Entergy can’t afford, for decades, to dismantle Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant Begins Slow Process of Closing, NYT By JESS BIDGOODJAN. 4, 2015 “………..The Entergy Corporation, a Louisiana-based energy company that operates nuclear plants around the country, purchased Vermont Yankee in 2002. The plant had withstood opposition from activists since it opened, but from 2007 to 2010, the collapse of a cooling tower, radioactive tritium leaks and misstatements from plant executives that had preceded them further eroded public confidence in the company.
State legislators tried to close the plant, but a judge ruled in 2012 that they could not. Shortly after that decision was upheld, in August 2013, Entergy announced it would nevertheless close the plant, citing economics.
“It became pretty clear that we could not, this would not be a financially viable resource going forward,” said Bill Mohl, the president of Entergy Wholesale Commodities, which owns the plant, last week. He cited the plant’s small size, the low cost of natural gas for producing electricity and other issues with the market.
“This plant, this area, ranks right up there with the highest antinuke sentiment across the entire country,” said Mr. Farabaugh, who worked in five other plants around the nation before coming to Vermont Yankee.
Entergy projects it will cost $1.2 billion to decommission Vermont Yankee, but its trust fund has about half of that, so the full dismantling of the plant will not begin for decades. Meanwhile, the operators will turn to the mammoth task of cooling, storing and securing the spent fuel there.
Federal law requires the government to develop a long-term storage facility for nuclear waste, but there is currently no plan in place. So the spent fuel at Vermont Yankee, like at closed nuclear facilities around the country, will stay on site, and officials say it will be safe.
The prospect of the plant’s future as a nuclear storage facility worries many of the area’s activists, like Clay Turnbull, the president of the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution, which is based in Brattleboro.
Enormous risk in France’s plan for nuclear garbage tip near the town Bure.
Nuclear Waste on the Aquifer Nuclear free by 2045? http://nf2045.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/the-inconvenience-of-geothermic-energy.html by Professor Canardeau translation of Des déchets (nucléaires) sur la nappe Le Canard enchaîné December 2014
A huge pocket of warm water exists beneath what is supposed to be France’s largest nuclear garbage pit, located near the town Bure. This site is destined to store, for at least 100,000 years, the most dangerous high-level waste that has accumulated since France built its first reactor. 125 meters tall, 30 kilometers wide and dozens of kilometers long, this reserve of warm water could sooner or later be used to produce heat or energy. The water is a comfortable 66 degrees, but it is found at a depth of 1,800 meters, while the nuclear waste is to be buried above it at a depth of 500 meters.
On January 5, 2015, the agency for the management of radioactive waste (ANDRA) will find itself on trial in high court in Nanterre for having divulged false information concerning the supposed absence of concern about significant underground water tables at the site in Bure. The citizen groups Sortir du nucléaireand Stop Bure 55, and Mirabel Lorraine Nature Environnement have brought the charges.
Some background: The fundamental rules related to deep geological disposal of nuclear waste, established in 1991 and still in force, clearly state that sites should not involve significant concerns about geothermal sources or build-up of heat. But in 2002, the geophysicist André Mourot (now deceased) was going through the archives at the Bureau of Geological and Mining Research in Nancy, Reims, and he discovered the existence of this aquifer, and he realized its significance as a source of energy. The geologist Antoine Godinot remembers that André Mourot wrote a report and distributed it to all interested groups. Next, they demanded that ANDRA conduct testing to learn fully about the aquifer.
ANDRA made no response until 2008. “What a disaster, this drilling and testing,” laughed the nuclear physicist Monique Sené. “The probe got stuck. They couldn’t even reach the aquifer.”
This fiasco didn’t stop ANDRA from declaring in 2009 that the geothermic source is negligible. Since then it has stuck to this position. To the malcontents it accuses of spreading this information about a geothermic potential, it responds, “The studies done by ANDRA concern whether there is an exceptional geothermic resource.” For ANDRA, as far as Bure is concerned, there is “no geothermic resource of exceptional interest.” Everything hinges on what is understood by “exceptional.”
Tada! At the end of 2013, at the request of the local information committee tracking the Bure laboratory (composed of representatives of the State, local collectives, and civil society groups), a Swiss group called Geowatt, specializing in geothermic energy resources, produced a report that stated, “We are of the opinion that the geothermic resources of the Bure region could at present be developed at an economical cost with the use of appropriate technology. The nail in the coffin was the additional comment stating, “The burial of nuclear waste prevents access to the geothermic resource.”
The physicist Bernard Laponche points out, “If we build this project at this site, we are going to impose enormous risks on future generations, and for sure one day people will want to exploit this geothermic energy, but they will stumble upon the nuclear waste that is blocking access to it. ”
Perhaps ANDRA will be able to leave their contact information for future generations to get in touch.
Nowhere to put nuclear waste, so the companies just sue the USA government
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant Just Shut Down; U.S. Still Has No System for Disposing of Nuclear Waste http://www.newsweek.com/vermont-yankee-nuclear-plant-just-shut-down-us-still-has-no-system-disposing-295775 BY ZOË SCHLANGER 12/31/14 The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant officially went offline Monday, halting the nuclear reaction process and beginning what could be a nearly 40-year process to fully decommission the plant. But what happens to all the plant’s nuclear waste at the end of those decades? No one knows for sure, because the U.S. government has nowhere to put it.
That’s also the case for the nuclear waste from decommissioned plants all over the country: Their spent fuel rods remain on the reactor property, trapped inside steel cylinders called “dry casks,” even after the reactor is disassembled.
Since 1998, the federal government has been legally bound to remove dry-casked nuclear waste from private plants and dispose of it in a secure facility. But it can’t, because no such facility exists. Yucca Mountain, the facility that might have been, has been in limbo since its conception in 1987. It was initially scheduled to come online in 1998, but never did. Only 5 miles of the 40-mile storage tunnel were ever built. With more than $30 billion already collected over three decades from taxpayers for the project, the Obama administration cut funding to the mostly-unbuilt project in 2011.
As it stands now, it’s predicted the waste from the plant will be transfered from cooling ponds into dry casks by 2020. Then those casks may end up sitting on the reactor’s property in Vernon, Vermont, indefinitely, like so many thousands of casks lying around on reactor sites all over the country. The Vermont Yankee lists 2052 as the year the federal government might come take them away, but that’s pending Congressional action that has not yet taken place. So what does a corporation do when a contract, government or otherwise, is violated? They sue.
“You then sue the Department of Energy for the costs that are incurred for storing the spent fuel. [So do] all the other decommissioned facilities—the dry casks still remain on the site because there’s no place to bring the spent fuel. So you sue the Department of Energy and they pay you back for the cost that you’ve incurred,” says Martin Cohn, a spokesperson Entergy Wholesale Commodities, which owns Vermont Yankee.
Savannah River Site Secretly Becoming World’s Nuclear Dumping Ground
Secretly Dumping Other People’s Problem Savannah River Site Becoming World’s Nuclear Dumping Ground, despite Safety Risks By: GLORIA TATUM Atlanta Progressive News 6-9-2014 (APN) ATLANTA — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is close to finalizing plans to accept highly radioactive commercial spent nuclear fuel from Germany to be deposited at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, according to news reports that were buried deeper than the plutonium itself.However, it is not only Germany that is sending, or has sent, nuclear waste to SRS, but also Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, and perhaps other countries not yet known, Atlanta Progressive News has learned.
Atlanta Progressive News can report that South Carolina’s Savannah River Site is quietly becoming the world’s nuclear dumping ground, and de facto nuclear waste storage site, despite the facts that frequent rain and an overlapping earthquake zone make the site extremely dangerous, especially to our water supply.
There is no long-term storage plan for the waste in the U.S., with the Yucca Mountain proposal on the rocks, as it were, and with a temporary nuclear waste storage site in New Mexico having been closed to new shipments indefinitely.
SRS is already quietly storing plutonium brought in from other countries, and is now also planning to import 23,000 liters of liquid high-level waste from the Chalk River Laboratories in Canada, which would end up in the already stressed high-level waste tank system, according to an SRS Watch news release.
Shipments of foreign plutonium appear to have been secretly brought in via Charleston, South Carolina, in February and March 2014 of this year, according to an article by the Ottawa Citizen, dated March 29, 2014.
The article has a photo of PNTL transport ship Pacific Egret, noting that the ship carried guns and cannons, and that the ship–which originated in Italy with sensitive nuclear material– disappeared from an online marine tracking system after entering Canadian waters:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Covert+mission+Plutonium+source+might+Canada/9675369/story.html
Italy and Belgium have announced the transfer of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) to the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site. The Italy and Belgium imports are admitted to in two respective statements posted to the White House’s website, just days before the Ottawa Citizen report:
Meanwhile, according to Reuters and other reports, Japan will transfer HEU and plutonium to the U.S., but that the destination is not known. However, based on the closure of the New Mexico facility, it is highly reasonable to suspect that the Japanese shipment will also be dumped at SRS.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/24/nuclear-proliferation-idUSL5N0ML2MP20140324
At the National Security Summit at the Hague on March 24 and 25, 2014, a priority item on the agenda was to reduce the amount of dangerous nuclear material in the world. They issued a statement that countries should repatriate highly enriched uranium (HEU) to its country of origin, thereby reducing the number of locations that terrorist groups could target to obtain it.
With the U.S. being the country of origin for much of the world’s nuclear material, this means all our nuclear chickens are coming home to roost……. http://www.fairewinds.org/secretly-dumping-peoples-problems/#sthash.mtEhWriM.dpuf
Vermont Nuclear Shutdown highlights reality of nuclear’s radioactive legacy
Another Reactor Closes, Punctuating New Reality for U.S. Nuclear Power As Vermont Yankee shuts down, the U.S. has yet to address industry issues that span decades Christina Nunez National Geographic JANUARY 1, 2015
As another nuclear power plant closed this week, the United States faced a dwindling fleet of aging reactors, few new projects, and the challenge of safely mothballing radioactive fuel for decades……..
So far, nuclear isn’t winning. Vermont Yankee, which shut down Monday after 42 years of operation, is the fourth U.S. nuclear facility to close in two years. For the owners of each recent retiree—from Vermont Yankee to San Onofre in California, Kewaunee in Wisconsin, and Crystal River in Florida—the math just didn’t work.
“When we looked at the cost of those improvements with what we projected as the cost of energy, the decision was that it would be better to shut the plant down,” said Martin Cohn, spokesperson for Vermont Yankee’s operator, Entergy.
More closures in the United States, the world’s largest producer of nuclear power, could lead to a far different nuclear landscape from the one imagined before the gas boom.
Nuclear’s Long-Term Legacy
Technically, the decades-long process of decommissioning a nuclear plant hasn’t changed much over the years: The reactor is shut down, the radioactive fuel is removed and encased for storage, and the plant itself is eventually dismantled.
“We will have a concrete pad with a bunch of casks of spent fuel on it that will look almost exactly like the ones at Maine Yankee or Yankee Rowe [in Massachusetts],” which retired in 1996 and 1991, respectively, said Chris Wamser, Vermont Yankee site vice president.
The rules surrounding that process haven’t changed either, which is a problem, according to Vermont Yankee executives. “Just because we shut down, we’re still a nuclear plant with a license,” said Barrett Green, who is leading the project. He said the NRC hasn’t finalized a road map for decommissioning.
“We’ve had to make all sorts of petitions for amendments to the license, or exceptions to a rule, or various other allowances for the regulatory process to say it’s OK for us to stop maintaining a system that we’re never going to need again,” Green said.
Outgoing Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Allison Macfarlane acknowledged this issue at a National Press Club luncheon in November, suggesting that the agency has not prepared for a future where, instead of overseeing new nuclear plants, it is reckoning with older plants such as Vermont Yankee retiring ahead of schedule.
“The predicted ‘nuclear renaissance’ did not materialize,” Macfarlane said. “It’s time for the NRC to develop regulations specific to the decommissioning of nuclear power plants and to structure public expectations of the process.”………On Twitter: Follow Christina Nunez and get more environment and energy coverage at NatGeoGreen. The story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2015/01/150101-vermont-yankee-shutdown-us-nuclear-issues/
Mixed Oxide Fuel (MOX) facility would further pollute and endanger Georgia and South Carolina
Savannah River Site Becoming World’s Nuclear Dumping Ground, despite Safety Risks By: GLORIA TATUM Atlanta Progressive News 6-9-2014
“……..We are wasting money and increasing the risk of a terrorist accident if we build that MOX plant at SRS. Plutonium fuel cost more than uranium fuel and there’s plenty of uranium on the planet. So we are taking other people’s plutonium to keep a MOX plant running and no one wants to buy the output from it,” Gundersen told APN.
Plutonium is a man made element derived from the transformation of uranium through fission. Plutonium, Pu-239, has a half life of 24,100 hundred years; that’s the time it will take for half of the plutonium to radioactively decay. Radioactive contaminants are dangerous for ten to twenty times the length of their half-lives, meaning that if plutonium gets into the environment, it will be dangerous essentially forever. If ingested into the body, it causes DNA damage in tissue, and cancer.
The use of MOX fuel does not get rid of plutonium; instead it becomes part of the lethal soup of ingredients termed “high level nuclear waste.” There are no safe long-term storage for nuclear waste, only interim storage solutions for waste that will remain hazardous for thousands of years.
“When I hear plutonium in the environment, it becomes a problem not only for the next generation – we were not even a [human] species a quarter of a million years ago – we might be a new species before this stuff completely disintegrates from the environment,” Gundersen said. http://www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/nuclear-dumping-ground-despite-safety-risks.html
Citizens living downstream from the site have complained for years of high levels of cancer and death in their community, which they attribute to the SRS and Plant Vogtle’s nuclear reactors across the river on the Georgia side.
“The DOE is more interested in jobs this year and totally forgetting about the environmental costs for the next 300 or a thousand years. It’s unfair to the people of Georgia and South Carolina to make some money now and pollute the Savannah River for a thousand years,” Gundersen said. http://www.fairewinds.org/secretly-dumping-peoples-problems/#sthash.mtEhWriM.dpuf
Nuclear clean-up contract in Idaho altered by DOE
Feds alter nuclear cleanup contract in Idaho Casper Star Tribune, The Associated Press 2 Jan 15 The U.S. Department of Energy has altered a proposed contract for radioactive waste cleanup after potential bidders warned that they could pull out of the process.. Last week, the agency issued a new plan that eliminated language requiring a contractor to pay for all cost overruns exceeding $150 million.
The Department of Energy’s Idaho Cleanup Project Core, known as ICP Core, is a five-year contract that also includes monitoring of spent nuclear fuel at the Idaho National Laboratory.
The new contract is set to begin in 2016 and consolidate responsibilities of the two primary nuclear waste contractors now working at the nuclear facility in southeast Idaho………..
In a 1995 agreement struck between the federal government and then-Gov. Phil Batt, a Republican, the Department of Energy was required to remove all high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel from Idaho by 2035.
The fear was that buried nuclear waste would seep into the huge Eastern Snake Plain aquifer, which provides water to much of the state’s agriculture industry.
But several problems have surfaced. In November, federal officials said a waste treatment facility planned to be operational by now won’t be ready for months.
The Department of Energy said malfunctions with the $571 million Integrated Waste Treatment Unit continue to cause delays in turning 900,000 gallons of liquid waste into a solid form.
The high-level radioactive waste came from the processing of spent nuclear fuel from Navy ships. It’s now stored in tanks at the INL’s Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center.
And in December, the federal agency said low-level radioactive waste that’s supposed to be sent out of Idaho is backing up because an underground nuclear waste repository in southern New Mexico is not taking shipments because of recent mishaps.
Officials said it’s not clear when those shipments will resume. http://trib.com/business/energy/feds-alter-nuclear-cleanup-contract-in-idaho/article_3977693d-05be-55da-8f3f-1c74d6e01574.html
Vermont Yankee has only half the $1.24B needed to get rid of the nuclear plant corpse
Nuclear plant predicts $1.24B decommissioning cost http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2014/12/nuclear-plant-predicts-1-24b-decommissioning-cost.html?cmpid=enl-poe-weekly-december-22-2014 12/22/2014 MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – The Vermont Yankee nuclear plant has made formal its prediction that decommissioning the reactor will cost $1.24 billion.
The plant currently has about half that amount saved up to dismantle the reactor and complete other tasks. It’s expected to be at least the early 2040s before the fund has grown enough to pay for full decommissioning.
Vermont Yankee owner Entergy Corp. announced in August of 2013 that it would shut down at the end of this year because the plant was no longer economical to operate.
Nuclear waste burial for Nevada? State and Feds in talks
Nevada, Feds to Study Nuclear Waste Burial in State http://www.ktvn.com/story/27696890/nevada-feds-to-study-nuclear-waste-burial-in-state Dec 23, 2014 Nevada and the federal government are agreeing to have a panel keep studying whether the U.S. will bury radioactive material from Tennessee at a former nuclear weapons proving ground north of Las Vegas.Officials say there is no deal yet.
The state has balked at plans to bury low-level waste ranging from contaminated worker uniforms to machine parts from a World War II-era plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at the Nevada National Security Site about 65 miles from Las Vegas.
Security Site spokesman Darwin Morgan says talks are continuing, and the Energy Department is optimistic shipments could begin in early 2015. (AP)
South Korea’s nuclear waste problem
Dealing with nuclear waste in South Korea The Korea Herald/Asia News Network December 21, 2014,The much awaited nuclear waste facility in Gyeongju will begin operations next year following final approval by the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission last week. The Wolseong Low and Intermediate-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Center, consisting of six silos some 80 meters underground, can hold up to 100,000 barrels of radioactive waste.
A second-phase construction is underway to add a 125,000-barrel holding unit to the site, which is designed to store 800,000 barrels of nuclear waste over the next 60 years before it is sealed off.
A total of 23 nuclear reactors are responsible for about one-third of all power generated in Korea and produce 2,300 barrels of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste each year.
The country’s first low- and intermediate-level radioactive repository was realized some 28 years after the country started looking for a site. Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang Province, was selected in 2005 after votes in four candidate cities. Almost 90 percent of voters in Gyeongju approved of the facility.
To win over communities that did not want a hazardous waste facility in their midst, the government promised 300 billion won in community support. The local community would also receive annual fees in addition to the initial grant.
The Gyeongju facility is just the first step. The country has yet to draw up a plan for dealing with the growing piles of spent nuclear fuel rods. Some 750 tonnes of spent fuel are produced each year by the country’s 23 nuclear power reactors.
Currently, spent fuel rods are stored temporarily on the reactor site pending the building of a centralized storage facility. About 13,250 tonnes were stored in different nuclear reactor sites as of end-2013 and it is estimated that the sites will become full incrementally between 2016 and 2038.
The Public Engagement Commission of 15 nuclear experts, academics, city council members and a representative of an environmental watchdog group was formed last year to engage the public in discussions about the spent nuclear fuel issues so that their opinions could be incorporated into policy decisions. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy is expected to draw up a plan for disposing of spent fuel based on recommendations by the commission.
So far, the commission has released an interim report suggesting that a permanent disposal facility must be completed by 2055. It has not said where it could be built or what type of storage could be employed. The commission, in the meantime, has extended its mandate to June 2015.
The Gyeongju site for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste took 28 years to complete. A facility for the more hazardous spent fuel rods will be much more controversial. Hence, the building of a permanent storage site for spent nuclear fuel rods is an urgent matter that requires immediate government attention…….http://www.chinapost.com.tw/commentary/the-china-post/special-to-the-china-post/2014/12/21/424512/Dealing-with.htm
Radioactive waste incineration to begin in Kawauchi , Fukushima Prefecture
Kawauchi will have radioactive waste incinerator http://www.fukushima-is-still-news.com/2014/11/kawauchi-will-have-radioactive-waste-incinerator.html November 26, 2014 Radioactive waste incinerator built in Fukushima http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20141126_27.html
A facility to incinerate radioactive debris and other waste is ready to open in a village near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The Environment Ministry had been building the temporary incineration facility in the village of Kawauchi since May.
Officials and village delegates marked the completion of the work in a ceremony on Wednesday.
The facility is designed to burn 7 tons of waste per day while removing radioactive cesium.
Ministry officials plan to put the facility into full operation in early January following test runs.
The government lifted an evacuation order for part of Kawauchi last month. But about 1,700 tons of debris and other waste stored in the village remain to be disposed of.
Village Mayor Yuko Endo said some residents are worried about radiation and an unsafe living environment. He said he hopes the incineration facility will help ease their concern.
The Environment Ministry says Kawauchi is the first municipality in Futaba County to have an incineration facility. It says it plans to build similar facilities in other municipalities in the county where Fukushima Daiichi is located.
Utah officially rejects nuclear waste storage facility
Utah nixes nuclear waste storage facility 12/27/2012 http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2012/12/utah-nixes-nuclear-waste-storage-facility.html Plans to park radioactive waste at a storage facility in Utah have been officially called off, The Salt Lake Tribune reports. Utility companies behind the proposed project have asked the NRC to cancel the license request, after Utahns from across the political spectrum and by wide margins came out publicly against the proposal. The 100-acre storage facility would have been situated in the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, near a bomb testing facility and 45 miles from Salt Lake City. The cash-hungry Goshutes hoped the $3 billion project would have spurred economic development on the reservation.
Major weaknesses found by NRC in bid for Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump
NRC finds hole in Yucca Mountain bid, Las Vegas Review Journal, By STEVE TETREAULTIn a report issued Thursday, staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded the lack of assured water fails the standard to license a nuclear waste complex.
The NRC report also noted the Department of Energy lacks permanent control of the 230-square-mile site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The project had operated under temporary land withdrawals that have since expired, and would need Congress to set aside the tracts for it to be completed.
The findings delivered a blow to a cadre of lawmakers on Capitol Hill and nuclear industry executives trying to resurrect the nuclear waste project that has been mothballed by the Obama administration.
If the licensing process was revived, the water and land control issues would need to be addressed and corrected. Neither are close to being resolved in the project’s favor.
The state of Nevada in a long legal fight has blocked the government from obtaining water for the Yucca Mountain Project, declaring it is not in the public interest.
A government lawsuit pending in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas challenges the state’s denial of water permits, but it has been largely inactive since the program was deactivated.
Similarly, a Yucca Mountain land withdrawal was proposed in Congress in 2007 but it was not considered and the issue has not been under discussion in recent years.
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a leading opponent of Yucca Mountain, said the report underscored major weaknesses in the project.
“This is just one reason why the Yucca Mountain project will never be built,” Reid said in a statement……..http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nevada/nrc-finds-hole-yucca-mountain-bid
Alarming government report on deteriorating nuclear waste tanks at Hanford
Gov’t report sounds alarm on Hanford’s nuclear waste tanks http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/hanford/2014/12/16/hanford-nuclear-waste-tanks-gao-report-december-2014/20489933/ Gary M Chittim, December 16, 2014 Tanks holding millions of gallons of nuclear and chemical waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation are deteriorating at a faster rate than previously thought, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The GAO report was released today by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who is demanding the Department of Energy (DOE) develop a plan to address leaks and other tank issues. He said the DOE must act on the recommendations in the report instead of acknowledging them and then doing nothing, as it has done in the past.
“Agreeing to recommendations is one thing, implementing them is another thing entirely,” Wyden said. “The DOE’s ‘watch-and-wait’ strategy for these tanks leaking nuclear waste into the soil is completely unacceptable. I’m asking for a schedule and a plan of action within 90 days to implement the GAO’s recommendations at Hanford.”
Highlights of the report include new information on the number of older, single-shell tanks (SSTs) at Hanford that are experiencing what’s called water intrusion – 14 as of the fall of 2014. Rain or ground water entering the tanks can cause a host of problems, including mobilizing the waste and giving monitors undependable levels of waste in the tank, making it difficult to detect leaks.
In addition, one of the SSTs (T-111) is leaking at a much higher rate than thought, some 640 gallons per year.
There are concerns the waste, which is leftover from decades of plutonium production at the 586-square-mile reservation in southeastern Washington, could leak through the aging tanks into the groundwater and the nearby Columbia River.
The report also found that several of the newer double-shell tanks (DSTs) share the same design flaws blamed for leaking in the interior wall of AY-102 – a DST found to be leaking in 2012. DOE is in the process of developing a plant that can convert the radioactive waste into stable glass that can be safely stored for hundreds of years. That plant is years behind schedule, billions of dollars over budget and plagued by unresolved design and safety issues.
Critics, including Wyden, have demanded DOE develop a plan for dealing with the stored waste while those issues are resolved. The governors of Oregon and Washington have urged DOE to build additional storage tanks to hold the waste until the treatment plant is finished. The GAO report notes that DOE estimates building new tanks would take eight years and require $800 million in funding.
The DOE’s acting assistant secretary for environmental management, Mark Whitney, responded to the report by saying DOE already has a plan to constantly monitor the tanks and respond to suspected leaks.
“This program includes the use of robotic ultrasound devices, corrosion monitoring probes, and remote video cameras for the DST,” said Whitney in a written response to the report.
Read the full report and the Department of Energy’s response.
US government planning to spend $1 trillion on upgrading nuclear weapons
The nuclear money pit, The Economist Does America really need a new plutonium production line? Dec 15th 2014 | LOS ANGELES THE RECENT sabre rattling by Vladimir Putin may have unwittingly done what the United States Congress has failed to do for decades: refocus attention—and billions of additional dollars—on overhauling America’s nuclear arsenal. The $585 billion defence bill for the next fiscal year sailed through the House of Representatives last week with broad bipartisan support, and then did the same in the Senate on December 12th, despite all the fractious squabbling over the $1.1 trillion government funding measure.
More pertinently, the $11.7 billion request for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a branch of the Department of Energy that oversees nuclear weapons, naval reactors and nonproliferation activities on behalf of the military, represents a 4% increase over the previous year. The biggest chunk of that—covering work on modernising the country’s nuclear weapons—is to increase by 7%. All this at a time when mandated “sequestration” cuts are supposed to be reducing military spending.
All told, the federal government intends allocating up to $1 trillion to upgrade the country’s missiles, bombers and submarines over the coming decades. Continue reading
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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