America’s MOX nuclear waste recycling boondoggle
they must stop making this radioactive trash
Failed Nuclear Weapons Recycling Program Could Put Us All in Danger io9, Mark Strauss, 7 June 14, Some government screw-ups are so epic that they require decades of effort. Such was the case for the recently cancelled plan to convert surplus weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear fuel. Not only did the U.S. waste $4 billion dollars, it increased the likelihood that terrorists could obtain bomb-making materials.
It sounded like a good idea at the beginning. Let’s turn megatons into megawatts!
In 2000, the United States and Russia signed the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA). Each country pledged to dispose of at least 34 metric tons of plutonium from their nuclear weapons programs. U.S. nuclear weapons contain less than four kilograms of plutonium, so the combined total of 68 metric tons is enough for some 17,000 nuclear weapons. Disposing of this plutonium would make it more difficult to reverse U.S.-Russian nuclear weapons reductions and would prevent terrorists from gaining access to the material.
The United States settled on a plan to convert most of its surplus plutonium into fuel for nuclear reactors. A massive reprocessing plant would be built at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which, during the Cold War, had refined nuclear material for deployment in warheads. Now, the site would have a new mission: creating nuclear fuel from a mixture of plutonium and uranium oxide, otherwise known as mixed oxide fuel, or MOX. Although nuclear power plants in the U.S. use fuel made from low-enriched uranium (LEU), other countries had demonstrated that MOX was a viable alternative.
Instead, the final outcome was a mothballed facility and a still-increasing supply of surplus plutonium. Like I said, this isn’t your typical government boondoggle. It was twenty years in the making………. Continue reading
Management Problems in USA’s failed Nuclear Weapons Recycling Program
Failed Nuclear Weapons Recycling Program Could Put Us All in Danger io9, Mark Strauss, 7 June 14 “…….In 2004, the National Nuclear Security Administration estimated that the Savannah River MOX facility would cost $1.6 billion. Three years later, that estimate jumped to $4.9 billion. In 2012, the forecasted expenditure increased again, to $7.7 billion. By this time, $4 billion had already been spent and the project employed more than 1,800 construction workers, designers and engineers. Then, in April 2013, an internal review conducted by the Department of Energy revealed that the total lifetime operating cost of the facility—including construction, maintenance and disposal of all the plutonium—would be $24.2 billion.
TJust one example of the poor management that led to cost overruns: NNSA and its primary contractor underestimated the number of safety systems required to meet Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requirements, which further increased equipment installation costs. More specifically, they were unaware of the costs associated with building a facility that could withstand an earthquake. The source of their confusion? The MOX facility’s design is based on a similar facility in France, but the NRC regulatory requirements differ from those in France.
The Department of Energy was also at fault, because it approved the initial cost and schedule estimate, when the overall design of the MOX facility was only about 58% complete.
A report published two weeks ago by the Department’s Inspector General noted:
In a separate July 2006 memorandum to the NNSA Administrator, NNSA’s Associate Administrator for Infrastructure and Environment expressed his concern regarding the MOX Facility project. He expressed the belief that incomplete project planning could lead to an unintended “design-build-design” process similar to that experienced by other major Departmental projects including the Waste Treatment Plant and the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility. The Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site was given the approval to start construction when the design was only about 45 percent complete. Since then, total project costs for that facility have increased significantly and the project is considerably behind schedule. He pointed out that, similarly, a comprehensive design review had not been conducted on the complete MOX Facility project and that the project had high-risk potential for increasing downstream costs and schedule.
The White House did its part, as well. In 2010, President Obama announced a loan guarantee of $8.3 billion to help the Southern Company build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia. As a result, workers with nuclear engineering design and manufacturing experience were suddenly in very high demand. The MOX construction site had an employee turnover of 20% per year because, after workers completed additional training at the Savannah River Site, they quit to take higher paying jobs in Georgia. The U.S. government was subsidizing its own labor shortfall.
Finally, in March 2014, the White House announced that it would put the whole project on “cold standby”—essentially, preparing it for shutdown—while the administration evaluated “alternative plutonium disposition technologies to MOX that will achieve a safe and secure solution more quickly and cost effectively.”
Adding up the losses
MOX may be mothballed, but the problem of what to do with our surplus weapons-grade plutonium remains. And, despite cool relations between Washington and Moscow, the disposal agreement still stands.
The Department of Energy has established a Plutonium Disposition Working Group that will spend the next 12 to 18 months trying to come up with a plan. You can see an initial working paper here. The options are depressingly similar to the ones suggested by the National Academy of Sciences, 20 years ago.he sticker shock prompted the Department of Energy to note in its Fiscal Year 2014 budget request that, “This current plutonium disposition approach may be unaffordable…due to cost growth and fiscal pressure.”
Any lingering doubts that the MOX program was on its last legs were dispelled when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report in February 2014. Even by GAO standards, the assessment was scathing.
One of the biggest mistakes, according to the GAO, was entrusting this project to the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy:
NNSA has not analyzed the underlying, or root, causes of the Plutonium Disposition program construction cost increases to help identify lessons learned and help address the agency’s difficulty in completing projects within cost and schedule, which has led to NNSA’s management of major projects remaining on GAO’s list of areas at high risk of fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.
………Even if we got this facility up and working, nobody wants what it’s making. The companies that run commercial nuclear reactors have lost confidence in the program. They can’t be certain that it would provide a reliable, steady supply of fuel, or keep enough surplus fuel on hand in case it was needed. And why would commercial nuclear reactors purchase MOX when low-enriched uranium is cheaper, easier to transport and doesn’t present a security risk? Adding to the climate of skepticism: a MOX fuel irradiation test in a commercial reactor had to be prematurely terminated in 2008 because of unanticipated problems.
The loss to the United States can be measured in more than the $4 billion to build the facility and the hundreds of millions of dollars sent to Russia to subsidize their program. The greater loss is that the U.S. could have spent those funds to shore up other nonproliferation programs…….. http://io9.com/failed-nuclear-weapons-recycling-program-could-put-us-a-1586851270
Political donations got the Texas Waste Control site going
Breaking Bad: A Nuclear Waste Disaster By Joseph Trento, DC Bureau, June 5th, 2014 “………Former President George W. Bush and Texas Governor Rick Perry’s single largest political contributor, the late Texas billionaire Harold C. Simmons, founded Waste Control Specialists and used his political influence to get the West Texas nuclear disposal site approved by state and federal licensing officials. The political efforts used to secure the licensing caused years of controversy in Texas. Environmentalists opposed the site because it is on an important aquifer in Texas. Another reason is that one of Simmons’s companies had operated a lead incinerator in Dallas that became an EPA Superfund Site.
Despite this environmental pedigree, LANL and DOE officials chose Waste Control Specialists to administrator their alternative nuclear waste storage site. While technically the company has licenses only for low-level nuclear waste, under its Texas permit, Waste Control can accept certified waste from federal agencies.
DOE officials said the Waste Control site is just a temporary alternative to the disabled WIPP. That is not true. Los Alamos and other national laboratories with high-level nuclear waste have been planning to use the Texas site for years, well before is licenses had been approved. The political promises that were made that it would be only for low-level waste were a ruse. As long as four years ago, during a Savannah River Site Citizens Advisory Board meeting in Aiken, South Carolina, DOE officials and SRS contractors talked openly about using the Texas site to offload uranium waste from SRS.
In late May, DOE investigators became so concerned about the Los Alamos containers being stores in what amounts to an open pit, they halted the shipments to Waste Control. The 112 canisters already at Waste Control were ordered to be isolated and surrounded by large concrete containers as well monitored by television camera. As of May 28, seventy-three Los Alamos containers have been segregated and covered with the cement and gravel-filled barriers.
Harold Simmons’s team lobbied hard to get only the second license in U.S. history from DOE for a private nuclear dump. They got the licensing in the last days of the Bush administration. Prior to the LANL decision to ship containers of transuranic waste to the site, there were warnings to Waste Control that it had already been accepting waste it was not permitted to receive.
Pressure has been building for years for DOE to stabilize and isolate its growing high-level nuclear waste stream. After the WIPP explosion, the DOE suddenly concluded that the thousands of feet below earth in salt beds were no longer needed to store the most deadly radioactive material on earth. Open trenches in the West Texas desert would be good enough. On April 2, tractor trailers hauled the first of the Los Alamos casks of radioactive high-level waste to the Andrews County dump before the WIPP investigation team succeeded in halting the shipments……….http://www.dcbureau.org/201406059835/natural-resources-news-service/breaking-bad-nuclear-waste-disaster.html
South Carolina site now to get nuclear trash from Germany?
it is crazy to keep on making nuclear waste
German nuclear waste may be dumped at US site http://www.news24.com/Green/News/German-nuclear-waste-may-be-dumped-at-US-site-20140605 Charleston – The US department of energy said on Wednesday it will study the environmental risk of importing spent nuclear fuel from Germany that contains highly enriched uranium, a move believed to be the first for the United States.
The department said it is considering a plan to ship the nuclear waste from Germany to the Savannah River Site, a federal facility in South Carolina. The 125Ha site already holds millions of gallons of high-level nuclear waste in tanks. The waste came from reactors in South Carolina that produced plutonium for nuclear weapons from 1953 to 1989.
The Energy Department said it wants to remove 900kg of uranium the United States sold to Germany years ago and render it safe under US nuclear non-proliferation treaties.
A technique for the three-year process of extracting the uranium, which is contained in graphite balls, is being developed at the site in South Carolina, according to the Energy Department.
Some critics question whether the department has fully developed a clear plan to dispose of the radioactive waste.
“They’re proposing to extract the uranium and reuse it as fuel by a process that has never been done before”, said Tom Clements, president of SRS Watch, a nuclear watchdog group in South Carolina.
“There’s no place to take high level waste in the US”, he said. “Uranium that is turned into commercial fuel is not contained inside nuclear waste. It’s pure material.”
A public environmental meeting on the proposed project will be held 24 June in North Augusta, South Carolina.
Clements said shipping the uranium to South Carolina would only add more nuclear waste to the Savannah River Site.
German and US officials signed a statement of intent for the import in March and April. A feasibility study is under way, the Energy Department said.
“The Germans couldn’t quite figure out what to do with it”, Clements said.
German officials have been embroiled in a fight over who will pay for clean-up of nuclear waste from nine remaining decommissioned nuclear plants.
Sources told Reuters in May that German utilities were in talks with the government about setting up a “bad bank” for nuclear plants, in response to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to close them all by 2022 after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Legal case continues over Australian govt’s plan to dump nuclear waste on Aboriginal land
Indigenous land owners accuse lawyer of manipulating nuclear waste storage report June 4, 2014 – Jane Lee Legal Affairs Reporter for The Age A lawyer who was key to the Howard government’s plan to store nuclear waste on indigenous land has been accused of manipulating the legal process required to ensure its approval.
Traditional owners from four indigenous clans are challenging the Ngapa clan’s 2007 nomination of Muckaty Station for the dump site in the Federal Court in Melbourne. The owners, including Aboriginal elders, argue they did not consent to the nomination, were not consulted on the agreement reached and were misled on the government’s proposal for the nuclear storage site.
Ron Levy was then the chief legal counsel for the Northern Land Council, which was set up to help indigenous people in the Northern Territory acquire and manage traditional lands. Mr Levy will be called as a witness later in the five-week case before Justice Anthony North.
Ron Merkel, QC, for the traditional owers, told the court on Thursday that Mr Levy “personally edited” anthropologists’ views in a Council report which concluded that only the Ngapa Lauder clan owned the site. Mr Levy also wrote a new section in the final report, reflecting his view that the Land Commissioner could depart from judges’ previous decisions on land claims, “if relevant material was before the commissioner.”
Mr Merkel said that he did this “(so) that the Lauder Ngupas would be recognised by the Northern Land Council as the only traditional owners of the site so their consent could be secured.” The site nomination could then “jump a hurdle” of having to consult in more detail about about the plan with other clans, he said………..
Mr Merkel told the court on Tuesday that Mr Levy, who controlled the consultation process, also failed to tell the full Northern Land Council or traditional owners about the only up-front $200,000 payment given to traditional owners for the site nomination or the terms of their agreement.
But he later told the federal goverrnment that he had all traditional owners’ full consent.
Mr Merkel said there was no explanation for this “unless … Mr Levy had a plan from the outset about how to achieve the end result and he did”. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/indigenous-land-owners-accuse-lawyer-of-manipulating-nuclear-waste-storage-report-20140604-39jk8.html#ixzz33nhZjp26.
In Australian Federal Court, Aborigines continue the fight against radioactive waste dumping on their land
Nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land invalid, court told The West Australian, 3 June 14. Sydney (AFP) – The earmarking of a remote Australian outback area as a nuclear waste dump was invalid because officials failed to contact all traditional Aboriginal landowners affected, a court heard Monday.Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory was nominated in early 2007 as a site to store low and intermediate radioactive waste under a deal negotiated with the Aboriginal Ngapa clan.
While Australia does not use nuclear power, it needs a site to store waste, including processed fuel rods from the country’s only nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, on the outskirts of Sydney,…..Opponents have fought against the dump for years, with a trial starting in the Federal Court in Melbourne Monday alleging Muckaty’s nomination was invalid due to a failure of the government and the land council to obtain the consent of all Aboriginal owners.
“What we’re here to say is ‘no more’ and that this process was so legally flawed that it is invalid,” Ron Merkel, who is representing traditional owners, told the court.
“The opposition is in no small part based on a spiritual affiliation to the land and that radioactive waste will poison the land,” he said in comments cited by Australian Associated Press.
The court was told the consent of all groups with a claim to the land was required for the facility to go ahead, but some Aboriginals whose country was affected have never had a chance to voice their concerns until now……..Speaking to reporters, Kylie Sambo, of the Warlmanpa people, said the idea of a waste facility on the land, which is in the centre of the country, was “poison”.
“We don’t want it to spoil our country because we love our land and we’ve been there for centuries,” she said. “My uncle once told me, ‘You may think you own the land, but in fact the land owns us’.”
The Australian Conservation Foundation said the case raised questions about the country’s management of long-lived radioactive waste.
“Australia has never has an independent assessment of how best to manage radioactive waste; now we urgently need one,” campaigner Dave Sweeney said.
The case is set to run for five weeks. https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/world/a/24084083/nuclear-waste-dump-on-aboriginal-land-invalid-court-told/
Canadian MP calls for caution on underground nuclear waste storage near Great Lakes
Masse calls for action on underground nuclear waste site near Great Lakes, The Windsor Star, Dave Battagello May 27, 2014 MP Brian Masse (NDP Windsor-West) will table a motion this week expressing concern over a proposed underground nuclear waste facility on the edge of the Great Lakes which critics say has potential to taint the waterway and drinking water.
“We don’t get a second chance on this,” he said following a press conference in Ottawa. “What we are trying to do is get a more full and robust review of nuclear storage around the Great Lakes.
“Several organizations are coming forward confronting (Ontario Power Generation’s) plan at the Bruce Nuclear Site as being a danger to the environment.”
The planned project is to construct and operate a nuclear disposal site over half a kilometre deep in the earth just north of Kincardine on the grounds of the Bruce site — and one kilometre from Lake Huron. The facility would store “low and intermediate” nuclear waste from operations of OPG-owned nuclear generation plants at Bruce, Pickering and Darlington.
There are several above ground nuclear waste storage sites near the Great Lakes, but environmentalists and politicians fear having it stored below ground makes it nearly impossible to address an accident. They say the impact would be devastating if any waste leaks into the Great Lakes……..
Masse hopes by tabling his motion it will bring the nuclear storage issue at Bruce to “a national level” and heighten awareness about potential impacts to the world’s largest freshwater supply.
“We want to ensure the assessment procedures around nuclear storage are strong enough,” he said. “We want to see if there are other ways to deal with this nuclear waste than just this one option.”
A large percentage of opposition to the OPG’s underground nuclear storage plan has come from the U.S. side of the border, Masse said.
“They have a law not to allow this stuff within 10 miles of the Great Lakes,” he said. “The Americans are concerned. This is not a moot issue to them by any means.”…….http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2014/05/27/masse-calls-for-action-in-ottawa-on-nuclear-waste-site-next-to-great-lakes/
USA’s “temporary” radioactive waste containers are becoming permanent
it’s time to stop making this toxic radioactive trash
US Nuclear Power Plants Prepare Long-Term Radioactive Waste Storage http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/697217-us-nuclear-power-plants-prepare-long-term-radioactive-waste-storage/ By Associated Press | May 26, 2014 WATERFORD, Conn.—Nuclear power plants across the United States are building or expanding storage facilities to hold their spent fuel — radioactive waste that by now was supposed to be on its way to a national dump.
The steel and concrete containers used to store the waste on-site were envisioned as only a short-term solution when introduced in the 1980s. Now they are the subject of reviews by industry and government to determine how they might hold up — if needed — for decades or longer.
With nowhere else to put its nuclear waste, the Millstone Power Station overlooking Long Island Sound is sealing it up in massive steel canisters on what used to be a parking lot. The storage pad, first built in 2005, was recently expanded to make room for seven times as many canisters filled with spent fuel.
Dan Steward, the first selectman in Waterford, which hosts Millstone, said he raises the issue every chance he can with Connecticut’s congressional members.
“We do not want to become a nuclear waste site as a community,” Steward said.
The government is pursuing a new plan for nuclear waste storage, hoping to break an impasse left by the collapse of a proposal for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. The Energy Department says it expects other states will compete for a repository, and the accompanying economic benefits, and it’s already heard from potential hosts in New Mexico, Texas and Mississippi. But the plan faces hurdles including a need for new legislation that has stalled in Congress.
So plants are preparing to keep the high-level nuclear waste in their backyards indefinitely. Most of it remains in pools, which cool the spent fuel for several years once it comes out of the reactors. But with the pools at or nearing capacity, the majority is expected within a decade to be held in dry casks, or canisters, which are used in 34 states. Only three of the 62 commercial nuclear sites in the U.S. have yet to announce plans to build their own.
In the past few years since the Yucca Mountain plan was abandoned, the government and industry have opened studies to address unanswered questions about the long-term performance of dry cask storage. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2011 began offering 40-year license renewals for casks, up from 20-year intervals. The tests are focusing on how to monitor degradation inside the canisters, environmental requirements for storage sites, and how well the canisters hold up with “high burnup,” or longer-burning fuels that are now widely used by American plants.
“Now that we’ve shown that the national policy is shifting, we’re having to relook at these systems to make sure they still meet the regulations for longer and longer periods of time,” said Eric Benner, an NRC official who has served as the inspections branch chief with its spent fuel storage division.
At Millstone, 19 canisters loaded with spent fuel are arrayed on a concrete pad, which was expanded in October to make room for as many as 135 canisters by 2045. The canisters, which are cooled by air circulation, seal the waste with inert gas inside an inner chamber and are themselves loaded into concrete modules. Workers regularly inspect temperature gauges and, during the winter, shovel snow off the vents.
Millstone’s low-level nuclear waste is shipped to a disposal facility in Barnwell, South Carolina.
The spent fuel is piling up at a rate of about 2,200 tons a year at U.S. power-plant sites. The industry and government decline to say how much waste is currently stored at individual plants. The U.S. nuclear industry had 69,720 tons of uranium waste as of May 2013, with 49,620 tons in pools and 20,100 in dry storage, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute industry group.
Spent nuclear fuel is about 95 percent uranium. About 1 percent is other heavy elements such as curium, americium and plutonium-239. Each has an extremely long half-life — some take hundreds of thousands of years to lose all of their radioactive potency.
Watchdog groups say the dry storage poses fewer safety concerns than the reactors themselves, and many have pushed for spent fuel to be transferred more quickly from the pools. Heavy security is in place to deter sabotage by terrorists.
The administration’s strategy calls for an interim storage facility by 2025 and a geologic repository by 2048.
Peter Lyons, an assistant secretary for nuclear energy at the U.S. Energy Department, said it cannot make plans for individual sites until the passage of legislation creating a new framework for waste policy. But he said the groups in southeastern New Mexico, western Texas and Mississippi are only the most public of potential hosts to express interest in taking in high-level waste.
The idea for the interim facility is to take spent fuel left behind from reactors that have already shut down, as is the case at sites in California, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Colorado and Oregon.
The dismal history of USA’s failed thorium nuclear experiment
Thorium: the wonder fuel that wasn’t http://thebulletin.org/thorium-wonder-fuel-wasnt7156 Robert Alvarez May 2014, “Thorium-Fueled Automobile Engine Needs Refueling Once a Century,” reads the headline of an October 2013 story in an online trade publication. This fantastic promise is just one part of a modern boomlet in enthusiasm about the energy potential of thorium, a radioactive element that is far more abundant than uranium. Thorium promoters consistently extol its supposed advantages over uranium. News outlets periodically foresee the possibility of “a cheaper, more efficient, and safer form of nuclear power that produces less nuclear waste than today’s uranium-based technology.”
Early thorium optimism. The energy potential of the element thorium was discovered in 1940 at the University of California at Berkeley, during the very early days of the US nuclear weapons program. Although thorium atoms do not split, researchers found that they will absorb neutrons when irradiated. After that a small fraction of the thorium then transmutes into a fissionable material—uranium 233—that does undergo fission and can therefore be used in a reactor or bomb.
By the early 1960’s, the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) had established a major thorium fuel research and development program, spurring utilities to build thorium-fueled reactors. Back then, the AEC was projecting that some 1,000 nuclear power reactors would dot the American landscape by the end of the 20th century, with a similar nuclear capacity abroad. As a result, the official reasoning held, world uranium supplies would be rapidly exhausted, and reactors that ran on the more-plentiful thorium would be needed.
With the strong endorsement of a congressionally created body, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, the United States began a major effort in the early 1960s to fund a two-track research and development effort for a new generation of reactors that would make any uranium shortage irrelevant by producing more fissile material fuel than they consumed.
The first track was development of plutonium-fueled “breeder” reactors, which held the promise of producing electricity and 30 percent more fuel than they consumed. This effort collapsed in the United States in the early 1980’s because of cost and proliferation concerns and technological problems. (The plutonium “fast” reactor program has been able to stay alive and still receives hefty sums as part of the Energy Department’s nuclear research and development portfolio.)
The second track—now largely forgotten—was based on thorium-fueled reactors. This option was attractive because thorium is far more abundant than uranium and holds the potential for producing an even larger amount of uranium 233 in reactors designed specifically for that purpose. In pursuing this track, the government produced a large amount of uranium 233, mainly at weapons production reactors. Approximately two tons of uranium 233 was produced, at an estimated total cost of $5.5 to $11 billion (2012 dollars), including associated cleanup costs.
The federal government established research and development projects to demonstrate the viability of uranium 233 breeder reactors in Minnesota, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. By 1977, however, the government abandoned pursuit of the thorium fuel cycle in favor of plutonium-fueled breeders, leading to dissent in the ranks of the AEC. Alvin Weinberg, the long-time director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was, in large part, fired because of his support of thorium over plutonium fuel.
By the late 1980’s, after several failed attempts to use it commercially, the US nuclear power industry also walked away from thorium. The first commercial nuclear plant to use thorium was Indian Point Unit I, a pressurized water reactor near New York City that began operation in 1962. Attempts to recover uranium 233 from its irradiated thorium fuel were described, however, as a “financial disaster.” The last serious attempt to use thorium in a commercial reactor was at the Fort St. Vrain plant in Colorado, which closed in 1989 after 10 years and hundreds of equipment failures, leaks, and fuel failures. There were four failed commercial thorium ventures; prior agreement makes the US government responsible for their wastes.
Where is the missing uranium 233? As it turned out, of course, the Atomic Energy Commission’s prediction of future nuclear capacity was off by an order of magnitude—the US nuclear fleet topped out at about 100, rather than 1,000 reactors—and the predicted uranium shortage never occurred. America’s experience with thorium fuels faded from public memory until 1996. Then, an Energy Department safety investigation found a national repository for uranium 233 in a building constructed in 1943 at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The repository was in dreadful condition; investigators reported an environmental release from a large fraction of the 1,100 containers “could be expected to occur within the next five years in that some of the packages are approaching 30 years of age and have not been regularly inspected.” TheEnergy Department later concluded that the building had “deteriorated beyond cost-effective repair. Significant annual costs would be incurred to satisfy current DOE storage standards, and to provide continued protection against potential nuclear criticality accidents or theft of the material.”
The neglect extended beyond the repository and storage containers; the government had also failed to keep proper track of its stores of uranium 233, officially classified as a Category I strategic special nuclear material that requires stringent security measures to prevent “an unauthorized opportunity to initiate or credibly threaten to initiate a nuclear dispersal or detonation.”
A 1996 audit by the Energy Department’s inspector general reported that the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons facility, and the Idaho National Laboratory “had not performed all required physical inventories ... the longer complete physical inventories are delayed, the greater the risk that unauthorized movement of special nuclear materials could occur and go undetected.” The amounts of uranium 233 that the Oak Ridge and Idaho national labs have reported in their inventories has significantly varied. Based on a review of Energy Department data, there appears to be an inventory discrepancy; 96 kilograms or 6 percent of the U-233 produced is not accounted for. The Energy Department has yet to address this discrepancy, which difference is enough to fuel at least a dozen nuclear weapons.
Uranium 233 compares favorably to plutonium in terms of weaponization; a critical mass of that isotope of uranium—about 6 kilograms, in its metal form—is about the same weight as a plutonium critical mass. Unlike plutonium, however, uranium 233 does not need implosion engineering to be used in a bomb. In fact, the US government produced uranium 233 in small quantities for weapons, and weapons designers conducted several nuclear weapons tests between 1955 and 1968 using uranium 233. Interest was renewed in the mid-1960s, but uranium 233 never gained wide use as a weapons material in the US military because of its high cost, associated with the radiation protection required to protect personnel from uranium 232, a highly radioactive contaminant co-produced with uranium 233.
For a terrorist, however, uranium 233 is a tempting theft target; it does not require advanced shaping and implosion technology to be fashioned into a workable nuclear device. The Energy Department recognizes this characteristic and requires any amount of more than two kilograms of uranium 233 to be maintained under its most stringent safeguards, to prevent “onsite assembly of an improvised nuclear device.” As for the claim that radiation levels from uranium 232 make uranium 233 proliferation resistant, Oak Ridge researchers note that “if a diverter was motivated by foreign nationalistic purposes, personnel exposure would be of no concern since exposure … would not result in immediate death.”
The end of an unfortunate era. After its 1996 safety investigation at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Energy Department spent millions to repackage about 450 kilograms of uranium 233 that is mixed with uranium 235 and sitting in the lab’s Building 3019, and to dispose of diluted uranium 233 fuel stored at the Idaho National Lab. The Energy Department’s nuclear weapons program managed to shift responsibility for the stockpile in Building 3019 from Oak Ridge to the Office of Nuclear Energy, which envisioned using the uranium 233 to make medical isotopes. This plan fell apart, and in 2005 Congress ordered the Energy Department to dispose of the uranium 233 stockpile as waste.
Since then, the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management has considered uranium 233 disposal to be an unfunded mandate, disconnected from other, higher-priority environmental cleanup compliance agreements. After several fits and starts, including a turnover of four project managers in less than two years, the Energy Department’s disposition project “had encountered a number of design delays, may exceed original cost estimates, and will likely not meet completion milestones,” the department’s inspector general reported in 2010. The cost of the project increased from $384 million to $473 million—or more than $1 million per kilogram for the disposal of uranium 233.
In an effort to reduce costs, the Energy Department developed a plan to ship nearly 75 percent of the fissile materials in Building 3019, as is, to a landfill at the Nevada Nuclear Security Site by the end of 2014. Because such disposal would violate the agency’s formal safeguards and radioactive waste disposal requirements, the Energy Department changed those rules, which it can do without public notification or comment. Never before has the agency or its predecessors taken steps to deliberately dump a large amount of highly concentrated fissile material in a landfill, an action that violates international standards and norms.
In June 2013, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and members of the state’s congressional delegation announced their opposition to the landfill disposition plan. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz visited with Sandoval but did not back down from the landfill plan. Even though the Oak Ridge material in its current form meets the legal definition for radioactive waste requiring geologic disposal, the Energy Department has taken the position that the sweeping authority granted to it under the Atomic Energy Act allows the department to dispose of the fissile material however it pleases, regardless of the state’s objection.
The United States has spent nearly $10 billion to discourage practices like landfill dumping of fissile materials in the former Soviet Union, only to have the Energy Department try it at home. Heedless of the discrepancy between overseas and domestic disposal policies, the department’s agenda—which focuses on saving money on guards who would be needed to secure the uranium 233—is placing the United States in an impossible position when it comes to criticizing the nuclear materials security of other countries. So ends America’s official experience with thorium, the wonder fuel.
America’s nuclear waste sites form many ticking time bombs
it is crazy to keep making this stuff!
AP: Ticking time bombs of nuclear waste at multiple U.S. sites? Lab checking for smoking drums — CNN: “Imminent threat from radiation” — Gundersen: Serious public health effects if one blows; “Very, very volatile… like nitroglycerin” (VIDEO) http://enenews.com/cnn-imminent-threat-from-radiation-leak-gundersen-interview-public-to-suffer-serious-health-effects-if-nuclear-waste-drums-blow-up-aboveground-a-major-concern-very-very-volat
AP, May 21, 2014: Los Alamos National Laboratory [LANL] on Wednesday told state government it has isolated and is closely monitoring nuclear waste […] packed with a type of cat litter suspected in a radiation leak at [WIPP]. [LANL] said the 55-gallon barrels have been secured in special containers and moved to an isolated area with a fire protection system. They also are being monitored 24 hours a day for any change in temperature, smoking or other abnormalities. […] More than 100 other suspect containers are being stored temporarily at Waste Control Specialists in Andrews, Texas.
AP, May 23, 2014: Has cat litter turned barrels of New Mexico nuclear waste into ticking time bombs? […] COULD THE OTHER BARRELS BE TICKING TIME BOMBS? [LANL] said it has packed them in special containers, placed them under a dome with a fire extinguishing system and is closely monitoring them. Waste Control Specialists has taken similar precautions. As for the more than 350 containers already at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Flynn has ordered the U.S. Department of Energy to expedite plans for sealing off the underground rooms where the waste is stored. Complicating that effort is the laborious investigative process […] they are still working to see if other containers have been breached.
CNN Interview with Arnie Gundersen, May 21, 2014: ‘Imminent’ threat from radiation leak
- At :15 in — Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds Chief Engineer: Barrels are above ground and still at Los Alamos, which is a major concern because this material gets more and more unstable as it gets warmer, and of course we’re heading into the summer months on the desert. So those barrels that are above ground, if they were to blow like the one that did below ground, we’d have a serious public health effect. […]
At 1:30 in – Gundersen: When the corn [in the kitty litter] absorbed the moisture, the nitrogen inside got very, very volatile. Almost like in these old movies when you see somebody holding nitroglycerin — any shake will cause it to be disturbed. Well that’s what happened to these canisters that have the organic kitty litter. They’ve got to go back through and find all of those and isolate them and then figure out how to change the litter.
Problems in nuclear reactor decommissioning thrashed out in US Senate hearing
Senate Hearing on Nuclear Reactor Decommissioning Challenges Energy Collective May 22, 2014 Bemnet Alemayehu, Project Scientist, Nuclear Program, Washington, D.C.
U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer’s Environment & Public Works Committee held a hearing on Wednesday, May 14th, 2014 to assess the challenges of nuclear reactor decommissioning nationwide. Panelists called to testify at Wednesday’s senate hearing included Christopher Recchia, Public Service Department Commissioner of Vermont, Geoffrey Fettus, Senior attorney of NRDC, Donald Mosier, Council Member of the City of Del Mar, Michael Weber, Deputy Executive Director for Compliance Programs of NRC and Marvin Fertel, President & Chief Executive Officer of NEI.
Christopher Recchia’s testimony to the senate opposed a request by operators of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to discontinue off-site emergency planning after the reactor shuts down. He argued that the off-site emergency planning should continue after the reactor shuts down until all of the plant’s spent fuel rods are removed from pools and placed in dry cask storage. ……… Continue reading
Burying nuclear wastes close to Great Lakes is a “shocking idea”
Michigan protests plan to store millions of gallons of nuclear waste next to the Great Lakes RT 221 May 14, A Canadian proposal that calls for a nuclear waste storage facility less than a mile away from the Great Lakes is coming under heavy fire from Michigan lawmakers and environmental groups, who are now attempting to stop the project.Under a plan crafted by energy supplier Ontario Power Generation (OPG), the company would construct a “deep geologic repository” (DGR), which would feature waste storage sites more than 2,200 feet underground to store nearly 53 million gallons of both low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste. The location of the proposed site, however – in Kincardine, Ontario, just three-quarters of a mile away from Lake Huron – has drawn criticism from numerous groups who fear potential contamination.
The fact that Lake Huron is connected to all the other Great Lakes via waterways has also drawn concern, since the five bodies of water make up the largest collection of freshwater lakes on the Earth and provide drinking supplies to tens of millions of Americans and Canadians.
According to the Detroit News, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have continued criticizing the plan, and are now proposing legislation that calls on the federal government to get involved. In addition to requesting that President Obama stake out a position on the issue, state Senate and House members are asking Secretary of State John Kerry to officially ask the International Joint Commission – established to mediate disputes over the Great Lakes – to rule on the matter.
The legislation would also “stop the importation of radioactive waste into Michigan from Canada.”
“Building a nuclear waste dump less than a mile from one of the largest freshwater sources in the world is a reckless act that should be universally opposed,” Michigan Rep. Dan Lauwers (R-Brockway Township) said in a statement Monday, as quoted by the Huffington Post.
While lawmakers continue to get involved in the situation – Michigan’s Senators in Washington have also urged the State Department to bring the IJC into the debate – environmental groups have come out against the plan.
“Burying nuclear waste a quarter-mile from the Great Lakes is a shockingly bad idea — it poses a serious threat to people, fish, wildlife, and the lakes themselves,” said Andy Buchsbaum, regional executive director for the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes Regional Center, in a statement to the Detroit News………http://rt.com/usa/160564-michigan-canada-nuclear-great-lakes/
USA’s Plutonium facility at Los Alamos ruled not safe
Federal Safety Board Cautions DOE on LANL Plutonium Facility L0s Alamos Study Group, 20 May 14
Main plutonium facility might “collapse” in earthquake unless repairs are completed; scope of work needed still unknown
Board says full re-start of LANL plutonium facility premature; nuclear criticality accidents not ruled out
On May 16, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB, Board), cautioned Congress about the structural integrity of the main plutonium facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in the event of an earthquake similar to those which have rocked the site in recent millenia. The building in question, “PF-4,” was built in 1978 to earlier, less stringent earthquake standards.
The Board was established by Congress in 1988 to advise the Department of Energy (DOE) on the safety of DOE’s nuclear facilities.
Also on the 16th, DNFSB Chairman Peter Winokur wrote National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Frank Klotz about the Board’s concerns regarding LANL’s planned re-start of higher-hazard plutonium operations in PF-4 without first evaluating the potential of those operations to result in nuclear criticality accidents. Such accidents, were they to occur as a result of human error, mechanical failure or any other cause, would invariably involve very high levels of radiation and have often been fatal to surrounding workers. Such accidents have happened before at LANL and at other nuclear facilities in the U.S. and abroad. (See for example this LANL review.)
Regarding the first issue DNFSB writes in its “Report to Congress on the Status of Significant Safety Issues Concerning the Design and Construction of DOE’s Defense Nuclear Facilities” that:
..the Board remains concerned that PF-4 is vulnerable to seismic collapse. The large plutonium inventory of PF-4, coupled with the facility’s proximity to the public, creates the potential for high off-site radiological consequences. DOE is pursuing actions to address the collapse vulnerability, but maintains that PF-4 is safe to operate in the interim and complies with DOE standards for seismic performance. The Board communicated to DOE in a letter dated July 17, 2013, that it does not agree… -: http://lasg.org/press/2014/press_release_20May2014.html#sthash.cCZ6igPz.VLFKX1CD.dpuf
America agonises over what to do with nuclear radioactive trash
that they should stop making this toxic stuff
LEGACY OF AMERICA’S NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS — SPENT FUEL AND NO PLACE TO PUT IT BRATTLEBORO REFORMER BY BOB AUDETTE MAY 19, 2014. BRATTLEBORO — After Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is closed and when the site is finally cleaned up — perhaps before the end of the next decade — there will still be a lingering reminder of what existed there since 1972.
As at other nuclear power plant sites around the country, spent nuclear fuel — or nuclear waste, as it used to be called prior to a successful rebranding campaign waged by the nuclear industry — might remain in Vernon long after all other reminders of Yankee are gone.
In fact, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission released last year a revised waste confidence rule that stated impacts would be small if spent fuel had to be stored at nuclear sites “indefinitely.”
Ernest Moniz, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, was in Vermont last week. During a phone interview with the Reformer, Moniz said his department is focused on developing a way to take care of the nation’s nuclear waste. However, noted Moniz, DOE needs the go-ahead from Congress. Continue reading
How DO you make a sign to warn against radioactive site for 10,000 years?
How To Make A Warning Label For Humans 10,000 Years From Now, Fast Code Design, 18 May 14 Nuclear waste can remain deadly for thousands of years. Plutonium-23, an isotope used in nuclear weapons production, has a half-life of more than 24,000 years. By contrast, some of the earliest human writing emerged only 5,000 years ago. This presents a challenge of near-eternal proportions: How do you create a label that will convey danger to someone thousands of years in the future–someone who probably won’t share any common culture or language with you?……
Episode 114: Ten Thousand Years
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
-
Archives
- April 2026 (211)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
- June 2025 (348)
- May 2025 (261)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 
