Failure of Japanese nuclear reprocessing plan. What to do with all that plutonium?
Two reactors, Takahama 3 and 4, owned by Kansai Electric, began operation in January and February 2016 loaded with plutonium MOX fuel, with unit 3 operating with 24 assemblies containing 1,088kg of plutonium and unit 4 with 4 assemblies containing 184kg of plutonium. Unit 4 shutdown due to an electrical failure three days after start up, while unit 3 was forced to shutdown on March 10th following a court order. Both reactors remain shutdown and are subject of a court injunction preventing operation issued by the Otsu district court, Shiga prefecture on March 9th. They are expected to be non operational for many months. Of the 26 reactors under review by the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), Ikata-3, Genkai-3 and Tomari-3 are all intended to operate with plutonium MOX fuel.
“On current plans, and if ever the Rokkasho-mura reprocessing plant begins operation, Japan`s program could yield as much as 93,000kg by 2025 – most of which will remain unused. The reactor program in Japan is in crisis with no credible program for either restarting most reactors or using large amounts of this plutonium. If ever there was a time to abandon its current doomed nuclear energy policy, it is now. The Obama administration in its last year has an opportunity to step up and actively reduce the spiraling proliferation dynamic in East Asia – this should be top of the agenda in Washington instead of being ignored. The next step is to challenge the basis of the U.S.-Japan nuclear cooperation agreement which runs to 2018 – approval for Japan to continue acquiring plutonium must be reversed,” said Burnie.
South Australian Aborigines strongly resist plans for international nuclear waste importing
18 Mar 16 Traditional Owners and members of the Aboriginal-led Australian Nuclear Free Alliance (ANFA) have today reaffirmed their opposition to the suggestion that South Australia should host a high level international nuclear waste dump. This announcement comes as the submission period closes for comments on the tentative findings of South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission
A major recommendation of the Commission to date has been that South Australia could host an international waste storage and disposal facility. This suggestion is strongly rejected by Aboriginal people across the state because of the risks posed to country and culture. Several Aboriginal communities throughout South Australia live with the negative impacts of the nuclear industry through uranium mining and nuclear weapons testing and are committed to resisting any further nuclear proposals.
“We have long memories; we remember the atomic weapons tests at Maralinga and Emu Fields and the ongoing denial around the lost lives and health impacts for Aboriginal people. We don’t want any nuclear projects here in South Australia and we won’t become the world’s nuclear waste dump,” said Arabunna elder and Australian Nuclear Free Alliance president Kevin Buzzacott.
Enice Marsh, senior Adnyamathanha woman and Australian Nuclear Free Alliance member said:
“Any kind of radioactive waste dump would put our groundwater at risk. Groundwater is about survival; we don’t want to be faced with another huge risk like this.”
Sue Coleman-Haseldine is a Kokatha-Mula woman and co-chair of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance. She has recently travelled to Vienna to share her family’s experience with the nuclear industry: “They’ve poisoned us once and there’s no way in the world they’re going to do it again.”
“This problem doesn’t stop at South Australia’s border, there is nowhere that should be designated an international waste dump,” Ms Coleman-Haseldine concluded.
Plutonium and ” fourth generation nuclear power”
Bill Gates’ Nuclear Pipe Dream: Convert Depleted Uranium to Plutonium to Power Earth for Centuries, Truth Out Tuesday, 15 March 2016 By Josh Cunnings and Emerson Urry, EnviroNews | Video Report Cunnings: “………..EnviroNews Editor-in-Chief Emerson Urry chatted with the esteemed nuclear industry expert and whistleblower Arnie Gundersen to explore whether Gates’ plan is a good idea or not.
Emerson Urry: Let’s go back to Bill Gates again, [and] the fourth generation nuclear power. I’ve heard him out there speaking about this, and essentially his ambition to, let’s say, convert Paducah, Kentucky [to plutonium]. What can you tell us about Paducah, Kentucky? We understand it went bankrupt a couple years back, and I think there is quite a bit of radioactive material still there. We’ve heard at one point in time it was also one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters from the Freon — not to mention having four allocated coal-fired power plants. What can you tell us about Paducah, Kentucky? What does the situation on the ground look like there, and how do you think they will deal with all that?
Arnie Gundersen: Paducah didn’t have centrifuges, it had gaseous diffusion, and there’s no need for the plant anymore, so the plant has to be decommissioned and destroyed. What’s happened is, the way they shut the plant down was, to be nice, sub-optimal. And what they allowed it to do was for all that uranium to cake inside the pipes. So, had they done it in a more orderly fashion, the plant could have been much cleaner when they went to shut it down — but they didn’t. So, the Paducah site is a very expensive cleanup that is going to take 20 or 30 years to decontaminate. You know, it’s like all of these bomb legacy sites — Hanford in Washington State…
Urry: … that has the plutonium leak in AY-102 correct? Which has that been ratcheted down? Have they been able to ratchet down AY-102?
Gundersen: No. Hanford is going to take 70 years and cost 110 billion dollars to clean up. So, here we are paying over half of a century for the legacy of building bombs for five years in 1940. And so, Paducah is another one of those sites. It was built to enrich uranium. Why did we do that? Because we had a bomb program. And now we’re stuck with these huge costs that are underfunded or unfunded by Congress. That plant is going to sit there for 30 years. It will create a lot of employment for a lot of people knocking it down, but it also is highly radioactive, and it’s got to be done so cautiously, and it’s a really difficult problem.
Cunnings: There’s no known disintegration of plutonium small enough that doesn’t possess the ability to cause cancer. To be clear, there is no safe amount to be exposed to whatsoever.
Plutonium, though a naturally occurring element was virtually non-existent on planet earth before the dawn of the nuclear age. Now, each of the roughly 400 uranium-powered nuclear reactors in the world create approximately 500 pounds of plutonium each year — or enough to create about 100 nuclear warheads each.
Coming from a “humanitarian” concerned with curing diseases, the notion that plutonium is the way to save ourselves from a runaway climate catastrophe seems the epitome of oxymoronic — utterly and woefully contradictory. But stay tuned for more on that topic, as in episode 14 of this series we examine whether or not we really need nuclear to solve the climate quandary.
But, in the meanwhile, let’s just say that Bill Gates’ nuclear ambitions go beyond mere ideas. He actually possesses financial holdings in one very dangerous situation indeed — a situation that is presently causing residents around St. Louis, Missouri to live under an all-out nuclear nightmare. And that scenario will be the topic of discussion in the next episode of our short series.
So please, tune in tomorrow for part three, where we explore the scary situation at hand in the Westlake Landfill in St. Louis, Missouri. Signing off for now, this is Josh Cunnings…… http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35229-bill-gates-nuclear-pipe-dream-convert-mountains-of-depleted-uranium-to-plutonium-to-power-earth-for-centuries
Hanford Nuclear Reservation ordered by federal judge to comply with new deadlines for nuclear waste clean-up
Federal judge sets new deadlines for nuclear waste cleanup at Hanford http://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate/4113014-151/federal-judge-sets-new-deadlines-for-nuclear-waste# The Associated Press /Mar 13, 2016 SPOKANE, Wash. — A federal judge has set new deadlines for cleaning up nuclear waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation after Washington state went to court to prod the U.S. Department of Energy over the flagging efforts.
U.S. District Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson issued the new deadlines in a 102-page order late Friday. Among them: A plant designed to treat low-activity radioactive waste must begin operating by 2022, and a plant to convert the most dangerous waste into glass for burial must be fully operating by 2036.
Washington and Oregon sued the U.S. Energy Department nearly a decade ago over missed cleanup deadlines, and after a settlement, Washington went back to court in 2014, leading to the judge’s order Friday.
Peterson criticized the Energy Department for what she described as a “total lack of transparency” as to the delays. She said that if the department had kept the states better apprised of the status of the cleanup efforts, the states could have sought further funding from Congress to help avert delays.
“The passage of time and the urgency of waste clean-up are inextricablylinked: the longer that DOE takes to satisfy its obligations under the Consent Decree the greater the likelihood of irreversible damage to the environment,” the judge wrote. “No party can ‘win’ this litigation. The public and environment only can ‘lose’ as more time passes without an operational solution to the radioactive waste problems at the Hanford Site.”
The government used the Hanford site during World War II and the Cold War to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. Hanford’s 586 square miles house over 50 million gallons of nuclear waste in 177 underground tanks, many of which are leaking.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson welcomed the court’s ruling, which they said Saturday will hold federal authorities accountable for the cleanup and which set firmer deadlines than the Energy Department wanted.
“Cleaning up the legacy waste at Hanford is the federal government’s legal and moral responsibility to the Tri-Cities community and the Pacific Northwest,” Inslee said. “I have been repeatedly frustrated by the delays and lack of progress toward meeting key milestones in waste cleanup and treatment. We cannot consider any further delays, and I am pleased that the court clearly agrees.”
One day before Washington deadline Workers begin removing nuclear waste from leaking Hanford tank
Workers begin removing nuclear waste from leaking Hanford tank http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/workers-begin-removing-nuclear-waste-from-leaking-hanford-tank/ March 4, 2016 Workers have started removing nuclear waste from a leaking tank at the Hanford Site just one day before a state of Washington deadline. By Seattle Times staff The Associated Press KENNEWICK, Wash. — Workers have started removing nuclear waste from a leaking tank at the Hanford Site just one day before a state of Washington deadline.
The Tri-City Herald reports that Hanford workers began pumping waste from the nuclear reservation’s oldest double-shell tank Thursday afternoon.
The tank contains about 150,000 gallons of radioactive sludge covered by about 650,000 gallons of liquid waste. The liquid could be removed by early next week if things go smoothly, but removing the sludge is more complicated.
The Washington Department of Ecology had ordered the U.S. Department of Energy and its contractor Washington River Protection Solutions to begin emptying the waste by March 4 and finish the work within a year.
Taiwan’s unsafe nuclear waste storage
Taipower panned over nuclear waste storage,Taipei Times, 28 Feb 16 RECKLESS:Storing nuclear waste in close proximity to the sea was not safe, as the containers could be submerged during a tsunami, a Japanese waste expert said By Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter Nuclear experts and a legislator yesterday criticized Taiwan Power Co (Taipower ) for its nuclear waste treatment during a visit to the Guosheng Nuclear Power Plant in New Taipei City’s Wanli District (萬里), saying the company’s temporary storage solution is problematic and its management is not transparent.
A visit by nuclear experts and activists to examine the plant’s dry cask storage facilities, a radioactive waste incinerator and a cooling pond was canceled after Taipower denied Japanese nuclear waste expert Masako Sawai access to the facilities due to a visa issue……….
Despite not being able to personally examine the facilities, Sawai criticized Taipower’s dry cask storage based on its design.
The company plans to store high-level radioactive waste in steel cylinders surrounded by concrete shells placed outdoors as a temporary solution until a permanent depository is constructed.
“Instead of being constructed as a single and seamless piece, the steel cylinder is designed to be welded, but welding points might corrode and crack over an extended period, and the likelihood of corrosion is greater when casks are stored outdoors and exposed to winds containing sea salt,” Sawai said.
The casks should be portable, but Taipower’s concrete cask, each weighing about 200 tonnes, could not be transported in case of an emergency, Sawai added.
“Although concrete casks are 20 percent cheaper than the metal casks used in Japan and many European nations, safety is more important than costs,” she said.
Choosing a storage area that is at close proximity to sea was improper, because casks would be submerged during a tsunami, as was the case with the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster, Sawai said.
He criticized the company’s incinerator for burning low-level nuclear waste. He said it runs on diesel instead of plasma torch technology as claimed on the Atomic Energy Council’s Web site.
Incinerators powered by diesel could only reach about 1,000?C, 90 percent lower than the temperature reached by plasma torch, leading to incomplete burning of radioactive waste, He said. He also criticized the location of a cooling reservoir on a hill above the plant’s two reactors, which is designed to pump water to the cooling system using the force of gravity during a nuclear accident if electrical power is cut, saying that the reservoir was not placed high enough to have the pressure required to pump water into the reactors to prevent a possible meltdown.
“The improper design of the reservoir and incinerator arises from the fact that the designer and supervisor of the nuclear waste treatment are the same institution, which is the Atomic Energy Council’s Institute of Nuclear Energy Research. It is time for the council to be replaced,” he said. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2016/02/29/2003640493
USA Energy Dept keen to reopen New Mexico Nuclear waste Station: others not so sure
New Mexico Presses Ahead on Nuclear-Waste Plant Reopening Burial site’s closure caused by 2014 accident left waste piling up across the country, WSJ By JOHN R. EMSHWILLER Feb. 28, 2016Despite a nine-month delay in the planned reopening of an underground nuclear-waste repository in New Mexico damaged by a radiation accident, progress is being made in resuming operations, said a top state official overseeing the effort.
In January, the Energy Department said it had pushed the reopening date of the federal facility near Carlsbad, N.M., to December from March. The closure caused by the February 2014 accident has left nuclear waste destined for the repository piling up at sites around the country……
Among the issues still being addressed, he said, are residual contamination from the accident and ensuring adequate and safe air flows in the complex.
While officials want to see WIPP reopen as soon as possible, “we have to make sure it is done right,” said Mr. Flynn, whose agency must give its approval before the site can accept waste again. He said he thinks December is a reasonable target date.
Not everyone is as sanguine. Given the remaining challenges, “I think it’s very unlikely the December date will be met,” said Don Hancock, director of the nuclear-waste safety program at the Southwest Research and Information Center, an Albuquerque, N.M., environmental group.
Earlier this month, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said he expects resumption of full operations at the repository to take a few years……..
The Energy Department has said it would cost about $240 million to bring WIPP back into operation and tens of millions of dollars more in additional capital costs, including revisions to the ventilation system.
WIPP, which began operations about 17 years ago, was designed to dispose of a specific type of nuclear waste from the atomic-weapons program. More than 171,000 waste containers are buried there………http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-mexico-presses-ahead-on-nuclear-waste-plant-reopening-1456655406
TEPCO now burning thousands of radioactive work clothes
TEPCO begins burning radiation-tainted work clothes at Fukushima plant Asahi Shimbun, February 26, 2016 By HIROMI KUMAI/ Staff Writer OKUMA, Fukushima Prefecture--Tokyo Electric Power Co. has started to incinerate the thousands of boxes of lightly contaminated waste, including clothing used by workers, at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant to reduce the amount of tainted waste on the site.
TEPCO, the plant operator, fired up a special on-site incinerator on Feb. 25 to burn protective suits, gloves, socks and other work clothes worn by plant workers that became contaminated with low-level radiation.
The operation will reduce the amount of tainted work clothing accumulating at the plant during decommissioning operations since the nuclear disaster unfurled in March 2011. The garments cannot be processed outside the plant due to the radiation.
The clothing being incinerated are items with the lowest levels of contamination that have been stored in tens of thousands of 1 cubic-meter special boxes. The number of containers reached 66,000 at the end of last year…….http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201602260071
Germany’s nuclear utilities will have to transfer nuclear clean-up cash by 2022
Nuclear commission proposes firms transfer cash by 2022 to pay for clean-up http://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFB4N10000F
Mon Feb 22, 2016BERLIN Feb 22 (Reuters) – Germany’s utilities will have to transfer provisions set aside to pay for the interim and final storage of nuclear waste to a fund in cash by 2022, according to a draft report from a government-appointed committee seen by Reuters on Monday.
The report recommends that Germany’s “big four” utilities — E.ON, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall — remain liable for the cost of up to double the 18 billion euros ($19.8 billion) allocated so far to pay for interim and final storage.
The companies will also have to set aside a further 1.3 billion euros in provisions, according to the report which is due to be presented at the end of the month. ($1 = 0.9084 euros) (Reporting by Markus Wacket; Writing by Caroline Copley; Editing by Christoph Steitz)
Crisis mode continues at Fukushima nuclear wreck
5 Years Later, the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Site Continues to Spill Waste
The cleanup effort could take decades; meanwhile the amount of radioactive material the plant leaks grows, Scientific American By Madhusree Mukerjee on March 1, 2016 “……..
Today the disaster site remains in crisis mode. Former residents will not likely return anytime soon, because levels of radioactivity near their abodes remain high. Even more troublesome, the plant has yet to stop producing dangerous nuclear waste: its operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), currently circulates water through the three melted units to keep them cool—generating a relentless supply of radioactive water. To make matters worse, groundwater flowing from a hill behind the crippled plant now mingles with radioactive materials before heading into the sea.
TEPCO collects the contaminated water and stores it all in massive tanks at the rate of up to 400 metric tons a day. Lately the water has been processed to reduce the concentration of radionuclides, but it still retains high concentrations of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Disputes over its final resting place remain unresolved. The same goes for the millions of bags of contaminated topsoil and other solid waste from the disaster, as well as the uranium fuel itself. Health reports, too, are worrisome. Scientists have seen an increase in thyroid cancers among the children who had lived in Fukushima at the time, although it is too early to tell if those cases can be attributed to the accident…….http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/5-years-later-the-fukushima-nuclear-disaster-site-continues-to-spill-waste/
No straightforward answers to nuclear waste – except to stop making it
More money and some jobs would be offset by the stigma inevitably attached to radioactivity and by the risks involved, including accidents, radioactive leaks to underground water systems, and radioactive emissions to the air.
Recent accidents at nuclear waste dumps in Germany, New Mexico and France are deeply concerning. It is difficult to credibly predict cumulative environmental effects should a radioactive incident occur underground.
There are no straightforward answers. Given the dangers of radioactive waste, McKenna should invoke the precautionary principle which is enshrined in environmental laws worldwide. It states projects should not be undertaken if they might have serious adverse consequences, even if we don’t know whether these consequences will happen.
The next step would be to stop making more nuclear waste.
Dealing with nuclear waste is so difficult that phasing out nuclear power would be the best option http://www.lfpress.com/2016/02/26/dealing-with-nuclear-waste-is-so-difficult-that-phasing-out-nuclear-power-would-be-the-best-option Erika Simpson and Ian Fairlie, Special to Postmedia Network Environment Minister Catherine McKenna has dealt a setback to Ontario Power Generation’s plan for a nuclear waste burial site on the shores of Lake Huron. In a letter to interested parties last week,
McKenna delayed a decision on whether to approve the proposed deep geologic repository (DGR) for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste and set a short April 18 deadline for OPG to furnish a timeframe within which it could provide an updated list of commitments to mitigate potential damage from the site.
Furthermore, she stated she will seek a further extension for the review from cabinet at a later date. We are probably in for long delays. Continue reading
Disastrous problem of nuclear waste just won’t go away
A disaster waiting to happen: nuclear waste and Lake Huron, Michigan Radio, By JACK LESSENBERRY , 25 Feb 16 Michigan has been so preoccupied with our own environmental disaster in Flint that we may have missed the announcement that Canada last week indefinitely delayed a decision about whether to bury low-level nuclear waste near Lake Huron……..
Had the conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper been reelected last fall, the decision announced last week would almost certainly have been to bury the waste here. But Harper’s party lost in an unexpected landslide to Justin Trudeau’s more environmentally conscious liberals.
The outcome may be especially welcome in poor, battered Flint. The city hopes to eventually switch to a new water provider using Lake Huron, and the last thing anyone wants to worry about is radioactive waste leaching into the water, as unlikely as that may be.
But this also means we still don’t have an answer to what is to be done with 200,000 cubic feet of nuclear waste, currently stored in above-ground containers near Ontario’s immense Bruce nuclear generating station.
Even more important is finding a permanent home for all those highly radioactive, spent nuclear fuel rods in both our nations. Scientific American estimated seven years ago that the United States alone had produced 64,000 metric tons of those rods.
There’s more now, and any effort to establish a permanent burial site has been killed by narrow, NIMBY, not-in-my-backyard thinking, as it has in Canada.
This is a disaster waiting to happen – there’s tons of this stuff in “temporary,” above-ground storage everywhere from Monroe to Charlevoix, where an old nuclear plant was torn down nearly twenty years ago.
If the apparent decision to not bury low-level waste near Lake Huron makes us forget this far bigger problem, then it is no kind of victory at all. http://michiganradio.org/post/disaster-waiting-happen-nuclear-waste-and-lake-huron#stream/0
Out of control- Fukushima nuclear wastes, but they plan Olympic events there!
Fukushima – Deep Trouble CounterPunch, FEBRUARY 22, 2016 by ROBERT HUNZIKER The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster may go down as one of history’s boundless tragedies and not just because of a nuclear meltdown, but rather the tragic loss of a nation’s soul.
Imagine the following scenario: 207 million cardboard book boxes, end-to-end, circumnavigating Earth, like railroad tracks, going all the way around the planet. That’s a lot of book boxes. Now, fill the boxes with radioactive waste. Forthwith, that’s the amount of radioactive waste stored unsheltered in one-tonne black bags throughout Fukushima Prefecture, amounting to 9,000,000 cubic metres
But wait, there’s more to come, another 13,000,000 cubic metres of radioactive soil is yet to be collected. (Source: Voice of America News, Problems Keep Piling Up in Fukushima, Feb. 17, 2016).
And, there’s still more, the cleanup operations only go 50-100 feet beyond roadways. Plus, a 100-mile mountain range along the coast and hillsides around Fukushima are contaminated but not cleansed at all. As a consequence, the decontaminated land will likely be re-contaminated by radioactive runoff from the hills and mountains.
Indubitably, how and where to store millions of cubic metres of one-tonne black bags filled with radioactive waste is no small problem. It is a super-colossal problem. What if bags deteriorate? What if a tsunami hits? The “what-ifs” are endless, endless, and beyond.
“The black bags of radioactive soil, now scattered at 115,000 locations in Fukushima, are eventually to be moved to yet-to-be built interim facilities, encompassing 16 square kilometers, in two towns close to the crippled nuclear power plant,” Ibid.
By itself, 115,000 locations each containing many, many, mucho one-tonne bags of radioactive waste is a logistical nightmare, just the trucking alone is forever a humongous task, decades to come.
According to Japanese government and industry sources, cleaning up everything and decommissioning the broken down reactors will take at least 40 years at a cost of $250 billion, assuming nothing goes wrong. But dismally, everything that can possibly go wrong for Tokyo Electric Power Company (“TEPCO”) over the past 5 years has gone wrong, not a good record.
And, Japan is hosting the 2020 Olympics?
Yet, Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant remains totally out of control with no end in sight. As far as that goes, Olympic events alongside an out of control nuclear meltdown seem unfathomable.
As recently as October 30, 2015, The Japan Times reported: “Extremely high radiation levels and the inability to grasp the details about melted nuclear fuel make it impossible for the utility to chart the course of its planned decommissioning of the reactors at the plant.”
On the other hand, according to TEPCO, preparation is underway for removal of the melted nuclear fuel, scheduled to begin in 2021. “But it is difficult to know what is happening inside the reactors, and there are no established methods for doing so… It is not difficult to get a camera inside the reactor. The problem is the camera breaks down due to high levels of radiation,” according to Toru Ogawa, director of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency’s Collaborative Laboratories for Advanced Decommissioning Science (Kiyoshi Ando, senior staff writer, Long Road Ahead for Fukushima Cleanup, Nikkei Asian Review, Feb. 19, 2016)……….
“Sporting events at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are to be held in the Japanese region of Fukushima… Spectators and athletes in the Olympic village will be served with food from the region as part of an effort to restore the reputation of Fukushima, formerly one of Japan’s richest agricultural regions,” Fukushima to Host Olympic 2020 Events, The Times, Feb. 25, 2015.http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/22/fukushima-deep-trouble/
Germany struggles with nuclear waste storage problem
German nuclear exit plan fails to solve waste storage puzzle http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-nuclear-storage-idUKKCN0VW1Y9 Feb 23, 2016 FRANKFURT | BY CHRISTOPH STEITZ When Germany committed itself five years ago to phasing out nuclear power by 2022, there was one big gap in its plans — what to do with the waste that can remain toxic for hundreds of thousands of years.
That issue remains unresolved even after a government-appointed nuclear commission came up with ideas on how to ensure funding for shutting down all of the country’s atomic reactors.
According to a draft proposal, utilities E.ON, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall [VATN.UL] could be saddled with up to 56 billion euros ($61.6 billion) in costs to cover their share of the cost of the nuclear exit.
But the final bill could climb even higher and the extra cost may have to be met by German taxpayers.
The main uncertainty centres on the difficulty of finding a permanent storage site to house highly radioactive material.
Local opposition has ruled out turning an interim waste storage site in salt formations in the small village of Gorleben in northwest Germany into a final site, with the location having ultimately been excluded by law.
The nuclear commission has proposed capping the utilities’ liability for storage costs at 36 billion euros — twice the size of current provisions made by the four utilities for that part of the process.
This proposal would put a ceiling on costs for the power firms and remove a major source of investor concern.
But there is caution that this is only a draft settlement which does not settle the practical problem of finding a storage site.
Analysts at Jefferies are among those who “remain concerned about the potential for future cost escalations and the negative balance sheet implications that it may have for German utilities”.
GOING UNDERGROUND?
Underlining the tensions around the storage issue, German utilities have sued the government over the Gorleben decision, claiming a ban is politically motivated and will force them to incur additional costs.
The OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency says it is impossible to gauge the future costs of storage sites because each country’s geography is different and there are no previous projects to serve as examples.
In contrast, the dismantling of nuclear plants, for which utilities have set aside about 20 billion euros in provisions, is more predictable in terms of costs.
Several plants have already been torn down and several more are being dismantled after the German government decided to end nuclear in the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
More fanciful ideas to dispose of the nuclear waste include shooting it into outer space, but underground storage remains the most feasible option.
Finland and Sweden are most advanced in their preparations for such a solution to their own waste issues, hoping to be the first countries to put high-level waste into underground caverns in the next decade. ($1 = 0.9088 euros)
(Editing by Keith Weir)
USA Dept of Energy wants to dump nuclear waste on Sacred Native American Lands
Sacred Native American Lands Could Become Nuclear Waste Dump Derrick Broze February 22, 2016 (ANTIMEDIA) Nye County, Nevada —During the 1970s and 80s, a large movement of antinuclear and anti-war activists protested the growing acceptance of nuclear power and the possibility of an impending global nuclear war. The protesters were not only concerned with the Cold War breaking down into a hot war, but also with the dangers that nuclear technology presented to the environment and the health of the public……..
Unfortunately, Native communities in the region are not new to this type of exposure to radiation. From 1951 to 1992, the U.S. government used a 1,300-square mile patch of land known as the Nevada Test Site for nuclear weapons testing. 928 American and 19 British nuclear tests were conducted at the Nevada Test Site. Although no official tests have been conducted to examine the health effects on the Paiute and the Shoshone, the communities believe the radiation has affected their health — and the health of the land…….
The DOE is currently accepting public comment from communities, states, tribes, and other stakeholders regarding how to establish a nuclear waste repository with respect to the community. The DOE says it aims “to establish an integrated waste management system to transport, store, and dispose of commercial spent nuclear fuel and high level defense radioactive waste.” The public comment period ends on June 15, and the DOE and Nuclear Regulatory Commission will likely issue statements shortly after.
Ian Zaparte, representative of the Western Shoshone government, says the NRC and the DOE are ignoring the possibilities for danger in the area.
“There are 26 faults, seven cinder cone volcanoes, 90 percent of the mountain is saturated with 10 percent water,” Zaparte told MintPress. “If you heat the rock, it will release that water. If the water comes up and corrodes the canisters, it will take whatever is in storage and bring it into the water and into the valley.”
However, Ian Zaparte takes his criticism of the project even further. He believes the actions taken by the U.S. government constitute acts of genocide against the Western Shoshone and other tribal nations who have been subject to the effects of nuclear testing and power. He is determined to fight for his people’s way of life and the land that his ancestors fought for. http://theantimedia.org/sacred-native-american-lands-could-become-nuclear-waste-dump/
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23-25 October – on Zoom – World BEYOND War’s annual global conferenc
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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