Few barriers between Nevada and nation’s nuclear waste
….That view was not unanimous in the 2-1 decision. Judge Merrick B. Garland wrote a dissent scoffing at the assumed import of the decision, chiding that an order to send $11 million would do more than “order the commission to spend part of those funds unpacking its boxes, and the remainder packing them up again.”….
Published Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2013
The pressure on Nevada lawmakers to see a new nuclear waste disposal act through Congress this session just skyrocketed.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., decided Tuesday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must continue reviewing plans for a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain until they have zero funds to continue.
That leaves only two barriers to Nevada getting dumped with the nation’s nuclear waste: Sen. Harry Reid’s ability to block funding – which depends entirely on Democrats keeping a majority in the Senate – or a scientific determination that Yucca Mountain is unfit.
Neither is as sure a thing as a law that simply designates a new destination for nuclear waste.
But it may take a small miracle to get such legislation passed.
“We’re not going to get any laws passed to change this,” Reid told reporters during a summit on clean energy in Las Vegas on Tuesday, blaming Tea Party opposition for stymieing any positive momentum toward siting a new repository.
In fact, the problem runs far deeper than that.
Last month, Congress began considering a bill to site new temporary and permanent repositories to store spent nuclear fuel by a consent-based process. Such a process, which would rely on the host community agreeing to the project, won tentative approval of members of the Nevada delegation, including Sen. Dean Heller, who got a whole lot more vocal about his support for the legislation immediately after the appeals court decision.
“Today’s decision serves as yet another example of why Yucca Mountain needs to be taken off the table once and for all,” Nevada Sen. Dean Heller said in a statement released after the ruling. “Instead of continuing to try to force Yucca Mountain on the people of Nevada, my colleagues should focus on moving toward a new process that will allow for consent-based siting.”
But last month, lawmakers in the House of Representatives also overwhelmingly rejected amendments presented by Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., to divert money appropriated for the Yucca Mountain licensing process by a vote of 335 to 81.
Votes like that – which occur on an annual basis – make it clear that support for Yucca is strong in both the Republican and Democratic parties.
Proposal for an island of nuclear waste off Fukushima coast
Asahi: Huge island made of “contaminated soil and rubble” proposed off Fukushima coast — Place for disposal of radioactive debris — “Measures will be taken to prevent adverse impact on ocean” http://enenews.com/asahi-huge-island-made-contaminated-soil-rubble-proposed-fukushima-coast-could-be-disposal-radioactive-debris
Title: INTERVIEW: Former member of ‘nuclear village’ calls for local initiative to rebuild Fukushima
Source: AJW by The Asahi Shimbun
Author: TAKAFUMI YOSHIDA
Date: August 8, 2013
Yukiteru Naka, former General Electric engineer who spent 40 years at nuclear plants in Fukushima Prefecture
[…] In May, I presented a Futaba County Island Construction Plan to heads of municipal governments in Futaba county.
It calls for creating a huge island off the Fukushima No. 1 plant from contaminated soil and rubble and building facilities for decommissioning as well as for disposal of and research on debris.
(A high level of) radiation is not expected on the island because it will be covered with a large amount of soil. All possible measures will be taken to prevent an adverse impact on the ocean. […]
I came up with the proposal for the purpose of reconstructing all of Fukushima Prefecture. In return, I expect government assistance in building the man-made island and other projects. […]
Will companies set up in a place full of abandoned homes? Can agriculture be revived when there are no successors? The government’s approach is not realistic. […]
[The island could] change the image of Futaba county drastically and develop an area where young people want to gather.
The Futaba County Island Construction Plan should contribute to decommissioning the reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 plant and reconstructing local communities. I expect experts to study the feasibility of the project. […] See also: Like a Pyramid: Mountain of debris 20 meters tall in Miyagi — Hot white vapor rising up from trash — 100km north of Fukushima (PHOTO)
Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2013 a step towards USA action
Finally, there is a glimmer of hope that – more than 30 years after the Nuclear Waste Policy Act passed, and 15 years after the feds guaranteed they’d start accepting the waste – paralysis and dithering might give way to action
The new bill would:
essentially yank all responsibility from the Department of Energy (which spent about $10 billion on moribund Yucca Mountain) and would create a new organization solely devoted to solving the nuclear waste storage and disposal problem (as was recommended by the president’s Blue Ribbon
Commission, and is widely hailed as a solid idea by Republicans and Democrats alike).
develop the aforementioned “consensual process” for figuring out where to actually put nuclear waste by engaging with willing, rather than unwilling, communities, thus hoping to avoid the gridlock that resulted from 
Nevada’s rabid opposition to deep, permanent geologic storage at Yucca Mountain.
emphasize getting the ball rolling for short-term storage first, and for permanent disposal second. This means pushing the new agency to start accepting waste as soon as possible at an “interim storage” site or sites, while it wrestles with the more thorny issue of where to put a permanent, deep geologic repository (or repositories).
End of paralysis on nuclear waste disposal? Orange County Register, August 9th, 2013, by By TERI SFORZA At this very moment, the vast majority of America’s highly radioactive nuclear waste – and San Onofre’s as well — is cooling in steel-lined concrete pools filled with water, which “are essentially loaded guns aimed at neighboring communities,” a scientist testified at a Congressional hearing last week.
“Unlike the reactor cores, the spent fuel pools are not protected by redundant emergency makeup and cooling systems and/or housed within robust containment structures having reinforced . “Thus, large amounts of radioactive material – which under the (Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982) should be stored within a federal repository designed to safely and securely isolate it from the environment for at least 10,000 years – instead remains at the reactor sites.” Continue reading
Radioactive trash from Oak Ridge and NASA to be dumped in Nevada
Energy Department Plans More Nuclear Shipments to Nevada http://news.yahoo.com/energy-department-plans-more-nuclear-shipments-nevada-160203634.html A cache of aging, weapon-usable uranium is not the only atomic material the Energy Department wants to ship from Tennessee to Nevada, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported on Wednesday. DOE officials plan in 2015 to send additional amounts of unwanted uranium from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and plutonium power supplies from NASA are also on the docket for eventual interment at the Nevada National Security Site, Representative Dina Titus (D-Nev.) said on Tuesday.
“This is not just a couple of trucks,” Titus said. “This is a long-term project they have in mind.”
The lawmaker said a plan to ship the material under the Energy Department’s Secure Transportation Officemeans that Nevada officials will not receive any information on the timing or route of the transfers.
That “takes away any oversight, any decisions, any information out of the hands of the state,” Titus argued. “It is totally secure but they can’t tell us where it is going. That means it could come through the heart [of Las Vegas].”
Until Nevada politicians protested plans for the initial uranium transfer, the Energy Department believed the arrangement had been finalized last year.
“The delay now is costing us quite a bit of money,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said at a Senate hearing on Tuesday. He refused to specify the exact amount.
Columbia River gets radioactive wash from Hanford nuclear site
Radio: Uranium-contaminated plume covers 125 acres at U.S. nuclear site — Over 300 lbs. of uranium a year flowing into Columbia River (AUDIO) #Hanford http://enenews.com/radio-uranium-tainted-plume-of-groundwater-stretches-across-125-acres-at-u-s-nuclear-site-over-300-lbs-of-uranium-a-year-released-into-columbia-river-audio-hanford
Northwest News Network (NPR),, July 29, 2013: Cleanup Options For Hanford’s 300 Area Going Public […] Federal officials are trying to figure out what to do about radioactive materials that remain at a place near the Columbia River known as the 300 Area. […] The 300 Area was where workers milled uranium rods and tested ways to process plutonium during WWII and the Cold War. They poured about 2 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste a day into sandy ponds and trenches right next to the Columbia River. […] One of the remaining jobs is to work on a 125-acre groundwater plume contaminated with uranium.
Uranium-contaminated groundwater plume at Hanford (SOURCE: Proposed Cleanup Plan for Hanford’s 300 Area)
Tri-City Herald,, July 29, 2013: […] The 300 Area was used for fabricating uranium into fuel pieces for the Hanford reactors that produced plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program. It also was used for research, including testing processes for chemically removing plutonium from irradiated uranium fuel. […] About 330 pounds of uranium per year is released to the Columbia River from the Hanford 300 Area, according to DOE. […] The public may comment at a meeting at 6:30 p.m. today at the Richland Public Library, 955 Northgate Drive, Richland. An open house will start an hour earlier. Additional public meetings will be held Wednesday in Seattle and Aug. 8 in Hood River.
Listen to the broadcast here http://www.nwnewsnetwork.org/post/cleanup-options-hanfords-300-area-going-public
All British children have plutonium in their teeth, from Sellafield nuclear plant
Plutonium from Sellafield in all children’s teeth Antony Barnett, public affairs editor The Guardian 30 November 2003 Government admits plant is the source of contamination but says risk is ‘minute’ Radioactive pollution from the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria has led to children’s teeth across Britain being contaminated with plutonium.
The Government has admitted for the first time that Sellafield ‘is a source of plutonium contamination’ across the country. Public Health Minister Melanie Johnson has revealed that a study funded by the Department of Health discovered that the closer a child lived to Sellafield, the higher the levels of plutonium found in their teeth. Continue reading
Columbia River threatened by Hanford radioactive waste cleanup plan
Hanford Cleanup Plan Would Let Massive Amounts of Uranium Flow into the Columbia River http://columbiariverkeeper.org/featured/hanford-agencies-want-to-let-massive-amounts-of-uranium-flow-into-the-columbia-river/
On July 15th, the Tri-Party agencies, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Washington State Department of Ecology, released their Proposed Plan for cleanup for forty square miles, ten along the Columbia River, on the southern corner of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, also known as the 300 Area. The public has only thirty-two days, until, August 16th, to submit comments on the 300 Area Proposed Plan.
Unfortunately, the Tri-Party agencies’ want to rely on experimental technology and natural attenuation to treat the pollutants in the soil and groundwater of southeast Hanford. This strategy demonstrably fails to protect the Columbia River from long lived pollutants such as uranium that seep into the groundwater and the river where they enter the food chain. Continue reading
Hinkley nuclear site’s history of weapons deals with USA
Hinkley’s hidden history Morning Star UK 21 July 2013 by David Lowry With the coalition government’s decision to back a third nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point on Somerset’s coast and the ongoing debate over Trident replacement, it’s interesting to take a look back at the origins of Britain’s nuclear programme.
When the British nuclear power and weapons programmes were born, a different foreign power, the United States, was intimately involved in the planning.
The first public hint came with an MoD announcement in June 1958 on “the production of plutonium suitable for weapons in the new [nuclear] power stations programme as an insurance against future defence needs” at Britain’s first-generation Magnox reactor (named after the fuel type, magnesium oxide).
A week later in Parliament, Labour’s Roy Mason asked why the government had “decided to modify atomic power stations, primarily planned for peaceful purposes, to produce high-grade plutonium for war weapons.”
He was informed by paymaster general Reginald Maudling: “At the request of the government, the Central Electricity Generating Board has agreed to a small modification in the design of Hinkley Point and of the next two stations in its programme so as to enable plutonium suitable for military purposes to be extracted should the need arise.
“The modifications will not in any way impair the efficiency of the stations. As the initial capital cost and any additional operating costs that may be incurred will be borne by the government, the price of electricity will not be affected……….
the following month, the US and British governments signed a mutual defense – spelt with an “s” even in the official British version, so you can guess where it was authored – co-operation agreement on atomic energy matters.
The agreement was intended to circumvent the draconian restrictions of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act, which sought to retain all nuclear secrets within the US, even though many foreign nationals had worked collaboratively with US counterparts for six or more years on nuclear R&D.
The deal was reached after several months of congressional hearings in Washington DC, but no oversight whatsoever in the British Parliament.
As this formed the basis, within a mere five years, for Britain obtaining the Polaris nuclear WMD system from the US, and some 20-odd years later for Britain to buy US Trident nuclear WMD, the failure of Parliament to at least appraise the security merits of this key bilateral atomic arrangement was unconscionable…….
And so it may be seen that the Britain’s first civil nuclear programme was used as a source of nuclear explosive plutonium for the US military, with Hinkley Point A the prime provider.
The reason there was a swap between Britain and the US of weapons-suitable highly enriched uranium and plutonium was the US had huge surpluses of uranium, but wanted more plutonium than its nuclear production complex at Hanford could deliver, while the British first-generation “commercial” Magnoxes, which were scaled-up plutonium production factories, were perfect for producing military-suitable plutonium as they had online refuelling systems to optimise plutonium over electricity production.
They produced perfect plutonium in surplus, but Britain lacked sufficient highly enriched uranium, so an exchange deal was mutually beneficial.
Two decades later in 1984 Wales national daily the Western Mail reported that the largest Magnox reactor in Britain, at Wylfa on Anglesey, had also been used to provide plutonium for the military.
Plutonium from both reactors went into the British military stockpile of nuclear explosives, and could well still be part of the British Trident warhead stockpile today.
Subsequent research by the Scientists Against Nuclear Arms, published in the prestigious science weekly journal Nature and presented to the Sizewell B and Hinkley C public inquiries in the ’80s, has demonstrated that around 6,700kg of plutonium was shipped to the US under the military exchange agreement, which stipulates explicitly that the material must be used for military purposes by the recipient country.
To put this quantity into context, a nuclear warhead contains around 5kg of plutonium.
Is it any wonder the Atoms for Peace movement began to demand “safeguards” to deter diversion of civilian nuclear plants to military misuse?
After all, the US and Britain knew that such deadly diversion was possible – they had demonstrated it themselves.
The trouble is that safeguards are misleading. They are neither safe, nor do they guard. And what would Iran or North Korea make of this deliberate intermixing of civil and military nuclear programmes by one of the nuclear weapons superpowers – one which leads the criticisms of them for allegedly doing this very thing today. http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/135635
Bad luck for nuclear obby, Dept of Energy favours burial of wastes, not reprocessing
DOE’s Spent Fuel Strategy: Disappointing for Nuclear Advocates, The Energy Collective, Steve Skutnik January 17, 2013 There is a hallowed tradition in Washington known as the 
“Friday Document Dump,” in which news and announcements the government wishes to bury are strategically timed for Friday afternoons, when such announcements tend to fall through the cracks of the typical news cycle (i.e., assuming reporters are even present to cover the event, the strategic timing tends to ensure it will miss the weekend papers, thus effectively “burying” the story by the time the new week rolls around).
In this storied tradition, the Department of Energy released the Obama administration’s response to the Blue Ribbon Commission report last Friday to relatively scarce media coverage. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find any coverage in many of the major papers; what little coverage there was can be found in the Washington Times, Platts(an energy publication), and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. (Needless to say, the timing appears to have had its intended effect)……..
Some of the major highlights:
- An emphasis upon a flexible, staged, consent-based process for locating a permanent geologic repository for used nuclear fuel designed to be adaptive to potentially changing circumstances.
- A new, independent waste disposal organization charged with overseeing used fuel management and disposal, along with legislative action to reform allocation of the Nuclear Waste Fee paid by operators to allow for greater operational flexibility and independence.
- Short-term emphasis upon siting a pilot interim storage facility for used nuclear fuel, with a triage priority of relocating fuel from decommissioned reactor sites first. Operations would begin in2021.
- Transitioning toward an operational interim storage site with sufficient capacity to meet the existing federal government’s liabilities under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982; operations to begin in 2025.
- Making “demonstrable progress” toward locating and characterizing a potential geologic repository with a target operations date of 2048…….
Perhaps to the disappointment of the AREVA (who emphasized reprocessing as a viable fuel cycle strategy in their blog response), the report seems to go out of its way to minimize the potential role of reprocessing in a future U.S. fuel cycle strategy – in fact, one point which stuck out to me was in that the DOE report recommended that the scope of the waste management organization (referred to as a “management and disposal organization, or “MDO” – because if there’s one thing Washington loves, it’s acronyms…) should be explicitly constrained to explicitly exclude reprocessing. Here’s the relevant quote:
In addition, the mission of the MDO will need to be carefully defined. For example, funding made available to the MDO should be used only for the management and disposal of radioactive waste. While this could include the management and disposal of waste resulting from the processing of defense materials, the MDO itself should not be authorized to perform research on, fund or conduct activities to reprocess or recycle used nuclear fuel. These limitations on the MDO mission are consistent with the recommendations of the BRC.
Nevada politicians want answers on radioactive trash transport
Nevada Politicians Push DOE for Info on Uranium Transport Plan http://news.yahoo.com/nevada-politicians-push-doe-uranium-transport-plan-150209553.html Global Security Newswire Staff 16 July 13
Governor Brian Sandoval in a July 12 letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz noted that “I have received no official communication from your office” regarding the Nevada chief executive’s previous request for a meeting “and now write again to request this important meeting as soon as possible.”
Sandoval is concerned about an Energy plan to lower the budget for a program that financially supports states’ supervision of radioactive waste activities.
Nevada could see its oversight funding reduced by 30 percent or approximately $300,000 under the initial DOE budget plan, according to Nevada Conservation and Natural Resources Department Director Leo Drozdoff.
Energy plans to transport 403 containers filled with weapons-usable uranium from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to Nevada, which objects to the planned transfer.
USA scandal of Uranium Center of Excellence taxpayer ripoff
The “excellence” of this facility was that the radioactive garbage was green-washed as “recyclable,” and Ohio voters were also duped by the promise that it would bring hundreds of jobs, when the final tally was only two full-time inventory managers. I suppose that if spent fuel storage had been added, it would have been called the Center for Real Awesomeness with Plutonium.
Many of the same contractors who had been paid to haul the excellent garbage in were then paid a second time to haul the excellent garbage out in a less-than-excellent shell game that meant lucre for an elite group of crappy corporations.
Uranium Titan Tumbles EcoWatch July 12, 2013 By Geoffrey Sea“…….Excellent Extortion Recent developments at Piketon and Paducah make no sense at all without understanding that the working national plan for how to deal with the outmoded gaseous diffusion plants and their massively contaminated sites has been to convert both into “national sacrifice” waste repositories. But you won’t find that plan in any Federal Register notices or Environmental Impact Reports. Rather, it’s the subtext of a hundred different records of decision and formal notifications. The new way to evade those nuisance environmental compliance requirements is for federal agencies and funded corporations to simply not announce what they intend to do. Continue reading
The $trillion danger of San Onofre’s 1,400 tons of radioactive trash
A Spent Fuel Accident at San Onofre Nuclear Waste Dump Could Cost a Trillion Dollars Intro by Paul de Burgh-Day for Salem-News.com
Article by Ace Hoffman of Carlsbad puts a straight face on a severe potential problem that could bankrupt California.
– A HELL OF A WAY TO BOIL WATER! – So said Albert Einstein.
Somebody back then should have listened to him and acted accordingly…
Instead, with nuclear power stations around planet earth, humanity faces a massive and utterly intractable disaster – to which there is currently no answer.
It is a while since I posted from Ace Hoffman.
He has been part of a ‘victory’ which has lead to his local San Onofre (CA) being permanently closed. Which of course is a good thing.
BUT it still leaves unresolved a gigantic problem – a ticking time-bomb.
The powerful nuclear industry has a vast problem to deal with – with little inclination to do so. As we are seeing, just with the out of control Fukushima situation – more dangerous than ever – with no remedies in sight – see
A spent fuel accident at San Onofre Nuclear Waste Dump could cost a trillion dollars. Deal with it. Ace Hoffman July 13th, 2013 Some people would be happy to leave San Onofre’s 1,400 tons of accumulated radioactive spent fuel, from nearly half a century of leaky, unreliable, expensive and disquieting operation, right where it is.
On an earthquake fault line, in a tsunami inundation zone, amongst 8.7 million of the most beautiful, industrious, peaceful and creative people in the world — from all over the world — who live within a 50 mile radius of the waste, and tens of millions more who live just slightly beyond that artificial marker.
The highly radioactive used reactor cores will be stored locally in relatively flimsy (for their purpose) containers called dry casks. These casks — about 40 are on site now, the oldest about 10 years old, with 100 or more yet to come to empty the spent fuel pools of fuel — cannot resist significant forces of any sort (manmade, natural, you-name-it). Continue reading
America must wake up to its growing nightmare of radioactive trash
If America chooses not to wake up to this reality, sooner or later it will cost us dearly: A spent fuel accident at San Onofre Nuclear Waste Dump could cost a trillion dollars. The spent fuel will need to be guarded for hundreds of millennia, but right now it is MOST important that it be guarded properly.
Shutting down ALL the reactors now, and properly securing ALL the waste immediately, is the only logical thing to do
A spent fuel accident at San Onofre Nuclear Waste Dump could cost a trillion dollars. Deal with it. Salem News Ace Hoffman July 13th, 2013 ”……..For all intents and purposes Fukushima was a spent fuel accident. While it’s true that the reactors tripped after the earthquake and had only been shut off for a short while when the tsunami struck, it’s also true that even if the reactors had been off for years, the same basic sequence of events could have happened if water wasn’t circulated properly around the used fuel assemblies.
Spent fuel is incredibly deadly stuff, but in fact, Fukushima was not a “worst case scenario” by any means. An even larger catastrophe is still possible at Fukushima because of the fuel that’s still there in the spent fuel pools and dry casks, and because the melted blobs of “corium” (uranium and plutonium) can theoretically go critical again. Massive explosions of the corium blobs are also possible without a new criticality event, when/if they reach the local water table. And more than two years after the meltdowns, nobody knows precisely where the corium blobs are.
There are 23 reactors similar to Fukushima’s operating in America, and all other types of reactors have other dangers which make them just as capable of catastrophic accidents as those were, but in different ways. There are no “safe” reactors, and there is no safe way to store or transport the fuel. Continue reading
Nuclear waste casks filling up one aweek, and rate is increasing
it is crazy to keep making this radioactive trash
New dry casks are popping up around the country at the rate of about one a week these days. As spent fuel pools fill up, that rate will increase to a steady-state (for 100 reactors) of about 4 to 6 dry casks per week around the nation.
Each one, if its contents get out, could wipe out a small state
A spent fuel accident at San Onofre Nuclear Waste Dump could cost a trillion dollars. Deal with it. Salem News Ace Hoffman July 13th, 2013 “……..Nevertheless, some people, even some among those who helped shut down San Onofre because of the danger, now refuse to talk about moving the waste, primarily for one of two reasons:
First, they are concerned about transportation accidents — a reasonable fear. But consider this: Transport risks last for only a few days each trip, and there are a finite number of trips, because, thankfully, the reactors at San Onofre are permanently closed. So that’s a relatively limited risk. On the other hand, leaving the waste to sit dangerously in an earthquake/tsunami/growing population zone is a danger that lasts for decades or centuries, and possibly forever.
The other reason some people oppose transporting the waste away from San Onofre is that there’s nowhere to put it. Continue reading
Nuclear wastes in dry cask storage – still very dangerous
A spent fuel accident at San Onofre Nuclear Waste Dump could cost a trillion dollars. Deal with it. Salem News Ace Hoffman July 13th, 2013 “…….There are a total of about 75 sites in America with operating or closed nuclear reactors. Almost all have spent fuel stored on site. Most are under various airline routes. All are vulnerable to terrorism. San Onofre has repeatedly been cited as a likely terrorist target by elected officials because of the devastating damage an attack could do to the economy and lives of so many millions of people. Have the lessons of 9-11 truly been forgotten just 12 years later?
The time to solve the nuclear waste problem is now, not later. Once the waste has “cooled” enough to remove it from the pools, it is still incredibly hot (as much as 400 degrees Fahrenheit at the fuel rod’s surfaces) and stays hot for many years. The heat is produced mainly by the decay of fission products, emitting deadly gamma rays (hence the lead, steel, and cement shielding) as well as alpha and beta particles.
The spent nuclear fuel is in danger of fire by several methods, including, of all things, water intrusion, which can lead to zirconium cladding degradation along with splitting the water molecules into separate hydrogen and oxygen atoms. This chemical reaction created an explosive atmosphere three times at Fukushima, and is known to have happened in at least one dry cask here in the sStates — but it was discovered before an explosion occurred. Will we always be so lucky?
As the fission products decay, the spent fuel cools and becomes “safer.” However, it doesn’t become “safe” ever. Many of the most dangerous isotopes, such as cesium and strontium, have half-lives in the 30 year range, and are at their peak now. Thus, the importance of taking care of the “spent fuel problem” is highest now — much higher than, say, 30 years from now when about half the cesium and strontium will have decayed. So waiting makes no sense. The waste’s most virulent components are at their peak quantities right now, and an accident now would be the most devastating for the planet’s collective DNA — DNA which has already taken a terrible hit from weapons testing and use, from Chernobyl, from Fukushima, from 1000 other accidents and purposeful spills, and from continuing leaks at Hanford and other nuclear sites.
There is really only one logical conclusion, of course: It’s time to shutdown the reactors everywhere. In China, Russia, France, England, India, South Korea, and everywhere else, not just in southern California. Currently nuclear waste is stored in at least four locations in California. Those four sites need to be consolidated into one highly protected site, with earthen berms between EACH cask, and a “no-fly” zone and other considerations.
But how will consolidation be accomplished when communities are bullied into supporting flimsy, inadequate dry cask storage wherever the waste was produced, regardless of the danger?
Activists in Humboldt County and around Rancho Seco have accepted dry cask storage for years. Why shouldn’t southern California?
The answer is, because southern Californians understand, post-Fukushima, what the real dangers of spent fuel are……”. http://www.salem-news.com/articles/july142013/san-onofre-bdb-ah.php
1 This Month
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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