China’s concern over Japan’s plutonium and enriched uranium
Japan and China’s Dispute Goes Nuclear, The Diplomat, Japan and China’s bitter PR campaign has now entered the nuclear realm. By Zachary Keck March 18, 2014 Japan and China appear to be trading nuclear barbs with one another.
For some weeks now, China has been raising concerns about the amount of enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium Japan currently stockpiles. “We continue to urge the Japanese government to take a responsible attitude and explain itself to international community,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said at the end of last month.
The following week, the same spokesperson asked: “Has Japan kept an excessive amount of sensitive nuclear material that is beyond its actual needs? Does one need so much sensitive nuclear material for peaceful use? Should one keep excessive weapons-grade nuclear material?” He added: “More importantly, does Japan have higher-enriched and weapons-grade uranium, and how much does it have? What are those used for? How can Japan ensure a balance between the demand and supply of nuclear materials? These are the real concerns and questions of the international community.”
Japan has one of the most advanced civilian nuclear programs of any country without nuclear weapons.According to NBC News, Tokyo has 9 tons of plutonium stockpiled in different places throughout Japan, while 35 tons of Japanese plutonium is stockpiled in different countries in Europe. Only about 5 to 10 kilograms is needed to produce a nuclear weapon. Japan also has an additional 1.2 tons of enriched uranium. It is also building a fast-breeder plutonium reactor in Rokkasho that will produce 8 tons of plutonium annually.
Many experts believe that Japan could produce nuclear weapons within 6 months of deciding to do so, and some believe that Tokyo is pursuing a “nuclear hedging” strategy. Japan has done little to mollify these concerns. In fact, it has often encouraged them, with a Japanese official recently saying off the record that “Japan already has the technical capability [to build a nuclear bomb], and has had it since the 1980s.”
Having a “bomb in the basement” largely suits Japan’s interests in its competition with China. …….http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/japan-and-chinas-dispute-goes-nuclear/
Officials At Odds Over Storing Nuclear Waste WLTX19 Eric Connor, Greenville News March 17, 2014 Plans to ship decades-old weapons waste from South Carolina’s Savannah River Site are on hold still as the underground nuclear waste dump in New Mexico that was to be its home remains shuttered indefinitely a month after a mysterious radioactive leak stopped shipments from sites nationwide.
The leak at New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant raises new questions over another multibillion-dollar disposal site shut down in the American desert: Yucca Mountain……..
For environmentalists skeptical of nuclear energy, the incident in New Mexico stands as evidence that geologic disposal akin to the Yucca Mountain project is too risky. Continue reading
Global crisis in nuclear waste – we must stop making it
Worldwide Nuclear Waste Crisis In the Wake of WIPP “If We Don’t Have a Place to Store it, then We Have to Stop Making It.”http://www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com/videos/radiation-poisoning/worldwide-nuclear-waste-crisis.html Alexandra Bruce March 15, 2014
The recent fire and release of deadly radiological poison from the Carlsbad, NM WIPP site is being whitewashed in the mainstream media.
The cover-up of the recent events at WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Program), where a plume of deadly plutonium particles were released and carried by winds over a vast swathe of the the US is such that we do not know exactly how dangerous this situation truly is. What we do know is that there was (and may still be) an out-of-control fire at that bomb-grade plutonium waste storage plant in Carlsbad.
The storage of nuclear waste remains an unresolved issue – and as one expert, interviewed here say, “If we don’t have a place to store it, then we have to stop making it.”
The lack of a real plan for managing the disposal of weapons-grade waste at Hanford,
WIPP and others have existed since these plants began being built, over 70 years ago, as can be seen by the age of this film. The issue of radioactive waste management has become so covered-up and controlled, that such a film could probably *not* be made today.
So, take advantage of seeing the preposterous ‘solutions’ which have been used, since the
beginning of the Nuclear Age, such as the savage dumping of steel barrels full of nuclear waste into oceans, surrounding highly-populated areas.
The lack of any resolution as to what to do with the nuclear waste from power plants has caused these to continuously stockpile the spent fuel rods on site, in conditions that are not very safe.
For example, when the reactors at Fukushima initially exploded, spent fuel rods, which were being stored ABOVE the reactors were shattered and sent flying in a radius of several miles surrounding the site, with this highly toxic debris covering the land that was the breadbasket of Japan.
Spent fuel, as I hope we have all learned by now, since the Fukushima disaster, is much more toxic than fuel rods are, before use.
Nobody really knows what’s going on under the Irish Sea, where British nuclear waste has been dumped for decades. This film attempts to find out.
With 5 Million Tons of uranium waste to clean up, Colorado Mining Corp. Spills more
Colorado Mining Corp. Spills 20,000 Gallons Of Uranium Waste Amid Negotiations To Clean Up 15 Million Tons More Opposing Views, By Sarah Fruchtnicht, Sat, March 15, 2014
A broken pipe at a dismantled Colorado mill spilled 20,000 gallons of uranium waste just as the corporate owner is negotiating with state and federal authorities to clean up another 15 million tons of radioactive uranium tailings.
The Colorado mining and milling corporation Cotter Corp. is working with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to negotiate one of the nation’s longest-running cleanups in history. The agencies are expected to help Cotter clean up, gather data, and figure out what to do with 15 million tons of radioactive uranium tailings.
They could remove the tailings, which would cost more than $895 million, or bury the waste.
In the meantime, a 6-inch plastic pipe, part of a 30-year-old system on Cotter’s 2,538-acre property in Canon City, broke and spewed 20,000 gallons of uranium-laced waste………
A community group, Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste, is pressing Cotter and the state for more facts about the spills and cleanup operations.
Energy Minerals Law Center attorney Travis Stills says the public deserves to know more.
“There’s an official, decades-old indifference to groundwater protection and cleanup of groundwater contamination at the Cotter site — even though sustainable and clean groundwater for drinking, orchards, gardens and livestock remains important to present and future Lincoln Park residents,” Stills said. “This community is profoundly committed to reclaiming and protecting its groundwater.” http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/environment/colorado-mining-corp-spills-20000-gallons-uranium-waste-amid-negotiations
Los Alamos’ huge nuclear waste problem, with New Mexico facility shut
New Mexico nuclear repository mishap leaves Los Alamos waste quandary KFGO, Thursday, March 13, 2014 By Joseph J. Kolb ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (Reuters) – The Los Alamos National Laboratory is evaluating how to meet a June deadline to permanently discard plutonium-tainted junk in light of a prolonged shutdown of a New Mexico nuclear waste dump after an accident there last month, a lab official said.
Los Alamos, one of the leading U.S. nuclear weapons labs, has been forced to halt shipments of its radioactive refuse some 300 miles across the state to the nation’s only underground nuclear repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, according to lab spokesman Matt Nerzig.
The repository has remained closed while the U.S. Department of Energy investigates the origins of a radiation leak that occurred there on February 14, exposing at least 17 workers at the facility to radioactive contamination. It was the first such mishap since the facility opened in 1999.
Nerzig said about 1,000 temporary storage drums of the waste remain at the Los Alamos National Laboratory awaiting shipment to the repository near Carlsbad. The lab faces a strict June 30 deadline to permanently discard of the waste…….
“We intend to hold LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory) to the deadline,” said Jim Winchester, communications director, for the New Mexico Environment Department………
Established during World War Two as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the world’s first atomic bomb, the complex remains one of the leading nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities in the United States.
A massive wildfire that raged at the edge of the complex in 2011 burned to within a few miles of a collection of radioactive waste drums temporarily stored at the site. Since then, Energy Department and state officials have made the removal of transuranic waste from the lab to the repository a top environmental priority. http://kfgo.com/news/articles/2014/mar/13/new-mexico-nuclear-repository-mishap-leaves-los-alamos-waste-quandary/
Ontario Power Generation underestimated radiation levels for planned waste storage site
Bruce waste site radiation understated, says former OPG scientist A scientist who formerly worked for OPG says the company has understated radiation levels in waste destined for a storage site near Kincardine Stzar.com By: John Spears Business reporter, Feb 28 2014 A former research scientist with Ontario Power Generation says the company has “severely underestimated” the level of radioactivity of material destined for a waste storage site near Kincardine.
Dr. Frank R. Greening’s letter to a federal panel reviewing the site says that OPG has understated the extent of radiation in material destined for the proposed site, “sometimes by factors of more than 100.”…… Continue reading
Thorium nuclear reactors (LFTRs) produce intensely radioactive wastes
“……LFTRs are theoretically capable of a high fuel burn-up rate, but while this may indeed reduce the volume of waste, the waste is more radioactive due to the higher volume of radioactive fission products. The continuous fuel reprocessing that is characteristic of LFTRs will also produce hazardous chemical and radioactive waste streams, and releases to the environment will be unavoidable. Spent fuel from any LFTR will be intensely radioactive and constitute high level waste.
The reactor itself, at the end of its lifetime, will constitute high level waste.
The UK’s National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) believes that considerable research, development and testing lies ahead before thorium fuels will be ready for operational use. As the NNL states, “Thorium reprocessing and waste management are poorly understood. The thorium fuel cycle cannot be considered to be mature in any area.” It estimates that 10-15 years work is required before thorium fuels will be ready for use in current reactor designs, and that their use in new types of reactor is at least 40 years away….”http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/nuclearnews/NuClearNewsNo43.pdf
Nuclear Management Partners (NMP)’s expensive botch at Sellafield
Politicians and the deal’s numerous critics were shocked when the NDA awarded NMP the extension in October, despite a disastrous tenure during which Sellafield’s clean-up bill soared to over £70bn. The letters warn that a “re-baselining” of budgets will cause cost estimates to further spiral in April this year: “However presented, the extent of change was going to be extremely uncomfortable and difficult to sell.”
Nuclear chief’s despair over Sellafield firm NMP revealed in letters written by UK nuclear decommissioning boss The Independent, 26 Jan 14, Damning criticism of the consortium overseeing the expensive clean-up of the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant has been revealed in a series of hostile letters written by John Clarke, head of the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
Mr Clarke accused Nuclear Management Partners (NMP) of undermining confidence and damaging the entire project’s reputation, as well as criticising Tom Zarges, the consortium chairman, of setting “unduly conservative” targets. In one letter, written in November 2012, Mr Clarke attached slides that outlined the NDA’s frustrations with NMP’s decontamination work at the Cumbrian facility, including concerns about the “quality of leadership” and the “pace of change”, which it said “feels too slow”.
The content of the letters has added to the confusion over why NMP was recently asked to continue overseeing the clean-up of one of the world’s most hazardous nuclear sites until 2019. The correspondence, which was obtained under a Freedom of Information request, covers a 21-month period to November 2013. During this time NMP and the NDA were locked in discussions over a five-year extension to a contract that was originally awarded in 2008.
Politicians and the deal’s numerous critics were shocked when the NDA awarded NMP the extension in October, despite a disastrous tenure during which Sellafield’s clean-up bill soared to over £70bn. The letters warn that a “re-baselining” of budgets will cause cost estimates to further spiral in April this year: “However presented, the extent of change was going to be extremely uncomfortable and difficult to sell.”
The harsh tenor of the letters – one of which demanded “improved performance in a number of key areas, including schedule delivery” – adds weight to suggestions that Mr Clarke did not want NMP to continue at Sellafield. The NDA looked at bringing the decontamination back under the management of the public sector.
A critical 292-page report by the accountancy firm KPMG last year showed that nine of the 11 biggest projects on the site, including the construction of a storage facility for radioactive sludge, were a combined £2bn overbudget.
Seven were also behind schedule, while KPMG argued that the structure of NMP’s contract was “inappropriate” and was designed in a way that sought to “maximise shareholder returns”. NMP is a consortium of California-based URS, France’s Areva and British engineer Amec.
Dr David Lowry, an independent environmental policy and research consultant and a member of Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates, obtained the letters. He said: “This is a massive indictment of NMP’s failure to deliver – and then to give them an extension is almost inexplicable…….http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/nuclear-chiefs-despair-over-sellafield-firm-nmp-revealed-in-letters-written-by-uk-nuclear-decommissioning-boss-9085512.html
Private company making a bonanza from nuclear waste storage
Radioactive Gold Rush: Nuclear Waste Storage Is A Booming Business http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/01/radioactive-gold-rush-nuclear-waste-storage-is-a-booming-business/ KELSEY CAMPBELL-DOLLAGHAN First, dig a hole. Then, reinforce it with clay, concrete, steel, and plastic. Fill it with nuclear waste and cover it in 12 more metres of concrete. Then profit. That’s how one company in Texas has struck radioactive gold, charging companies $US10,000 per cubic foot to store nuclear refuse.
Safely burying “low-level” nuclear material is now a $US30 billion industry in the U.S., driven in part by an increase in old, contaminated parts removed from the country’s rapidly ageing nuclear power plants and radiation-related medical waste. The New York Times‘ Matthew Wald calls one storage pit “America’s most valuable hole in the ground,” describing the process of digging, protecting, and filling This booming business is dominated by a single, two-year-old company in Texas —Waste Control Specialists — who even charge extra depending on radioactivity levels. Think of it as surge pricing for nuclear waste.
Here’s how WCS describes its facility in Andrews County, Texas, on its website:
Located within a 1,200-ft. thick nearly impermeable red-bed clay formation, the Waste Control Specialists (WCS) site ensures safe and permanent disposal of radioactive waste by combining this unique natural barrier with a custom designed and engineered, 7-ft. thick, steel-reinforced concrete liner system… Offering the most robust facilities of their kind in the world, WCS is a long-term solution for the nation’s commercial and public radioactive waste generators.
Is it really safe for nuclear waste disposal to be controlled by private industry? Critics are divided. Some claim that these companies are using techniques lightyears beyond the government’s dated waste storage sites. Others argue that letting private interests dictate the location and security of potentially deadly materials is incredibly troubling. Right now, it’s the best option we have. [The New York Times]
UK scientists aim to get the public to be confident about nuclear waste disposal
Researchers grapple with UK’s nuclear legacy http://phys.org/news/2014-01-grapple-uk-nuclear-legacy.html#jCp 9 Jan 14 The University of Leeds will lead a consortium of 10 universities in a national research programme looking at ways of dealing with Britain’s nuclear waste. The £8 million project, funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), will start in February and bring together the nuclear industry, the Government’s nuclear advisors and the country’s leading academic researchers.
More than 40 doctoral and post-doctoral researchers will work over the next four years on issues including how best to handle different types of spent fuels, packaging and storing waste, and dealing with nuclear sludges in ponds and silos at nuclear power stations.
Professor Simon Biggs, Director of the University of Leeds’ Institute of Particle Science and Engineering, who will lead the University consortium, said: “The project is primarily focused on developing new technologies and providing confidence in the safe storage and disposal of legacy waste. The UK is a technology leader in this field and the core aim of this project is to maintain and further develop that skill base.”
ed.note UK might have to copy the USA’s rule
He added: “This will be a truly interdisciplinary effort. We have civil engineers, chemists, chemical engineers, robotics experts, radiochemists, mechanical engineers and material engineers all working together on thirty different projects.”
The National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and Sellafield Limited will be partners in the project, alongside the Universities of Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol, Imperial, Lancaster, Loughborough, Manchester, Sheffield, Strathclyde and UCL.
Much of the UK’s legacy waste is kept at the Sellafield site in Cumbria.
Sellafield Limited’s Research Alliance Manager Neil Smart said: “Today, Sellafield faces a challenge where there is no blueprint; emptying and demolishing some of the most difficult and complex nuclear buildings in the world – the decommissioning of historic reactors, reprocessing facilities and associated legacy ponds and silos.
“This massive challenge is however an opportunity to demonstrate that Sellafield is still at the forefront of the UK’s nuclear industry and we are delighted that the EPSRC is supporting appropriate academic research that will contribute to the scientific and technical underpinning of our mission. We look forward to engaging in these projects and benefiting from the outcomes, not only in terms of the science and technology but also the skilled people developed through these projects with the potential to enhance our workforce long into the future.”
Vermont nuclear decommissioning may be a model for other States
State Involvement Key for Decommissioning Old Nuclear Plants, Nasdaq, By Oilprice.com, January 03, 2014 The beginning of 2014 marks the final year of operation for the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, ending a contentious battle between the state and the plant’s owner. On December 23, Entergy (ETR) and the state of Vermont announced a deal that will end all litigation surrounding the plant’s operation, shut down the plant at the end of 2014, and lead to a compressed schedule to study decommissioning.
The conflict started when Entergy sought a 20-year license renewal to keep the Yankee plant operating into the 2030’s. Vermont, however, requires approval from the state legislature for license renewal, the only state in the country that does so. Yet Entergy sued the state, arguing that authority over nuclear license renewals rests only with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and that federal authority trumps state authority.
Although a series of court decisions affirmed Entergy’s position, the company ultimately decided to close the plant anyway, largely due the inability to compete with cheap natural gas. In August 2013 it announced that it would cease operations at the end of 2014…….
The deal to close Vermont Yankee does offer a useful model for decommissioning as it tackles some of the key areas of conflict between the industry and the areas in which it operates. Entergy agreed to complete adecommissioning study in one year, much quicker than the four years allotted for by the NRC. It also agreed to move nuclear waste from onsite pool storage into dry casks within seven years, even though the NRC allows the company to keep waste in pools for sixty years. The deal also calls for Entergy to pay millions of dollars to the state for economic development for the county in which Vermont Yankee is located.
One of the interesting features of the deal is that it allowed for active involvement of the state in shaping the path towards decommissioning and waste disposal, which is often absent elsewhere. To be sure, huge question marks remain, including how the state will make up for the shortfall in electricity generation, and where funding for decommissioning will come from. But, the U.S. has thus far failed to implement a strategy to decommission old nuclear power plants. And with most of the 100 or so nuclear power plants obtaining 20-year license renewals, that conversation has been pushed off into the future. The Vermont Yankee deal, while incomplete, does offer lessons for decommissioning. http://www.nasdaq.com/article/state-involvement-key-for-decommissioning-old-nuclear-plants-cm315680#ixzz2pRYlLxGz
America dumped radioactive trash on the ocean floor
Nuclear Waste Sits on Ocean Floor U.S. Has Few Answers on How to Handle Atomic Waste It Dumped in the Sea By JOHN R. EMSHWILLER and DIONNE SEARCEY WSJ Dec. 31, 2013 More than four decades after the U.S. halted a controversial ocean dumping program, the country is facing a mostly forgotten Cold War legacy in its waters: tens of thousands of steel drums of atomic waste.
From 1946 to 1970, federal records show, 55-gallon drums and other containers of nuclear waste were pitched into the Atlantic and Pacific at dozens of sites off California, Massachusetts and a handful of other states. Much of the trash came from government-related work, ranging from mildly contaminated lab coats to waste from the country’s effort to build nuclear weapons.
Federal officials have long maintained that, despite some leakage from containers, there isn’t evidence of damage to the wider ocean environment or threats to public health through contamination of seafood. But a Wall Street Journal review of decades of federal and other records found unanswered questions about a dumping program once labeled “seriously substandard” by a senior Environmental Protection Agency official: Continue reading
Decommissioning problems with Vermont Yankee Nuclear reactor
RECAP 2013: VERMONT YANKEE, RENEWABLE ENERGY CAPS AND WIND PROJECTS STIR CONTROVERSY HTTP://VTDIGGER.ORG/2013/12/29/RECAP-2013-VERMONT-YANKEE-RENEWABLE-ENERGY-CAPS-WIND-PROJECTS-STIR-CONTROVERSY/ JOHN HERRICK DEC. 29, 2013 VERMONT YANKEE, THE STATE’S ONLY NUCLEAR REACTOR, DOMINATED HEADLINES THIS YEAR.
Entergy Corp., the company that runs the reactor, is plagued by financial problems, and operating the Vermont plant was an expense it could no longer afford. In late August, Entergy announced it would close the plant, ironically just days after the Louisiana corporation won a long-running court battle with the state over the right continue operating the Vernon facility for an additional 20 years.
Entergy amended its application with the Public Service Board and is now seeking a one year license to operate the plant through the end of 2014, when Vermont Yankee is slated to close.
The board held off from ruling on the relicensure case at the request of the Shumlin administration while state officials settled differences over decommissioning, the economic impact of the plant closure, hot water discharges into the Connecticut River and a generation tax.
Many of those issues were resolved when the state and Entergy reached an agreement last week that sets a decommissioning completion date of 10 to 15 years, decades sooner than required by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 60-year timeframe. Entergy also agreed to pay millions of dollars in payments to the state in tax revenues and in support for regional economic development efforts. In addition, the agreement settled all pending federal litigation.
The settlement is contingent on the Public Service Board approving the plant’s certificate of public good before March 31, 2014.
There are other outstanding issues that have yet to be resolved. The two parties disagree over whether Entergy’s Decommissioning Trust Fund is sufficient to support decommissioning. In addition, the state and the company do not yet have a common understanding of how the site will be restored. Entergy must file a decommissioning plan with the NRC after the plant is closed.
The state is concerned that the 42-year old merchant plant’s worsening financial foundation could compromise the operational safety of the facility in the near term and the decommissioning process over the long haul.
It is unclear what the plant will do with 530 tons of radioactive waste stored on the premises. Vermont Yankee has 3,879 fuel rod assemblies submerged in a spent fuel pool that was originally designed to hold about 350. Spent fuel rods must be kept under water to prevent them from igniting, but once they are cooled, they can be transferred into long-term cement “dry casks.” Vermont Yankee will need 58 casks in all. Right now, the facility has 13. Each cask costs about $1 million.
The agreement requires that all the spent nuclear fuel stored on site pools be placed in dry cask storage, which Gov. Peter Shumlin said could take up to seven years.
Entergy’s decision to close Vermont Yankee was the result of declining wholesale market prices and competition with natural gas. Merchant plants are investor-funded; early this year a Swiss financial services firm UBS Securities downgraded Entergy Corp.’s stock and urged investors to sell.
The downgrade came on the heels of a report by UBS Securities that found Entergy “is unlikely to generate any meaningful cash” from wholesale commodities in 2013 and 2014.
Entergy’s nuclear fleet includes the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, Vermont Yankee in Vermont, Indian Point Energy Center and the James A. Fitzpatrick Nuclear Power Plant in New York, and the Palisades Power Plant in Michigan.
USA’s 70,000 metric tons of radioactive trash
they sould stop making the stuff!
Highly reactive nuclear waste seeks permanent home ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER, December 27th, 2013, By TERI SFORZA “………; two things happened last month that give hope to those who want Yucca to open for business: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered its staff to finish a safety evaluation report for Yucca Mountain, and it will spend $11 million from the Nuclear Waste Fund to do it, and, a federal appeals court told the government to quit collecting $750 million a year from consumers for said Nuclear Waste Fund, since, you know, the federal government has failed to permanently dispose of a single gram of nuclear waste for more than 50 years.
This all comes as the city of San Clemente officially implores the federal government to create some sort of safe repository for nuclear waste, and to give first priority to the stuff stored at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station because of our area’s “unique circumstances” (read: vulnerability to earthquakes and dense population).
“I’ll take any sign of forward momentum on Yucca Mountain as positive, including this one,” said San Clemente City Councilwoman Lori Donchak by email shortly after the news broke. “The immediate need is for a safety-evaluation report to see if the site can do its job. It’s not clear that the money available is enough to get that done and unfortunately no indicators that renewed funding is in the works in Washington…..
the importance of some sort of answer to the nation’s acute nuclear-waste-disposal-question grows more pressing every day: Some 70,000 metric tons of the poisonous stuff have piled up in pools and dry casks all across America, and more than 116 million people live within the 10-mile evacuation zone around the nuclear power plants that have created it.
That’s more than one of every three people in the United States.
And the financial cost of paralysis is high: About 80 lawsuits have been filed against the feds over broken promises to start accepting spent nuclear fuel by 1998, theDepartment of Energy had paid out $2.6 billion in damages to utility companies as of 2012, and it faces another $19.7 billion in liabilities through 2020, according to the General Accounting Office……
Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s study on nuclear waste storage is inadequate
Watchdogs criticize nuclear storage study; A.G. says NRC didn’t focus on Indian Point lohud.com, 26 Dec 13, State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and his counterparts in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont have given a thumbs-down to the federal government’s draft study on the long-term storage
of used nuclear fuel.
A 143-page document filed late last week detailed their concerns, along with those of a Minnesota Native American tribe.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s review, they maintain, was incorrectly focused at the industry level and not individual plants.A federal court in 2012 found the NRC didn’t fully consider the hazards of on-site storage of old fuel at the nation’s nuclear plants, including Indian Point in Buchanan. The court ordered the commission to evaluate the environmental effects of such storage.
Old fuel at Indian Point is kept in spent-fuel pools and dry casks. Both are reinforced against attacks or other calamities but critics have called for moving more old fuel at a faster pace into the casks.The draft study “fails(s) to address these core issues as required by (federal law) and the Court,” the attorneys general and the general counsel for the Prairie Island Indian Community wrote. The study also fails to provide the states, the tribe and the public with plant-by-plant reviews and wrongly relies on a generic approach, they wrote.
The tribe’s reservation is next to the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant, which was the subject of litigation in the 1970s that lead to how the NRC regulates the storage of old nuclear fuel……..http://www.lohud.com/article/20131225/NEWS/312250023/Watchdogs-criticize-nuclear-storage-study-A-G-says-NRC-didn-t-focus-on-India
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!
23 April – WEBINAR – Why new nuclear reactors are the wrong tools for decarbonization Thursday, April 23 • 1 AM – 2 AM AEST
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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