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More releases of Plutonium and Americium from New Mexico nuclear waste site

WIPP officials admit new release of Plutonium and Americium — More expected in future — Nearly double levels seen after February leak — 61 DPM on March 11 vs. 36 DPM in February http://enenews.com/wipp-officials-admit-new-radioactive-release-nearly-double-levels-seen-after-february-leak-61-dpm-on-march-11-vs-36-dpm-in-february?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29

 AP, Mar. 19, 2014: New air sampling data from southeastern New Mexico’s troubled nuclear waste dump indicates there has been another small radiation release. […] they believe the contamination is from previous deposits on the inner surface of exhaust ductwork. […] Officials say occasional low-level releases are anticipated, but they should be well within safe limits.

Las Cruces Sun, Mar. 18, 2014 (emphasis added): DOE: Another radiation release reported at WIPP […] Samples collected from the ventilation exhaust recorded 61 disintegrations per minute of americium. DPM measures the amount of radioactive contamination from alpha and beta rays in an area. […] The DOE believes the most recent contamination was residual radioactive particles that were trapped in the ventilation system from the initial radiation leak. […] The DOE said it anticipates additional low-level releases on occasion, but officials expect radiation in the environment will remain at safe levels. New Mexico Environment Department Secretary Ryan Flynn said the state was briefed of the news Tuesday morning and thinks there is nothing to worry about at this time. “The level they detected is low and we don’t believe there was any risk to public health or the environment but we need to investigate more,” he said. […] Department of Energy officials were not available for comment.

Albuquerque Journal, Mar. 19, 2014: One air sample collected March 11 from the ventilation exhaust showed increased levels of americium […] In a statement, WIPP called the release “expected, given the amount of contamination captured by the WIPP ventilation system during the February 14 radiation release event.” Engineers say the contamination comes from previous deposits inside the exhaust ducts, WIPP reported. […] WIPP said it doesn’t expect the release to impact the health of workers, the public or the environment.

KVIA News, Mar. 18, 2014: “This is expected given the amount of contamination captured by the WIPP ventilation system during the February 14 radiation release event,” WIPP’s March 18 statement reads.

Las Cruces Sun, Mar. 18, 2014: Increased radiation in Carlsbad not related to WIPP incidents — Radiation levels appear to be on the rise in Carlsbad and around the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Air monitoring results since last month’s radiation leak appear to show the amount of radiation trending upward near Carlsbad, but Department of Energy officials say there is no proof it is related to the leak.  A DOE air monitor stationed on Carlsbad’s eastern border, near the Bureau of Land Management office on Greene Street, has shown an uptick of radiation from 1.6 disintegrations per minute (DPM) on Feb. 18, to 7.1 DPM as recently as March 4. […] The initial radiation leak registered at 36 DPM at the WIPP site […]

See also: Radiation level doubles at location far from WIPP leak; Carlsbad monitor jumps around 40% — Residents plead for more info, concerns over safety (MAP)

March 21, 2014 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Rokkasho a big-box store for nuclear terrorists.

Rokkkasho-reprocessing-plan

After spending tens of billions of dollars and decades on breeder-related programs, Tom Cochran said, countries find it hard to pull the plug.

“You have an entrenched bureaucracy and an entrenched research and development community and commercial interests invested in breeder technology, and these guys don’t go away,” Cochran said. “They’re believers … and they’re not going to give up. The really true believers don’t give up.”……..

“Stealing a weapon is too hard,” Cochran said. “But there is no big risk in fuel assemblies, or in taking things from a bulk handling facility that can be used to make weapons.” In this view, Rokkasho is a kind of big-box store for would-be nuclear terrorists.

A World Awash in a Nuclear Explosive? TruthOut,  19 March 2014 12:24 By Douglas Birch and R. Jeffrey SmithCenter for Public Integrity | Report Washington — A generation after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the world is rediscovering the attractions of nuclear power to curb the warming pollution of carbon fuels. And so a new industry focused on plutonium-based nuclear fuel has begun to take shape in the far reaches of Asia, with ambitions to spread elsewhere — and some frightening implications, if Thomas Cochran is correct.

A Washington-based physicist and nuclear contrarian, Cochran helped kill a vast plutonium-based nuclear industrial complex back in the 1970s, and now he’s at it again — lecturing at symposia, standing up at official meetings, and confronting nuclear industry representatives with warnings about how commercializing plutonium will put the public at enormous risk.

Where the story ends isn’t clear. But the stakes are large. Continue reading

March 20, 2014 Posted by | - plutonium, Japan, Reference, reprocessing | Leave a comment

Why plutonium is so dangerous

plutonium238_1A World Awash in a Nuclear Explosive? TruthOut,  19 March 2014 12:24 By Douglas Birch and R. Jeffrey SmithCenter for Public Integrity | Report Washington “……..Just a Few Pounds Worth of Plutonium? There’s been a ghoulish debate between officials and independent scientists about how much plutonium is needed to fuel a clandestine bomb. But both agree it’s not much.

The U.S. bomb that destroyed half of Nagasaki in 1945 had 6.2 kilograms of plutonium in it, or 13.6 pounds. But experts say it was over-engineered — only one kilogram fissioned, they concluded later.

The International Atomic Energy Agency nonetheless decided years ago that eight kilograms of plutonium, or 17.6 pounds, are needed to make a bomb and so that’s the quantity its monitoring is geared to stop from getting loose.

Cochran and his NRDC colleague Christopher Paine challenged the IAEA standard in 1995 with a study concluding that only 3 kilograms — 6.6 pounds — would be needed to fashion a “very respectable” bomb with the explosive power of a kiloton, or 1,000 tons of TNT. But no matter who is right, Rokkasho’s annual plutonium production would be enough for 1,000 weapons or more. Continue reading

March 20, 2014 Posted by | - plutonium, Reference | Leave a comment

The Coke Can Plutonium Experiment

On arrival at lecture halls, he would push his stand-in for plutonium into an empty Coke can he had sawn in half. During his talks, he would hold the can up so his audience could see it, and say the contents could incinerate a city. “A six-pack of these is a nuclear arsenal,” he would say.

PuA World Awash in a Nuclear Explosive? TruthOut,  19 March 2014 12:24 By Douglas Birch and R. Jeffrey SmithCenter for Public Integrity | Report Washington #……..The Coke Can Experiment In the abstract, there’s plenty of alarm in official circles. “Just one nuclear weapon exploded in a city — be it New York or Moscow; Tokyo or Beijing; London or Paris — could kill hundreds of thousands of people,” President Barack Obama told the United Nations Security Council in September 2009. “And it would badly destabilize our security, our economies, and our very way of life.”

But Cochran has long criticized the effectiveness of one of Washington’s most costly and elaborate strategies to prevent such a catastrophe — a global effort to detect and capture illicit fissile materials at border crossings and major world ports.

Since 2003 the United States has spent more than $850 million on equipment and training for customs officials at 45 foreign ports so they can scan shipping containers to detect nuclear materials. It’s a daunting assignment. About 432 million shipping containers crisscrossed the oceans in 2009 alone. U.S. ports accept 15 million containers every year. Continue reading

March 20, 2014 Posted by | - plutonium, Reference, safety | Leave a comment

China’s concern over Japan’s plutonium and enriched uranium

flag-japanflag-ChinaJapan 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/

March 19, 2014 Posted by | - plutonium, Japan | Leave a comment

wastes-1Officials 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

March 17, 2014 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Global crisis in nuclear waste – we must stop making it

wastes-1Worldwide 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.

March 17, 2014 Posted by | wastes | Leave a comment

With 5 Million Tons of uranium waste to clean up, Colorado Mining Corp. Spills more

exclamation-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

March 16, 2014 Posted by | Uranium, wastes | Leave a comment

Los Alamos’ huge nuclear waste problem, with New Mexico facility shut

wastes-1New 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/

March 14, 2014 Posted by | USA, wastes | 1 Comment

Ontario Power Generation underestimated radiation levels for planned waste storage site

text-radiationBruce 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:  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

March 1, 2014 Posted by | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

Thorium nuclear reactors (LFTRs) produce intensely radioactive wastes

wastes-1“……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

January 27, 2014 Posted by | Reference, technology, wastes | 1 Comment

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.”

money-in-nuclear--wastes

flag-UKNuclear 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

January 27, 2014 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

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/  

 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]

money-in-nuclear--wastes

January 24, 2014 Posted by | wastes | Leave a comment

UK scientists aim to get the public to be confident about nuclear waste disposal

flag-UKResearchers 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 , 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 , 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

Waste-Confidence-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.”

 

January 9, 2014 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

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

January 3, 2014 Posted by | decommission reactor | Leave a comment