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
AUDIO: crisis of dangerous radioactive trash at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant
it would make sense to just stop producing this radioactive trash
At Pilgrim — like Fukushima — spent fuel is stored in a pool high above the reactor. Tarantino says the pool contains all the nuclear waste ever produced by Pilgrim’s reactor.
“We have 40 years worth of spent fuel in the reactor building,” Tarantino said. “Fuel has never left the site.”…… Pilgrim is rapidly running of room. In two years there won’t be any space left in the pool and Pilgrim will have to shut down unless a new waste storage site can be built outside of the reactor building….
Workers have already begun constructing a road to transport huge containers — called dry cask storage — out of the reactor building to a special concrete pad nearby. This is this construction that opponents were trying to photograph with their kite camera……
AUDIO http://www.wbur.org/2013/07/10/pilgrim-nuclear-waste-permit Residents Challenge Pilgrim’s Permit For New Nuclear Waste Site By Bruce Gellerman July 10, 2013 PLYMOUTH, Mass. — Since 1972, the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant here has generated prodigious amounts of electricity, tons of radioactive waste and plenty of controversy.
Wednesday night, the debate heats up as the Plymouth zoning board votes on whether to allow Entergy — the plant’s owner — to continue with construction on a new waste storage site. The vote could stall or even stop the nuclear power plant for good.
Security, And Public Scrutiny
A few weeks ago, anti-nuclear activists — with the help from the law firm EcoLaw — flew a kite with a camera over the plant. They wanted to see what Entergy was building on the 1,600-acre site along Cape Cod Bay.
“This is the first time in a long time that citizens have pulled back the blanket of secrecy that has allowed Entergy to operate without much public scrutiny on the local level,” said attorney Meg Sheehan, who was born and raised in Plymouth. Continue reading
Congress wants answers about nuclear waste transport through Las Vegas
Titus asks for disclosure of nuclear waste routes
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/jul/10/titus-asks-for-disclosure-of-nuclear-waste/ Associated Press July 10, 2013 LAS VEGAS (AP) — A frustrated congressional representative is asking for more disclosure about a plan to route nuclear waste through Las Vegas.
Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., sent a letter Tuesday to the head of the federal Department of Energy asking to discuss a plan to ship 403 canisters of bomb-grade nuclear waste through her home state.
The Las Vegas Sun (http://bit.ly/130TXZE ) reports that she berated the department for failing to provide Congress with adequate information about the plan to ship the canisters from the Oak Ridge
National Laboratory in Tennessee to a Nevada National Security Site. Continue reading
Deep burial a cheaper way than MOX to dispose of plutonium

Nuclear waste: DC has ignored a cheaper way to dispose of plutonium — until now Sentinel.com, Douglas Birch & R. Jeffrey Smith The Center for Public Integrity, 7 July 13,
For the past decade, Washington has known how to dispose of excess U.S. plutonium at a cost estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars less than what the Energy Department is spending on a South Carolina factory meant to transform plutonium into fuel for nuclear reactors.
Instead of burning the plutonium, the cheaper alternative mixes it with glass or ceramics and some other materials, so it can be buried deep underground. Continue reading
Nuclear waste experts reject Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuel program
Nuclear waste: DC has ignored a cheaper way to dispose of plutonium — until now Sentinel.com, Douglas Birch & R. Jeffrey Smith The Center for Public Integrity, 7 July 13, “………Frank von Hippel, a White House science official in the early 1990’s who chaired a working group on Russia’s weapons plutonium, said he initially supported the MOX plant because the threat was high and MOX was the only solution Russia would support. But Russia’s decision since then to burn its new MOX fuel in reactors that can actually produce more plutonium was the last straw for von Hippel. As a result, he said, the MOX plant “[has] become from my point of view a pretty meaningless program” — one that’s cost billions of dollars so far.
Last May, von Hippel joined three other prominent scientists in a commentary published in Nature, entitled, “Time to Bury Plutonium,” in which they criticized Britain’s draft plans to dispose of its huge stockpile of surplus reactor plutonium by building a new MOX plant of its own. The four authors wrote that MOX programs worldwide have been plagued by extravagant expenses, technology breakdowns and design flaws.
In France, Areva’s recycling of plutonium from spent fuel for MOX adds about $750 million each year to the cost of electricity, according to a French study in 2000 cited by their article. Britain closed its Sellafield MOX plant in 2011, they pointed out, after it operated at just 1 percent of capacity for a decade.
The authors urged the country to “give plutonium immobilization another look … Although the technique has not been demonstrated at full scale, there is substantial literature on how to do it. Immobilization should be easier and cheaper than MOX production.” Von Hippel separately said that according to his calculations, it could be as much as seven times cheaper. Continue reading
The failure of the South Carolina Mixed Oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel plant
Nuclear waste: DC has ignored a cheaper way to dispose of plutonium — until now Sentinel.com, Douglas Birch & R. Jeffrey Smith The Center for Public Integrity, 7 July 13, “………..Unrealized ambitions
Although the White House has not allocated any additional funding for the South Carolina plant after 2014, the Energy Department claims it remains in contention as a solution to the plutonium disposal problem. But already it’s clear that the original U.S. goal for the program — reducing the world’s supply of nuclear explosive material by 68 tons – will not be realized.
Washington compromised repeatedly with Russia to pursue a program that even for some of its initial supporters has long since ceased to be a top nonproliferation priority. Meanwhile, the price of the MOX fuel factory soared far beyond the Energy department’s estimates, making it one of many, multi-billion dollar, Energy Department programs accused of being poorly run.
“MOX is just a sample of a larger problem,” says Gene Aloise, a senior federal auditor who tracked nonproliferation projects for the Government Accountability Office from 1994 to 2012.
The result is that Washington has spent at least $3.7 billion on a plant to manufacture reactor fuel no U.S. utility is eager to buy, after rejecting alternatives that likely would have been cheaper.
“The government’s plutonium plan is a pluperfect disaster,” Sen. Edward Markey, a newly-elected Massachusetts Democrat, told the Center for Public Integrity in a statement. “And all to produce $2 billion worth of reactor fuel at a cost of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars and damage to our global non-proliferation efforts.” Markey was the ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, has long been active on nuclear safety issues, and in 1986 chaired hearings on the Chernobyl disaster.
The factory’s fate might be decided next year, as the administration prefers, after another $320 million is spent on its construction. Or Congress might decide to take swifter and more decisive action in budget legislation this summer……..And after twenty years of negotiations, promises and plans, and billions in spending, the U.S. appears no closer — in its principal plutonium disposal efforts — to the goal of making the world safer from a nuclear disaster.http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/070513_nuclear_waste/nuclear-waste-dc-has-ignored-cheaper-way-dispose-plutonium-until-now/
Secret promises to USA, by Japan, to burn plutonium
Mainichi: Japan’s secret promise with U.S. to burn plutonium — “It is abnormal for sure” — “Expected to stir up controversy” http://enenews.com/mainichi-japan-secretly-promised-to-burn-plutonium-it-is-abnormal-for-sure-expected-to-stir-up-controversy
Title: Japan made secret promise with U.S. to restart pluthermal nuclear program
Source: Mainichi
Date: June 25, 2013
A Japanese prime ministerial envoy secretly promised to the United States that Japan would resume its controversial “pluthermal” program, using light-water reactors to burn plutonium, according to documents obtained by the Mainichi.
The secret promise was made by Hiroshi Ogushi, then parliamentary secretary of the Cabinet Office, to Daniel Poneman, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, during Ogushi’s visit to the United States on behalf of then Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda in September last year.
[…] The fact that a Japanese official promised to the U.S. to implement such a controversial project without a prior explanation to the Japanese public is expected to stir up controversy. […]
“It is abnormal for sure,” said one official with the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. […]
See also: Plutonium-burning reactors to restart in Japan? — Gov’t forcing companies to use MOX fuel — Official: “We have no other choice”
Nuclear waste cleanup a financial bonanza for UK firm
Nuclear waste: Clean-up Quandary.FT, By Sylvia Pfeifer, 1 July 13, More reactors are to be built but a permanent solution for high-level waste remains elusive …….
More than 50 years after the world’s first commercial nuclear power plants started operating in the UK and the US, the tens of thousands of tonnes of spent nuclear fuel in the world still has to find a permanent home.
The absence of a permanent solution for high-level waste is one of the biggest challenges facing the industry as it tries to recover from the deadly disaster at Japan’s Fukushima plant in 2011. Several governments scaled back their expansion plans, with Germany announcing plans to close all its reactors. The International Energy Agency last year predicted that global nuclear generating capacity would reach 580GW in 2035 – a 10 per cent drop from its forecast a year before.
Yet new reactors, and more waste, are not far off…..
Alvin Weinberg, an American nuclear pioneer, famously said that atomic power represents a Faustian bargain: a valuable source of electricity that carries with it an obligation to deal with the waste. “New nuclear should not go ahead until we have sorted out the waste problem,” says Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace, adding that the environmental organisation is “concerned about a new round of spent fuel set to be created”…..
“We have an obligation to get it right . . . We are like a shopfront for the nuclear industry,” admits Tony Price, brought in recently by Nuclear Management Partners (NMP),as the managing director of Sellafield Limited. “It’s time now to really focus on delivery,” he adds………
In the short term, the pressure is on NMP to deliver at Sellafield. Yet the potential prize is much bigger than just cleaning up one of the world’s most polluted sites. There are potential export contracts for companies involved in the decommissioning work and for west Cumbria it offers much-needed employment opportunities. Success at Sellafield would also mean success on a wider scale.http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/77c177ba-dcba-11e2-b52b-00144feab7de.html#axzz2XvB1ouop
A bad idea, burning radioactive trash in Fukushima
Nuclear Information and Resource Service Now here’s a bad idea: Tepco building incinerator for Fukushima radwaste. Will spread radiation through the air. http://bit.ly/11YFs9M Fukushima waste incinerator takes shape Construction of an incinerator is underway at the Fukushima Daiichi plant to burn the low-level waste (LLW) being generated from the clean-up and decommissioning of the site. (Diagram of planned incinerator below)
Update:
Small fire reported at Fukushima nuclear plant
TOKYO —
A fire broke out in a rubbish pile at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex on Tuesday, the operator said, the latest in a series of incidents at the crippled plant.
Workers discovered flames licking at piles of cardboard boxes placed near an incineration facility shortly before 1 p.m., Tokyo Electric Power Co said.
The fire damaged an area of about four meters by two meters, but was put out in a hour, it said.
The fire did not affect radiation levels in the plant, and no one was injured, it said.
TEPCO has struggled with a growing number of incidents at the plant including several leaks of radioactive water, more than two years after the worst nuclear disaster in a generation.
Improvised fixes put in place since the disaster leave it vulnerable to problems and at the mercy of nature, with no immediate end in sight, critics say.
© 2013 AFP
Global nuclear radioactive trash problem – no solution in sight
it’s just plain stupid to keep on making the stuff
Nuclear waste: Clean-up Quandary.FT, By Sylvia Pfeifer, 1 July 13 “….Today, apart from Finland and Sweden, most countries have not agreed on a site for their high-level waste. In the US, the issue has stalled after President Barack Obama withdrew support for a facility in the Yucca Mountains in Nevada. Britain, too, has gone back to the drawing board after Cumbria voted against storing the waste this year.
France, meanwhile, which derives 75 per cent of its electricity from nuclear energy, is seeking to store its waste underground near Bure, a remote area in the east of the country. Public debates have had to be postponed because of local opposition.
For now, spent fuel from the UK’s reactors is transported to Sellafield in specifically designed flasks, removed and stored in big ponds to cool. It is dissolved in nitric acid and separated into uranium (96 per cent), plutonium (1 per cent) and waste products (3 per cent). The high-level waste is fused into borosilicate glass using a process called vitrification. The resulting mixture is poured into stainless steel canisters and stored pending availability of an underground repository.
Cleaning up the legacy of the past is a particular problem for western nations such as the US and the UK and, to a lesser extent, France, whose involvement in the arms race has left them with military as well as civil waste. In the US, the former plutonium production facility at Hanford in Washington is the subject of a big clean-up operation and political wrangling about rising costs and delays, as well as concerns about contamination of groundwater.
In Europe, the true scale of the challenge is laid bare at Sellafield, the continent’s most complex facility which employs about 10,000 people. Decades of mismanagement and a lack of urgency have dogged the site, which was passed from one government agency to another. During the miners’ strike of 1972, when the imperative was to keep the lights on, the site’s Magnox power reactors were run flat-out, resulting in a faster build-up of spent fuel than they could handle. Much was dumped in the silos and ponds…….http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/77c177ba-dcba-11e2-b52b-00144feab7de.html#axzz2XvB1ouop
A handsome dowry for an ugly bride – bribing communities to host nuclear wastes
On Nuclear Waste Bill, Senators Look to Public for Help By MATTHEW L. WALD. NYT 29 June 13After the Obama administration abandoned plans in 2009 to bury nuclear waste at a repository in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, a spot chosen by leading senators more than 20 years earlier, a study commission recommended that a new location be picked through “a consent-based process.”
On Thursday, a group of senators introduced a bill, the Nuclear Waste Administration Act, that would establish such a process, based in part on public comments solicited online by the bill’s sponsors — a practice generally reserved for rules proposed by federal agencies. Call it consent-based legislation.
“The Senate did something highly unusual,” said Per F. Peterson, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a public policy expert. He said the way the legislation was developed resembled the process used by the study commission, which held hearings around the country. Taking public comment “establishes a strong foundation for the legislation to be successful if passed by the Senate and then by the House,’’ he said…….
Under the new bill, a new federal agency would be empowered to cut a deal with a state and local governments, subject to approval by Congress.
It does not define the elements of such a deal, but the expectation is that the government would offer what amounted to a handsome dowry for an ugly bride: money for roads, universities or other goodies.
In the interim, the bill would allow above-ground storage of nuclear waste in a central location, a temporary resolution to a problem that has arisen asreactors retire and the waste is orphaned.
The bill was introduced by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development; Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the subcommittee’s ranking Republican; Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee; and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the ranking Republican member.
Congress leaves town for the Fourth of July recess on Friday, but the Senate could take up the measure later this year. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/on-nuclear-waste-bill-senators-look-to-public-for-help/?_r=0
Germany’s nuclear waste “depository site law”
What to do with nuclear waste? DW 28 June 13 Fifty years after Germany began using nuclear power, the country is once again looking for a suitable nuclear waste storage facility. Search priorities include transparency, safety and scientific criteria.
The German government, together with the opposition, hopes to approve a so-called depository site law for nuclear waste ahead of federal elections in September. The Bundestag, Germany’s lower house of parliament, on Friday (June 28) will vote on the planned legislation.
After a nearly 35-year controversy over the suitability of a salt mine in Gorleben in northern Germany as a potential site for storing high-level nuclear waste, the search for a storage site will begin again. The bipartisan compromise is considered historic. Continue reading
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