Jean-Paul Baquiast – a nuclear war against Russia would finish USA
US Will Not Survive a Nuclear War Against Russia – Jean-Paul Baquiast
http://sputniknews.com/us/20150417/1021016791.html#ixzz3Xd8u2w8E A nuclear strikes exchange between the United States and Russia will lead to the complete destruction of the United States, leaving Russia and China in a far better position, editor of the French portal Europesolidaire Jean-Paul Baquiast said.
His comment came in the wake of recent internet speculation about the US’ possible intent to carry out a preemptive nuclear attack on Russia. The concerns have risen after General Robin Rand was appointed as head of the US Air Force Global Strike Command.
There are assumptions that he might take an example from American General Curtis LeMay who became famous in 1949 for preparing a plan for a massive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.
Unable to subdue Russia by conventional methods, Washington is preparing to destroy it with its armed forces, Jean-Paul Baquiast wrote. In the event of an armed conflict, American politicians may carry out a preemptive nuclear strike.
“Chances of the United States to destroy Russia without consequences for itself are small,” Baquiast said.
However, even the highly efficient S-500 missile system, which Russia is currently working on, would be unable to protect the country against a massive launch of ballistic missiles from US submarines, he noted.
In turn, Russia would launch its missiles from its submarines off the coast of the United States. And if the Americans manage to hit only a part of the Russian territory due to its large size, the US will be destroyed completely, the journalist wrote.
Nuclear power – a really dirty form of energy – big mistake for Japan to restart it
‘Fukushima lessons: Any notion that nuclear power is clean is obsolete’ Rt.com : April 17, 2015 The world must phase out nuclear power because it is absolutely not clean from the mining processing of uranium to the generation of high-level radioactive waste, Kevin Kamps for the radioactive waste watchdog Beyond Nuclear, told RT.
It’s been four years since the most powerful earthquake in Japan’s history struck the Fukushima nuclear power plant. All of Japan’s 43 operable reactors have been shut down since 2013, because of safety checks required after the accident. The operator of the nuclear plant has sent a second robot inside the Fukushima reactor to collect data from it. The first robot became immovable after recording some footage from inside the reactor.
RT: Since the disaster, Japan has allocated more than $15 billion to an unprecedented project to lower radiation in towns near the power plant. However few locals believe Tokyo’s assurances that the site will eventually be cleaned up. Do you think their fears are reasonable?
Kevin Kamps: Yes, it is an unprecedented catastrophe. Of course there was Chernobyl, but in this area of Japan – it is so densely populated all over. So when they are trying to clear the landscape down to a certain depth, it is going to be more and more expensive. When you add all of the projects from decommissioning of the nuclear power plant to trying to clean up the landscape to loss of economic activity – we’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars all together. It is going to be very difficult for anything like normal life ever to return there.
RT: In addition to massive radioactive remains, Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise following the increase in coal-fired power. Should environmentalists sound the alarm here?
KK: Just in recent days there have been the admissions by high-ranking Tokyo Electric officials that the decommissioning of the nuclear power plant could take more like 200 years because of the lack of technology to do the job. They are going to have to invent all of these robotic systems and engineering processes to try to remove the melted cores at Fukushima Daiichi because that is their current plan unlike Chernobyl with the sarcophagus. The current plan in Japan is to remove those melted cores to somewhere else – perhaps to geologic disposal, they haven’t said. But it is going to be very challenging…………http://rt.com/op-edge/250509-fukushima-nuclear-power-danger-disaster/
New report indicates that deep burial of plutonium better and cheaper than MOX reprocessing
NuClear News, April 15 Alternatives to MOX A new report by Frank von Hippel and Gordon MacKerron reviews programs in France, Japan, the UK and the US to dispose of large stocks of separated plutonium in nuclear power reactor mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel. Most of these efforts have suffered long delays and large cost increases and all have failed to reduce plutonium stockpiles. This has led some of these countries to consider alternatives.
A less costly and more effective approach may be to treat plutonium as a waste to be processed into a stable form and deeply buried. These alternative approaches include disposal with radioactive waste or spent fuel or disposal down a 3-mile (5-kilometer) deep borehole. The report recommends that more than one direct-disposal approach be pursued. It also recommends that the countries that share the problem of plutonium disposal collaborate on exploring direct-disposal options.
Finally, it recommends that the quantities of plutonium disposed by the weapon states be verified by the IAEA. The huge cost overruns in the under-construction MOX plant at the DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina led the Obama Administration to conclude in 2013 that plutonium disposal via MOX “may be unaffordable.”
This has revived policy interest in the U.S. in the possibilities of direct disposal of plutonium as a waste. Efforts to convert foreign separated plutonium into MOX fuel encountered technical problems in the UK, forcing the abandonment of the Sellafield MOX Plant. The UK has therefore looked, in at least a pro forma way, at direct-disposal alternatives.
In the late 1990s, the U.S. studied in considerable depth a “can-in-canister” option in which immobilized plutonium would be embedded in some of the high-level reprocessing waste from which it had been originally separated. This was a way to create a radiation barrier around the plutonium like that around the plutonium in spent fuel, which makes plutonium inaccessible except via chemical and mechanical operations controlled remotely from behind thick radiation shields.
The can-in-canister approach also shares the merit with MOX that it just adds marginally to the quantity of an already existing waste form for which a geological repository has to be found in any case. This option may still be of particular interest in the US, which will be disposing of reprocessing waste for several decades into the future.
In France and the UK, where high-level waste vitrification has been ongoing in parallel with reprocessing, it may be impossible to pursue the “can-in-canister” option unless it is planned well before reprocessing ends. There are other options, however. One that appears increasingly attractive is deep borehole disposal. It does not involve a radiation barrier, but retrieval would be much more difficult than from a closed geological repository.http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/nuclearnews/NuClearNewsNo73.pdf
Utah State regulators have safety concerns about plans to bury nuclear wastes
Regulators question plan to store depleted uranium in Utah By MICHELLE L. PRICE, Associated Press, April 13, 2015 SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — State regulators on Monday cited a number of concerns they need resolved before approving a plan to bury in Utah’s western desert a type of nuclear waste that grows more radioactive over a million years.
The Utah Department of Environmental Qualityreleased a 250-page report Monday that examines a plan from Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions to store depleted uranium at its site about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City. The company said its plan would allow for it to safely bury the waste in a way that weathers changes in climate, civilization and other disruptions.
The state report highlights eight areas where regulators say EnergySolutions hasn’t answered enough questions about how the storage site will hold up in various scenarios, including large-scale geologic changes to the planet.
State officials had begun accepting public comment on the plan through May and may reconsider their conclusions based on that feedback. The division will also hold public meetings in Tooele and Salt Lake City in May……..
While the Monday report from Utah’s Department of Environmental Quality doesn’t make a final conclusion about the plan, some environmental groups said they’re hopeful about the state’s response.
Matt Pacenza, the executive director of HEAL Utah, said after reading the state report that he’s optimistic that regulators may lean toward rejecting the plan.
“You can’t possibly take waste that’s dangerous for two million years,” Pacenza said, “if you have a whole host of unanswered questions and huge gaps in scientific knowledge.” http://www.greenwichtime.com/news/science/article/Regulators-question-plan-to-store-depleted-6196824.php
Utah Radiation Control Board insists on public input to review of depleted uranium waste plan
Utah Radiation Control Board insists depleted uranium hearings go on By BRIAN MAFFLY | | The Salt Lake Tribune, 14 Apr 15 EnergySolutions wants to put the process on hold after state faulted its proposal to accept radioactive waste. Utah Radiation Control Board members Tuesday pushed back against EnergySolutions’ request to delay a public review of the company’s plans to bury depleted uranium in Tooele County.
Board members told company executives they want to move forward with a public process that will culminate this summer with a decision whether to accept the nation’s 700,000-metric-ton stockpile of radioactive waste that is low-level now, but becomes increasingly hotter over the next 2 million years.
“This literally is of national interest, and we keep punting it down the road,” said radiation board chairman Peter Jenkins. “It is time to get additional opinions on it.”
On Monday the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) released a long-anticipated safety evaluation of EnergySolution’s plan to bury the waste at its Clive landfill 80 miles west of Salt Lake City……..
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the enrichment process required to produce fissionable material for nuclear bombs and fuel. The nation’s stockpile of the waste is currently stored at three federal sites, in Kentucky, Ohio and South Carolina.
EnergySolutions proposes burying most of the waste in an 80-acre, west desert landfill cell, covering 55-gallon barrels of the stuff with concrete, clay and rocks.
Meanwhile, 5,800 drums already have been shipped to Clive from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River, S.C. site. After the state blocked further shipments, those barrels were placed in a metal warehouse in Clive.
EnergySolutions also has buried 49,000 tons of depleted uranium under previous disposal contracts………
Eight technical issues remain unresolved, including questions about frost damage, infiltration, evaporation and erosion of the cell that would hold the depleted uranium, as well as how the waste could affect the environment in “deep time” — tens of thousands of years from now. http://www.sltrib.com/home/2399963-155/utah-radiation-control-board-insists-depleted
Scientists advise deep bore burial for high level nuclear wastes
Nuclear waste: Bury nuclear waste down a very deep hole, say scientists, Science Daily April 14, 2015 Source: University of Sheffield
The concept — called deep borehole disposal — has been developed primarily in the UK but is likely to see its first field trials in the USA next year. If the trials are successful, the USA hopes to dispose of its ‘hottest’ and most radioactive waste — left over from plutonium production and currently stored at Hanford in Washington State — in a deep borehole………
Deep borehole disposal (DBD) has a number of advantages over the current solution envisaged for all UK nuclear waste, which is in a mined repository at 500m depth:
- DBD is effectively ‘pay-as-you-go’ disposal. A mined repository can cost from hundreds of millions to tens of billions of dollars to construct before any waste can be disposed of; DBD costs a few tens of millions of dollars per borehole.
- There are more geological sites suitable for DBD as the granite layer that is required can be found at appropriate depths under most of the continental crust.
- A borehole could be drilled, filled and sealed in less than five years, compared to the current timescale for a UK mined repository, which is to open in 2040 and take its first waste by 2075 (although a site has not yet been agreed).
- As DBD disposes of nuclear waste at greater depths and with greater safety and because there are more potential sites available, it should be easier to obtain public and political acceptance of the technology.
- DBD has limited environmental impact and does not require a huge site: the holes are a maximum 0.6m in diameter and can be positioned just a few tens of metres apart. Once a borehole is complete, all physical infrastructure on the surface can be removed.
- While seismic activity might damage the containers within the borehole, fracture the surrounding rock and disrupt some of the nearest barriers in the borehole, it would still not destroy the isolation of the waste or make it possible for radioactivity to reach the surface or any ground water.
The demonstration borehole in the USA will be drilled just under half a metre in diameter and trials will be conducted to ensure waste packages can be inserted into the borehole and recovered if required. Initial results are expected in 2016. If these results are positive, disposal of the Hanford waste capsules would then take place in another borehole, just 0.22m in diameter.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by University of Sheffield. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150414100956.htm
Taiwan’s nuclear waste storage problem may cause early retirement of nuclear reactor
Nuclear generator may be retired early: Taipower CNA April 13, 2015 TAIPEI--The state-owned Taiwan 
Power Co. (Taipower, 台電) warned Sunday that the No. 1 generator at the country’s first nuclear power plant may have to go offline sooner than expected because of limited storage space for spent nuclear fuel. On Feb. 17, Taipower issued an invitation for foreign companies to tender for the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from Taiwan’s first and second nuclear power plants but withdrew the request on April 2 amid a budget controversy.
Taipower had allocated NT$11.257 billion (US$360 million) for the overseas reprocessing of 1,200 clusters of spent fuel rods, 300 of which were to be shipped out by the end of the year.
But lawmakers failed to approve the budget in March, saying that Taipower and the Ministry of Economic Affairs were trying to initiate a bidding process with foreign companies without legislative oversight and were accessing the nation’s nuclear back-end management fund before the establishment of legal guidelines for its use……..
Taipower said that if the fuel storage problem is not resolved in time, the No. 1 generator would have to go offline in mid-2016, ahead of the decommissioning of the first nuclear power plant in New Taipei City, which is scheduled to begin in 2018 and be completed by 2023.
The generator, in fact, has been down since last December due to a component failure, and the Atomic Energy Council has not yet given approval for it to be put back online……..
Several civic groups, including Mom Loves Taiwan and Green Citizens’ Action Alliance, have lodged strong protests against Taipower’s proposed reprocessing of nuclear fuel.
The groups have said is “absurd” to consider sending fuel rods overseas for reprocessing since Taiwan should be phasing out nuclear power.http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/national/national-news/2015/04/13/433515/Nuclear-generator.htm
Only now, 29 years after the nuclear catastrophe, are Chernobyl reactors 1, 2 and 3 to be finally shut
Final shutdown work authorized at Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Rt.com April 10, 2015 The Chernobyl nuclear power plant has officially launched the decommissioning and dismantling of its first three units. The move to fully shutdown the plant comes 29 years after it became site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
Though the Unit 4 reactor had been rendered inoperative in the 1986 meltdown, the first three continued to work for years after the devastating accident. Unit 2, 1 and 3 were put off the line in 1991, 1996 and 2000, respectively.Work will now be carried out to bring the three units into a “conserved” state in several stages, the first of which will take at least ten years, according to a statement on the plant’s website.……..A Chernobyl site operator said last year when the project was announced that its aim was to bring the three units “to a condition that ensures safe, controlled storage of radioactive substances and sources of ionizing radiation within them.”
A giant radiation shield is also currently being built around the site of the wrecked Unit 4 reactor as part of an effort to contain the radiation the site continues to leak. ……..http://rt.com/news/248737-shutdown-chernobyl-power-plant/
Nuclear waste dumps can be forced on local communities – new British law
Law changed so nuclear waste dumps can be forced on local communities http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/05/law-changed-so-nuclear-waste-dumps-can-be-forced-on-local-communities Legislation rushed through in the final hours of parliament allows local planning laws to be bypassed, seriously alarming anti-nuclear campaigners Nuclear waste dumps can be imposed on local communities without their support under a new law rushed through in the final hours of parliament.Under the latest rules, the long search for a place to store Britain’s stockpile of 50 years’ worth of the most radioactive waste from power stations, weapons and medical use can be ended by bypassing local planning.
Since last week, the sites are now officially considered “nationally significant infrastructure projects” and so will be chosen by the secretary of state for energy. He or she would get advice from the planning inspectorate, but would not be bound by the recommendation. Local councils and communities can object to details of the development but cannot stop it altogether.
The move went barely noticed as it was passed late on the day before parliament was prorogued for the general election, but has alarmed local objectors and anti-nuclear campaigners.
Friends of the Earth’s planning advisor, Naomi Luhde-Thompson, said: “Communities will be rightly concerned about any attempts to foist a radioactive waste dump on them. We urgently need a long-term management plan for the radioactive waste we’ve already created, but decisions mustn’t be taken away from local people who have to live with the impacts.”
Objectors worry that ministers are desperate to find a solution to the current radioactive waste problem to win public support to build a new generation of nuclear power stations.
Zac Goldsmith, one of the few government MPs who broke ranks to vote against the move, criticised the lack of public debate about such a “big” change. “Effectively it strips local authorities of the ability to stop waste being dumped in their communities,” he said.
Labour abstained in the vote, indicating that a future government will not want to reverse the change of rules. However, the shadow energy minister, Julie Elliott, has warned that the project is expected to take 27 years to build even after a preferred site was identified and would cost £4bn-5.6bn a year to build, plus the cost of running it for 40 years.
Since the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution found in 1976 that it was “morally wrong” to keep generating nuclear waste without a demonstrably safe way of storing the waste, there have been at least four attempts to find the right site, all of them shelved after strong protest.
There are now 4.5m cubic metres of accumulated radioactive waste kept in secure containers at sites across Britain, though only 1,100m3 of this is the most controversial high-level waste, and 290,000m3 is intermediate-level waste. Itcosts £3bn a year to manage the nuclear waste mountain, of which £2bn comes from taxpayers.
The most recent proposal for a more permanent solution was to ask local authorities to volunteer to examine whether they could host the development. Initially, a coalition of Cumbria county council and Copeland and Allerdale borough councils put their names forward, but the policy stalled in 2013 when the county council pulled out.
Last year, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) published awhite paper which said ministers would prefer to work with public support, but reserved the right to take more aggressive action on planning if “at some point in the future such an approach does not look likely to work”.
The day before parliament rose, MPs voted in an unusual paper ballot to implement a two-page statutory instrument which adds nuclear waste storage to the list of nationally significant infrastructure projects in England, via the 2008 Planning Act.
Officials have said approval depends on a “test of public support” and any site would undergo extensive geological safety tests.
Copeland borough council, one of the two areas most affected by any such development at Sellafield, said it was pleased with the government’s change to planning rules.
Radiation-Free Lakeland – set up to block the Sellafield proposal because they claim there is no evidence deep storage is safe or that the geology of Cumbria is suitable – claimed, however, “the test of public support is a fig leaf: the government hast’t said what the public support will be”.
The only existing high-level radioactive underground waste storage, in New Mexico, USA, has been closed since last year following two accidents.
Germany has put similar plans for burying high-level waste on hold and four other countries, including France and Japan, are examining the idea.
The 211 radioactive poisons left in wastes from CANDU nuclear reactors
Chart of 211 Radioactive Poisons in 10-Year Old CANDU Spent Fuel
The following chart identifies 211 radioactive poisons which are present in every ten-year old irradiated CANDU fuel bundle. The list is not complete.These data, compiled from AECL-9881, refer to the radioactive contents of an irradiated fuel bundle from the Bruce A reactors.
The origin of each radioactive poison is also indicated in the chart:
- F.P. indicates ”Fission Products”: these are the broken pieces of atoms which were split or fissioned in the reactor to produce energy [fission products are also produced when an atomic bomb explodes].
- F.I.A.P. indicates ”Fuel Impurity Activation Products”: during fission, impurities in the fuel become radioactive by absorbing neutrons.
- Z.A.P. indicates ”Zircaloy-4 Activation Products”: elements in the zirconium sheath also become radioactive by absorbing neutrons.
- ”Actinides” refer to the radioactive decay products of uranium and the trans-uranium (heavier-than-uranium) elements created during fission, when uranium atoms absorb one or more neutrons without fissioning.
The radioactivity of each poison is only roughly indicated:
- a single yen-sign ¥ indicates the presence of a particular radioactive poison;
- a triple yen-sign ¥ ¥ ¥ indicates the presence of over a million becquerels of that radioactive poison
- per kg of uranium fuel (for FP, FIAP, and Actinides) or
- per kg of zirconium alloy (for ZAP).
The list is organized according to the electric charge of the nucleus (the so-called “atomic number [Z]”), from the smallest charge (Hydrogen-3, also known as “tritium”) to the largest charge (Californium-252). This is consistent with the order of the elements in the periodic table.Within each chemical species, the radioactive varieties (called “isotopes” or “nuclides”) are organized according to the mass of the nucleus, indicated by the accompanying number in the chart, called the “mass number [A]”…….
CHART – on original …..http://www.ccnr.org/hlw_chart.html
Two junior congressmen willing to pollute Nevada with nuclear waste
let’s look at how many states back in the 1980s had been willing to take the highly radioactive fuel rods off the hands of nuclear energy plant operators: zero. Not a one particular. In particular not Nevada, which currently had paid a human toll as the website of atmospheric atomic bomb detonations. No one gave much believed to the radioactivity in our sky — “don’t worry” — and, boy, had been we snookered.
The truth that two junior congressmen from Nevada would be open to filling a nearby mountain with radiation — placing not only Las Vegas’ economy, but the lives of our youngsters, grandchildren and generations of future Nevadans at threat — is beautiful.
Our delegation in Washington can definitely bicker more than other difficulties, but on Yucca Mountain, Nevadans anticipate solidarity, not betrayal, due to the fact absolutely nothing can be allowed to jeopardize our safe future.
Congressmen’s willingness to money in on Yucca Mountain endangers Nevadans, Herald Recorder , 
March 29, 2015 Two of our congressmen, who are the least skilled in our Capitol Hill delegation, have much to learn when it comes to watching out for the security, welfare and financial safety of Nevadans.
Cresent Hardy and Mark Amodei, a pair of Republicans, say they’d want Nevada to money in on the opening of Yucca Mountain as the final resting place for highly radioactive nuclear
waste if professionals are convinced it would be safe. If the feds and the nuclear power market genuinely want handle of Yucca Mountain, at least they can throw some money our way — perhaps to help fund education or enhance our public infrastructure.
In other words, they’re prepared to place Nevadans in harm’s way if the income is correct. In harm’s way, mainly because no one can be sure that the web site will remain safely benign when filled with this nuclear material. Hardy and Amodei definitely have signaled to Washington and the out-of-state nuclear energy industry that they’re open to bringing lethal nuclear waste to within 90 miles of Las Vegas.
We do not even know where to commence in showing how outrageous their position is…….. Continue reading
Ontario’s nuclear waste dilemma
Burying nuclear waste big issue for Ontario now, Woodstock Sentinel Review, By Greg Van Moorsel, The London Free Press Monday, March 16, 2015……….. a federally-appointed panel’s report, due by May, on whether to allow Ontario Power Generation to bury its least dangerous nuclear waste in a site deeper than the CN Tower is tall.
Opposed by more than 140 Great Lakes centres, including Toronto and Chicago, the 680-m-deep disposal site could be years away even if a construction permit is granted. OPG still needs approval of the local first nation and would have to go through more lengthy review to operate and fill the site, where low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste — not spent nuclear fuel rods — would be stashed more than a kilometre from Lake Huron, in ancient rock in the shadow of one of the world’s largest nuclear plants.
But that’s not the only thing to thrust nukes back onto public radar in Ontario: .Late next year, an overhaul of Ontario’s newest nuclear plant, Darlington, east of Toronto, is set to begin. Already more than 20 years old, Darlington is now at mid-life. OPG says the refurbishment will cost under $10 billion and create 2,000 direct jobs and half as many indirect jobs. It will add 30 years to the plant’s life.
A generation of Ontarians who watched the old Ontario Hydro binge on costly nuclear projects, often with monstrous over-runs, can be forgiven if they’re nail-biting. Yesterday’s mega-projects, which made taxpayers run for the hills, are today sold as “infrastructure” projects we’ve been conditioned to think of only as good. Barring an explosion in oil prices, and new oilsands mines, Darlington will become a construction site like few others in Canada starting in fall 2016.
Whether you support nuclear power misses the point: Ontario is a nuclear power in energy, and that demands public attention.
With 20 reactors, including two in safe storage, Ontario’s nuclear muscle dwarfs almost everything in the U.S. Only Illinois and Pennsylvania come close to Ontario, whose nuclear backbone provides about 60% of its energy needs.
And, yet, even in Southwestern Ontario, where the province first tested nuclear at Douglas Point in the 1960s, atomic energy is often out of mind even though it supports thousands of area jobs.
Southwestern Ontarians, their region Ground Zero for big fights on wind farms, can tell you about highrise-sized turbines. But fewer know the Bruce nuclear plant has the world’s largest operating capacity, or that it’s where OPG wants to sink its deep-burial waste disposal site.
For nuclear in Ontario, the lights are on but too few of us are home. That will soon change. http://www.woodstocksentinelreview.com/2015/03/16/burying-nuclear-waste-big-issue-for-ontario-now
USA to establish a new “independent” Nuclear Waste Administration
Senators Propose New Nuclear WastAgency http://www.law360.com/publicpolicy/articles/635220/senators-propose-new-nuclear-waste-agency By Juan Carlos Rodriguez Law360, New York (March 24, 2015, — A bipartisan group of U.S. senators on Tuesday introduced legislation that would create a new agency to handle the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and establish a new working capital fund in the U.S. Treasury for nuclear waste projects.
The act would establish the Nuclear Waste Administration, an independent agency to manage the country’s nuclear waste program in place of the U.S. Department of Energy. The agency would be headed by an administrator appointed by the president and subject to Senate confirmation, according to the senators.
The act would also require the NWA to establish siting processes for storage facilities and repositories and link those storage facilities and repositories. And the administrator would be authorized to begin siting a pilot storage facility for priority waste immediately, while not setting waste volume restrictions on storage.
“I appreciate my colleagues’ recognition that dealing with our nation’s defense waste — more than half of which exists at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington — is an important priority,” Cantwell, the Senate Energy Committee’s ranking member, said in a statement.
But the DOE said the U.S. is no longer generating defense high-level waste associated with weapons production, and the inventory and composition of defense high-level waste is finite, which means the department can use separate disposal pathways for some waste streams.
“In addition, some defense waste is less radioactive, cooler and easier to handle than commercial waste, which means a simpler design and potentially fewer licensing and transportation challenges for a defense repository. Separate disposal of defense high-level waste could allow greater flexibility in site selection — and that could help keep costs down,” the department said. http://www.law360.com/publicpolicy/articles/635220/senators-propose-new-nuclear-waste-agency
USA’s military and commercial nuclear wastes to be dealt with separately
Senators, Energy Department Float Nuclear Waste Proposals US News 25 Mar 15 A bipartisan group and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz are exploring alternatives to a permanent storage facility in Nevada.
Four Senators from both sides of the aisle promoted legislation Tuesday calling for the construction of interim disposal sites for nuclear waste, a potential alternative to decades of deadlock over a permanent facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
“Nuclear energy is a vital part of America’s energy portfolio, and for far too long, the American taxpayer has been on the hook for the federal government’s failure to implement an effective plan to handle the backend of the nuclear fuel cycle,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and chairwoman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement. “This legislation is an important step toward advancing the use of nuclear power in America.”
The bill does not mention Yucca Mountain, but it mirrors recommendations published in January 2012 by the Energy Department’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, a panel convened by President Barack Obama in 2010 to develop a new strategy for disposing of spent nuclear fuel. Continue reading
USA plans for storage of the 5% of nuclear wastes that originate from defense programs
U.S. to pursue storage for nuclear waste from defense programs, Japan Times, BLOOMBERG
An administration official who requested anonymity to discuss the plan said building the storage site probably will face fewer obstacles than establishing a repository for waste from nuclear power plants.
That’s in part because U.S. defense programs produce about 5 percent of all nuclear waste, the official said. Waste from generating electricity accounts for 85 percent of the total…http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/25/world/u-s-pursue-storage-nuclear-waste-defense-programs/#.VRR7wfyUcnk
1 This Month
petition to oppose the rapid increase of space-military industry threatening Jeju Island and the region.
[Petition by April 19th (KST)] Stop the joint military-Hanwha Systems-Jeju Provincial Government Sea Launch!
World Nuclear Power. Reactors 1951-2026, 75 Years of Nuclear Power.
Interactive Map– https://dv.worldnuclearreport.org/
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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