Scotland cops the risks of dismantling Britain’s old radioactive submarines
Fears over Rosyth nuclear submarine waste http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/fears-over-rosyth-nuclear-submarine-waste-1-2869329 By TRISTAN STEWART-ROBERTSON 31 March 2013 SCOTLAND has 
been chosen for the pilot project to break up some of Britain’s old nuclear submarines, prompting fears it could become a dumping ground for radioactive waste. Continue reading
Canada’s tax-payers up for increased costs for nuclear wastes
Nuclear waste cleanup liability cost up by $2.4B, Ottawa told Andy Johnson, CTV News, , Mar. 20, 2013 The cost of cleaning up Canada’s nuclear program has risen dramatically in recent years and Ottawa is being warned another $2.4 billion is needed, bring the total to $6 billion.
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited posted a statement Tuesday saying liability costs will go up by $2.4 billion from $3.6 billion in March of last year.
The estimate represents the cost associated with “decommissioning, managing and disposing of its radioactive waste in a manner that will ensure long-term health, safety, security and environmental responsibility.” “The main reason for the liability adjustment is an increase in the indirect costs attributed to the decommissioning and waste management over the period of up to 70 years of the program,” said a statement posted on the AECL website. Continue reading
No way to stop Hanford radioactive leaks, says Washington’s Governor
Gov. Jay Inslee says no available technology to plug the radiation leak Examiner.com FEBRUARY 28, 2013 BY: DEBORAH DUPRE Washington state governor Jay Inslee said Wednesday that there is no available technology to plug the radiation leaks at Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
Radioactive waste tanks may be leaking some 1,000 gallons per year at the Hanford Nuclear facility….. Hanford has 177 aging tanks storing millions of gallons of radioactive sludge.
Faulty data analysis meant officials did not properly catch signs of leaking before now, according to Inslee.
The governor expressed concern about the other tanks at the reservation. http://www.examiner.com/article/gov-jay-inslee-says-no-available-technology-to-plug-the-radiation-leak?CID=examiner_alerts_article
Urgency of the radioactive pollution disaster unfolding at Hanford Nuclear Reservation
When stacked against other environmental issues – timber clear-cutting, setting aside wilderness areas, and even plastic waste floats larger than Texas, the risk of radioactive contamination to our environment is infinitely more catastrophic
It is not too late. We have the ability to alter the impending disaster by placing pressure on responsible government agencies, legislators, community leaders, and contractors to safely increase the pace of the cleanup operations—and to tell Congress to shift all $2.46 billion in nuclear weapons “modernization” funds to cleanup—or at least what’s left after sequestration. Now.
Betrayal of Trust on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, Radioactive Columbia River Imminent Without Action http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/01/betrayal-of-trust-on-the-hanford-nuclear-reservation/ by GINA MASON MARCH 1-3, 2013
Living with radiation sickness is not on my bucket list and I would hazard that it isn’t on yours either. Nor is it what I have in mind for my children’s future. Yet our government continues to manufacture nuclear materials and unsafely store radioactive waste in clear violation of the public trust. Nowhere is this more visible than at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the most radioactively contaminated site in the western hemisphere, where we now know radioactive sludge is leaking badly from at least six underground tanks. While Hanford is technically in Washington State, the management of this catastrophe is vitally important to the rest of the nation—indeed, the biosphere. Unfortunately, environmental disasters do not stop at city, state, or national borders. Continue reading
Six nuclear waste tanks leaking radioactive water and sludge, at Hanford Nuclear Reservation
The entire city of Los Angeles could fit rather comfortably within Hanford’s borders in southeastern Washington, but the human and environmental consequences of Hanford have spread beyond those borders, across Washington and Oregon.
At The Hanford Nuclear Reservation, A Steady Drip Of Toxic Trouble by Eric Nusbaum The Daily Beast, Feb 24, 2013 Eric Nusbaum tours the largest environmental cleanup operation the United States government has ever undertaken.This month, the Department of Energy announced that a tank at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State is leaking up to 300 gallons of radioactive waste a year. Then last week, Washington governor Jay Inslee corrected that figure: a total of six tanks are leaking. To people unfamiliar 
with Hanford, this might sound mildly apocalyptic. Nuclear sludge left over from Cold War plutonium production is drip drip dripping into American soil, infiltrating the groundwater, slowly making its way into our rivers. But to Washington residents and Hanford observers, the leak is just another in a long line of mild disasters at America’s most contaminated nuclear waste site, a radioactive drop in the already-polluted Columbia River.
The reactions by politicians to this news have come off like bad attempts at satire. Continue reading
At Hanford – 200 square miles of radioactively polluted groundwater
Millions of dollars and labor hours are being spent moving nuclear waste from bad tanks into good tanks. Then millions more will be spent on vitrification. But single-shell or double shell, peanut butter or glass, it will still be nuclear waste. There is no getting rid of it. There is only finding more convenient, less uncomfortable ways to deal. .
At The Hanford Nuclear Reservation, A Steady Drip Of Toxic Trouble by Eric Nusbaum Feb 24, 2013 Eric Nusbaum tours the largest environmental cleanup operation the United States government has ever undertaken. “……There are 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater under Hanford. Every day that water moves closer to the Columbia River. Not coincidentally, there are also 177 massive storage tanks on the site, each built to hold between 55,000 and more than 100,000 gallons of nuclear waste.
Our first stop was at one of these tanks, which, even in the middle distance, was ominous and metallic and looked sort of like a giant industrial-sized swimming pool. Continue reading
The messy history of the Hanford Reservation radioactive mess
.At The Hanford Nuclear Reservation, A Steady Drip Of Toxic Trouble by Eric Nusbaum Feb 24, 2013 Eric Nusbaum tours the largest environmental cleanup operation the United States government has ever undertaken.”,,,,,,,,Late in 2010, crews with the contractor Washington Closure Hanford were set to begin demolition on what had once been the most radioactive structure on the site: Building 324. Located less than half a mile from both the city of Richland and the Columbia River, Building 324 housed a pair of “hot cells,” which are three-story enclosures that scientists use to perform remotely-operated tests of highly unstable materials. One of those cells, B-Cell, was so radioactive in the 1990s that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that “an unprotected person standing inside could have received a fatal dose in less than two seconds.” By 2010, the building’s worst radioactive material had been removed. But when Washington Closure Hanford tested the ground under the site, it found radiation levels significantly higher than surrounding soil, which itself was already contaminated. Needless to say, demolition on Building 324 has not resumed. The site is “currently being deactivated,” says the Hanford website.
There are similar stories to tell about buildings all over the site, messy stories about government bureaucracy and highly radioactive equipment and the troublesome permanence of nuclear waste. The process of producing plutonium at Hanford required the constant transport of highly unstable materials from one facility to another to another, which made containing the mess basically impossible. Continue reading
Germany’s nuclear waste nightmare- the Gorleben salt mines
Abyss of Uncertainty: Germany’s Homemade Nuclear Waste Disaster Spiegal online, By Michael Fröhlingsdorf, Udo Ludwig and Alfred Weinzier, 21 Feb 13, Some 126,000 barrels of nuclear waste have been dumped in the Asse II salt mine over the last 50 years. German politicians are pushing for a law promising their removal. But the safety, technical and financial hurdles are enormous, and experts warn that removal is more dangerous than leaving them put……
Germany’s Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) has been responsible for Asse since 2009. This is an agency that was originally founded to monitor things such as the safety of workers in nuclear research facilities. In early 2010, the federal government ordered the BfS to assess whether the radioactive waste in the Asse mine can be retrieved. The agency estimated that it would take three years to prepare the project. Most recently, the BfS said it would need 10 years for the fact-finding phase alone.
The BfS still has no detailed concept for the retrieval, no timetable, no script that maps out the technical procedures. It’s essentially a flight by the seat of the pants, and problems are encountered for which no solutions have been found anywhere in the world…. Continue reading
UK’s nuclear cleanup problems are echoed in USA
Across the Pond, Florida’s Progress Energy’s Crystal River 3 Nuclear Power Plant is also in
the process of being decommissioned. Not only for consumers but those living nearby, the decisions regarding Sellafield’s decommissioning are likely to reverberate across the Atlantic.
WHO WILL PAY FOR NUCLEAR POWER PLANT CLEANUP? Yves here. Holy moley, the cost estimates focus the mind! And the little mishap recounted below isn’t encouraging either.
Naked Capitalism, By John Daly, a non-resident scholar at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and chief analyst at OilPrice. Cross posted from OilPrice 20 Febv 13
Many of the civilian nuclear power plants built in the US. and Western Europe during the halcyon days of the Eisenhower administration are coming to the end of their operational lives as their operating licenses expire.
The looming deadlines leave their operators with two stark choices – apply for a license extension beyond the original forty years, or decommission.
A bad choice, however you look at it. For a license extension, aging NPPs must upgrade, while decommissioning raises the primordial question sidestepped since the dawn of the civilian nuclear age – what to do with the radioactive debris? The British imbroglio. Continue reading
New USA Energy Secretary must commit to cleanup of Hanford radioactive pollution
Sen. Wyden wants nuclear cleanup commitment from next Energy secretary THE HILL, By Zack Colman- 02/20/13 The Senate Energy Committee chairman said Tuesday that any Energy secretary nominee must agree to clean up high-level nuclear waste at a Washington facility to get his support. Continue reading
Radioactive liquid leaking from Hanford nuclear waste tank
Hanford Nuclear Tank in Wash. Is Leaking Liquids
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/tank-hanford-nuclear-site-wash-leaking-18515755
By SHANNON DININNY and MIKE BAKER Associated Press
OLYMPIA, Wash. February 16, 2013 A waste tank is leaking
radioactive liquids at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site,
raising new concerns about delays and budget overruns in a plan to
treat material at the federal Hanford site.
The U.S. Department of Energy said Friday that liquid levels are
decreasing in one of 177 underground tanks at the nuclear reservation.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said the tank is leaking liquids in the
range of 150 to 300 gallons annually. Continue reading
Savannah Rivers Site’s aging cracked spent nuclear fuel containers
KEY FINDINGS
Here are some key findings from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s report on older spent nuclear fuel assemblies:
• Oxide formation can cause handling problems due to sludge formation.
• Hydrogen gas accumulation can form “hydrides” that can spontaneously ignite in air.
• Cladding has ruptured, is missing, or was breached – allowing direct contact with water.
• Sealed cans that hold fuel initially packaged dry have leaked, allowing water inside.
• Fuel is stored in cans whose designs are vulnerable to developing leaks.
UK, USA, paralysed, but need permanent deep burial of nuclear wastes
In the United States, efforts to build a repository are in the doldrums
At the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, spent fuel stored above ground at reactors is likely to have been a major source of contamination following the earthquake and tsunami in 2011. At the last count, the clean-up there is expected to cost trillions of yen, or hundreds of billions of dollars.
In a hole It is in Britain’s best interests to keep looking for a site for a deep nuclear-waste repository. Nature, 05 February 2013 The best way to dispose of nuclear waste is to bury it deep underground. With the right mixture of geology and engineering, researchers think, it should be possible to contain highly radioactive material safely for the many thousands of years that it will take to decay.
Scientists agree on this. The industry thinks the same way, and so do regulators, politicians and most environmental groups. Yet despite the expert endorsement, plans for a deep geological repository in Britain effectively ground to a halt last week, after a local council voted against plans to look for a suitable site…….
why has the process come up empty again? The answer is a lack of political will at almost every level of government. Critics say that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the body responsible for the repository, never did much to try to sell the facility to local residents or to address their concerns about what it might do to property prices or tourism. At a national level, politicians offered only the vaguest promise of ‘economic development’ in exchange for taking the waste. Meanwhile, local politicians advocated an alternative plan: to build more short-term storage at Sellafield, thereby creating jobs in the near-term without making long-term commitments.
“There are moral, financial and environmental reasons to make deep geological disposal work.” Continue reading
USA’s Energy Dept plan to sell nuclear wastes into consumer products
This approach ignores the current scientific consensus that there is
NO safe level of radiation exposure.
the fundamental safety question is whether any additional radiation
exposure is safe in any meaningful sense.
This approach also fails to deal with the reality that once the
department has released radioactive materials for commercial use, it
loses almost all control over how and where they’re used, and in what
concentrations.
Multimillion Dollar Bonanza: Nuclear Waste from US Weapons Industry To
Be Sold for Profit? By William Boardman Global Research, February 05,
2013
An Energy Department plan to allow the
recycling of scrap metals emitting very low levels of radiation is
drawing opposition because of concerns about potential health hazards.
But the upside for U.S. atomic bomb-makers is that waste now requiring
costly storage could be sold for a profit.
In something of a stealth maneuver during the 2012 holiday season, the
U.S. Department of Energy set about to give every American a little
more radiation exposure, and for some a lot, by allowing manufacturers
to use radioactive metals in their consumer products – such as
zippers, spoons, jewelry, belt buckles, toys, pots, pans, furnishings,
bicycles, jungle gyms, medical implants, or any other metal or
partly-metal product. Continue reading
No One in Charge of Risk – USA’s plan to put nuclear waste materials into consumer “goods”
“Nothing has changed since 2000 that would justify lifting its current
ban. Rather, just the opposite: since then the National Academy of
Sciences has acknowledged that there is no safe level of radiation
exposure, and we’ve learned that women are even more vulnerable to
radiation than men (while children have long been known to be more
vulnerable than adults).”
NIRS and other advocacy organizations are currently engaged in a
campaign to submit comments before the Feb. 11 deadline to ask the
Energy Department to withdraw this proposal.
Multimillion Dollar Bonanza: Nuclear Waste from US Weapons Industry To
Be Sold for Profit? By William Boardman Global Research, February 05,
2013
Consortiumnews 4 February 2013 “……No One in Charge of Risk
There is no federal agency with responsibility for such oversight or
enforcement [of radioactive materials in consumer products] . This regulatory vacuum was illuminated by the discovery
in 2009 of thousands of contaminated consumer products from China,
Brazil, France, Sweden and other countries, as reported by Mother
Nature Network:
“The risk of radiation poisoning is the furthest thing from our minds
as we shop for everyday items like handbags, furniture, buttons, chain
link fences and cheese graters. Unfortunately, it turns out that our
trust is misplaced thanks to sketchy government oversight of recycled
materials.
“The discovery of a radioactive cheese grater led to an investigation
that found thousands of additional consumer products to be
contaminated. The source is recycled metals tainted with Cobalt-60, a
radioactive isotope that can cause cancer with prolonged exposure.” Continue reading
1 This Month
9 September – online public forum THREE MILE ISLAND:
7-8:30 PM ET,
Legacy, resistance to reopening – https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-LGJU4j6TD2Hgf0rpgAr1A#/registration
The nuclear industry and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission are threatening to restart Pennsylvania’s permanently closed and decommissioning Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power station. Three expert speakers will present the resistance to this dangerous misadventure in a webinar hosted by the Clamshell Alliance, Beyond Nuclear and Massachusetts Peace Action.
No Nuclear in Cwm Llynfi! Stop the nuclear power station near Maesteg.
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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