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South Bruce voters narrowly approve being host to nuclear waste

Scott Dunn Oct 29, 2024 , Horeline Beacon

Teeswater is near one of the two proposed sites for an underground storage facility for the country’s highly radioactive nuclear fuel.

By a thin majority, the answer in South Bruce was yes. Bruce declaring South Bruce to be a willing host for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s proposed Deep Geological Repository (DGR)? resulted in 51.2 per cent, or 1,604, of voters saying yes, and 48.8 per cent, or 1,526, saying no, according to unofficial results posted by the municipality Monday night. Eight electors declined their ballot.

Voter turnout was 3,138 of 4,525 electors, or 69.3 per cent. Since turnout was above 50 per cent, the results are binding on municipal council…………………

Teeswater’s residents were divided by the prospect of burying spent nuclear fuel in a deep, underground vault, people said in interviews outside the community’s post office earlier Monday.

Nuclear Waste Management Organization has secured land for a possible DGR site northwest of Teeswater, part of South Bruce. If the area is selected, the NWMO would build and manage the bunker to be some 650 metres underground.

But first NWMO needed to confirm if the community was a willing host. A referendum was chosen as the way to do that, and voting is to end at 8 p.m. today. It would take 50 per cent plus one of eligible voters to signal willingness, as long as at least 50 per cent of South Bruce voters cast ballots. Otherwise the decision was council’s to make.

……………………………….. there’s the risk of a leak, and the implicit requirement to trust officials who say the job can be done safely. Still others said they think government has already decided it will build the nuclear storage facility in South Bruce……………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.shorelinebeacon.com/news/local-news/update-south-bruce-voters-narrowly-approve-being-host-to-nuclear-waste

October 31, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, politics, wastes | Leave a comment

Japan struggles to find nuclear waste disposal site

Japan is facing difficulties selecting a final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste left from spent fuel at nuclear power plants across the nation.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/10/27/japan/nuclear-waste-site-struggles/

First-stage surveys to find locations suited to host an underground storage facility have been conducted in three municipalities — two in Hokkaido and one in Saga Prefecture — despite continuing anxieties among local residents.

With nuclear power plants in Japan gradually going back online, there remains no clear timeline for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, keeping the government’s goal of a nuclear fuel cycle out of reach.

High-level radioactive waste, which is vitrified after uranium and plutonium are extracted from spent fuel for reuse, presents a significant challenge. Japan’s plan for final disposal involves burying the waste more than 300 meters underground for tens of thousands of years, allowing its radioactivity to diminish over time.

Nuclear power plants in Japan, operating without a designated final dump site for waste, are often criticized for being like “a condominium building without a toilet.”

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization of Japan, or NUMO, responsible for managing final disposal, began inviting municipalities to host surveys for potential dump sites in 2002. To date, however, no location has been selected.

The research process for selecting a final repository site consists of three stages: a literature survey, a drilling survey, and a detailed investigation using an underground facility. Local governments that host such surveys receive subsidies from the central government.

Literature surveys, which involve reviewing geological maps and historical earthquake records, began in the town of Suttsu and the village of Kamoenai in Hokkaido in 2020, and in the town of Genkai, Saga Prefecture, in 2024. No other municipality has agreed to participate in site selection research, however.

The first-stage surveys concluded that all of Suttsu and most of Kamoenai are suitable for moving forward to the drilling survey phase. NUMO plans to release a report as early as this fall and hold briefing sessions for local residents.

Still, Hokkaido Gov. Naomichi Suzuki has expressed opposition to the drilling surveys, and Saga Gov. Yoshinori Yamaguchi has also voiced objections to conducting such a survey in Genkai. The consent of the prefectural governor is required to proceed with second-stage surveys.

The central government has emphasized its responsibility in its basic policies on the final disposal of nuclear waste and aims to conduct surveys in about 10 additional locations, following international precedents.

In the past, the town of Toyo in Kochi Prefecture and the city of Tsushima in Nagasaki Prefecture considered hosting surveys but ultimately declined. Central government representatives now plan to visit over 100 local governments, increasing opportunities to explain the process to residents.

Japan, which has relied on nuclear power for over half a century, currently holds around 19,000 tons of spent fuel at its nuclear power plants and other facilities, using about 80% of its total storage capacity.

As a resource-scarce nation, Japan has been promoting a nuclear fuel cycle, by which spent fuel is reprocessed and recycled for continued use in power generation. The reprocessing plant that is key to this cycle has yet to be completed, however.

Japan Nuclear Fuel started construction of the country’s first commercial reprocessing facility in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, in 1993, but its completion has been delayed 27 times.

In September, an interim storage facility in the city of Mutsu, Aomori Prefecture, took delivery of the first batch of spent fuel from Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings’ Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture. This facility, not on the premises of any nuclear power plant site, will store the fuel for up to 50 years before it undergoes reprocessing.

Many local residents see the receipt of spent fuel as premature, given the unfinished reprocessing plant and the lack of a final disposal solution. They worry that storage at the facility may become permanent rather than temporary.

The central government has decided to rebuild nuclear power plants and extend their operational periods. This marks a reversal of the previous policy, which aimed to reduce reliance on nuclear energy following the March 2011 accident at TEPCO’s Fukushima No. 1 plant, caused by severe damage from the earthquake and tsunami the same month.

An official from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said that “as we have used nuclear power plants, we cannot avoid” the issue of final nuclear waste disposal.

Hideki Masui, president of Japan Atomic Industry Forum, emphasized the need for “a national debate” as Japan struggles to conduct surveys in additional areas for potential disposal sites, placing disproportionate burdens on certain regions.

October 30, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

MP seeks answers on Submarine Dismantling Project in Rosyth

26th October, By Ally McRoberts

THE UK Government have been asked what steps they’re taking to keep West Fife safe and mitigate the “potential risks” posed by the Submarine Dismantling Project.

Radioactive waste is being removed from old nuclear subs at Rosyth Dockyard and Babcock have just applied for permission for more hazardous material to be taken out in the next stage.

Christine Jardine, Lib Dem MP for Edinburgh West, submitted a question at Westminster: “To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (John Healey), what steps his department is taking to (a) ensure the safety of and (b) mitigate potential risks posed by the decommissioning of nuclear submarines at Rosyth Royal Dockyard for surrounding residential areas.”

On Mr Healey’s
behalf, Maria Eagle, Minister for Defence Procurement, replied: “All the
submarines currently stored at Rosyth have already been de-fuelled, which
has significantly reduced overall potential risk. “Further, steps include
contractual requirements with Babcock International around safety and
environmental factors. “These include regular sampling of surrounding
waters and beaches, and dismantling one boat as a demonstrator to determine
the safest methods before starting on other boats.

Dunfermline Press 26th Oct 2024, https://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/24679595.mp-seeks-answers-submarine-dismantling-project-rosyth/

October 29, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | decommission reactor, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Japan to resume trial removal of Fukushima nuclear debris, reports say

Storage tanks for radioactive water are seen at Tokyo Electric Power Co’s (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan February 18, 2019. Picture taken February 18, 2019. REUTERS/Issei Kato

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/10/25/japan/fukushima-debris-removal/
The operator of the tsunami-stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant will resume an operation to remove a sample of highly radioactive material next week, reports said Friday, after having suspended the effort over a technical snag.

Extracting the estimated 880 tons of highly radioactive fuel and debris inside the former power station remains the most challenging part of decommissioning the facility, which was hit by a catastrophic tsunami in 2011.

Radioactivity levels inside are far too high for humans to enter, and last month engineers began inserting an extendable device to try and remove a small sample.

However, operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings had to halt the procedure after noticing that remote cameras on the apparatus were not beaming back images to the control center.

Tepco on Friday said it would resume the removal on Monday after replacing the cameras with new ones, the Asahi Shimbun daily and other local media reported.

Tepco officials could not immediately be reached to confirm the reports.

Three of Fukushima’s six reactors went into meltdown after a tsunami triggered by the nation’s biggest earthquake on record swamped the facility in one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents.

Japan last year began releasing into the Pacific Ocean some of the 540 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of reactor cooling water amassed since the catastrophe.

China and Russia banned Japanese seafood imports as a result, although Tokyo insists the discharge is safe, a view backed by the U.N. atomic agency.

Beijing last month said it would “gradually resume” importing seafood from Japan after imposing the blanket ban.

In a Tepco initiative to promote food from the Fukushima area, swanky London department store Harrods began selling peaches grown in the region last month.

October 28, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Fukushima continuing, wastes | Leave a comment

Isotopic signature of plutonium accumulated in cryoconite on glaciers worldwide

Science Direct, Volume 951, 15 November 2024,

Edyta Łokas ^a, Giovanni Baccolo ^b, Anna Cwanek ^a, Jakub Buda ^c, Katarzyna Kołtonik ^a, Nozomu Takeuchi ^d, Przemysław Wachniew ^e, Caroline Clason ^f, Krzysztof Zawierucha ^c, Dylan Bodhi Beard ^g, Roberto Ambrosini ^h, Francesca Pittino ⁱ, Andrea Franzetti ⁱ, Philip N. Owens ^j, Massimiliano Nastasi ^kl, Monica Sisti ⁱ, Biagio Di Mauro ^m

Highlights

•Cryoconite samples show larger deposition of ^239+240Pu, but not of ²³⁸Pu, in the Northern than in the Southern Hemisphere
•Isotopic signatures of Pu in cryoconite show that besides the global fallout the regional contributions may be significant
•First evidence of ²³⁸Pu contamination from the crash of Interplanetary Station “Mars’96”

Abstract

Glaciers are recognized as repositories for atmospheric pollutants, however, due to climate change and enhanced melting rates, they are rapidly transitioning from being repositories to secondary sources of such apollutants. Artificial radionuclides are one of the pollutants found on glaciers that efficiently accumulate onto glacier surfaces within cryoconite deposits; a dark, often biogenic sediment. This work provides information about the accumulation, distribution and sources of plutonium (Pu) isotopes in cryoconite samples from glaciers worldwide.

Plutonium is an artificial radionuclide spread into the environment in the last decades as a consequence of nuclear test explosions, accidents and nuclear fuel re-processing. Samples collected from 49 glaciers across nine regions of Earth are considered. Activity concentrations of plutonium in cryoconite are orders of magnitude higher than in other environmental matrices typically used for environmental monitoring (e.g. lichens, mosses, soils and sediments), particularly in the Northern Hemisphere.

Isotopic ratios indicate that plutonium contamination of cryoconite is dominated by the global signal of stratospheric fallout related to atmospheric nuclear tests. However, specific glaciers in Svalbard reveal a signature compatible with a contribution from the re-entry of the SNAP-9A satellite in 1964, which was equipped with a ²³⁸Pu radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Similarly, an excess of ²³⁸Pu is observed in cryoconite from the Exploradores Glacier (Chile). This could be associated with the November 1996 crash of the automatic Interplanetary Station “Mars ’96” which was carrying a ²³⁸Pu thermoelectric generator. This is the first time ever that an isotopic evidence for this event is reported. These findings highlight the role that cryoconite can play in reconstructing the radioactive contamination history of different glaciated regions of the Earth.

Introduction

Atmospherically derived radioactivity is the component of environmental radioactivity that is deposited on the Earth’s surface through wet and dry deposition from the atmosphere. The deposited radionuclides are also named fallout radionuclides (FRNs). Some FRNs have a natural origin, such as cosmogenic ⁷Be and ¹⁴C, or are decay products of primordial isotopes. This is the case for ²¹⁰Pb, which derives from ²³⁸U.

However, most FRNs are artificial and occur globally as a result of atmospheric nuclear tests and unintentional nuclear accidents (UNSCEAR, 1982, UNSCEAR, 2000). A key requirement when dealing with environmental radioactivity is the assessment of contamination levels, including the reconstruction of contamination histories, the identification of transport pathways, and of the fate of the radioactivity released into the diverse environmental compartments (Engelbrecht and Schwaiger, 2008).

Glaciers are especially important for studying atmospheric fallout history (Jaworowski et al., 1978). First, glaciers consist of deposits of atmospheric precipitation and intrinsically accumulate fallout species, including FRNs. Under specific conditions (i.e. no melting, low horizontal ice flow), by studying the stratigraphy of ice and snow layers, it becomes possible to reconstruct the depositional history of FRNs (Gabrieli et al., 2011; Olivier et al., 2004). In addition to glacier ice, attention has recently turned to another environmental matrix typical of glaciated landscapes which accumulates radioactivity; cryoconite that is a type of sediment found on the surface of glaciers worldwide (Cook et al., 2016). …………………………………..

Plutonium (Pu) is a toxic, radioactive and predominately anthropogenic element produced through neutron irradiation of uranium in nuclear reactors and during nuclear weapon detonations (Zhong et al., 2019). The most significant releases of plutonium in the Northern Hemisphere were associated with global fallout (GF) resulting from atmospheric nuclear weapon tests carried out between 1945 and 1980, with a peak in the 1960s (UNSCEAR, 1982, UNSCEAR, 2000).

Other important sources are related to catastrophic events such as the 1978 crash of the Cosmos-954 satellite, which had a nuclear reactor on board (Krey et al., 1979; Tracy et al., 1984), as well as the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in 1986 (UNSCEAR, 2010) and the Fukushima Daiichi accident in 2011 (Povinec et al., 2013a; Povinec et al., 2013b). Moreover, from 1964 to 1980, China conducted atmospheric nuclear testing at the Lop Nor test site in north-western Chi

The Northern Hemisphere has received two-thirds of global plutonium deposition (Clark et al., 2019). Fig. 1 illustrates the most significant atmospheric nuclear testing and accident sites in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, including those near the Equator.

The tests conducted in the Northern Hemisphere have received significant interest but much less is known regarding the deposition that took place in the Southern Hemisphere. The United Kingdom (UK) was at the forefront of the atmospheric nuclear testing program in the Southern Hemisphere between 1952 and 1957 in Australian territory (Johansen et al., 2019), while France conducted extensive open-air nuclear testing in French Polynesia in the South Pacific Ocean from 1966 to 1974 (Bouisset et al., 2021). The UK tests resulted in a substantial amount of regional fallout (i.e., tropospheric fallout), compared to the higher-yield French tests, which contributed to the stratospheric fallout.

In 1964, the Transit 5BN3 satellite carrying a SNAP 9A radioisotope thermoelectric generator, launched by the United States of America (USA), failed to achieve orbit. The satellite burned up when descending into the upper atmosphere over Madagascar. The ²³⁸Pu load (1 kg) was dispersed worldwide and was detected globally in the environment, even in remote areas. Most of the fallout of ²³⁸Pu from this satellite occurred in the Southern Hemisphere (Hardy et al., 1972, Hardy et al., 1973).

Another important event, although not well-documented, was reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency (Radiation and Safety, 2001) in their inventory of accidents and losses at sea involving radioactive material. According to the report, it involved the atmospheric re-entry of the automatic Interplanetary Station “Mars ’96”, which was launched on November 16th, 1996. The station fell off the coast of Chile near the border with Bolivia and has not been located to date.

Plutonium isotope deposition after weapons testing can be local, regional and global, depending on detonation height, yield and meteorological conditions ………………….

This study, for the first time, presents a comprehensive global analysis of the variation in activity concentrations of ²³⁸Pu and ^239+240Pu, along with activity (²³⁸Pu/^239+240Pu) and atomic (²⁴⁰Pu/²³⁹Pu) ratios, observed in cryoconite on glaciers from both hemispheres.

…………………………….Conclusions

This study provides new insights into the provenance of Pu isotopes (²³⁸Pu, ²³⁹Pu, ²⁴⁰Pu) in glaciers based on cryoconite samples collected from nine glaciated regions of six continents. The ^239+240Pu activity concentrations are significantly higher in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern Hemisphere, which reflects the uneven deposition of global fallout between hemispheres. Within the Northern Hemisphere the highest concentrations occur in Scandinavia and the European Alps…………………………………………….. more https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969724055062

October 27, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | - plutonium | Leave a comment

Has Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization earned the public’s trust?

by Gordon Edwards, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, October 24 2024.

http://www.ccnr.org/NWMO_and_Public_Trust_2024.pdf

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) represents Canada’s nuclear waste producers. For 14 years, NWMO has been searching for a “willing host community” to accept all of Canada’s high-level radioactive waste (used nuclear fuel) for burial in a Deep Geological Repository (DGR). In 2010, NWMO promised “the industry’s plan will only proceed in an area with informed and willing hosts.”

The residents of South Bruce are now voting on whether or not to lock themselves into the NWMO plan. I am deeply disappointed to find that, for more than a dozen years, NWMO has been consistently misleading these residents about the true nature of the hazards from used nuclear fuel. In fact, NWMO has systematically withheld the most relevant scientific information from candidate host communities.

Each candidate community has a Community Liaison Committee (CLC) that meets with NWMO 10 times a year under a program called “Learn More”. Despite more than a hundred meetings over a dozen years, NWMO has never called attention to the dozens of varieties of human-made radioactive materials – the very thing that makes used fuel so dangerous. These toxic materials include radioactive varieties of commonly occurring non-radioactive elements like iodine, cesium , and strontium.

All reactor-created radioactive waste materials are known carcinogens. Most of them are not found in nature. They are particularly dangerous when ingested, inhaled or otherwise absorbed into the body. To get into the environment, they must leak out of the used fuel – something that happens regularly in reactor cooling systems, including the used fuel storage pools.

Does NWMO think that Canadians are not entitled to know about these materials and their dangers to humans and the environment?

When I spoke to the South Bruce Community Liaison Committee (CLC) in 2020, one man who had already served for seven years on the CLC for South Bruce was caught completely off-guard when I spoke about these things.

He said, “You mentioned about radioactive materials. I guess that’s the first I’ve heard of them. There are names I have not heard of before – strontium [radioactive strontium], iodine [radioactive iodine]. That’s the first I’ve heard of it. How are they created, or generated? How do they come about?”

from a South Bruce CLC member, November 4 2020

I was stunned. This man had met with NWMO at least 60 or 70 times to “Learn More”, yet he knew nothing about the nature of these radioactive waste materials that will almost certainly be released into the local environment when six million individual fuel bundles are repackaged for burial. Even tiny cracks or pinholes in the metallic fuel cladding will allow radioactive iodine and cesium to be released in the form of a gaseous vapour that is difficult to contain completely. These gases turn back into a solid on contact with any cool surface.

In particular, radioactive iodine contaminates cattle feed such as hay or alfalfa, and then re-concentrates in the cow’s milk. When children drink that milk, the radioactive iodine concentrates even further in the thyroid gland. The iodine in the thyroid is typically 10,000 times more concentrated than the iodine released in the air. In Belarus, 5000 children had to have their thyroid glands surgically removed as a result of radioactive iodine from the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Do the dairy farmers in the South Bruce area not deserve to be informed of such facts?

Radioactive cesium released from Chernobyl contaminated sheep meat in Northern England and Wales for twenty years after the accident. Even today, when hunters kill a wild boar in Germany or Eastern Europe, the meat is unfit for human consumption due to radioactive cesium contamination from Chernobyl. Radioactive cesium concentrates in the soft tissues, hence the meat of farm animals. On the other hand, radioactive strontium goes to the bones, where it can cause bone cancer and/or leukemia.

NWMO has insisted that the used fuel is completely solid, implying that there can be no leakage. On the NWMO web site we are told that, in order to prevent leakage, “the first barrier in the multiple-barrier system is the fuel pellet … a ceramic material, which is baked in a furnace to produce a hard, high-density pellet.”

But NWMO does not reveal that used fuel pellets are always badly cracked and fractured. About 2 percent of the radioactive iodine and cesium vapours have already escaped from the used pellet and are available for immediate release as soon as there is the slightest penetration of the cladding.

Iodine-129 has a half-life of 16 million years, so when it is released into the environment it is there to stay. Cesium-135 has a half-life of 3.5 million years, so it too will be a permanent threat. Cesium-137 has a half-life of only 30 years, so half of it is already gone by the time the used fuel arrives at its final destination, but the amount released into the local environment will stick around for several centuries.

As a science educator, I find NWMO’s failure to highlight these facts unforgivable. They are asking the public to trust them for countless generations to come. I do not believe they have earned that trust.

P.S. Here is a video of my presentation to the residents of Teeswater and South Bruce on October 5, 2024. Other speakers included David Suzuki, Brennain Lloyd of Northwatch, Dale Dewar of IPPNW-Canada, and Theresa McClenaghan of the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM1kfDsS9Uc -a video of the entire event:

October 26, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

Last German nuclear power plant to receives decommissioning and dismantling permit

WNN Thursday, 24 October 2024

The Schleswig-Holstein Ministry for Energy Transition, Climate Protection, Environment and Nature has issued the first decommissioning and dismantling permit to PreussenElektra for the Brokdorf nuclear power plant. Brokdorf is the last German nuclear power plant to receive this approval and begin dismantling.

PreussenElektra – a subsidiary of EOn Group – applied for approval to decommission and dismantle the 1410 MWe pressurised water reactor in December 2017. The plant was shut down on 31 December 2021.

Phase 1 of the plant’s decommissioning and dismantling has now been approved. This includes the decommissioning and dismantling of the plant components that are no longer required and subject to nuclear regulatory supervision, with the exception of the reactor pressure vessel and the biological shield.

Since Brokdorf’s closure, the conditions for dismantling the plant have been created in close coordination with the authorities. These include the decontamination of the primary cooling circuit, systems and plant components that are no longer required have been taken out of service, and the workforce has been adjusted. A large proportion of the fuel elements still present in the plant have already been moved to the interim storage facility on site and replacement systems for the plant’s energy supply have been installed.

…………….. The next steps will be to create new logistics routes within the control area and set up a waste processing centre for the dismantled masses. In addition, systems and plant components that are no longer required will be prepared for dismantling.

A second dismantling permit is required to dismantle the reactor pressure vessel and the biological shield. This requires the removal of all fuel elements and special fuel rods, which are expected to be transported to the interim storage facility at the site in 2025. PreussenElektra submitted the application for the second dismantling permit on 30 August this year. This is currently being examined by independent experts.

………………………………. In December last year, PreussenElektra, together with EOn group companies, announced plans for the construction at the Brokdorf site of the largest battery storage facility in the EU to date. The facility – to store electricity from renewable sources – is to be expanded in two stages to up to 800 MW of power and a storage capacity of up to 1600 MWh. Commissioning could begin as early as 2026. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/decommissioning-permit-granted-for-brokdorf-plant

October 26, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | decommission reactor, Germany | Leave a comment

Cost overruns at Sellafield nuclear waste site to hit £136bn

Storage facility is not delivering value for money as large projects are running
behind schedule, warns spending watchdog.

The cost of managing Britain’s most hazardous nuclear waste has risen by almost a fifth to £136 billion due to a failure to set a realistic budget, the government’s spending
watchdog has concluded.

Sellafield, which is home to about 85 per cent of the UK’s nuclear waste and stores the most hazardous waste, is not delivering value for money as large projects are running behind schedule and over budget, according to the National Audit Office’s latest
assessment.

The site in Cumbria is operated by the Nuclear Decommissioning
Authority (NDA), a mainly taxpayer-funded body, and over its lifetime will
retrieve about 3.3 million m3 of waste from ageing facilities and store it
in more modern silos. The cost of maintaining the site into the next
century, when Sellafield is scheduled for demolition, is likely to cost
£136 billion after adjusting for inflation, up from £84 billion at March
2019, but could run to £253 billion under a worst-case scenario.

None of the budgets for the four big projects under way at Sellafield in 2018, when
the audit office last scrutinised the waste storage site, accounted for
“optimism bias”, which assumes work will be delivered on time and
within budget. More realistic costings were only included in 2018, despite
the watchdog recommending the NDA require Sellafield to do so in 2012.
There has been some progress made since the National Audit Office last
scrutinised Sellafield, including savings of about £170 million a year by
operating the sites as subsidiaries rather than contracting out their
management and the government indemnifying the decommissioning authority
against certain risks so it no longer needs to buy insurance. The
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said that the NAO’s report
showed “significant progress” had been made by Sellafield and the NDA
but “there is still more to do”.

Times 23rd Oct 2024, https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/energy/article/cost-overruns-at-sellafield-nuclear-waste-site-to-hit-136bn-zjklxk3p7

October 25, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Video. Gordon Edwards on Nuclear Fuel Waste Abandonment (South Bruce)

Canada’s nuclear waste producers want to bury and eventually abandon all of their high-level radioactive waste (used nuclear fuel) in a Deep Geological Repository (DGR). For this purpose they need to find a “willing host community” that will accept the waste. Accordingly, in 2005 the waste producers created a Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) that has given many millions of dollars to a small number of “candidate communities” over the last 14 years, in addition to meeting on a monthly basis with the members of a Citizens’ Liaison Committee (CLC) chosen for each candidate community, in a program called “Learn More”.

The idea is that each community would learn about how safe the management, transport, packaging and burial of this intensely radioactive material will be, so that they are “fully informed” about the proposed project. Now NWMO has narrowed down the original list of 22 candidate communities to just two: one near Revell Lake north of Lake Superior, between the Ontario towns of Ignace and Dryden, and the other near Teeswater, South Bruce, a small farming community a few kilometres west of Lake Huron.

Unfortunately, NWMO withheld information about the individual radioactive constituents of used nuclear fuel (like radioactive iodine, radioactive caesium, radioactive strontium, and plutonium) and the biomedical dangers they pose. NWMO also erroneously affirmed that the used fuel pellets are solid ceramics that can not leak, which is untrue. Until recently, NWMO neglected to tell the communities that the used fuel will have to be “repackaged” before burial, an elaborate and potentially dangerous operation. In addition NWMO withheld information about the specific risks associated with “reprocessing” – the option of extraction of plutonium from the used fuel before burial, which requires the destruction of the nuclear fuel matrix, thereby releasing a very large quantity of radioactive solids, vapours and gases that are difficult to contain.

The Ignace town council has already signed an agreement with NWMO to proceed, and we are awaiting the decision of Wabigoon Lake First Nation – one of the closest indigenous communities to the Revell Lake site. The citizens of South Bruce will be voting in a referendum near the end of October whether or not to give their approval, after which the nearby Saugeen Ojibway First Nation will render its decision whether or not to support the project. In both cases, the decision of the indigenous peoples will be of great importance. Canada has accepted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as a fundamental component of federal decision-making. UNDRIP asserts that no toxic waste shall be stored or disposed of o indigenous lands without the Free, Prior, Informed Consent of those indigenous rights-holders.

October 21, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

How to build a nuclear tomb to last millennia

These enthusiastic articles about nuclear technology!

The writers never for a moment consider the thought of also just stopping making the foul stuff!

A promising site may turn out to be too close to vital aquifers that supply fresh water to local communities, or to the side of a valley, which in 10,000 years’ time may mean it’s at risk from an advancing glacier, and the hunt has to start again.

Then there is the nature and volume of the waste, and the amount of heat it generates. Intermediate waste produces less heat and so it can be stored safely, with containers stacked relatively close together in large vaults. High-level nuclear waste produces a great deal more heat, and must be stored in small amounts, far apart.

There is also the need for physical barriers to stop radiation from escaping from the GDF, which can range from the design of the containers to the type of rock that surrounds it. But critics fear these barriers may fail over time.

Nuclear waste remains toxic for thousands of years. How do you build a
storage facility that will keep it safely buried for millennia? How do you
go about designing, building and operating structures that take decades to
plan and even longer to build, that operate over centuries and must survive
for 100,000 years, and that contain some of the most dangerous materials on
the planet?

Four hours’ drive east of Paris, the 2.4km (1.5 miles) of
tunnels are home to countless scientific experiments, construction
technique testing and technological innovations. France’s National
Radioactive Waste Agency (Andra) needs these to demonstrate to the
regulators if it is to be awarded a licence to build a geological disposal
facility (GDF) next to the tunnels.

Geological disposal facilities for
nuclear waste are, or will be, some of the largest underground structures
humanity has ever built. They are planned, in development, about to start
construction or about to open in the UK, France, Sweden, Finland and around
20 other countries.

BBC 19th Oct 2024,
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241018-how-to-build-a-nuclear-tomb-to-last-millennia

October 21, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes | Leave a comment

First ex-Royal Navy nuclear submarine to be disposed of enters final dismantling phase.

Navy Lookout 15th Oct 2024 https://www.navylookout.com/first-ex-royal-navy-nuclear-submarine-to-be-disposed-of-enters-final-dismantling-phase/

Work has started on the third and final phase of the project to dismantle ex-HMS Swiftsure. As the demonstrator project for the dismantling programme, she will be the first former RN SSN to be fully disposed of.

The glacial project to safely scrap the growing fleet of decommissioned boats has finally begun to make some progress at Rosyth in the last few years. Each submarine will undergo a three-step process which involves Low Level Radioactive Waste (LLW) being removed first. The second and most demanding stage involves the removal of the Reactor Pressure Vessel that holds the reactor core and is classed as Intermediate Level Radioactive Waste (ILW).

Swiftsure’s disposal is a notable achievement as the first Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) anywhere in the world to be dismantled. Other nations use a much simpler process and cut the entire reactor compartment out of the submarine and transport it structurally complete for burial in land storage facilities. The US has successfully disposed of over 130 nuclear ships and submarines since the 1980s. The Russians have disposed of over 190 Soviet-era boats (with some international assistance) since the 1990s while France has already disposed of 3 boats from their much smaller numbers.

Besides the progress with Swifsure, LLW has been safely removed from ex-HMS Resolution, Revenge and Repulse. As experience has been gained working on successive boats techniques have been refined and more waste has been managed to final disposal at reduced cost. The optimisation of the process allowed 50% greater tonnage of waste to be removed in 75% of the time it took for Swiftsure. So far the work has been completed safely on budget and on time. Work has yet to begin on ex-HMS Dreadnought, Churchill and Renown still afloat in the basin at Rosyth.

While there is positive progress at Rosyth, 14 Dock at Devonport is still not ready to accept the first boat to begin defuelling and dismantling. There are now 15 decommissioned submarines filling up the basins in Plymouth (soon to be 16 when HMS Triumph goes in 2025). Work to get rid of this legacy cannot start soon enough. At least the lessons learned in Rosyth should give the teams at Devonport an advantage although the majority of these boats still have their nuclear fuel on board and will have to undergo a 4-stage process.

October 20, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | decommission reactor, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Plutonium just had a bad day in court

In a major decision whose consequences are still being assessed, a federal judge declared that plutonium pit production — one ingredient in the U.S. government’s $1.5 trillion nuclear weapons expansion — has to be performed in accordance with the nation’s strongest environmental law

SEARCHLIGHT NEW MEXICO, by Alicia Inez Guzmán, October 17, 2024

Most Americans don’t seem aware of it, but the United States is plunging into a new nuclear arms race. At the same time that China is ramping up its arsenal of nuclear weapons, Russia has become increasingly bellicose. After a long period of relative dormancy, the U.S. has embarked on its own monumental project to modernize everything in its arsenal — from bomb triggers to warheads to missile systems — at a cost, altogether, of at least $1.5 trillion.

Los Alamos National Laboratory plays a vital role as one of two sites set to manufacture plutonium “pits,” the main explosive element in every thermonuclear warhead. But as a recent court ruling makes clear, the rush to revive weapons production has pushed environmental considerations — from nuclear waste and increases in vehicular traffic to contamination of local waterways, air and vegetation — to the wayside.

That just changed dramatically. On Sept. 30, United States District Judge Mary Geiger Lewis of South Carolina ruled that the federal government violated the National Environmental Policy Act — the “Magna Carta” of federal environmental law — when it formulated and began to proceed with plans to produce plutonium pits at LANL and the Savannah River Site, in Aiken, South Carolina.

“[T]he Court is unconvinced Defendants took a hard look at the combined effects of environmental impacts of their two-site strategy,” Lewis wrote of the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which together oversee America’s nuclear weapons stockpile.

The ruling was momentous for the anti-nuclear community. But it was also mystifying, because Judge Lewis didn’t provide a roadmap for how to move forward with this extraordinarily complicated policy dispute. Rather than bringing pit production to a halt — which plaintiffs argued for in their original complaint, filed in 2021 — the judge instead ordered the parties to reach some sort of “middle ground” among themselves and submit a joint proposal by Oct. 25. What that will consist of is anybody’s guess. The judge was clear on one point, though — she’ll be keeping a close eye on the matter by maintaining jurisdiction over the case. Injunctive relief, she added, could still be in the cards.

NEPA’s rules require that agencies take a “hard look” at potential environmental impacts. NEPA does not, however, dictate what decision should be made once those impacts are identified.

Previous impact statements have spelled out a vast array of potential hazards for nuclear facilities. These have included an “inadvertent criticality event,” which happens when nuclear material produces a chain reaction and a pulse of potentially fatal radioactivity. Another risk is fire igniting inside a glovebox — the sealed enclosure where radioactive materials like plutonium are handled — and then resisting suppression, leading to widespread contamination. Other possibilities: a natural gas explosion at vulnerable nuclear sites or a wildfire on LANL’s sprawling campus, which is bounded on all sides by the towns of Los Alamos and White Rock, the Pueblo of San Ildefonso, the Santa Fe National Forest and Bandelier National Monument.

“Perhaps more significantly,” Judge Lewis stated, those impact statements “provide a springboard for public comment,” a kind of mechanism for citizens to express criticism and concern and, in some cases, identify a project’s blindspots — risks to people and places that have not been properly taken into account.

An announcement from the DOE the following day was telling, if not defiant: The first plutonium pit manufactured as part of this modernization program was ready to be deployed into the stockpile. That pit — made at LANL but the product of multiple facilities across the nation’s nuclear weapons complex — is intended for a new warhead, which will be strapped into a new intercontinental ballistic missile called the Sentinel. The Sentinel program, at $140 billion, is one of the costliest in the history of the U.S. Air Force……………………………………………………………………….

Now, almost 40 years later, the court found that the agencies charged with reviving the nuclear weapons complex have not properly evaluated the perils that could come with turning out plutonium pits at two different sites, thousands of miles apart. For the plaintiffs in this case — which include Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition — Lewis’s decision to intervene is a milestone.

“We’ve had a pretty significant victory here on the environmental front,” said Tom Clements, the director of Savannah River Site Watch. “Nonprofit public interest groups are able to hold the U.S. Department of Energy accountable.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………….. For LANL, which sits on the kind of forested land typical of the Pajarito Plateau, wildfire is a major risk. …………………………………………………..

A “parade of horribles”

The array of sites that play some role in this latest phase of pit production goes well beyond LANL and SRS, and includes existing facilities in Amarillo, Texas; Kansas City, Missouri; and Livermore, California. Hypothetically, if the feds ever produce the kind of environmental impact statement plaintiffs demand, it could potentially cover this entire constellation, requiring public hearings at each location and in Washington, D.C………………………………………… more https://searchlightnm.org/federal-judge-ruling-plutonium-pits-environmental-impact/?utm_source=Searchlight+New+Mexico&utm_campaign=ae33d0dc0a-10%2F15%2F2024+%E2%80%93+Plutonium&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8e05fb0467-ae33d0dc0a-395610620&mc_cid=ae33d0dc0a&mc_eid=a70296a261

October 19, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | - plutonium, Legal, USA | Leave a comment

The Energy Department just made one plutonium pit. Making more is uncertain

Bulletin, By Dylan Spaulding | October 10, 2024

Two conflicting developments arose this month in US efforts to produce new plutonium pits for its nuclear weapons: The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced it had produced a warhead-ready pit—the explosive core of a nuclear weapon—for the first time in decades, and a federal court ruled that NNSA will be required to consider the cumulative environmental and health impacts of its pit production program.

Overshadowing these events is a vigorous debate over the necessity for new pits at all. Previous analyses have found that plutonium pits have viable lifespans well beyond the expected service life of the current stockpile, whereas production of pits for new weapons is part of a sweeping US nuclear modernization that raises concern over the future of arms control and any possibility for stockpile reductions at a time of deteriorating international relations.

The two most recent developments illustrate a critical tension in the US nuclear weapons program: New pit production demonstrates a doubling down of US reliance on nuclear weapons for the 21st century. The failure to adhere to environmental policy in doing so highlights the unwitting cost that US citizens may bear for this policy choice—as they have repeatedly in the past………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

…….Production challenges. Despite any fanfare, demonstrating the ability to certify one plutonium pit doesn’t guarantee smooth sailing toward Los Alamos’s mandated production goals.

The Los Alamos’ Plutonium Facility at Technical Area 55 (PF-4) is conducting the dangerous and difficult work of pit production while also undergoing construction and modernization, with work happening round-the-clock—several other plutonium-related missions are pursued under the same roof. The facility has been criticized for deficiencies in personal safety and safety-related engineering, including recent glovebox fires, floods, worker exposure to plutonium and beryllium, and violations of criticality safety rules. The likelihood of such incidents increases as a result of fast-paced work in close-quarters with a mostly new workforce. In 2013, the PF-4 facility was shut down for three years following a severe criticality safety violation; a repeat could prove fatal, literally and figuratively.

…………………………………………… Regardless of Los Alamos’ success, the congressionally mandated quota of 80 pits per year remains impossible to meet by NNSA’s own admission. This number relies on completion and commissioning of a second production facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which won’t be operational until the mid-2030s at the earliest.

Just as the future rate of plutonium pit production is uncertain, the missile these pits are intended for—the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile—is also not likely to be completed on schedule. The troubled Sentinel project remains vastly over budget and behind schedule, putting its future at risk and making coordination of the warhead and missile difficult to foresee. Problems or changes in scope for either program will affect the other.

A federal court ruling. Coinciding with NNSA’s announcement of the first diamond-stamped pit, a US District Court ruled that the Energy Department and the NNSA violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to properly consider alternatives before proceeding with pit production, requiring the agency to conduct a programmatic environmental impact assessment.

This was a victory for transparency and the community groups—among them, Savannah River Site Watch, Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs), and the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition—who, for years, have been asking for such an assessment.

Reestablishing pit production on the scale now contemplated is potentially the biggest investment in the nuclear weapons complex since the Manhattan Project. With it comes hiring and training of thousands of new employees, increased transportation between sites, new construction, safely handing radioactive material, and the generation of new nuclear waste. The cumulative nature of these activities, occurring across many Energy Department’s sites, demands that the impacts of pit production be considered holistically in the form of a programmatic environmental impact assessment.

The environmental impact statements issued by the national laboratories offer perhaps the best public-facing analyses of whether their plans comply with standards for protection of public safety and the environment, including the likelihood of specific scenarios and associated risk of public exposure to hazards such as chemicals or radiation. Still, the NNSA has—until now—resisted issuing such a programmatic statement.

The agency clearly recognizes that pit production involves much of the US nuclear weapons complex. The press release announcing the first diamond-stamped pit thanked workers in Kansas City, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Los Alamos, and the Pantex plant in Texas. But the NNSA has so far relied on a series of addenda and supplements to a 2008 environmental impact statement for work at Los Alamos and considers Savannah River separately. These assessments largely ignore the cross-complex collaboration required and the subsequent risks, including impacts on the potentially overburdened Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico that must absorb the prolific—and complex—waste stream from the pit production process.

The court ruling—which holds that the Energy Department and the NNSA did not follow environmental requirements in pursuing two production sites—will require the NNSA to conduct a new review, bringing renewed public scrutiny and allowing a new opportunity for input from concerned opponents.

An unclear horizon. A programmatic environmental impact statement can take years before it’s finalized. The judge in the case declined to halt construction at NNSA’s second pit production site at Savannah River while the new assessment is being carried out, and the two parties have until October 21st to seek an agreement. It’s likely that the NNSA will argue that stopping pit-production work would be too expensive, too disruptive, and too damaging to national security to consider. It remains unclear what the potential consequences could be if the NNSA decides to challenge the ruling.

While work at Los Alamos is likely to continue amid a programmatic assessment, design choices are still underway at the Savannah River Site, where the NNSA is attempting to retrofit the troubled former mixed oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication plant which never reached productivity despite more than $7 billion of investment. This site is years away from being active and will require extensive transformation that may cost as much as $25 billion. Given this enormous investment, a programmatic environmental impact statement can ensure that this transformation better addresses the actual hazards and better protects communities, workers, and the environment.

Reestablishing pit production in the United States is a massive undertaking. It involves resurrecting a lost capacity that requires complicated engineering, construction, and extremely hazardous work processes that will be carried out by a largely new work force with little to no prior experience. NNSA and its contractors must manage safety risks across multiple sites where new hazardous waste will be generated in communities that don’t want it and where the Energy Department has a poor historic track record of environmental stewardship.

Congress and the Biden administration should eliminate the mandated 80 pit per year requirement while the NNSA conducts a new, thorough environmental assessment that would go a long way toward promoting increased safety and public protection—a challenge that the NNSA and the labs should take seriously. https://thebulletin.org/2024/10/the-energy-department-just-made-one-plutonium-pit-making-more-is-uncertain/

October 18, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | - plutonium, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

A desire to leave not a ‘compelling need’ under nuke dump compo scheme say Nuclear Waste Services

Residents no longer able to live under the continued threat of a potential nuclear waste dump will be unable to avail themselves of compensation if they simply sell up at a loss under the terms of the scheme recently announced by Nuclear Waste Services.

Last month, Nuclear Waste Services launched the Property Value Protection Scheme to compensate homeowners who sell their properties in the three GDF Search Areas in West Cumbria and East Lincolnshire for a sum that is lower than the ‘market price’ because the market has been blighted by the threat of a Geological Disposal Facility.

Given that a big factor in determining property price is ‘location, location, location’, future residency in an area hosting a GDF which we described as ‘a massive mining project akin to building the Channel Tunnel, into which the UK’s most deadly stockpile of radioactive waste would be deposited for eternity’, must inevitably result in blight, particularly in quiet, seaside retirement communities and those with no historic association with the nuclear industry.

In response, the NFLAs published a critique of the scheme as overly complex and too restrictive.[1]

Eligibility for compensation requires the applicant to hurdle five key conditions and supply complex evidence. One key hurdle is the need to demonstrate a ‘compelling need’ to sell.

On reading our critique, a Cumbrian resident and local Parish Councillor set out for the NFLAs their circumstances:

“I currently live in a rural hamlet with open countryside surrounding me, with far reaching views over the countryside to the mountains beyond. It is quiet and peaceful. This is the type of property and lifestyle I have chosen. I did not choose to live near a 1 KM square head works for a GDF with the long-term build and operating life with the noise, visual disturbance and general impact the development would bring. I would not live in that environment.”

The Secretary read out this scenario to NWS officials at the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s Stakeholder Summit in September and asked them if the desire to escape the prospect of a future GDF development would be accepted as a ‘compelling need’’.

After a follow up exchange of emails, the response was a resounding No: ‘A desire to move away from an area being considered to host a potential GDF would not meet the “compelling” need criteria of the PVP scheme.’

Although on the face of it, the NWS reply represents for people wishing to move a massive disappointment, the actual position may – as per usual with the GDF process – be more nuanced. For under the published guidance, ‘Section 3.5 – Criteria 5: Compelling need to sell’ it states that a compelling need includes ‘a significant change in health’.

It is clear from public questions posed at recent meetings of the East Lindsey District Council that the continued uncertainty is taking a toll on the emotional, mental and physical health of some residents. Surely then, in circumstances where they have had to obtain related professional medical treatment, the need to move must constitute a ‘compelling need?’ To the NFLAs taking a counterview would be inhumane.

Regrettably they will be unable to rely on any sympathy from any member with local residency and knowledge of the situation on the ground; for it has been made clear to the NFLAs that only specialists with relevant experience of administering similar compensation schemes used with other large national infrastructure projects will be eligible for appointment as ‘independents’ to the five-member panel that will consider applications. Tellingly no positions will be reserved for members of the Community Partnerships.

For more information, please contact Richard Outram, NFLA Secretary by email to richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk

1. https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/co

October 14, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

The Anishinaabe community fighting nuclear waste dumping, one step at a time‘

‘There’s more fresh water in this part of the country than there is in the Great Lakes, and they want to destroy that’

Ricochet, Crystal Greene, September 23 2024

Every September long weekend for the past five years, Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies have walked together along the TransCanada Highway 17 to peacefully protest the proposed dumping of nuclear waste on Treaty 3 lands in northwestern Ontario.

Among the walkers at the annual Walk Against Nuclear Waste was an Anishinaabe grandmother, who started the walk in hopes that more people will “wake up” to what’s at stake with the possibility of a deep geological repository (DGR) that would contain all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste within their watershed.

“This is my last year and I feel like I’m gonna miss it, but it was a good awareness. I’m okay with that,” Darlene Necan, told Ricochet Media as vehicles zoomed by on TransCanada Highway 17, many beeping their horns in support throughout the roadside interview.

On September 1, two groups left from Ignace and Wabigoon at the same time. Over two days the group of about 30 participants walked about 40 kilometres from each direction.

They all met up at a rest stop near Revell Lake, the site where the Nuclear Waste Management Organization has done exploration drilling for the potential $26-billion DGR, which would sit at headwaters of the Wabigoon River and Turtle River watersheds. The underground facility would be used to bury and abandon millions of bundles of spent fuel from Canadian nuclear power plants.

“We cannot foresee the future, but what if it does happen? What if there’s a leak?” Necan said. “The creator gifted us this beautiful land for all of us to live, but who are these people to come here and economically destroy it? Money is never going to last.”

Necan, 65, is also known for asserting Anishinaabe title by building a cabin on her traditional territory at Savant Lake, Ontario, without permits, after she grew tired of waiting for housing from her band, Ojibway Nation of Saugeen #258. She was charged under the Public Lands Act with construction on so-called Crown land.

It’s no surprise that she took on the responsibility to alert others about the NWMO’s plan to transport, bury and abandon the waste.

There is a strong sense of urgency as the NWMO is set to finalize its chosen waste site, narrowed down from a list of 22 locations in Canada, a process that began in 2010.

By the end of the year, NWMO will choose either the Revell Lake site, near where the walk ended, or a Bruce County site in southwestern Ontario.

Rather than having the radioactive waste shipped by truck or train for the next 50 plus years —which they foresee is an accident waiting to happen — walkers say they want to see the waste all kept where it originated from, and for Canada to stop producing nuclear energy altogether.

The NWMO is an industry-funded organization made up of representatives from Canada’s nuclear power industry who’ve been looking for a way to deal with the approximately 100,000 tonnes of waste they’ve produced that will be radioactive for tens of thousands of years.

In a report to the Standing Committee on Environmental and Sustainable Development, a northwestern Ontario coalition “We the Nuclear Free North” describes the flaws and weaknesses of the DGR project along with the serious risks expressed by experts.

“Numerous experts in the fields of geology, chemistry and physics warn of the insufficiency of current scientific knowledge to guide a project of the nature and magnitude of the NWMO’s proposed plan,” the coalition wrote .

Their report broke down NWMO’s “conceptual” plan.

The waste would be transported by truck and received at a fuel packaging plant where it would be placed into containers.

The water used during the process to decontaminate the devices used for the waste in-transit would become contaminated with radionuclides and moved into a tailings pond, and be contained as a low-to-medium level radioactive liquid waste.

The waste in containers would be lowered to the DGR underground storage facility, made up of rooms blasted out of precambrian rock, 500 to 1000 metres below the Earth’s surface.

Since there is no way for the high-level radioactive nuclear fuel to deactivate, except for time, it would continue to generate heat, years after being stored. It could lead to pressure build-up, causing fractures in the DGR walls, where the groundwater would seep in and mix with water-soluble radionuclides.

Eventually, the free-moving contaminated water would reach the two watersheds, through cracks in the DGR, and a sump pump would need to be used to bring liquid to a surface tailings pond.

Another risk to hosting a DGR in the Revell Lake area are low magnitude earthquakes that have been documented by Environment Canada. A quake could fracture the DGR and increase flow of water into the facility and send contaminated water into the watersheds…………………………………………………………. more https://ricochet.media/indigenous/the-anishinaabe-community-fighting-nuclear-waste-dumping-one-step-at-a-time/

October 4, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, indigenous issues, opposition to nuclear, wastes | Leave a comment

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