Hanford wants more time to empty leak-prone radioactive waste tank. Here’s the new deadline, Tri City Herald, BY ANNETTE CARY, acary@tricityherald.com, 18, 2018 , RICHLAND, WA
The Department of Energy will have more time to empty some of Hanford’s leak-prone underground waste storage tanks under an order issued in federal court.
Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson agreed to a request by the state of Washington and DOE to give DOE until the end of 2026 to empty radioactive and hazardous chemical waste from nine more single-shell tanks.
It is an extension from March 31, 2024. A second deadline to keep work on pace to meet that milestone also has been extended.
DOE has another six months — until June 2021 — to have the first two tanks of the nine emptied. New court-enforced consent decree deadlines for retrieving the waste from tanks and treating it at the $17 billion vitrification plant under construction were set by Malouf Peterson in 2016………https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article220235380.html
October 22, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
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60,000 tons of dangerous radioactive waste sits on Great Lakes shores, THE EFFECTS OF A WORST-CASE SCENARIO — FROM A NATURAL DISASTER TO TERRORISM — COULD CAUSE UNTHINKABLE CONSEQUENCES FOR THE GREAT LAKES REGION, Keith Matheny, Detroit Free Press, Oct. 19, 2018 More than 60,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel is stored on the shores of four of the five Great Lakes — in some cases, mere yards from the waterline — in still-growing stockpiles.
“It’s actually the most dangerous waste produced by any industry in the history of the Earth,” said Gordon Edwards, president of the nonprofit Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
The spent nuclear fuel is partly from 15 current or former U.S. nuclear power plants, including four in Michigan, that have generated it over the past 50 years or more. But most of the volume stored along the Great Lakes, more than 50,000 tons, comes from Canadian nuclear facilities, where nuclear power is far more prevalent.
It remains on the shorelines because there’s still nowhere else to put it. The U.S. government broke a promise to provide the nuclear power industry with a central, underground repository for the material by 1998. Canada, while farther along than the U.S. in the process of trying to find a place for the waste, also doesn’t have one yet.
The nuclear power industry and its federal regulator, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, point to spent nuclear fuel’s safe on-site storage over decades. But the remote possibility of a worst-case scenario release — from a natural disaster, a major accident, or an act of terrorism — could cause unthinkable consequences for the Great Lakes region.
Scientific research has shown a radioactive cloud from a spent fuel pool fire would span hundreds of miles, and force the evacuation of millions of residents in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Toronto or other population centers, depending on where the accident occurred and wind patterns.
It would release multiple times the radiation that emanated from the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011 — a disaster that led to mass evacuations, no-go zones that exist to this day, and a government ban on fishing in a large, offshore area of the Pacific Ocean because of high levels of radioactive cesium in the water and in fish. The fishing industry there has yet to recover, more than seven years later.
“The Mississippi and the Great Lakes — that would be really bad,” said Frank von Hippel, senior research physicist and professor of public and international affairs emeritus at Princeton University.
Added Jim Olson, environmental attorney and founder of the Traverse City-based nonprofit For Love of Water, or FLOW: “The fact that it’s on the shorelines of the Great Lakes takes that high consequence that would be anywhere and paints it red and puts exclamation marks around it.”
Spent nuclear fuel is so dangerous that, a decade removed from a nuclear reactor, its radioactivity would still be 20 times the level that would kill a person exposed to it. Some radioactive byproducts of nuclear power generation remain a health or environmental hazard for tens of thousands of years. And even typically harmless radioactive isotopes that are easily blocked by skin or clothing can become extremely toxic if even small amounts are breathed in, eaten or drank, making their potential contamination of the Great Lakes — the drinking water supply to 40 million people — the connected Mississippi River and the prime agricultural areas of the U.S. a potentially frightening prospect. ……….
For five years, Michigan residents, lawmakers, environmental groups and others around the Midwest have, loudly and nearly unanimously, opposed a planned Canadian underground repository for low-to-medium radioactive waste at Kincardine, Ontario, near the shores of Lake Huron.
Meanwhile, spent nuclear fuel, vastly more radioactive, sits not far from the shores of four Great Lakes — Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario — at 15 currently operating or former nuclear power plant sites on the U.S. side. In Michigan, that includes Fermi 2; the Donald C. Cook nuclear plant in Berrien County; the Palisades nuclear plant in Van Buren County, and the former Big Rock Point nuclear plant in Charlevoix County, which ceased operation in 1997 and where now only casks of spent nuclear fuel remain.
Neither the U.S. nor the Canadian government has constructed a central collection site for the spent nuclear fuel. It’s not just a problem in the Great Lakes region — more than 88,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, an amount that is rising, is stored at 121 U.S. locations across 39 states…….
Spent nuclear fuel isn’t only radioactive, it continues to generate heat. It requires storage in pools with circulating water for typically five years before it can be moved into so-called dry-cask storage — concrete-and-steel obelisks where spent fuel rods receive continued cooling by circulating air.
In practice, however, because of the high costs associated with transferring waste from wet pools to dry casks, nuclear plants have kept decades worth of spent fuel in wet storage. Plant officials instead “re-rack” the pools, reconfiguring them to add more and more spent fuel, well beyond the capacities for which the pools were originally designed.
“The prevailing practice in the United States is you re-rack the pools until they are just about as dense-packed as the nuclear core,” von Hippel said.
Only in recent years have nuclear plants stepped up the transition to dry cask storage because there’s no room left in the wet pools. Still, about two-thirds of on-site spent nuclear fuel remains in wet pools in the U.S.
That’s a safety concern, critics contend. A catastrophe or act of terrorism that drains a spent fuel pool could cause rising temperatures that could eventually cause zirconium cladding — special brackets that hold the spent fuel rods in bundles — to catch fire.
Such a disaster could be worse than a meltdown in a nuclear reactor, as spent nuclear fuel is typically stored with nowhere near the fortified containment of a reactor core.
“The long-term land-contamination consequences of such an event could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl,” a 2003 research paper by von Hippel and seven other nuclear experts stated.
The reference is to the worst nuclear power disaster in world history, the April 1986 reactor explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the former Soviet Union, now a part of the Ukraine, where 4,000 to 90,000 are estimated to have died as a result of the radiation released. A study by the University of Exeter in Great Britain, released this June, found that cow’s milk from farms about 125 miles from the Chernobyl accident site still — more than 30 years later —- contains the radioactive element cesium at levels considered unsafe for adults and at more than seven times the limit unsafe for children.
Allison Macfarlane, a professor of public policy and international affairs at George Washington University, served as chairman of the NRC during the Obama administration from July 2012 until December 2014.
“What I think needs more examination is the practice of densely packing the fuel in the pool,” she said.
The NRC does not regulate how much fuel can be in a pool, in what configuration it’s placed, and how old the fuel is, Macfarlane said. ……….
In a Great Lakes region where magnitude-9.0 earthquakes and tsunamis aren’t a potential threat to stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel, terrorism remains possible………
In a Great Lakes region where magnitude-9.0 earthquakes and tsunamis aren’t a potential threat to stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel, terrorism remains possible.
“The NRC’s position on beyond design basis threats is essentially that this is a matter for the national security apparatus — it’s not our job, so somebody else will take care of it,” he said. “But if you look at the Pentagon, Homeland Security, I think you will look in vain to find any part of that apparatus that is addressing that area that the NRC says is not its job.”……….
Welcome to Zion, nuclear waste dump ………..
Canada’s Yucca Mountain
Because nuclear power is much more widely used in Canada — the province of Ontario alone has 20 nuclear reactors at three plants — it also generates much more nuclear waste.
In Ontario, nearly 52,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel is stored on-site at nuclear plants along Lakes Huron and Ontario.
“There’s a huge amount of high-level, radioactive waste stored right along the water,” said Edwards, the president of the nonprofit Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility……… . https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/10/19/nuclear-waste-great-lakes/1417767002/
October 20, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
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Regulators Discuss New Plans For Nuclear Waste At Hanford https://www.opb.org/news/article/hanford-nuclear-waste-plans-portland-oregon-meetings/, by Cassandra Profita Oct. 15, 2018 Federal and state energy regulators will hold back-to-back meetings in Portland on Tuesday for a proposal to reclassify some of the high-level nuclear waste at the Hanford Site in Washington.
The proposal has major implications for the nuclear waste that remains in Hanford’s storage tanks.
In recent years, the U.S. Department of Energy has been working to retrieve the nuclear waste left in storage tanks, and in one area known as C-Farm, they’ve removed as much as they can get.
“But there is some amount they were not able to get,” said Jeff Burright, nuclear waste remediation specialist with the Oregon Department of Energy. “And that equates to approximately 70,000 gallons of waste.”
The Energy Department wants to downgrade that remainder to “low-level radioactive waste,” so they can leave it in place and fill the tanks with grout. The area would then be sealed off to prevent the waste from migrating.
It’s the first step in a long closure process for about 10 percent of the storage tanks on the site. But the Oregon Department of Energy has raised concernsthat federal officials are moving too quickly. The state has filed public comments asking federal officials to do additional reviews before making any decisions.
“The movement of waste through the Hanford environment is a very complex process that we’re still trying to fully understand,” Burright said. “Despite their best efforts, there are still uncertainties over very long time scales that could represent future risk.”
Burright said closing the tanks could prevent the future removal of the 70,000 gallons of remaining waste should new technologies emerge. Plus, he said, there may be additional risks stemming from the million gallons of waste that have already leaked or spilled into the ground underneath the tanks on the site.
The Oregon Department of Energy is holding its own informational meetingon the issue at 6:30 p.m. after the U.S. Department of Energy’s informational meeting from 3-5 p.m. in Portland on Tuesday. Both meetings will be held at the same location, the Eliot Center at the First Unitarian Church, 1226 SW Salmon St.
October 16, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA, wastes |
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Last three reactor compartments soon off the water https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2018/10/last-three-reactor-compartments-soon-water#.W8P-hlNi_4E.facebook25-years with safe decommissioning of Cold War submarines in the Russian north will come to an end next year. By Thomas Nilsen, October 14, 2018
120 nuclear-powered submarines sailing in-and-out from the Kola Peninsula during the Cold War have been properly decommissioned since the early 1990s. While most of the metal could be recycled, the still-highly radioactive reactor compartments had to be secured for long-term storage.
Intermediate, that meant storing the compartments floating at piers until they could be taken onshore at the central storage complex in Saida Bay, north of Murmansk on the coast of the Barents Sea.
In 2017, the Barents Observer reported that 15 compartments were still kept afloat on the water.
Today, only three reactor compartments remain and they will be taken onshore in 2019, Izvestia reports with reference to the northwestern branch of RosRao, Russia’s state owned company for handling radioactive.
The three compartments are today stored at piers in Saida Bay, while 117 compartments are stored on the huge concrete pad.
RosRao’s Chief Engineer says the very last reactor compartment t be taken onshore is the one from the “Kursk” submarine that sant in the Barents Sea in August 2000 during a naval exercise. The submarine was lifted from the seabed two years after and the remaining parts of the hull were scrapped.
In Saida Bay, the reactor compartments will have to be stored for onshore for many decades before the radioactivity have come down to levels acceptable for cutting the reactors’ metal up and pack it for final geological disposal.
October 15, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Russia, wastes |
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What causes nuclear waste glass to dissolve? Phys Org, University of Houston October 10th, 2018
Immobilizing nuclear waste in glass logs—a process known as vitrification—is currently used in the United States to safeguard waste from sites associated with defense activities. Some other countries also use the process to capture waste from nuclear power plants.
Researchers know, however, that the glass can begin to dissolve after a long period of time, and the durability of these glass logs remains an active area of research.
Researchers from the University of Houston, the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Pittsburgh are working on one of the most pressing issues—what causes the glass to begin to deteriorate relatively quickly at some point, potentially releasing radioactive waste at levels exceeding regulatory thresholds?……….”We have long observed from laboratory studies that zeolite formation in glass corrosion tests resulted in an increase in the glass corrosion rate,” said Neeway, a researcher at PNNL. ………
Zeolite P, the zeolite that forms from the glass, is affected by temperature—Rimer said researchers synthesize it in the lab at 100 °C—but they don’t yet know how crystallization proceeds at lower temperatures and they don’t have methods to deter its formation. But controlling temperatures in the geologic formations designated as nuclear waste repositories is not necessarily practical, thus researchers are looking for other factors that might affect crystal growth, including components of the glass. https://phys.org/wire-news/300629772/what-causes-nuclear-waste-glass-to-dissolve.html
October 11, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Reference, safety, wastes |
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comments on this Russian claim Biological processes operate at the chemical level (electronic structure around atoms) these would be ineffective at changing anything at the nuclear level (strong and weak forces between parts of the nucleus). I would expect that the *most* that bacteria could do would be to concentrate and to isolate distributed atoms that happen to be radioactive.
Russian Scientists Discover Bacteria That Neutralizes Nuclear Waste https://sputniknews.com/science/201810081068701682-nuclear-waste-neutralizing-bacteria/ The unique bacteria, discovered in a nuclear waste storage site in Siberia, shows promise as a tool for the creation of a natural barrier to the spread of radionuclides.
Researchers from the Moscow-based Frumkin Institute of Physical Chemistry and the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Federal Research Center for Biotechnology have been able to isolate microorganisms which can be used to safeguard the surrounding environment from liquid radioactive waste.
Scientists made the discovery while conducting microbiological studies of the groundwater at the Seversky deep radiation burial site in Seversk, Tomsk region, Siberia, where liquid radioactive waste from the Siberian Chemical Combine, which supplies and reprocesses low enriched uranium for nuclear fuel, is stored.
Their research, recently published in Radioactive Waste, a Russian scientific journal, suggests that the bacteria is capable of converting radionuclide ions, including those found in uranium and plutonium, into sedentary forms, thereby preventing the spread of dangerous radiation into the surrounding environment. Through lab experimentation, the scientists were able to fine tune the conditions necessary for the bacteria to carry out its useful work.
The researchers say their findings are a first step in creation a biogeochemical barrier for radionuclides for use in deep burial sites containing liquid radioactive waste.
Research into microbiological tools to limit the effects of nuclear waste have been conducted since the 1980s, with scientists from around the world saying microbial processes must be taken into account in projects to bury and store nuclear waste which can otherwise decay over a period of millions or even billions of years.
October 9, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Russia, spinbuster, wastes |
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