4 reactors at the plant are operated for about three years. Kansai Electric has restarted all of its seven nuclear reactors.
The company initially planned to send spent fuel mainly to a reprocessing plant to be built in Aomori Prefecture, but the completion of the facility has been postponed.
Last September, the company notified Fukui Gov. Tatsuji Sugimoto of its intention to review the plan, and said that it would halt three reactors in the prefecture if it fails to come up with a proposal that can win the understanding of officials there by the end of fiscal 2024.
Council votes to end Holderness nuclear waste talks
22 February 2024, Richard Madden & David McKenna, BBC News
Councillors have voted to immediately pull out of talks over the siting of a nuclear waste disposal facility in East Yorkshire.
Nuclear Waste Services (NWS) had identified South Holderness as a potential area for a Geological Disposal Facility (GDF).
East Riding of Yorkshire Council said it had listened to the public and decided to withdraw.
NWS said it would now “wind down” the South Holderness proposal.
The proposal to pull out of the talks had been put forward by two Conservative councillors, Lyn Healing and Sean McMaster, and was voted through almost unanimously at a full council meeting on Wednesday.
Beverley and Holderness MP, Graham Stuart, said he was “delighted” at the result of the vote.
‘Hare-brained idea’
Ms Healing told the meeting she was concerned about safety and the impact on tourism and farming due to the area becoming industrialised.
She said both she and Mr McMaster had received hundreds of messages from concerned residents.
Speaking ahead of the vote, Councillor Denis Healy, Liberal Democrats, said local residents had “unequivocally” rejected the idea.
“So, let’s just show our residents the respect they deserve and give them our verdict on this hare-brained idea right now,” he added.
A GDF consists of a series of vaults and tunnels deep underground, or under the sea, where the material would be buried.
NWS, which had claimed a GDF would create thousands of jobs and opportunities for investment in infrastructure, said it “fully respected” any decision taken by the authority…………………………………… https://bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-68350061
Nuclear Dump “Reveal” of “Areas of Focus.” A Nuclear Dump Anywhere is a Nuclear Dump Everywhere – #GDFOFF.
On By mariannewildart,
https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2025/02/04/nuclear-dump-reveal-of-areas-of-focus-a-nuclear-dump-anywhere-is-a-nuclear-dump-everywhere-gdfoff/
Nuclear Waste Services have “revealed” their “Areas of Focus” for Mid-Copeland and South Copeland along with Lincolnshire.
This is not so much of a reveal as now being more upfront with the maps which were previously obtuse so as not to scare the horses grazing happily on premium hay courtesy of the “bribes”.
Nuclear Free Local Authorities have produced a press release below which assumes that “Drigg has been spared” for now at least. This is unfortunately exactly what Nuclear Waste Services want folk to think. The reality is that Drigg is being eyed up for for so called “Near Surface Disposal” 10s of metres below ground for Intermediate Level Wastes, these are the wastes that were refused at the NIREX inquiry for a dump 1000 metres below ground, however, the inquiry found the wastes would percolate to the surface faster than the nuclear industry had forcast. At 10s of metres below ground the rate of percolation would be even faster!
Mark Kirkbride (the coal mine boss) has produced costings for the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management/Nuclear Decommissioning Authority for the “co-disposal” of Intermediate and High Level nuclear wastes. This would involve a dump for Intermediate Level Wastes underground with the above ground sprawl and drift tunnels also being used to access a sub-sea Geological Disposal Facility.
“Exploratory” boreholes have already been drilled for “Near Surface Disposal” of Intermediate Level Wastes at Drigg. The “tandem” plan to “co-locate” a Near Surface Disposal Facility for Intermediate Level Nuclear Wastes which would be fully delivered in 10 years ie within the lifetimes of many of the people within the so called Community Partnerships now. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority have stated in their 2020 position paper on Near Surface Disposal that “The assessment of disposal costs has been made on the assumption that a nearer- surface disposal facility ..would be co-located with a GDF.” Lakes Against Nuclear Dump say that “Drigg would be the politically expedient choice for co-location given that the community has already been in receipt of decades worth of funding for the ongoing blight caused by hosting the Low Level Waste Repository.”
At a GDF drop in event at Drigg we were told that “the Near Surface Disposal Plan for Intermediate Level Wastes has nothing to do with a GDF.” Mmmm Rather like the hot plutonium now nonchalantly earmarked for a GDF? Boy does this industry love mission creep. Our report on the shifting sands of nuclear waste dumping is here outlining the Drigg plan
Here are the newly released “Areas of Focus” with Drigg being “spared” – yeah right we believe you. No area is safe – the only sane response is to oppose a geological disposal facility aka deep hot nuclear dump anywhere – all would be impacted.
The following press release is from Nuclear Free Local Authorities who have given a good summary of Nuclear Waste Services “Areas of Focus,” the veil is slipping. The “Areas of Focus” are for the surface nuclear sprawl which would blight towns and villages on the Lake District coast but not within the National Park. For this intergenerational toxic blight there is proposed a single “Test of Public Support” for a limited area and excluding the wider region for what would be the biggest and most dangerous infrastructure project in the UK. Nuclear Waste Services want to give the impression that “Drigg has been spared” – but we say buyer beware – Drigg may be the gateway to GDF via so called Near Surface Disposal of the high end of Intermediate Level Wastes 10s of meters below ground. The only sane response is to oppose this plan.
Continue readingFury over switch of possible nuclear waste dump site to village land near Louth
A previous survey revealed that 85 per cent of local residents were against the dump, which would store nuclear waste beneath up to 1,000 metres of solid rock until its radioactivity naturally decayed.
By Richard Silverwood, 3rd Feb 2025,
The bombshell news that a nuclear waste dump could now be built on greenfield land close to Louth has been greeted with dismay by campaigners and the town’s MP.
East Lincolnshire has long been identified as one of three potential locations for the dump, known as a GDF (geological disposal site).
And the government agency, Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), charged with finding a suitable area, has focused its attention on the former gas terminal site, operated by Conoco, within the coastal village of Theddlethorpe.
But now NWS has announced that it is looking inland and “beyond Theddlethorpe”. Instead, it is “prioritising” largely agricultural land to the north of the A157 road, between the villages of Gayton le Marsh and Great Carlton and south-west of Gayton Wind Farm.
A network of underground vaults and tunnels would transfer shipments of waste to a sealed storage area under the seabed which would extend 22 kilometres from the coast.
NWS insists nothing has been decided and has promised to keep all residents informed. A series of webinars and public drop-in events is already under way and will continue throughout February.
However, opponents of the dump, led by Conservative MP Victoria Atkins, are furious and are calling for a public vote on the entire scheme.
Ms Atkins said: “I have opposed the threat of a nuclear waste dump on the Lincolnshire coast since the proposal came to light several years ago.
“In that time, residents have had to live with the uncertainty, worry and financial costs of having this monstrous carbuncle threatened in their area.
“People have been left in limbo and have had their house prices severely impacted by these proposals.
“This latest news will be very distressing for the residents in and around the area. Rest assured, I will be meeting NWS in the coming week to continue to put pressure on them to move their focus away from Lincolnshire entirely………………………
The campaign group, Guardians Of The East Coast, has also lambasted the latest proposal, claiming the switch has been made because the Theddlethorpe site would not be large enough.
Chairman Mike Crookes said the fresh site would span 900 acres of agricultural land, including at least one farm. He called on Lincolnshire County Council to withdraw their apparent engagement with the dump scheme process.
“The council has expressed its outrage at agricultural land being taken for solar farms and pylons by National Grid,” Mr Crookes said.
“But it seems perfectly happy with a square mile of agricultural land being used to bury high-level nuclear waste, including weapons-grade plutonium.
“When the project was first announced, the council said it was policy to make use of ‘brownfield’ sites such as the gas terminal.
“But if it has a policy of opposing the industrial use of agricultural land, why is it apparently facilitating this project?”
Another group firmly against the nuclear waste dump is the Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA), whose secretary Richard Outram described the fresh site as “worse than the original”.
“The news will have come as a tremendous shock to the residents of Gayton le Marsh and Great Carlton, where the threat of a dump suddenly appears writ large.
“Those residents are already up in arms and, doubtless in the coming days, new protest groups will be formed to represent the people affected.
“It is important to emphasise that the decision on the final site for a GDF is still a long way off. There is still time to organise and fight back.”
Coun Travis Hesketh, who represents the ward of Withern and Theddlethorpe on East Lindsey District Council, said residents were demanding a public vote – and this year, not in 2027 as previously promised.
A previous survey revealed that 85 per cent of local residents were against the dump, which would store nuclear waste beneath up to 1,000 metres of solid rock until its radioactivity naturally decayed.
However, NWS is hoping to win people over and has set up a community partnership group to fully explain the scheme.
Hidden history of RAF airfield may be lost in latest nuke dump plan
The latest announcement by Nuclear Waste Services making the site of RAF
Millom part of the Area of Focus in South Copeland may lead to the airfield
and its rich wartime history being lost to a nuclear waste dump.
NFLA 4th Feb 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/hidden-history-of-raf-airfield-may-be-lost-in-latest-nuke-dump-plan/
AI’s Energy Demands Threaten a Nuclear Waste Nightmare
Reviving nuclear power plants to power AI threatens an avalanche of nuclear waste
By Michael Riordan , https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ais-energy-demands-threaten-a-nuclear-waste-nightmare/ January 31, 2025
Long in decline, the U.S. nuclear industry is hoping for resurrection at two sites of its greatest failures: Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and the Hanford Site in Washington state. Nuclear power, the industry claims, will help satisfy the surging power demands from data centers and the growing AI economy. But such a wrong turn ignores the long-unresolved problems of radioactive nuclear wastes that AI cannot wish away.
In September Constellation Energy announced plans to restart a shuttered reactor at Three Mile Island, prodded by Microsoft, which will need many gigawatts of power to perform extensive AI calculations in its expanding fleet of data centers. Amazon followed suit and announced in November that it will invest $334 million to develop small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) at Hanford, site of the world’s first plutonium-production facility.
Google and Meta are also hoping to bring nuclear power back. In October 2024 Google announced it eventually plans to purchase 500 megawatts of electricity from Kairos Power, which is developing a novel SMR in Oak Ridge, Tenn., on the site of the national lab that long refined uranium for the nuclear industry. And Facebook parent Meta is seeking bids for nuclear power plants for its data centers.
These tech giants recognize that the next generation of microprocessors to be used for AI calculations at data centers will require oodles of electricity to power and cool them. A single Nvidia Blackwell chip, for example, can draw up to two kilowatts, more than what is needed for a typical house. Cram thousands of them in servers inside a data center, and they will need as much power as a small city.
So-called hyperscale data centers require over 100 megawatts (100 MW)—a sizeable fraction of the output of a major power plant. And that power should be cheap, steady and reliable.
An authoritative December 2024 report from the U.S. Department of Energy, written by energy experts at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is especially illuminating. The growth in U.S. data-center energy usage over the next five years, they state, would correspond “to a total power demand for data centers between 74 and 132 [gigawatts].” That would represent some 7 to 12 percent of the U.S. electricity consumption forecast for 2028.
Where on Earth is all this power going to come from? Given the challenges electric utilities face in supplying electricity to meet other growing needs, including electric vehicles, it’s small wonder that big tech has turned back to the atomic nucleus. But the power demands outlined in the DOE report would require building or resurrecting the equivalent of at least 40 Three Mile Island reactors over the next five years. That’s impossible.
Several years ago Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft promised not to exacerbate atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels. But that laudable goal is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve, given their data centers’ exploding electricity consumption. So they have instead begun touting a return to nuclear power to avert this thorny problem. That’s a huge mistake.
Nuclear power is indeed a source of carbon-emission-free energy, but it is hardly a clean energy source, and it is definitely not renewable. All along the uranium supply chain—from mining to enrichment to the fabrication of fuel rods or pellets—opportunities abound for radioactive releases. In South Texas, for example, landowners worry about contamination of their groundwater by renewed uranium mining activities nearby.
The diagram below illustrates carbon emissions – but the same picture applies also to radioactive emissions
Since 1989, the DOE has spent hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars cleaning up the original nuclear complex—including the gargantuan Oak Ridge factory that enriched much of the uranium used for commercial nuclear power. And despite decades of trying, the department has yet to fully clean up and dismantle the oozing, disintegrating tanks of highly radioactive wastes left over from plutonium processing at Hanford.
The storage and containment of spent nuclear fuel is in fact the crucial unresolved challenge of the U.S. nuclear industry. Over 90,000 tons of these wastes are stored at 77 sites in 35 states—an amount increasing by over 2,000 tons a year.
Small modular reactors, promoted by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and others, will only add to this growing burden. As former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) chair Allison Macfarlane and Rodney C. Ewing of Stanford University stated, “In some cases these new reactors may make it worse by creating more waste that’s more costly to manage, new kinds of complex waste, or just more waste, period.”
Elsewhere, Macfarlane stressed the procedural and practical difficulties faced by novel nuclear reactor technologies in gaining NRC acceptance and achieving commercial success. Shortly after it had received NRC certification in 2023, for example, the much-touted NuScale SMR project was abandoned after anticipated construction costs more than doubled to $9.3 billion. Leaving aside the waste problem, a commercially successful SMR design is probably over a decade away.
But the relentless AI gold rush, if left unchecked, will impose unattainable demands on projected power supplies well before that. Meanwhile, electricity rates will rise inexorably in light of the law of supply and demand. That looming energy crisis explains big tech’s efforts to slow shutdowns of fossil-fueled power plants and to resurrect shuttered reactors.
Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft executives should instead take a deep breath and begin reevaluating their options. Do they really need to build and upgrade data centers at such a breakneck pace? Or is this devil-take-the-hindmost AI arms race just the result of bitter competition, prodded by recent advances in semiconductor technology?
And what about the truly clean, renewable energy sources they once embraced—especially solar, wind and geothermal? Yes, the variability of solar and wind energy makes them a poor match to the steady power requirements of data centers. But energy storage has come a long way recently and has a promising future. And the recent startling success of the Chinese DeepSeek AI program demonstrates that software efficiency will play an important role in this effort.
Given the dark clouds still lingering over nuclear power, especially its unresolved waste problem, these renewable alternatives deserve renewed consideration.
Threat of nuke dump falls on Cumbrian and Lincolnshire rural communities
NFLA 3rd Feb 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/threat-of-nuke-dump-falls-on-cumbrian-and-lincolnshire-rural-communities/
Residents living in rural villages in West Cumbria and East Lincolnshire will have been shocked to discover that Nuclear Waste Services has its eye on their backyard as the potential location for Britain’s high-level nuclear waste dump.
For contained amidst the detailed announcements made last week by NWS of that organisation’s plans to conduct more intensive investigations in so-called Areas of Focus in the three GDF Search Areas were revelations that several small villages are now potentially threatened by this huge civil-engineering project.
The Geological Disposal Facility will be the final repository for Britain’s historic and future high-level nuclear waste, including redundant nuclear submarine reactors, spent nuclear fuel, and the world’s largest civil stockpile of deadly plutonium. Nuclear Waste Services is charged with finding a forever site for the GDF that combines ‘suitable’ geology and a ‘willing’ community.
The facility will comprise a surface site approximately 1 km square that shall receive regular shipments of nuclear waste. This waste will be transferred downwards along a sub-surface accessway into a network of deep tunnels located between 400 and 1,000 metres below the seabed. Here the waste will be placed in permanent storage with tunnels sealed up as they are filled. The network of tunnels could be between 20 – 50 kms square in area and extend up to 22 kms out from the coast (the UK territorial limit).
Last week, Nuclear Waste Services published three ‘brochures’, which identified specific Areas of Focus within each Search Area that NWS consider may have potential to locate the surface facility, the accessway, and the tunnel network. NWS intends to conduct more intensive investigations in these areas, seeking official approval at a later stage to carry out deep borehole drilling at those sites deemed to be most geologically promising by NWS.
It is in the South Copeland and Theddlethorpe GDF Search Areas that the chosen Areas of Focus will court controversy.
In South Copeland, NWS has now finally conceded – as the NFLAs and many local Cumbrians have long suspected – that their area of choice is West of Haverigg, incorporating the former RAF airfield and surrounding the prison [Figure 1]. Although Nuclear Waste Services have made much of their efforts to avoid Haverigg and Millom, referencing the provision of a ‘buffer zone’, they have given no similar consideration to the poor residents of Kirksanton, who will find that the Area of Focus comes up to their very doorsteps and, in some sorry instances, incorporates their properties. In so doing NWS have provided for direct access to the railway line.
As the Area of Focus incorporates the former RAF airfield and surrounds the prison, it seems inconceivable that HMP Haverigg would remain open if the GDF surface facility were to be located there, and the two wind farms owned by Thrive Renewables and Windcluster might also be lost[i]. The prison’s closure would impact more than two hundred staff, over 100 of them local, as well as local businesses which supply the prison[ii].
There is at least some consolation for the good people of Drigg, living on the other side of the South Copeland Search Area. Although a parcel of land northeast of the village was identified as being of interest, in recognition that the Low Level (Radioactive) Waste Repository is located nearby it was considered that ‘an Area of Focus so close to the LLW Repository site could potentially impact ongoing operation of the site’. Consequently, NWS are ‘not prioritising it at this stage’, but this is one to watch as this may represent a stay, rather than a commutation, of execution.
In the Theddlethorpe Search Area, a huge bombshell has been dropped on the unsuspecting residents of Great and Little Carlton and Gayton-le-Marsh, as Nuclear Waste Services’ primary focus has moved from the former Theddlethorpe Conoco gas terminal to the fields that lie between these villages [Figure 2]. As the new site is so far inland, NWS are looking at a prospective accessway of considerable length under the King’s National Nature Reserve to the coast [Figure 3 on original].
The current site selection appears worse than the original. Local Theddlethorpe and Withern Ward Councillor Travis Hesketh explains why: “After 4 years NWS have abandoned the 69-acre brownfield former gas terminal site for 250-1000 acres of productive farmland”. The NFLAs look forward to hearing senior Lincolnshire politicians berating the loss of agricultural land to this energy project as they have so readily condemned the encroachment of solar farms and pylons. But we won’t be holding our collective breath!
Also worrying is the illustration used in the accompanying ‘brochure’, a more detailed version of which is used with this media release [Figure 4 on original and at top of this page]. This incorporates a jetty – termed a Marine Off-loading Facility – which suggests that if the Lincolnshire site is chosen, NWS might consider bringing waste shipments to the site by ship from Sellafield as there is no immediate rail station.
This news will have been a tremendous shock to many local people in Cumbria and Lincolnshire for now the threat of a nuclear waste dump suddenly appears writ large. Residents are already up in arms, and doubtless in coming days, there will also be new protest groups formed to represent the people affected.
It is important though to emphasise that the identification of the final site for a GDF is a long way off, is still very uncertain, and that there is still time to organise and fight back! Cllr Hesketh is clear what should happen next: “Residents are well informed and want a vote now. East Lindsey District Council and Lincolnshire County Council promises of a vote by 2027 are worthless as they will be abolished in local government reorganisations.”
As ever the NFLAs as always stands ready to offer advice and support to these new groups, as we continue to work with existing groups which have long campaigned against the GDF.
Government announces dangerous new plan for more plutonium at Livermore Lab
January 27, 2025, By Marilyn Bechtel, https://peoplesworld.org/article/government-announces-dangerous-new-plan-for-more-plutonium-at-livermore-lab/
In a surprise mid-January announcement, the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) revealed it proposes to significantly increase the quantities of nuclear-grade plutonium to be stored at its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., and to be trucked in and out of the lab on area roads and freeways such as nearby I-580. NNSA’s proposal would also allow riskier activities with plutonium than those currently authorized, and could allow increases of other nuclear materials at the Lab.
Livermore Lab is one of two locations designing and developing every nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal.
The proposal announced on Jan. 14 also projects an abbreviated 30-day public comment period on the new Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement which must be prepared. Just a week later, NNSA announced that a virtual public hearing will take place on Wednesday, Jan. 29, from 6 – 8 p.m. PST.
NNSA’s announcement came just a year after a lengthy public process had been completed to disclose and analyze the environmental impact of the Lab’s activities during at least the next decade. In that process, some increases in plutonium-related activities and plutonium at the Lab were indicated, but far less than the “bomb-usable” quantities envisioned in the new plan.
Scott Yundt, executive director of Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (Tri-Valley CAREs), which monitors nuclear weapons and environmental cleanup activities with a special focus on Livermore Lab and surrounding communities, says the new proposal “increases both the likelihood and potential severity of an accident, or intentional destructive act, at the Livermore Lab.” He said some 90,000 people live within five miles of the Lab, which is closely surrounded by houses, apartment buildings, sports fields and schools. Over 7 million live within a 50-mile radius, identified in Lab environmental documents as the “potentially affected population.”
Yundt said the new proposal “skirts the intended purpose of the National Environmental Policy Act. The Lab was repeatedly asked in public comment sessions during the year-long Site Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) process if it was contemplated that the Security Category limits at Livermore Lab would change over the next decade to allow for increased quantities of plutonium and a return to the riskier kinds of nuclear weapons activities that used to occur there during the height of the Cold War. And the answer given to Tri-Valley CAREs and the public was a flat ‘no.’”
Yundt called it “unfortunate” that the new plan wasn’t included in the SWEIS process but is now being presented as a new, stand-alone environmental document: “This is exhausting for members of the public who are concerned about the Lab’s activities, forcing them to again engage and grapple with the cumulative environmental impacts of the Lab’s actions so soon. This feels like a deliberately induced whiplash.”
Livermore Lab has a dubious record both on maintaining security of nuclear-weapons-usable amounts of plutonium it has stored in its most heavily guarded facility, and on avoiding pollution of surrounding communities.
Tri-Valley CAREs Senior Adviser Marylia Kelley says the Lab “has already proven that it cannot keep weapons-usable quantities of plutonium safe.” Kelley recalled the scheduled force-on-force security drill the Department of Energy conducted there in 2008, to test the security of nuclear-weapons-usable amounts of plutonium stored in the Lab’s most heavily-guarded area, the “Superblock.”
While the attack wasn’t a surprise, the mock-terrorists were able to enter the Superblock, get the material they wanted, and hold their ground long enough to detonate a simulated nuclear “dirty bomb.” Additionally, a DOE team was able to take away some of the plutonium material.
Lab lost its Category II security
“This is how Livermore Lab lost its Category II security,” Kelley said, adding that removal of the Lab’s large stock of plutonium was completed in 2012, and the Lab currently holds a lower Category III security classification which limits the amount of nuclear material it can hold on-site.
Kelley called it “shocking and dangerous that Livermore Lab management and its overseeing agency plan to bring large quantities of deadly plutonium back to Livermore” because developments since 2012 have made it even less safe to have large quantities of plutonium there. The City of Livermore has a larger population now and has extended its boundaries so the plutonium would now be within Livermore City limits, and the Lab has recently ramped up its workforce.
“The bottom line is that more Lab employees and local residents could die due to a terror attack or serious accident,” she said. “We must ensure this does not happen.”
Adding to environmental concerns, both the Lab and its Site 300 high explosives testing range near the city of Tracy are federal Super-Fund sites, undergoing cleanup the government expects will not be complete until about 2060.
Though the U.S. hasn’t built new plutonium pits on an industrial scale since 1989, Congress and recent federal administrations have mandated that U.S. nuclear weapons must be modernized, and the NNSA has started plutonium production for newly designed nuclear weapons including the W87-1 warhead, designed by Livermore Lab to top the new Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. New pits are being built at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and to provide a second site, a major retrofit is proposed for an existing facility at Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
At the end of September, a South Carolina District Court ruled in favor of a lawsuit by plaintiffs Tri-Valley CAREs, Savannah River Site Watch and Nuclear Watch New Mexico against DOE and NNSA. U.S. Judge Mary Geiger Lewis ruled in favor of the monitoring organizations’ contention that the government agencies had failed to “programmatically” evaluate the environmental aspects of proposed enhanced production of plutonium bomb pits.
Judge Geiger’s ruling requires NNSA to issue a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) analyzing the full impacts of its plutonium pit production plans across the nuclear weapons complex. Yundt said this should include the role of Livermore Lab, where this year’s funding for plutonium pit production has escalated by 50% over last year.
“The enhanced plutonium activities suddenly being proposed at Livermore’s Plutonium Facility should be included as part of the nationwide PEIS on plutonium pit production because it is a ‘connected action’ to producing new cores for new nuclear weapons,” Yundt said.
“That PEIS is the appropriate document for a thorough analysis of alternatives in conjunction with the pit production plans, in order to evaluate if this Livermore proposal is truly necessary, rather than producing a stand-alone Supplemental EIS focused solely on the Livermore site that may not include any analysis of the pit production mission, even though that is a driver for the decision.”
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