German government will not pay costs of burying dead reactors
Germany’s Gabriel says state won’t pay for nuclear decommissioning http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/05/18/uk-germany-energy-nuclear-idUKKBN0DY0EM20140518 BERLIN Sun May 18, (Reuters) – Germany‘s economy minister has joined Angela Merkel in rejecting talk that utilities might hand over responsibility for decommissioning Germany’s nuclear powerplants to a new public entity, as the projected costs of decommissioning rise.
“It should not be tax payers who pay for the clean-up of atomic waste but rather those who made money for decades through running nuclear power stations,” Sigmar Gabriel told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag in an interview published on Sunday.
Two sources told Reuters last weekend that utilities were in talks with the government about setting up a “bad bank” for nuclear plants, in response to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to close them all by 2022 after the Fukushima disaster.
The foundation would use provisions earmarked by the nuclear plant operators but would also take on the risk of unforeseen extra costs, effectively capping the utilities’ liability.
The Environment Ministry said last week the utilities bore full responsibility for safely decommissioning and dismantling the nine nuclear power plants still on the grid.
One of the sources had told Reuters that if the state takes over responsibility for the decommissioning, the utilities might be willing to drop their legal claims against the government for compensation for having to shut the plants. The four operators of nuclear plants in Germany – the German companies E.ON (EONGn.DE), RWE (RWEG.DE) and EnBW (EBKG.DE) and Sweden’s Vattenfall VATN.UL – have set aside total provisions of around 36 billion euros (29.3 billion pounds) for dismantling the plants and disposing of nuclear waste.
Germany’s Spiegel magazine reported on Sunday that government experts predicted a possible shortfall of 3.5 billion euros for the clean up, as costs had risen sharply. (Reporting by Alexandra Hudson; Editing by Larry King)
Tepco to start dumping Fukushima water into the ocean next week
Japan’s TEPCO to Start Dumping Fukushima Water into Ocean Next Week MOSCOW, May 16 (RIA Novosti) – Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), the operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant, plans to begin releasing underground water near the facility into the Pacific Ocean as early as next Wednesday, The Asahi Shimbun reported Friday.
The first water to be released will total around 560 tons, the agency said citing an official from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. TEPCO will begin releasing the water as soon as it presents results of radiation tests to local government and the fishing industry.
Initial talks between the government and TEPCO agreed that only water with 1,500 becquerels of radiation or less per liter could be released. Tests conducted by TEPCO and two outside agencies have revealed that the Fukushima underground water met the standards, averaging 220 to 240 becquerels of tritium per liter.
TEPCO began pumping out groundwater from the Fukushima nuclear plant in April in an effort to prevent further radioactive leaks.
The company continues to grapple with the problem of contaminated water storage, with about 450,000 tons of highly-radioactive water currently being stored in Fukushima’s underground facilities and tanks. Experts say some 15,000 tons is also being held in a service tunnel. According to recent estimates, up to 400 tons of contaminated water from the damaged plant is seeping into the Pacific Ocean every day.
In an effort to prevent further irradiation, TEPCO has adopted a plan to draw off groundwater from the plant. The fallout from Fukushima is later to be sent for analysis that will determine whether it is safe to be disposed of by dumping into the ocean.
The practice will allow the operator to reduce the accumulation of radioactive water at the plant by 100 tons a day……..https://news.google.com/news?ncl=d_uao6qIU8QsFkM74lsq0LkpKVl4M&q=radiation&lr=English&hl=en&sa=X&ei=l7N2U52sB8mtlQXZ_4HYBw&sqi=2&pjf=1&ved=0CDsQqgIwAw
Top secret cargo. Plutonium from Canada?
Covert mission: Plutonium source might be Canada Questions being asked about mystery cargo BY IAN MACLEOD, OTTAWA CITIZEN MARCH 30, 2014 The nuclear fuel carrier Pacific Egret slipped into the harbour at Charleston, South Carolina, on March 19 and unloaded a top-secret cargo at the port’s Naval Weapons Station.
Fitted with naval guns, cannons and extensive hidden means of repelling a terrorist assault, the three-year-old British vessel was purpose-built to transport plutonium, highly enriched uranium (HEU) and mixed-oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel on the high seas.
Its previous publicly reported position had been exiting the Mediterranean at the Strait of Gibraltar almost two weeks earlier on March 7, carrying a delicate nuclear cargo loaded at the La Spezia naval base in northern Italy.
As the vessel entered the North Atlantic that day, its tracking image vanished from an online marine traffic monitoring system. The ship the size of a football field became all but invisible to unauthorized eyes.
Questions are now being raised about whether the sensitive cargo included recycled plutonium that originated here in Canada.
The clandestine business of transporting shiploads of fissile nuclear materials between nations rarely comes into public view. An eight-kilogram piece of plutonium-239 the size of a grapefruit could obliterate much of Ottawa in seconds — as it did to Nagasaki in August 1945. It’s aptly named after the ancient Greek god of the underworld……… Continue reading
USA Energy Dept in a fix about legal cases and no answer for nuclear wastes
they should stop making this toxic radioactive trash
Tiny nuclear waste fee added up to billions LA Times, 17 May 14 A charge for electricity that millions of Americans didn’t even know they pay will suddenly disappear Friday, after the Energy Department this week quietly notified utilities across the country that it was suspending its fees for a future nuclear waste dump.
The Energy Department has been collecting $750 million from electricity bills every year 
for such a dump since 1983, putting it into a trust fund that now contains $31 billion.
The court-ordered suspension may be a modest victory for consumers, but it reflects the government’s failure over the last 40 years to get rid of what is now nearly 70,000 metric tons of highly radioactive spent fuel, accumulating at 100 nuclear reactors across the nation……… Continue reading
Complex arrangements – a “bad bank” for Germany’s dead nuclear reactors
A bad bank for nuclear, as public assumes risk for closure costs http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/a-bad-bank-for-nuclear-as-public-assumes-risk-for-closure-costs-39365 By Craig Morris on 16 May 2014 Energy Transition Over the weekend, there were reports of talks about the creation of a “bad bank” for German nuclear plants, which are to be shut down successively by the end of 2022.
Critics charge that the proposal is yet another attempt to privatize profits and nationalize losses. But Craig Morris has a bit more understanding for the firms’ position. At the end of February, the German hard coal sector made a proposal that revealed the sector’s actual situation: a bad bank. We continue to hear many reports about coal making a comeback in Germany, but in reality the uptick in 2013 will prove to be short-lived; coal power is already dramatically down in Q1 2014. And going forwards, hard coal in particular will be squeezed out even during the nuclear phaseout.
Now, the firms that run coal and nuclear plants think the idea might be useful to them during the nuclear phaseout. A quick glance at the idea is enough to make your hair stand on end, and the comments on German news websites (such as here – in German) are filled with outrage:
- The provisions set aside for the dismantling of the nuclear plants would be transferred to a state-owned foundation (the bad bank), which would then use the money for the phaseout.
- The government – meaning “the public” – would then run the risks, specifically if the costs exceed the provisions.
- In return, the power firms would drop their lawsuits against the German government with the ICSID (International Centre for Settlement and Disputes) settlements court in DC. Sweden’s Vattenfall has a minority holding in the Brokdorf nuclear plant in Germany along with Eon and is suing the German government in DC.
- Surprisingly, while Eon and EnBW (Vattenfall is apparently not involved in the negotiations for a bad bank) would be able to hand over their provisions, RWE would reportedly need a capital increase – has the firm spent its nuclear provisions on something else?
The case of Vattenfall is especially interesting. In the fall of 2010, the German government reneged on the original nuclear phaseout agreement of 2002 and extended the service lives of nuclear plants by 8 to 14 years, depending on the plant. In return, the government imposed a tax on the nuclear fuel rods to be consumed – allegedly to prevent windfall profits. But after Fukushima – only a few months later – those power plant extensions were revoked, but the tax remained.
In all likelihood, the four utilities agreed that the foreigner – Vattenfall, the one with the smallest nuclear assets – would “test the waters” and see whether a court case against the nuclear tax could be won. Last month, a German court ruled that the nuclear tax was illegal, so the current negotiations may be taking place against that backdrop.
There are, however, different readings of who wants what now. German economics daily Handelsblatt writes in its newsletter on Monday that “the government in Berlin wants to have the roughly 35 billion euros in nuclear provisions from Eon, RWE, EnBW, and Vattenfall,” the four utilities that run nuclear plants and Germany. This report in English at the Financial Times also makes it sound like the German government has plans of its own.
Technically, of course, the public already runs the risks. If anything goes wrong, the liability of these firms is limited. And while this limited liability has often been decried as unfair, we should keep in mind that the power firms themselves – from the US to Germany – never wanted to build nuclear plants. The nuclear power sector was originally an attempt to make the production of nuclear weapons more palatable to the public. The power sector wanted nothing to do with the technology, which they did not understand and did not trust. Once the government had limited their liability, they essentially began building the kind of power plants they understood but merely boiled the water with nuclear fuel rods instead of coal. Some 50 years ago, RWE in particular felt that nuclear would conflict with its fleet of coal plants. The result is hundreds of nuclear plants of crappy design, with numerous design options having barely been investigated.
The German government thus forced these companies into nuclear decades ago and now it is forcing them out. All of this is unfair to these firms. It’s also unfair to the German public, which never asked for nuclear power but has to pay for the entire mess. Whatever the outcome, perhaps the main argument against nuclear is that it’s hard to do it fairly.
Huge and worrying task of cleaning up Zion Nuclear Plant
Decommissioning Of Zion Nuclear Plant Raises Safety Concerns ZION, Ill. (CBS) 15 May 14. — It’s the largest closing of a nuclear plant in the United States, and it’s right in our backyard. The most critical and dangerous part of the process at Zion is underway right now with the transfer of used nuclear fuel. CBS 2’s Jim Williams is the only local TV reporter allowed inside to see firsthand what’s going on and to get answers to concerns about safety in this original report. For us, it was a first: an interview right next to a worker holding a radiation detector………….
The plant stopped operating 16 years ago, but what was left behind is so toxic robots were brought in.
“You don’t want men in there using hand tools and torches,” said Sauger.
By train and truck, they’re shipping the less hazardous material to Texas, Tennessee and Utah where it will be buried.
Dan Pryor is the project manager. He described the less hazardous material as “filters, rags, mops; things that might have been in contact with radiated material and might be contaminated.”
But spent nuclear fuel that had been in this cooling pool is being placed in steel cylinders called casks and then encased in concrete. Dave Kraft of the Nuclear Energy Information Service said, “We call this the nuclear bowling alley,” because all 65 casks will end up together above ground next to the old plant.
Kraft fears they could be a prime target for terrorists in a plane.
“If you have a huge fire from a burning airliner for example, It’s going to affect everything around,” said Kraft.
Kraft and Paul Kakuris, of the Dunesland Preservation Society worry the casks could break open, releasing radiation across the Chicago area and poisoning the Lake.
“We are at risk here. This is the water supply for 20 million people,” said Kakuris………Today, the casks are surrounded by high fences and razor wire. Heavily armed security guards are everywhere there. Still, it’s not enough to satisfy the critics.
“You only get one chance to be wrong,” said Kraft.
Another safety concern is how will those steel and concrete casks hold up over time before a permanent storage site is created? The nuclear regulatory commission expects them to be replaced in 100 years. But, environmentalists fear those casks may wind up sitting there next to Lake Michigan for much longer than that. http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/05/14/decommissioning-of-zion-nuclear-plant-raises-safety-concerns/
Lawmakers press for stronger safety regulations for spent nuclear fuel rods
Bills would beef up safety regs for spent nuclear fuel http://thehill.com/regulation/205962-bills-would-beef-up-safety-regs-for-spent-nuclear-fuel By Benjamin Goad – 05/13/14 Lawmakers are pressing to bolster regulations for spent nuclear fuel, contending that pools left to languish for decades at decommissioning plants could prove disastrous in the event of an accident or terrorist attack.
Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday introduced a trio of bills meant to tighten safety and security at plants winding down operations around the country.
“Experts agree that a spent fuel pool accident could have consequences that are every bit as bad as an accident at an operating reactor,” Markey said.
Spent fuel can produce heat and radiation threats long after it is removed from a nuclear reactor’s electricity generating operation. Too dangerous to ship away from the plant altogether for as long as seven years, the spent fuel is left in pools at the plants.
A leak — whether due to accident or attack — could lead to fire and widespread contamination, the lawmakers said, citing various reports. Yet current Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rules allow for spent fuel to remain in the pools until the reactor completes decommissioning, which can take as long as 60 years, they said.
The Safe and Secure Decommissioning Act of 2014 would bar the NRC from exempting reactor licensees from any safety or security requirements at decommissioning plants until all fuel stored at the site is transferred into safer dry casks.
The lawmakers contend that the NRC has granted every exemption request it has ever received from decommissioning reactors, despite the agency’s own determination that an earthquake could result in a devastating breach. The Dry Cask Storage Act of 2014 is designed to force nuclear reactor operators to adhere to an NRC-approved plan for the transfer of spent fuel to dry cask storage within 7 years of the time the plant’s decommissioning plan is submitted.
Under the lawmakers’ Nuclear Plant Decommissioning Act of 2014, states and local communities would be guaranteed a meaningful role in the preparation of decommissioning plans for retired nuclear plants.
The legislation would require the NRC to publicly approve or reject every proposed decommissioning plan.
“Every state with a nuclear power plant has a strong interest in how that plant is decommissioned,” Sanders said. “This is about making sure that states and local communities can play a meaningful role in a decision.”
Concern about oversight of San Onofre Nuclear Decommissioning
Del Mar Councilman To Testify At Senate Hearing On Nuclear Power Plant Decommissioning http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/may/12/del-mar-councilman-testifies-senate-hearing-decomm/, May 12, 2014 By Alison St John U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, will convene a hearing Wednesday morning in Washington D.C., to look at the challenges of decommissioning nuclear reactors nationwide.
One of the five panelists called to testify is Del Mar City Councilman Don Mosier. Mosier, a biologist at the Scripps Research Institute, said he has concerns about continuing to store 4,000 tons of radioactive waste at San Onofre. The plant, 50 miles north of San Diego, was shut down in 2013 after a small radioactive leak was discovered in the steam generators in 2012.
“When the reactors were closed, we hoped that some of the safety concerns about San Onofre would be diminished,” Mosier said, “but I actually think they’re increased because of the lack of planning for storing all this radioactivity.“
Mosier said he has questions about the spent fuel pools and dry cask storage at San Onofre that were not designed for the kind of “high burn-up” fuel that will be stored there. High burn-up fuel (HBF ) is hotter and more radioactive than previously used fuel rods.
Mosier said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that oversaw San Onofre when it was in operation, does not have the same level of regulatory authority over the decommissioning process.
“I feel in the absence of federal oversight, one of the things I am going to argue for is more state and local control of the decommissioning process,” Mosier said.
A Citizens’ Engagement Committee set up by Edison, the company that operates San Onofre, is not the independent oversight Mosier hopes to see.
Other panel members at Wednesday’s Senate hearing include Michael Weber, NRC deputy director for waste compliance programs, and Geoffrey Fettus of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Taiwan’s growing problem of nuclear radioactive waste
the only sane thing is to stop making the stuff
Taiwan in talks with China, France for nuclear waste deals Global Post 12 May 14, Taiwan has been talking with China and France over the possibility of managing the island’s radioactive nuclear waste, Taiwanese officials said Monday.
Hwang Jung-chiou, chairman of the state-owned electric power utility Taiwan Power Co. (Taipower), told Kyodo News that they have been in contact with France with the intention of sending shiploads of spent fuel rods there for reprocessing, adding that Taiwan has obtained consent from the United States. A civil nuclear agreement between Taiwan and the United States, renewed in December last year, allows the transfer of nuclear waste from Taiwan to France and other countries or destinations agreed upon by Taipei and Washington for storage and reprocessing.
Hwang made the remarks after the construction of an interim dry storage facility for spent fuel rods his company plans to build in New Taipei City hit a snag.
The water pools at the First Nuclear Power Plant in Chinshan, 41 kilometers away from the capital Taipei, are nearing full capacity.
Taipower is building an above-ground facility at the reactor site for storing the used fuel before a deep geological disposal site is available.
Taipower’s plan is to begin building the final repository in 2044 and commence operation in 2055.
However, local opposition to the interim facility has forced the New Taipei City government to hold off from giving a green light to the proposal……..
Apart from talking with France on reprocessing high-level radioactive waste, Hwang said they are also talking with China over the possibility of disposing low-level nuclear waste there.
Taipower began to ship low-level radioactive nuclear waste to an underground storage site on Orchid Island off Taiwan’s southeastern coast three years after Taiwan’s first nuclear power plant came online in 1979.
Over 97,000 barrels of such waste were shipped to the island, which is home to some 4,000 Tao Aboriginal people, before they began to disintegrate in 1992, leading to efforts to replace the eroded containers with new ones beginning in 1996.
While Orchid Island is a temporary disposal facility, the Ministry of Economic Affairs has announced that Wuciou Island in the Kinmen archipelago, near the coast of mainland China, and Daren Township of Taitung County in eastern Taiwan have been chosen as possible sites of permanent storage.
However, strong opposition has made the two local governments reluctant to hold regional referendums on the issue. http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/kyodo-news-international/140512/taiwan-talks-china-france-nuclear-waste-deals
New Mexico nuclear waste facility will not fully re-open for years
DOE: Could be 3 years to fully reopen NM nuke dump LAKE WYLIE PILOT, BY SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN Associated PressMay 8, 2014 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The head of the recovery effort at the federal government’s nuclear waste repository in southern New Mexico said Thursday it could be up to three years before full operations resume at the underground facility.
Recovery manager Jim Blankenhorn made the announcement when answering questions from the public during a weekly meeting in Carlsbad. He said the timeline continues to be a moving target, but full operations are expected to resume no earlier than 18 months from now.
Crews continue investigating the cause of a radiation release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad that exposed some workers and halted operations in February……..
Los Alamos is under a tight deadline to get the plutonium-contaminated waste off its northern New Mexico campus before wildfire season peaks. The state of New Mexico pressured the lab to hasten the cleanup after a massive wildfire in 2011 lapped at the edges of lab property.
Lab Director Charlie McMillan said Thursday during a news conference in Albuquerque that the recent developments “are very much a cause for concern.” But he said it was too soon to tell if they will have any effect on the lab’s ability to meet the state’s deadline. http://www.lakewyliepilot.com/2014/05/08/2418188/doe-could-be-3-years-to-fully.html
High Burnup nuclear fuel , San Onofre, – Storage and Transportation issues
ISSUES INVOLVING STORAGE AND TRANSPORTATION OF HIGH BURNUP NUCLEAR FUEL DECOMMISSION SAN ONOFRE By Marvin Resnikoff, Ph.D.SCE Community Engagement Panel (CEP) San Juan Capistrano Community Center May 6, 2014 “……… I’m going to briefly discuss transportation and storage of nuclear fuel, and I’m going to focus on high burnup nuclear fuel (HBF). What and why is HBF? NRC has not fully investigated the technical issues and implications, which in my view, are major and should have required careful study and an EIS. This is work that should have been done before the NRC allowed utilities to go to high burnup, not after. By high burnup, I mean fuel greater than 45 GWD/MTU, but in clearer terms, allowing each assembly to remain in the reactor longer. The implications are the radioactive inventory in HBF is greater.
NRC staff have focused on the heat in HBF, which is greater. But heat will decline over time. One implication is decommissioning will take longer. Fuel will sit in fuel pool for 20 years or more. San Onofre has high burnup fuel. The implication of a longer decay time is that the workers at the site will not be available for the decom process. Putting more fuel into the same space, moving from 24 fuel assemblies to 32, as Southern California Edison intends to do, will further the cooling off period. However, while heat is an important consideration, but perhaps of greater import is the impact on fuel cladding. It may surprise you to know that the NRC does not know how much HBF exists across the country. While the NRC has the power and the ability to identify how much HBF is at each reactor. The NRC has inspectors at each reactor. They simply have not made the effort. The Department of Energy (DOE) is conducting a survey which should be released in September. HBF has major implications for decommissioning, storage, transportation and disposal.
• Little technical support for NRC approval of high burnup fuel (HBF). Experiment taking place in the field.
• Total amount of HBF unknown. At a minimum, the NRC should survey utilities.
• HBF will postpone storage up to 20 years; 32 PWR canister extends cooldown period.
• Cladding defects are a major problem for HBF; HBF may not be retrievable. HBF should be canned.
• Because of corrosion, long-term storage may not be possible in a salt environment.
• Side impact rail accidents may shatter HBF cladding.
• Long duration, high temperature fires may involve oil tankers that travel the same tracks. NRC has not properly quantified the statistical likelihood.
Radiation pollution of Great Lakes – is that really OK?
Canadian ‘Experts’ Comfy with Radioactive Pollution of Great Lakes http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/02/canadian-experts-comfy-with-radioactive-pollution-of-great-lakes/ by JOHN LAFORGE
No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.” — Lily Tomlin
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) — which owns or leases 20 nuclear reactors across Ontario — would save loads of cash by not having to contain, monitor and repackage leaky above-ground radioactive waste storage casks. Last Sept., I testified in Ontario against the company’s plan to deeply bury some of this waste next to Lake Huron.
OPG officially plans to let its waste canisters leak their contents, 680 meters underground, risking long-term contamination of the Great Lakes — a source of drinking water for 40 million people including 24 million US residents.
The Bruce reactor complex — the world’s biggest with 8 reactors — is on Huron’s Bruce Peninsula and is the storage site for radioactive waste (other than fuel rods) from all of OPG’s 20 reactors. Digging its dump right next door would save the firm money — and put the hazard out of sight, out of mind.
OPG’s public statements make clear that it intends to poison the public’s water. First, the near-lake dump would be dug into deep caverns of porous limestone. The underground holes are to “become the container” OPG testified last fall, because its canisters are projected to be rotted-through by the waste in 5 years. On April 13 the Canadian government was shocked to learn that OPG grossly understated the severe radioactivity of its waste material, some of which, like cesium, is 1,000 times more radioactive than OPG had officially claimed.
Second, OPG’s callous poisoning plan was broadcast in a December 2008 handout. Radioactive contamination of the drinking water would not be a problem, OPG says, because “The dose is predicted to be negligible initially and will continue to decay over time.”
The ‘expert’ group’s report says it’s possible that as much as 1,000 cubic meters a year of water contaminated with radiation might leach from the dump, but calls such pollution “highly improbable.” (Emphasis on “predicted” and “improbably” here: The US government’s 650-meter-deep Waste Isolation Pilot Project in New Mexico was predicted to contain radiation for 10,000 years. It failed badly on Feb. 14, after only 15.)
OPG’s pamphlet goes further in answer to its own question, “Will the [dump] contaminate the water?” The company claims, “…even if the entire waste volume were to be dissolved into Lake Huron, the corresponding drinking water dose would be a factor of 100 below the regulatory criteria initially, and decreasing with time.”
This fatuous assertion made me ask in my testimony: “Why would the government spend $1 billion on a dump when it is safe to throw all the radioactive waste in the water?” Now, what I thought of then as a rhetorical outburst has become “expert” opinion.
‘Experts’ Unworried About Drinking Industrial Radiation
On March 25, the “Report of the Independent Expert Group” was presented issued to the waste review panel. The experts are Maurice Dusseault, Tom Isaacs, William Leiss and Greg Paoli. They concluded that the “immense” waters of the Great Lakes would dilute any radiation-bearing plumes leaching from the site.
Dusseault advises governments and teaches short courses at the Univ. of Waterloo on oil production, petroleum geomechanics, waste disposal and sand control.
Paoli founded Risk Sciences International and the company’s web site notes his position on Expert and Advisory Committees of Canada’s National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy.
Isaacs, with degrees in engineering and applied physics, works at the plutonium-spewing Lawrence Livermore National Lab, studying “challenges to the effective management of the worldwide expansion of nuclear energy.” Of course, hiding radioactive waste from public scrutiny is one of his industry’s biggest challenges.
Leiss has degrees in history, accounting and philosophy, and has taught sociology, eco-research, risk communications and health risk assessment at several Canadian universities.
So what level of expertise do the experts bring? None of them have any background in water quality, limnology, radio-biology, medicine, health physics or even radiology, hazardous nuclides, health physics, or radiation risk. As plumes of Fukushima radiation spreading into the Pacific continue to show, the poisons spread from the source and can contaminate entire oceans. Fish large and small, and other organisms, bio-accumulate the cesium, strontium (which persist for 300 years), and cobalt (persisting for 57), etc. in the plumes. The isotopes also bio-concentrate in the food chain as albacore tuna studies repeated in April.
Canada’s expert group’s opinion on how radioactive waste might spread and be diluted in Great Lakes drinking water is inane and meaningless; its cubic meter estimates and risk assessments nothing but fairy tales. You could call the report a rhetorical outburst.
John LaForge works for Nukewatch, edits its Quarterly, and lives at the Plowshares Land Trust out of Luck, Wisconsin.
Nuclear reactors, radioactive waste dumps always sited near the poor and under-privileged
miningawareness
miningawareness.wordpress.comx 3 May 14 I think most people don’t see the reactors, whatever the country, and so don’t really know they are there.
Do you see reactors in Paris? No, but in the countryside you do. Do you see reactors in Zurich, Switzerland? No, but there is a lot of nuclear stuff to the NW of Zurich and they want to put a nuclear dump 40 minutes due north of Zurich. I checked and that area of South Carolina is around 48% black which for a country (USA) which is 13% black is high. Very sad that they were so proud of their black president, who is now dumping German waste on them!
Ditto for Shelby county (48% black) around Memphis, Tennessee where they are dumping low level rad waste in poor conditions – possibly the low level German rad waste burned at Oak Ridge Tennessee. I think they are dismantling reactor cores in an island in the Mississippi River near Memphis, if I recall correctly. Claiborne county where the Mississippi reactors are is probably a higher percentage African American. It is in the top poorest counties in the USA. This is most likely where they would put a Mississippi dump.
It’s where the waste sits anyway, while the Las Vegas casino operators block Yucca mountain. These areas of SC, Miss, and Tenn are very poor. Also, the South Dakota uranium mines are in very poor areas with large American Indian-Lakota Sioux populations. I guess that it’s because the US really doesn’t have much or any standards on these things, and Germany may.
But, Germany exporting its waste to Italy, Tennessee and South Carolina certainly looks racist in the broader sense of non-German, because there is plenty of space in the poor, rural parts of Germany and a lot of it is contaminated by Chernobyl fallout and probably from its power plants. Germany is earthquake prone, but oddly enough so is South Carolina. Germany is wet, but not as wet as South Carolina and certainly not as hot, and there would be some suitable geology someplace in Germany I would think – of the hard-rock variety. I saw part of a documentary which said that Germany exported its bad loans to Irish banks and maybe Scottish ones, such that Ireland had to bail the banks out and Germany’s banks did fine. You should inquire about it sometime.
Don’t bring more radioactive trash to South Carolina
Don’t bring more nuclear waste to SRS, Greenville Online, May 1, 2014
State should be wary of plan for more nuclear waste to SRS after years of broken promises. Plans for reprocessing, permanent storage in Nevada all have fallen by the wayside as waste piles up. The Savannah River Site near Aiken was not designed as a permanent or even a long-term storage site for high-level nuclear waste. Yet, because of broken promises and foot-dragging by the federal government, SRS has become just that. Now, there is word that the United States and Germany are in discussions about bringing even more nuclear waste to the site. Such a proposal should be met with extreme circumspection.
The United States Department of Energy is evaluating a plan to accept waste from a German prototype reactor, according to a recent report in The Greenville News. The talks began in 2011, and there is no agreement in place. However, it is troubling that there would even be discussion about bringing in more nuclear waste even as material that was supposed to be temporarily stored at SRS continues to sit with no viable plan in place to move it or process it.
The discussions are over approximately 1 ton of nuclear material that would be transported in canisters to SRS.
There already is a great deal of high-level nuclear waste at the Savannah River Site, including 37 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste that the government promised would be cleaned up by the mid-2020s. Instead, in some cases, the containers holding the waste are leaking, creating a dangerous situation. Much of the waste at SRS was brought in under the promise that it would be reprocessed and then removed from the state. That has yet to happen. Until it does, South Carolina should resist plans to bring more nuclear waste to the Savannah River Site. The arrival of the German waste is far from imminent, and it should stay that way until promises already made are being fulfilled. That day right now seems to be a long way off.
The broken promises for South Carolina have come over the course of several years.
SRS was supposed to be home to a fuel reprocessing plant that would have turned much of the waste at the site into fuel for nuclear power plants. The Obama administration now is strongly urging that the proposed reprocessing plant be put on hold. Given that there are no apparent buyers for the fuel, it is difficult to challenge the administration’s decision on a practical level while at the same time it is completely reasonable to expect the administration to make good on promises to South Carolina.
It stands as a deplorable failure of the federal government to deliver on promises made when former Gov. Jim Hodges unsuccessfully fought efforts to ship plutonium to South Carolina. Work on the Mixed Oxide reprocessing plant began in 2007. Years of delays and cost overruns have contributed to the apparent demise of this facility. Initially estimated to cost $3.8 billion, the budget has surged past $7.5 billion and the facility remains unfinished……….
The federal government has not been a trustworthy partner when it comes to shipping radioactive material to the Savannah River Site. As a spokesman for Gov. Nikki Haley told The News, the federal government has failed to live up to long-standing promises to this state. Until it begins to fulfill those promises, there should be strong opposition to bringing any more of this dangerous waste to a facility the government seems willing to turn into a de facto nuclear waste dump. http://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/opinion/editorials/2014/05/01/editorial-bring-nuclear-waste-srs/8578027/
Plan to bring Germany’s radioactive trash to South Carolina
German nuclear waste could be shipped to Savannah River Site http://chronicle.augusta.com/latest-news/2014-04-30/german-nuclear-waste-could-be-shipped-savannah-river-site By Meg MirshakThe U.S. Department of Energy signed a “statement of intent” with German research agencies offering to evaluate accepting, processing and disposing of waste at SRS. No final decision has been made, according to SRS spokesman Jim Giusti.
“All potential work to support DOE’s evaluation would be funded by the German government so the Statement of Intent is an important step forward,” Giusti said in an email this week to SRS stakeholders.
Additional shipments of waste at SRS has drawn opposition from environmentalist Tom Clements, director of watchdog group SRS Watch. SRS already has its own challenges disposing of large amounts of high-level waste existing at the facility, he said.
“The proposal to import highly radioactive spent fuel from Germany to SRS is simply nuclear dumping dressed up as nuclear non-proliferation,” Clements said. “Germany’s challenging dilemma with what to do with its nuclear waste must not become a waste management problem for the Savannah River Site.”
The graphite-based fuel for the German reactor contains U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium. Returning it to the U.S. would remove it from potential use in a nuclear weapon, Giusti said.
The energy department will “prepare appropriate analysis and consult with the public” as part of the National Environmental Policy Act before any decisions on accepting the waste are made, Giusti said.
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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