WNN 17 Feb 18 US-based GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) has been awarded a three-year contract to dismantle the reactor internals of units 1 and 2 at the Oskarshamn nuclear power plant in Sweden
Under a contract signed with plant operator OKG AB on 19 December, Wilmington, North Carolina-based GEH will segment the reactor pressure vessel internals of both units. The work includes dismantling, cutting and packing the reactor internals for final disposal.
Segmentation of the reactor internals of Oskarshamn 2 is scheduled to begin in January 2018, with that of unit 1 set for 2019. The segmentation project is expected to be completed by the beginning of 2020.
Lance Hall, executive vice president of GEH’s nuclear services business, said today: “This is a breakthrough project for us in the decommissioning space in Europe and we look forward to drawing upon the many resources of the ‘GE Store’, including the depth of the global supply chain of GE and the former Alstom power businesses to deliver superior safety and cost efficient performance for our customer.”…….http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/WR-GE-Hitachi-to-dismantle-Oskarshamn-units-0301174.html
On February 13, 2018, the Reporterre site revealed the new EDF project. In view of the prolongation of the operation of nuclear reactors and to unclog the four basins of the La Hague plant where used fuel is stored, the electrical firm wants to build a giant new “pool of deactivation” near the Belleville plant -sur-Loire (Cher). We strongly condemn this imposed, dangerous and expensive project. Rather than create a new trash, EDF must turn off the tap and dry up the production of unmanageable radioactive waste!
In France, spent fuel is stored in “deactivation pools” for the time needed to cool them (between 3 and 5 years). If each nuclear power plant has its own pool adjoining the reactor building, the La Hague plant (Manche) hosts 4 pools in which are immersed more than 10,000 tons of spent fuel, representing a hundred reactor cores waiting for a improbable “reprocessing”. Supposedly temporary, storage in these pools has been going on for 40 years. Consequences: the pools are full and the space is running out. Instead of starting a decline in spent fuel stocks by stopping the production of electricity from nuclear power, EDF is stubborn and plans to build an additional pool in Belleville-sur-Loire. But the experience of La Hague shows that the use of these pools goes hand in hand with disproportionate risks.
Vulnerable pools and potentially dramatic accidents The 4 cooling pools at the La Hague plant concentrate the largest volume of radioactivity in Europe. Belleville-sur-Loire could soon compete with this facility. Oversized, the giant basin that EDF plans to build in Belleville-sur-Loire could accommodate up to 8,000 tons of spent fuel, the equivalent of 93 cores of reactors.
This project is all the more worrying because EDF is never very concerned about the protection of the reactor deactivation pools it operates. Will the centralized Belleville pool be protected as recommended by nuclear safety authorities around the world since Fukushima? Nobody can say it. And the risk increases even if EDF chooses not to bunkerize the building that contains the pool, as is the case at the Orano factory in La Hague, where the basins are protected by a vulgar tin roof
… But even with a concrete hull, in the event of an accident, the amount of radioactivity released into the atmosphere would be incommensurate with the releases resulting from an accident in the core of a reactor: to concentrate in the same place such a quantity of radioactive material has intrinsic risks. And what about the dangers of transporting such large quantities of radioactive waste across France?
The Belleville-sur-Loire swimming pool project poses even more safety problems because it is supposed to house the assemblies of MOX – a mixture of uranium and plutonium oxides – a particular fuel that, when it is used, releases much more radioactivity than “normal” uranium assemblages. And since MOX can not be reprocessed or reused, temporary storage in this pool could well become permanent storage.
Finally, in normal operation, these pools are allowed to reject radioactivity. If a new bin of this kind were built, dangerous radioelements like tritium or krypton 85 would inevitably end up in the environment.
An opaque and expensive project EDF led this project with complete opacity. At the time Greenpeace submitted a report that points to the fragility and dangerousness of the 62 cooling pools scattered over the hex, EDF plans to build a 63rd, size XXL. Discussed on the sly, well protected from democratic choices and far from energy issues, the project was kept secret by EDF.
Once again, citizens and residents of the region are faced with a fait accompli. Still, the idea is in the pipes for a long time. Urged by ASN – which invited it in 2013 to “revise its spent fuel management and storage strategy, by proposing new storage methods” – EDF, to comply with the National Plan management of radioactive materials and waste, once again chose the worst option.For EDF and the promoters of the atom, the construction of such an installation is only one way of guaranteeing new outlets for a declining nuclear industry and of claiming to ensure the management of spent fuel for a new period.
The “Sortir du nucléaire” Network strongly denounces this project and, alongside the associations of the region, will resolutely oppose its implementation. In no case this pool is a “solution” to the problem of the accumulation of radioactive waste. In order not to generate new risks and to put the costs of a disproportionate installation on the citizens, the only solution is to dry up the production of this unmanageable waste. Press contacts: Martial CHATEAU: 06 45 30 74 66 Catherine FUMÉ: 06 62 84 13 88
Nikkei Asian review 14th Feb 2018, American
concerns about potential diversion of idle fuel leave the agreement at
risk.
The decision Jan. 16 to automatically extend a nuclear agreement with
the U.S. came as a relief to a Japanese government worried about the
prospect of renegotiating the basis for a cornerstone of its energy policy.
But friction remains over a massive store of plutonium that highlights the
problems with the nation’s ambitious nuclear energy plans. The nuclear fuel
cycle pursued by Japan’s government and power companies centers on
recovering uranium and plutonium from spent fuel for reuse in reactors.
This is made possible by the unique agreement with the U.S. that lets Japan
make plutonium. The radioactive element can be used in nuclear weapons, so
its production is generally tightly restricted. Japan has amassed roughly
47 tons of plutonium stored inside and outside the country — enough for
some 6,000 nuclear warheads. With the nation’s nuclear power plants
gradually taken offline after the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster,
and progress on restarting them sluggish, Japan has been left with no real
way to whittle down a pile drawing international scrutiny. https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/Japan-s-plutonium-glut-casts-a-shadow-on-renewed-nuclear-deal
Seattle Times 14th Feb 2018,Sorry, Hanford: Your radiation leaks aren’t as important as tax cuts.
Probably no place in America shows more acutely how incoherent politics has
become than our own Hanford nuclear reservation.
Consider this recent sequence of events at the Western Hemisphere’s most polluted spot:
First, in November, a board that oversees Hanford nuclear-waste cleanup warned
that the effort is so underfunded it has become shoddy and dangerous. More
spending for better work and expertise “is the only way to help avert a
major catastrophe.”
Then on cue, in December, plutonium particles again
contaminated dozens of workers and cars because of shoddy demolition work
at a defunct bomb factory.
Then the federal government put out the most
eye-popping cost revision I’ve ever seen. It found that the cost of
cleaning up tanks of old radioactive waste — the most serious pollution
problem at Hanford — will now run to $111 billion, an extraordinary $61
billion more than predicted just three years earlier.
President Trump’s $4.4 Trillions Budget Features Soaring Deficits 2 News 13 Feb 18
President Donald Trump is sending Congress a $4.4 trillion spending planthat provides a huge increase in defense spending while cutting taxes by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. The result is soaring budget deficits.
Trump’s first budget last year projected that the government would achieve a small surplus by 2027. But the new budget never gets to balance. It proposes $7.1 trillion in red ink over the next decade, basically doubling last year’s forecast……..
Trump last week signed a $300 billion measure to boost defense and domestic spending, negating many of the cuts in his new budget plan. …..
Meanwhile, the Trump administration wants NASA out of the International Space Station by 2025, and private businesses running the place instead.
Under the proposed budget released, U.S. government funding for the space station would cease by 2025. The government would set aside $150 million to encourage commercial development…..
Altogether, the budget seeks to increase NASA’s budget slightly to $19.6 billion.
And – the Pentagon is proposing to spend hundreds of millions more in 2019 on missile defense.
The budget calls for increasing the number of strategic missile interceptors from 44 to 64. The additional 20 interceptors would be based at Fort Greely, Alaska. Critics question the reliability of the interceptors, arguing that years of testing have yet to prove them effective against sophisticated threats.
The Pentagon also would invest more heavily in the ship-based Aegis system and the Army’s Patriot air and missile defense system. Both are designed to defend against missiles with ranges shorter than the intercontinental ballistic missile that is of greatest U.S. concern in the context of North Korea.
Trump’s proposed 2019 budget calls for slashing funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by more than one third, including ending the Climate Change Research and Partnership Programs.
The president’s budget would also make deep cuts to funding for cleaning up the nation’s most polluted sites, even as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt says that’s one of his top priorities. Trump’s budget would allocate just $762 million for the Hazardous Substance Superfund Account, a reduction of more than 30%.
Current spending for Superfund is down to about half of what it was in the 1990s. Despite the cut, the White House says the administration plans to “accelerate” site cleanups by bringing “more private funding to the table for redevelopment.”
……Congressman Ruben J. Kihuen issued the statement after the release of President Trump’s 2019 budget proposal which supports plans for an interim storage program and the licensing of the Yucca Mountain geologic repository:
“I am disappointed that President Trump’s latest budget request dedicates $120 million to revive the long-dead nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, money that would be much better spent on research and development of the renewable energy technology that we need to power our clean-energy future. Rather than pursue a realistic attempt to develop a substantive nuclear waste management program, this is a colossal waste of funding that goes directly against the will of Nevadans. I have been proud to help lead the fight against dumping nuclear waste in Nevadans’ backyards, and I will continue working to ensure this project remains dead.”
U.S. Senator Dean Heller released this statement:
“Despite Congress’ refusal to fund the Yucca Mountain project, the Administration is once again prioritizing it. Whether it’s the threat that Yucca Mountain poses to the people of southern Nevada or its potentially catastrophic effect on our tourism economy, I’ve made it clear why Nevada does not want to turn into the nation’s nuclear waste dump,” said Heller. “Under my leadership Congress has not appropriated funding for licensing activities at Yucca Mountain as requested in the last budget, and I’m going to continue to fight to make sure that this project doesn’t see the light of day.”
U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto said in a statement:
“It’s a disgrace that president trump and some members of congress find it acceptable to continue throwing away tax payer money on a failed project.”
President Donald Trump’s proposed $230 million cut to the budget for the federal Hanford Site nuclear cleanup will face bipartisan opposition in Congress.
By Gary Martin Review-Journal Washington Bureau, February 12, 2018, WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump renewed his commitment to restart licensing on the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear repository in Nevada on Monday with a funding request tucked into a $4.4 trillion budget blueprint.
Trump included $120 million to restart licensing on the geologic site north of Las Vegas, as well as to establish an interim storage program to address the growing stockpile of nuclear waste produced by power plants in states across the nation.
The funds are just part of the $30.6 billion budget request for the Department of Energy for fiscal year 2019, which begins Oct. 1.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry said the $120 million would be used for the licensing application process. Application hearings must be held to hear challenges by Nevada and other stakeholders.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must determine whether Yucca Mountain is safe for long-term storage, and issue a license for Energy to build the repository…….
Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, the state’s two senators, Republican Dean Heller and Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, and Democratic Reps Dina Titus, Jacky Rosen and Ruben Kihuen oppose the Yucca Mountain project.
Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., and Nye County, where Yucca Mountain is located, and other rural Nevada counties, support continuing the licensing process.
Although the House has backed efforts to restart licensing on Yucca Mountain, the Senate did not approve funding last year.
“Despite Congress’ refusal to fund the Yucca Mountain project, the administration is once again prioritizing it,” Heller said. He claims the project poses a threat to the people of southern Nevada and could have a catastrophic impact on the tourism economy.
“I’ve made it clear why Nevada does not want to turn into the nation’s nuclear waste dump,” Heller said.
Sante Fe New Mexican 10th Feb 2018, New Mexico’s senators and congressmen are making a bad choice for their
constituents by lobbying to retain the production of nuclear bomb triggers,
or “pits,” at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The production of
plutonium pits is one of the most toxic industrial processes on Earth.
PARIS, Feb 13 (Reuters) – French EDF plans new central storage site for nuclear wast state-controlled utility EDF plans to build a new central storage pool for nuclear waste but has not yet decided on a site, the company said.
French environment news site Reporterre on Tuesday wrote that EDF plans to build a central spent-fuel pool on the grounds of its Belleville-sur-Loire nuclear plant, which could receive up to 8,000 tonnes of spent fuel, the equivalent of up to about 90 reactor cores.
Spent fuel from nuclear reactors remains highly radioactive for thousands of years and all countries using nuclear energy struggle with the question of where to store it safely…….
France has a project to store long-life nuclear waste 500 metres below ground in impermeable clay in Bure, eastern France, but the plan has not yet received government approval and is strongly opposed by local groups and environmentalists.
Meanwhile, the La Hague reprocessing site acts as a de facto nuclear waste storage site as France has no permanent solution for deep geological storage. (Reporting by Geert De Clercq and Benjamin Mallet; editing by Richard Lough)
Radiation Free Lakeland 10th Feb 2018, On the 23rd January 2018 the Swedish Environment Court gave the thumbs down
to the Swedish equivalent (SKB) of the UK’s quango Radioactive Waste Management (RWM previously Managing Radioactive Wastes Safely previously
NIREX) tasked with implementing Geological Dumping of nuclear wastes.
The Swedish court said it could not recommend that their Government agree the application for a Geological Disposal Facility (Nuclear Underground Dump) unless and until the industry can prove that the copper capsules that would contain the spent nuclear fuels would not leak.
GDF Watch 10th Feb 2018, Radioactive Waste Management (RWM) have announced the appointment of
Lorraine Baldry OBE as Chair of their new Advisory Council. According to
RWM, “the Advisory Council will provide expertise, balanced perspective
and strategic support to RWM as it moves into a significant phase of its
programme to deliver a geological disposal facility. Its members, including
experienced leaders from a variety of business, engineering, infrastructure
and society backgrounds, will provide vital input to one of the most
complex and important long-term projects ever undertaken in the UK.”
Lorraine Baldry hails from the Financial Services sector, and is also
currently: Chair of the Central London Partnership, a non-profit
organisation that focuses on improving the working environment in central
London Chair of London & Continental Railways Limited, a property
development and land regeneration business within the railway and
infrastructure sectors Chair of Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust
Limited Independent Non-Executive Director at Thames Water She is an
Honorary Member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), a
Past President of the British Property Federation, and was previously
Chairman of the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation. http://www.gdfwatch.org.uk/2018/02/10/chair-announced-new-rwm-advisory-council/
Cumbria Trust 10th Feb 2018, Andrew Blowers OBE is Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences at The Open
University and is presently Co-Chair of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy/NGO Nuclear Forum. This is one of a series of
articles drawn on his latest book, “The Legacy of Nuclear Power” (Earthscan from Routledge, 2017). The views expressed are personal.
What is Sellafield? Fundamentally, these days, it is the UK’s primary nuclear waste-processing, management and clean-up facility. Concentrated on a
compact site of 1.5 square miles is a jumble of buildings, pipes, roads, railways and waterways, randomly assembled over more than half a dozen decades, which together manage around two-thirds by radioactivity of all the radioactive wastes in the UK.
The Sellafield radioactive waste component includes all the high-level wastes (less than 1% by volume, over half the radioactivity) held in liquid form or stored in vitrified blocks, and half the volume of intermediate-level wastes (the other half being heldat various sites around the country). The nation’s radioactive waste is mainly held at Sellafield and there it must remain, at least until the programme of management and clean-up is concluded.
New production facilities such as for MOX or reprocessing are exceedingly improbable, theproposed new reactors at nearby Moorside are doubtful, and although a GDF, if one is ever developed, might yet be located in West Cumbria, Sellafield will for long be caretaker of the nation’s wastes. Where and when the undertaker will come to bury them remains unclear, and may remain so for the foreseeable future. https://cumbriatrust.wordpress.com/2018/02/10/sellafield-britains-nuclear-heartland/
Why decommissioning South Africa’s Koeberg nuclear plant won’t be easy The Conversation, Hartmut Winkler, Professor of Physics, University of Johannesburg, January 26, 2018
Africa’s only operational nuclear power plant is in an area called Koeberg, outside Cape Town in South Africa. The life span of the plant was originally meant to end in 2024. But after an upgrade it’s now expected to operate until around 2044.
The funding for decommissioning, which is an expensive process, needs to be secured well in advance. Failing to decommission the site properly would saddle Cape Town with a dangerous radiation hazard for generations to come.
Responsibility for Koeberg’s site rehabilitation rests with its operator, the state electricity utility, Eskom. For now decommissioning Koeberg is not a priority for Eskom’s newly appointed board given its need to deal with the financial pressure and allegations of corruption the utility is facing.
But it will nevertheless need to start planning soon……….
All nuclear power plants accredited by the International Atomic Energy Agency must regularly set aside funds to finance the eventual decommissioning. By 2016, Eskom had paid R10.9 billion into a trust for this purpose.
But these provisions seem insufficient and the utility will probably need to raise additional funding to shut down Koeberg.
Eskom is responsible to pay for the site’s rehabilitation, but not for final waste disposal. The funding of that process ultimately becomes the responsibility of the state.
Waste from Koeberg
The arrangement is that low and intermediate-level nuclear waste is transported to a site called Vaalputs in sparsely populated Namakwaland, about 500 km north of Cape Town. High-level waste is kept on site in Koeberg in what are known as fuel pools.
South Africa doesn’t have storage facilities for its high-level waste. Like the rest of the world, construction of nuclear plants was initiated without a specific waste disposal plan, with the understanding that each country would manage and pay for it themselves.
Unfortunately South Africa is likely to approach decommissioning Koeberg in the same way other countries have done it – by effectively leaving the waste on site indefinitely in temporary storage facilities. This avoids the expense of waste processing as well as making difficult political decisions. But it passes the problem to future generations while continuing to expose the nuclear plant’s neighbourhood to contamination risk. This is a serious risk at Koeberg given that it’s a mere 30 km from the Cape Town city centre.
Koeberg’s decommissioning is an awkward reality that cannot be ignored for much longer. This should become the main focus for nuclear professionals in South Africa, rather than new plants. Eskom and other parties in the energy space need to develop detailed, credible decommissioning work plans with realistic costing scenarios and funding strategies. A crisis can be avoided, but only through early and proper planning. https://theconversation.com/why-decommissioning-south-africas-koeberg-nuclear-plant-wont-be-easy-89888
Why decommissioning South Africa’s Koeberg nuclear plant won’t be easy The Conversation, Hartmut Winkler Professor of Physics, University of Johannesburg, January 26, 2018
“……..There are three stages in the rehabilitation of a nuclear facility.
The plant must be dismantled. This is complicated because most of the material in and around the plant is radioactive to varying degrees and therefore dangerous to anything exposed to it. Radioactivity reduces with time, but for some isotopes commonly found in nuclear waste, the drop in radiation levels can be very slow. Because of this a plant will only be dismantled years after it’s been switched off.
The dangerous nuclear waste, or high level waste must be reprocessed. Most of the material stays dangerous for decades but some isotopes retain high levels of radiation levels for thousands of years. A portion of nuclear waste can be converted into reusable or less radioactive forms through nuclear engineering processes. These processes are complex and there are only a few facilities in the world that can perform them. This means that South Africa’s high level waste will have to be transported overseas. Reprocessing facilities include La Hague in France and the Russian Mayak site, thought to be responsible for the 2017 ruthenium leak incident.
The remaining nuclear waste must be secured in storage, virtually forever. This needs an isolated site that can’t be damaged by natural disasters or other processes that could cause radioactive material to seep into the surrounding environment, especially ground water. This final storage need is a massive headache worldwide. An example is the German Gorleben final repository site. It’s been the scene of protests for decades, preventing any further storage of waste on the site.
Bellona 7th Feb 2018, In a major step toward cleaning up the world’s worst nuclear disaster,
workers at Chernobyl have begun moving much of the stricken facility’s
liquid nuclear waste into long term storage.
The commissioning of Chernobyl’s liquid radioactive treatment plant is meant to tackle the
22,000 tons of irradiated water gathered not only since the plant’s
number 4 reactor exploded in 1986, but from continued operation of the
plant’s other three reactors, which continued producing electricity for
14 years after the disaster.
Surprisingly, these reactors were not decommissioned until 2000, nine years after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, when the Chernobyl plant became the newly-independent Ukraine’s
inheritance from Moscow. That the rest of the plant’s reactors continued
to operate in the middle of a irradiated disaster zone serves shows how
heavily Ukraine has depended on nuclear power since it struck out on its
own. That dependence – despite atomic energy’s domestic unpopularity
– hasn’t dropped with time: Kiev still relies on its other 15 reactors
to produce a little over half the country’s electricity. http://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2018-02-chernobyl-starts-tackling-its-liquid-radioactive-waste
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