Radioactive Real Estate: Finding a Forever Home for Nuclear Waste
To this day, WIPP only houses transuranic waste with medium radioactivity from nuclear defense projects — not, for example, waste from nuclear energy, or items with very high or low levels of radioactivity. There is no pilot plant for high-level materials in the U.S. at the moment or in the plans
Undark, 10 July 2024, BY SARAH SCOLES
Castoffs from U.S. nuclear weapons get buried at one site in New Mexico. But what happens when that facility fills up?
THE LAND around Carlsbad, New Mexico is spiked with oil and gas wells. Mines hoist up minerals. Hotel parking lots teem with twinning white work trucks, driven by employees who specialize in pulling material out of the Earth.
Amid these extractors, though, are others putting material into the planet: They work for a facility called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, located about 40 minutes from downtown Carlsbad. At first glance, WIPP resembles a normal industrial site: A road sign near the entrance sports its inscrutable name, pointing toward tan warehouse-like buildings, evaporation ponds, and headframes for hoisting material.
Superficially, it looks like any other mine in the area. But that sameness belies the strangeness of what lies below ground: A huge subterranean salt deposit that stores nuclear waste from the country’s defense projects.
Once the repository is full, the salt will naturally undo the miners’ work: Tunnels and rooms will collapse, entombing the radioactive material and protecting life aboveground. WIPP has buried more than 14,000 shipments of nuclear waste since its start in 1999.
Twenty-five years after that opening, on a chilly March morning, a charter bus carries a crowd of people — some wearing cowboy attire, others in insulated vests zipped over dress shirts — into the parking lot. They congregate next to a semitruck laden with cylindrical cargo containers that sport radioactive warning labels. The labels, it turns out, are just for show. These containers are empty — staged for a photograph as part of WIPP’s 25th anniversary, and these guests have come to mark the occasion.
When the event starts, in a building plunked just before the security gate, Mark Bollinger, head of the Department of Energy’s Environmental Management Carlsbad field office, heads to a lectern.
“This,” he proclaims, “is a celebration.”
Others beg to differ. According to WIPP’s founding documents, the site should be winding down soon: It is a pilot plant — an experiment, a proof-of-concept — these critics argue, not a permanent one. The goal is to show that it is possible to safely store nuclear waste underground, shut the plant down, and seal it off. Initially, the timeline estimated disposal would stop in the middle of this decade, letting earth close around the waste. Over the course of WIPP’s operating life, and drawing on lessons learned here, the United States would identify and open new repositories for America’s nuclear waste.
That’s not exactly what has happened though.
Today, there are no concrete plans for new deep geologic repositories in the U.S. There are no established future sites for the medium-level nuclear waste that WIPP handles, nor for more dangerous radioactive waste, nor for the tens of millions of pounds of spent nuclear fuel from power plants. Indeed, much of the radioactive trash the country has created since the 1940s still lives in temporary storage, spread across the U.S. And officials now expect WIPP could remain open until the 2080s — decades beyond its originally conceived chronology.
The lack of permanent nuclear waste storage in the U.S. isn’t an engineering problem. “It’s not technically difficult,” said Allison Macfarlane, director of the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia, and former chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The solution, she says, is to bury it. The more radioactive, the deeper it goes.
Politically and culturally, however, convincing communities to permanently host nuclear detritus remains difficult, and WIPP is the world’s only operational example of a deep geological repository for nuclear waste — and the only one on the horizon. If officials are to find a post-WIPP solution for the mid-level nuclear waste being stored here — and the other kinds of radioactive discards — they’ll need to study how WIPP came to be, and why Carlsbad residents haven’t put up much of a fuss.
“In any future repository program,” said Matt Bowen, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and a former official with the National Nuclear Security Administration, “state and local officials are going to want to understand WIPP.”
THE IDEA that you could store nuclear waste in salt dates to the 1950s, when the National Academy of Sciences published a report about radioactive waste disposal, identifying places where nuclear waste could remain undisturbed. Subterranean salt deposits, the panel of experts concluded, were the best spots, geologically speaking.
“The great advantage here is that no water can pass through salt,” read the report. Cracks in the mineral would heal themselves, theoretically helping halt radioactivity’s flow up or down. Salt deposits are also typically in seismically inactive areas, so nothing should shake the dangerous drums. “Abandoned salt mines or cavities especially mined to hold waste are, in essence, long-enduring tanks,” it continued.
Other geologic options that have been floated include crystalline rock, shale or clay, shale over hard rock, and volcanic rock called tuff, all of which can isolate the waste from the outside environment.
More than a decade passed before officials implemented the academy’s suggestion, with the defense apparatus continuing to produce nuclear waste the whole time. But when they did move forward with preliminary work in the 1970s, they settled on a part of New Mexico underlain by a huge slab of salt from the long-gone Permian Sea. This salt is 2,000 feet thick, starting 850 feet underground. It seemed perfect.
But first they needed to convince the public.
Proponents and politicians navigated this in part by allowing independent oversight and research and giving the state of New Mexico some power over the process. In the 1970s, the state created a radioactive and hazardous waste committee in the legislature, to recommend legislation for WIPP and for the transportation of radioactive material. And in the 1980s Congress allocated money to mine two shafts through the salt and research the site and its safety, access that allowed the state of New Mexico to do its own, independent research.
That was part of a plan that politicians and policymakers in favor of WIPP had in this era, says former Rep. John Heaton, whose district housed the future site. Namely, that they wanted the public to “hang loose.”
“Let’s not go overboard,” Heaton said of the advice to the public at the time. It is no use thinking of only bad-case scenarios or scary what-ifs. Let’s instead, the advice went, wait for the facts to come in.
As those facts arrived, independent researchers learned about how waste containers corroded over time, and how the underground salt behaved at different temperatures. The research pointed to the long-term safety of the site, and waiting on the scientific results had worked: Carlsbad was on board, with opposition coming mostly from larger, more liberal cities like Santa Fe, where Heaton lives now. And while the project did face controversy and opposition from the state, by the time the project was getting started, more people were in favor of WIPP than against it.
By 1992, politicians had drawn up the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant Land Withdrawal Act, giving more than 10,000 acres to WIPP and laying out its parameters — including the total amount of waste the Department of Energy could “emplace” — a fancy word used to mean “put underground.” WIPP would house material dubbed “transuranic,” largely objects contaminated with radioactive elements heavier than uranium — in this case, mostly plutonium — soiled during nuclear defense work.
(To this day, WIPP only houses transuranic waste with medium radioactivity from nuclear defense projects — not, for example, waste from nuclear energy, or items with very high or low levels of radioactivity. There is no pilot plant for high-level materials in the U.S. at the moment or in the plans.)
TODAY, WIPP is not just a hole in the ground but a series of tunnels and rooms largely housing barrels filled with pieces of rebar, rags, clothing, empty containers of spray adhesive — remnants of the objects engineers and technicians used while working on nuclear weapons or defense research.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… “legacy waste” — radioactive trash created long ago when records were less detailed and methods less stringent than they are now. Some of it was simply put in containers and buried in shallow trenches, or even above-ground, on the nuclear labs’ property during the Cold War. Legacy material makes up much of WIPP’s contents, and much of what will be in its future deliveries.
…………………………….. CHECKS and balances have been fine-tuned since 2014, when WIPP experienced its greatest setback.
February that year was a bad month for the plant. First, a truck hauling salt caught fire underground, spreading soot on important equipment and smoke throughout the site — and endangering the 86 workers underground. Everyone made it the 2,000 feet to the surface, but several had to be treated for smoke inhalation.
Just over a week later, in a different part of WIPP, a drum of waste exploded, turning itself essentially into a dirty bomb, blasting out transuranic radioactive material in a fiery burst.
Twenty-two workers received doses of radiation, and a small amount of contamination escaped into the outside world — about 3 percent of the amount of radiation from a chest X-ray.
The dangerous drum had originally come from Los Alamos, where workers had mixed in the wrong kind of cat litter — a simple substance that typically helps stabilize nuclear waste. But in this case, instead of combining the hazardous substances with inorganic kitty litter, they had mixed it with “an organic kitty litter,” the instructions having gotten garbled. And organic material can react with nitrates, causing chemical reactions that release heat. The increasing heat bumped up the pressure inside the drum, until it burst.
………………………………………………… The 2014 accidents may have been the most significant in WIPP’s history, but yearly, smaller incidents also occur. “It’s difficult to operate this kind of facility,” said Hancock. “Nobody in the world has ever safely operated a deep geologic repository.”
And that is the difference between the real world and a report from a national academy about what kind of rock or mineral is safe: A place can be perfect in geological theory, but when operated by flawed humans, it will be subject to their mishaps and misjudgments.
………………………………………………………………………Critics, like proponents, want the legacy waste cleaned up, and safely. But they don’t trust WIPP with that last part. While the bigger cities in the region are unlikely to suffer ill effects from a disaster at the plant itself, trucks of nuclear waste pass through on their highways. And some residents are concerned about the safety of those trucks. Any vehicle traveling anywhere, carrying anything, can have an accident.
They are also worried about WIPP’s proximity to oil and gas activity…………………………………………………………………..
WIPP RECENTLY received its latest 10-year operating permit from the state of New Mexico. As part of the final agreement, the DOE agreed to look for a future waste-disposal site, in another state. “I think it will be a consent-based siting program,” said Bowen, of repositories to come. “I don’t think anybody wants to fight states.”
But it will be hard to find a new, permanent place — or other places for the other kinds of nuclear waste out there. “At some point in time, we’re going to have to start this effort of establishing another deep geologic repository,” said Bowen. WIPP, after all, took decades to open, so starting now could mean getting a new space in the 2040s or 2050s, with more waste piling up in the meantime. “We need to get going on that,” he continued. He’s hopeful things may get started in 2025.
And as with WIPP, the hardest part won’t be finding more salt spots, or deciding between volcanic rock and shale: It will be getting the people sitting in Washington and the people living atop those deposits to agree to something. “The affected public has to trust those who are implementing this process and those who are regulating this process,” said Macfarlane.
But the requirement goes the other way, she added: The implementers and regulators have to trust the public. That latter part often falls apart, she said………………………………………………………………
In the 1990s, Sandia National Laboratories convened linguists, scientists, and anthropologists, among others, to figure out how to separate WIPP from the people of the future. They came up with a plan involving signs and symbols: The site will be surrounded by huge earthen berms, metal objects and magnets buried within, meant to reflect radar beams and make this place register as magnetically anomalous. The perimeter will also host 25-foot-tall granite columns, engraved with warnings, and no-go markers will be buried up to six feet deep throughout the site. WIPP’s center, if someone gets that far, will host an information center that includes pictorial messages today’s humans hope will convey “leave this alone” to future ones.
“Other nuclear waste disposal sites must be marked in a similar manner within the U.S. and preferably world-wide,” read the multidisciplinary report. Its authors likely imagined there would be plans for such sites by now, and that WIPP would soon be getting its warnings. But it got, instead, a birthday party. https://undark.org/2024/07/10/radioactive-real-estate-nuclear-waste-forever-home/?utm_source=Undark%3A+News+%26+Updates&utm_campaign=1b7bb2c675-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5cee408d66-185e4e09de-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
Water leaks reported at Germany’s Asse II radwaste facility
Staff Writer May 28, 2024, https://www.neimagazine.com/news/decommissioning-waste-management/water-leaks-reported-at-germanys-asse-ii-radwaste-facility/?cf-view&cf-closed
The ageing nuclear waste facility in the Asse II salt mine near Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony is facing a growing problem of water penetration. The mine, which holds some 126,000 barrels of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste, is operated by Germany’s Federal Association for Final Storage (BGE – Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung), a federally owned company within the remit of the Federal Environment Ministry. In April 2017, BGE took over responsibility as operator of the Asse II mine and the Konrad and Morsleben repositories from the Federal Office for Radiation Protection. Salt water has been entering the facility for decades, increasing concern about the stability of the 13 chambers filled with waste.
From 1967 to 1978, around 47,000 cubic metres of low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste were emplaced in the mine according to information from former operator, the Association for Radiation Research (now known as Helmholtz Zentrum München, HMGU). Some 67% of the waste originated from NPPs. Typical waste included: filters, scrap metal, paper, laboratory waste, building rubble, wood, slurries and mixed waste. Other waste was delivered by research institutes, the nuclear industry and other waste producers such as the medical industry.
Records show how many drums are stored in the Asse mine, but there is some uncertainty as the radionuclide and substance inventory as the waste declaration at the time does not meet current standards. The radioactive waste was emplaced in 13 former mining chambers Two chambers are located in the central section and 10 in the southern flank of the mine at depths of 725 and 750 metres. A further chamber is located at the 511-metre level.
At the start of emplacement, the waste containers were stacked in an upright position. In order to make better use of the space, the former operator subsequently began stacking them on their sides. From 1971 onwards, the waste was primarily dumped using a wheel loader. The simultaneous handling of multiple drums led to lower costs and lower radiation exposure for staff. There were no plans for retrieval, and possible damage to the waste containers was disregarded. The surrounding rock salt was intended to provide long-term protection.
According to current laws and state of the art of science and technology, the final disposal of radioactive waste in the manner employed at the Asse II mine would not be eligible for a licence although no laws were broken based on the legislation in force at the time. If the waste were to remain in the mine, it would not be possible to demonstrate that the legal safety objectives would be met and the intention is for the waste to be retrieved. So far, none of the barrels have been removed and is not expected to start before 2033 as scientific methods to do it safely are still being investigated. It’s estimated it will cost at least €4.7bn ($5.1bn).
So far, the water penetrating the salt dome from the outside – some 12 cubic metres a day – has been mostly absorbed and pumped to the surface. However, the infiltration patter has changed, BGE head Iris Graffunder recently told the environmental committee of the Bundestag. Graffunder earlier pointed out the deteriorating situation. “Due to this strong change in water access, we are alarmed” she tolkd Braunschweig newspaper. According to the BGE, the amount of water at the main collection point has been decreasing for several months. “This means that the water is collecting somewhere else. That worries us,” she said.
Experts warn that is the partly torn and rusted barrels mix with the water this could eventually contaminates groundwater. The inventory reportedly consists of 104 tonnes of uranium, 81 tonnes of thorium and 29 kilograms of plutonium. There are also toxins such as arsenic, mercury and banned pesticides, which were also disposed of in the mine.
The BGE has applied for the complete renovation of the main collection point, which is located at the 658-metre level in the mine. Experts are currently trying to find and repair possible damaged areas. According to the BGE, the water infiltration has increased from 0.8 to three cubic metres on the lower 725-metre level. At the even lower collection points directly in front of the nuclear waste chambers at the 750-metre level no increase in the salt water level has so far been observed.
Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) has expressed concern about the situation “I take the situation in the Asse II nuclear waste warehouse in Lower Saxony very seriously,” she said. She added that, in her view, the recovery of the waste was the safest option and “should remain our top priority”.
First Nation challenges nuclear waste decision in federal court
By Natasha Bulowski & Matteo Cimellaro | News, Urban Indigenous Communities in Ottawa | July 12th 2024Observer
A First Nation concerned about approval of a nuclear waste disposal facility near the Ottawa River was before federal court this week to challenge the decision.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission greenlit the project on Jan. 9 and less than one month later, Kebaowek First Nation filed for a judicial review.
Kebaowek’s legal challenge is centred on the United Nations Declaration Act (UNDA), which enshrined the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) into Canadian law. The declaration specifically references the need for free, prior and informed consent when hazardous waste will be stored in a nation’s territory.
Kebaowek argued in court that Canadian Nuclear Laboratories — the private consortium responsible for managing the Chalk River nuclear site — did not secure the First Nation’s free, prior and informed consent during the licensing process, as mandated under Canadian law, when it was looking to store the waste at a site about a kilometre from the Ottawa River. The Ottawa River (known as the Kichi Sibi in Algonquin) holds immense spiritual and cultural importance for the Algonquin people and is a source of drinking water for millions.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories wants to permanently dispose of one million cubic metres of radioactive waste in a shallow mound as a solution to waste accumulated over the last seven decades of operations and into the future. The company said the containment mound will only hold low-level waste.
A former employee at Chalk River told Canada’s National Observer a portion of the waste destined for the mound is a “mishmash” of intermediate- and low-level radioactivity because prior to 2000 there were inadequate systems to properly label, characterize, store and track what was produced at Chalk River or shipped there from other labs. Intermediate-level waste remains radioactive for longer than low-level waste and requires disposal deeper underground.
“It’s such a huge project that I don’t think most people are aware of just how big this is,” Coun. Justin Roy of Kebaowek First Nation told Canada’s National Observer in an interview after a press conference in Ottawa on July 10.
“We’re not talking about a pipeline that might not be there in a couple dozen years, or a mine that’s going to be up and running and close in 20 years, or a bridge that might be torn down one of these days. We’re talking about a huge mound that has a life expectancy, expectancy upwards of 500 years,” Roy said.
The First Nation is asking the Federal Court of Appeals to reject the nuclear safety commission’s decision to greenlight the facility and declare that the commission breached its duty to consult Kebaowek.
Kebaowek was in federal court July 10 and 11 to make its case that the project approval should be set aside or reconsidered. The First Nation argued two main points: First, that the nuclear safety commission refused to take the Canadian UNDRIP act into consideration, and that means the consultation process was flawed from the outset.
Second, the nation argues the project will rely largely on a forest management plan that has yet to be created to mitigate environmental impacts, Coun. Justin Roy of Kebaowek First Nation told Canada’s National Observer in an interview.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ lawyers argued the commitment to create a forest management plan and have it approved by the nuclear safety commission is appropriate, and disagreed with Kebawoek’s description of it as a “blank piece of paper,” saying it is intended to be a “living document” and respond to different situations yet to arise. The company’s testimony on July 11 also highlighted different instances — letters, phone calls, in-person meetings — where it engaged with Kebaowek First Nation.
Justice Julie Blackhawk will issue a decision at a later date.
A ‘litmus test’
When Parliament was in its consultation process regarding the United Nations Declaration Act, First Nation leadership across Canada spoke up because chiefs thought the legislation “needed to have teeth,” Lance Haymond, Chief of Kebaowek First Nation said in an interview. However, the legislation was never re-written to give it weight, leading to a “failure of implementation from the beginning,” he explained.
“Here we are stuck with a piece of legislation that could be stronger,” Haymond said of testing the United Nations Declaration Act (UNDA) in court over the nuclear waste facility. The success or failure of the judicial review will serve as a litmus test of how much sway the new Canadian law holds in the courts, Haymond said.
“Our case will hopefully demonstrate how it can be applied in a real world situation,” he added.
This judicial review is one of three legal challenges against the near surface disposal facility.
At a July 10 press conference, Sébastien Lemire, Bloc Québécois MP for Abitibi-Témiscamingue, emphasized his party’s support for the legal challenge. Lemire also promised continued support at future press conferences, in Question Period and in work at committees like the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs.
Canadian Nuclear Laboratories is run by a consortium of private companies (including AtkinsRéalis, formerly known as SNC-Lavalin) and is contracted by the federal government to operate its laboratories and deal with waste.
Over 75 years, Chalk River Laboratories developed CANDU reactors, did nuclear weapons research, supplied the United States’ nuclear weapons program with plutonium and uranium, and at one time was the world’s largest supplier of medical isotopes used to diagnose and treat cancers.
About 60 people attended a public rally in front of the Supreme Court on July 10 to support the First Nation, according to Vi Bui with the Council of Canadians.
It’s not the first time the public has given their support.
Kebaowek’s legal fund has been largely crowdfunded and supported by Raven Trust, a charity that raises legal funds for Indigenous nations, Haymond said.
If Kebaowek loses, it’s still unclear if they will appeal the decision, he added.
“Our ancestors would probably roll over in their graves if they were to hear that we would just allow a nuclear waste dump that’s going to hold one million cubic metres of waste adjacent to the Ottawa River,” Roy said. “We are people who have been here since time immemorial; this mound, if it proceeds, it can maybe outlast all of us here.”
Ignace, Ontario, betrayed by Council, on nuclear waste decision
Ignace has voted in favour of continuing in the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s siting process, which brings Northwestern Ontario one step closer to being put on the receiving end of all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste.
The NWMO has said it will select a single site by the end of 2024 for a deep geological repository for Canada’s existing stockpiles and future inventory of high-level nuclear fuel waste. The project will include transportation of the waste in 2-3 trucks per day for over 50 years, then processing at the site in a still-to-be-designed waste transfer facility, and finally placement deep underground in a series of tunnels and vaults so radioactive no workers can be present during the emplacement process.
An “ad hoc willingness committee”, appointed by the Township in February, delivered its recommendation in a special meeting of Council this afternoon. Immediately after the presentation by Committee co-chair Roger Dufault, Council voted to continue in the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s site selection process.
The NWMO has been studying the Revell Site, between Ignace and Dryden, since 2010. In 2020 the NWMO narrowed its list of candidate sites to just two: the Revell Site in Northwestern Ontario and the Teeswater site in the Municipality of South Bruce in Southwestern Ontario. The Revell Site is 45 kilometres outside the Township of Ignace and is in a different watershed.
“We feel betrayed”, said Ignace resident Sheila Krahn.
“For the last ten years we’ve been bombarded with promotional messages from the NWMO, and when it was finally time for a decision, we didn’t even get a vote. I don’t believe that the majority of people in Ignace support this project, but so many people didn’t trust the so-called “willingness process” and didn’t participate.”
Instead of a referendum such as the one scheduled for South Bruce on October 28th, Ignace hired a consultant to conduct interviews and run an online poll. The online registration required scans of government ID and asked residents if they supported continuing in the NWMO siting process, rather than asking a more direct question about whether they agreed with the NWMO’s project.
“The NWMO siting process is all about getting to “yes”, so they can claim some semblance of public support”, explained Northwatch spokesperson Brennain Lloyd.
“They missed the mark with this one. They’ve spent an estimated $10 million of electricity ratepayers’ money trying to convince Ignace to support their nuclear waste project, but at the end of the day what they bought was a questionable outcome from a largely unelected council of a community that has no authority and is not even in the same watershed as the NWMO’s candidate site.
The NWMO has deemed Ignace to be the “host community”, despite Ignace’s distance from the site, lack of jurisdiction, and the presence of other communities closer to the site and downstream. In 2020 the Township of Ignace passed a resolution that the Township itself would make the decision on behalf of the people of Ignace, rather than holding a referendum, as the Municipality of South Bruce will carry out on October 28, 2024. In 2023 the Township hired the consulting firm With Chela Inc., which conducted a number of interviews and held an online poll. The consultant’s report was presented in-camera to Ignace’s “Ad Hoc Willingness Committee”, which had been selected and appointed by the Council in February. This “ad hoc” committee recommendation to Council, presented today, is to stay in the NWMO siting process. Minutes later Council voted to accept the recommendation, committing the current and future councils to adhering to the terms and conditions of a “hosting agreement” signed by the Township of Ignace and the NWMO in March 2024.
“At minimum this should be a regional decision, not the decision of one small upstream council”, added Wendy O’Connor, a volunteer with the northern Ontario alliance We the Nuclear Free North.
“There is a growing list of municipalities and First Nations passing resolutions against the NWMO using northern Ontario as the dumping ground for high-level nuclear waste. It will be astounding to see the NWMO select the Revell site, despite the poor decision made by the Ignace Township Council today”.
There is broad opposition to the NWMO project from individuals, community and citizens’ groups, municipalities, and First Nations. In addition to criticism of the project itself due to the negative impacts on the environment and human health during transportation and operation and after radioactive waste abandonment, the NWMO siting process and the Township of Ignace’s approach have also been soundly criticized for being secretive, undemocratic, and lacking scientific and technical rigour.
How do you convince someone to live next to a nuclear waste site?
The nation’s 85 interim storage sites hold more than 86,000 tons of waste, a situation that’s akin to leaving your trash behind the garage indefinitely. The situation could grow more dire as the nation invests in advanced small modular reactors.
Everybody talks about the shiny new reactors, but nobody ever talks about back-end management of the fuel that comes out of them.”
The world’s first permanent depository for nuclear fuel waste opens later this year on Olkiluoto, a sparsely populated and lushly forested island in the Baltic Sea three hours north of Helsinki.
Austyn Gaffney Jun 27, 2024, https://grist.org/energy/how-do-you-convince-someone-to-live-next-to-a-nuclear-waste-site/
Onkalo — the name means “cavity” or “cave” in Finnish — is among the most advanced facilities of its kind, designed for an unprecedented and urgent task: safely storing some of the most toxic material on Earth nearly 1,500 feet underground in what’s called a deep mined geologic repository.
The process requires remarkable feats of engineering. It begins in an encapsulation plant, where robots remove spent nuclear fuel rods from storage canisters and place them in copper and cast iron casks up to two stories tall. Once full, these hefty vessels, weighing around 24 metric tons, will descend more than a quarter-mile in an elevator to a cavern hollowed out of crystalline bedrock 2 billion years old. (The trip takes 50 minutes.) Each tomb will hold 30 to 40 of these enormous containers ensconced in bentonite clay and sealed behind concrete. As many as 3,250 canisters containing 6,500 metric tons of humanity’s most dangerous refuse will, the theory goes, lie undisturbed for hundreds of thousands of years.
Nothing assembled by human hands has stood for more than a fraction of that. The world’s oldest known structure, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, is a bit more than 11,000 years old. Designing Onkalo to endure for so unfathomably long is necessary because the material left behind by nuclear fission remains radioactive for millennia. Safely disposing of it requires stashing it for, essentially, eternity. That way nothing — be it natural disasters, future ice ages, or even the end of humanity itself — would expose anyone, or anything, to its dangers.
The plan is that there will be no sign [of the facility],” said Pasi Tuohimaa, communications manager for Posiva, the agency that manages Finland’s nuclear waste. “Nobody would even know it’s there, whether we’re talking about future generations or future aliens or whatever.”
Building such a place, as technologically complex as it is, might be easier than convincing a community to host it. Gaining that approval can take decades and rests upon a simple premise.
“One of the principles of geologic disposal is the idea that the generations that enjoy the benefits of nuclear power should also pay for and participate in the solution,” said Rodney Ewing, a mineralogist and materials scientist at Stanford University and co-director of the university’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
The long process of gaining such support is called consent-based siting, an undertaking many in the nuclear energy sector consider vital as the world abandons fossil fuels. Nuclear power accounts for almost a fifth of the United States’ electricity generation, and its expansion is among the few elements of the Biden administration’s energy agenda that enjoys strong bipartisan support. Over the last year, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has touted the nation’s newest reactor, celebrated plans for an experimental small modular reactor, and unveiled a $1.5 billion loan to restart a defunct plant in Michigan.
These are hardly one-offs. The U.S. intends to triple its nuclear energy capacity by 2050. Yet experts say there isn’t enough public discussion of how to deal with the corresponding increase in radioactive trash, which will compound a problem the country has deferred since the start of the nuclear age. After botching plans for a deep mined geological repository a generation ago, the United States is scrambling to catch up to Finland and several other nations, including Canada, which could choose a site by year’s end.
As the U.S. races toward a post-carbon future in which nuclear energy could play a key role, policymakers, energy experts, and community leaders say dealing with the inevitable waste isn’t a technical problem, but a social one. Engineers know how to build a repository capable of safeguarding the public for millennia. The bigger challenge is convincing people that it’s safe to live next to it.
The United States knew, even before the world’s first commercial nuclear power plant began operating in Pennsylvania in 1957, how best to dispose of the effluvium generated by splitting atoms to generate electricity. Earlier that year, geologists and geophysicists wrote a National Academy of Sciences report that proposed burying it. Opinions haven’t changed much in the 67 years since.
“The only viable way to possibly deal with the issue of isolating radioactive waste that can remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years from the environment is a deep geologic repository,” said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “There’s really no alternative.”
Yet this refuse, most of it from the nation’s 54 commercial reactors, remains in what amounts to cold storage. Depleted fuel rods are kept on-site in water tanks for about half a decade, then moved to steel and concrete canisters called dry casks and held for another 40 years in what’s known as interim storage. Only then is the material cool enough to stash underground. That last step has never happened, however. The nation’s 85 interim storage sites hold more than 86,000 tons of waste, a situation that’s akin to leaving your trash behind the garage indefinitely. The situation could grow more dire as the nation invests in advanced small modular reactors.
“It’s a pet peeve of mine, to be honest,” said Paul Murray, who became the Department of Energy’s deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition in October. “Everybody talks about the shiny new reactors, but nobody ever talks about back-end management of the fuel that comes out of them.”
Congress attempted to rectify that in 1982 when it passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. President Ronald Reagan called the law “an important step in the pursuit of the peaceful uses of atomic energy.” It required that the federal government begin taking responsibility for the nation’s nuclear waste by 1998, and that the utilities generating it pay a fee of one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt-hour of nuclear-generated electricity to be rid of it. The plan stalled because the government never took possession of most of the waste. That failure has allowed the utilities to collect $500 million in fines from Washington each year since 1998. A report that the Government Accountability Office released in 2021 noted that federal liabilities could reach $60 billion by 2030.
The federal government’s missteps continued when plans for a deep geologic repository derailed about 15 years ago. The 1982 law directed the Department of Energy to provide the president, Congress, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency with suggestions for several sites. Congress amended the law in 1987 to designate one: Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas on land the Western Shoshone Nation considers sacred.
This top-down process was the antithesis of consent-based siting, and it collapsed amid community opposition and the efforts of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The Nevada Democrat convinced President Obama to scuttle the proposal, which by that point had cost $13 billion. The Obama administration convened a panel of scientists to devise a new plan; in 2012, it suggested creating an independent agency, giving it responsibility for the nuclear fund and directing it to revamp the effort through consent-based siting.
That recommendation mimicked what Finland had done, and Canada was doing, to build community consensus. Posiva spent four decades working toward the facility on Olkiluoto; the Canadian search started 24 years ago with the creation of the independent Nuclear Waste Management Organization. Yet more than 10 years after the Department of Energy made consent-based siting its official policy, there’s been little progress toward a deep mined geologic repository in the U.S. for commercial nuclear waste. (Radioactive refuse generated by the defense industry has, since 1999, been secured 2,150 feet underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.)
Instead of identifying possible sites for a deep geologic repository, the Energy Department directed Murray, who has a background in nuclear technology and environmental stewardship, to address a backlog of waste that could, by his estimate, take 55 years to clear out of interim storage. Much of this trash is languishing in dry casks that dot power plants in 37 states. Last year, he formed a 12-member Consent-Based Siting Consortia to start the search for a federally-managed site that would temporarily consolidate the nation’s waste until a permanent site is built.
Continue readingLandmark Swedish Court Judgment against Nuclear Waste Repository.
Landmark Swedish Court Judgment against Nuclear Waste Repository: Read the English Translation http://www.dianuke.org/landmark-swedish-court-judgment-nuclear-waste-repository-read-english-translation/
MKG, the Swedish NGO Office for Nuclear Waste Review has made an unofficial translation into English of the Swedish Environmental Court opinion on the power industry’s Nuclear Waste Company SKB’s license application for a final repository for spent nuclear fuel in Forsmark, Sweden.
The court said no to the application because it considered that there were problems with the copper canister that had to be resolved now and not later. The translation shows the courts judicial argumentation and why it decided not to accept the regulator SSM’s opinion that the problems with the integrity of the copper canister were not serious and could likely be solved at a later stage in the decision-making process.
The main difference between the court’s and the regulator’s decision-making was that the court decided to rely on a multitude of scientific sources and information and not only on the material provided by SKB. It had also been uncovered that the main corrosion expert at SSM did not want to say yes to the application at this time that may have influenced the court’s decision-making. In fact there appear to have been many dissenting voices in the regulator despite the regulator’s claim in the court that a united SSM stood behind its opinion.
The court underlines in its opinion that the Environmental Code requires that the repository should be shown to be safe at this stage in the decision-making process, i.e. before the government has its say. The court says that some uncertainties will always remain but it sees the possible copper canister problems as so serious that it is not clear that the regulator’s limits for release of radioactivity can be met. This is a reason to say no to the project unless it can be shown that the copper canister will work as intended. The copper canister has to provide isolation from the radioactivity in the spent nuclear fuel to humans and the environment for very long time-scales.
It is still unclear how the process will proceed. The community of Östhammar has cancelled the referendum on the repository, as there will be no question from the government in the near future. The government has set up a working group of civil servants to manage the government’s handling of the opinions delivered by the court and SSM. SSM has told the government that it is ok to say yes to the license application.
The court has stated that there are copper canister issues that need to be considered further. The nuclear waste company SKB has said that it is preparing documentation for the government to show that there are no problems with the canister. Whether the government thinks that this will be enough remains to be seen. This is likely not what the court had in mind. The government would be wise to make a much broader review of the issue. There is a need for a thorough judicial review on the governmental level in order to override the court’s opinion. Otherwise the government’ decision may not survive an appeal to the Supreme Administrative Court.
There are eminent corrosion experts that are of the opinion that copper is a bad choice as a canister material. There is also increasing experimental evidence that this is the case. One problem for the court was likely that SKB has hesitant to do the required corrosion studies that show that copper does not corrode in an anoxic repository environment. The 18-year FEBEX field test shows that copper corrodes relatively rapidly with pitting corrosion. SKB says that all corrosion is due to in-leaking oxygen but it is now clear that experimental systems containing copper and clay become anoxic within weeks or months so this explanation is not valid.
MKG has for long wanted SKB to retrieve the next experimental package in the LOT field test in the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory. SKB had refused. The remaining packages have now been heated for 18 years. When a 5-year package was retrieved in 2006 it was discovered that there was “unexpectedly high corrosion”. There is clearly a need for more lab and field test results to decide whether copper is a good and safe choice for a canister material.
The court’s decision-making shows the importance of a democratic and open governance in environmental decision-making. It is important that the continued decision-making regarding the Swedish repository for spent nuclear is transparent and multi-faceted.
Japan starts 7th discharge of Fukushima nuclear-contaminated wastewater despite opposition
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-06-28/news-1uNrsTbwBm8/p.html
Japan on Friday started the seventh round of release of nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean.
Despite opposition from local fishermen, and residents as well as backlash from the international community, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant’s operator, started releasing the radioactive wastewater in the morning, the third round in fiscal 2024.
Just like the previous rounds, about 7,800 tonnes of wastewater will be discharged from about a kilometer off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture via an underwater tunnel until July 16.
According to TEPCO, the company will begin dismantling empty storage tanks after the wastewater has been discharged around January next year.
There are approximately 1,000 storage tanks at the Fukushima plant because of its continued production of wastewater. TEPCO plans to dismantle 21 of these tanks over about one year starting next January, which will free up 2,400 square meters of space.
There is still uncertainty when it comes to the decommissioning schedule of the Fukushima plant and the measures to deal with contaminated wastewater, Masahide Kimura, a member of a Japanese anti-nuclear campaign group, told Xinhua.
The collapse of houses, the destruction of roads and the ground uplift along the coast caused by the recent Noto Peninsula Earthquake have warned us that nuclear power plants should not be operated in Japan, an archipelago prone to earthquakes, Kimura said.
Hit by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and an ensuing tsunami on March 11, 2011, the Fukushima nuclear plant suffered core meltdowns that released radiation, resulting in a level-7 nuclear accident, the highest on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale.
The plant has been generating a massive amount of water tainted with radioactive substances from cooling down the nuclear fuel in the reactor buildings. The contaminated water is now being stored in tanks at the nuclear plant.
Despite furious opposition both at home and abroad, the ocean discharge of the Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water began in August 2023.
Tensions with First Nations threaten to delay nuclear waste facility
MATTHEW MCCLEARN, 16 June 24 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-tensions-with-first-nations-threaten-to-delay-nuclear-waste-facility/#:~:text=Prof.%20Leiss%20said%20even%20if,this%20issue%2C%E2%80%9D%20he%20said.
The eight-reactor Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, ranks among the world’s largest nuclear power plants. With four more in the early planning stages, it might become larger still. But for the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON), behind its engineering grandeur lies a painful history – which it has described as one “of exclusion.”
Its people were not consulted before the plant’s construction during the 1970s and 80s, which resulted in quantities of radioactive waste stored within what they regard as their traditional territory. Nor did they see many of the economic benefits that flowed to neighbours.
These unresolved tensions threaten to derail – or at least significantly delay – efforts to find a permanent solution for Canada’s nuclear waste, which dates back to the 1970s. As of June, 2023, Canada had accumulated approximately 3.3 million used fuel bundles that were stored temporarily at operating or retired nuclear power plants in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. But there’s nowhere to send them for permanent disposal – a potential stumbling block as the nuclear industry seeks public acceptance for a proposed major expansion.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), an industry-controlled organization to which the federal government delegated responsibility for nuclear waste management, wants to select a site this year for a proposed, $26-billion underground nuclear waste disposal facility, known as a deep geological repository. The two remaining candidates are the Municipality of South Bruce (about 45 kilometres southeast of Bruce station, and also within SON’s traditional territory) and a site more than 40 kilometres from Ignace, a town of 1,200 northwest of Thunder Bay.
One of the NWMO’s guiding principles is that the repository’s host “must be informed and willing to accept the project.” Ignace’s council will decide that through a resolution; it has agreed to notify the NWMO of its decision by July 30. (It hired a consultant, With Chela Inc., to engage with residents and maintains its decision will be based on public input.) In South Bruce, citizens will vote in a by-election in late October. Both signed hosting agreements with the NWMO this year, under which South Bruce would receive $418-million over nearly a century and a half; Ignace would get $170-million.
Yet all that might well prove a sideshow. The NWMO also seeks consent from Indigenous peoples: Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, in the case of Ignace. SON, which is composed of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation and Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation, will decide regarding the South Bruce site. NWMO spokesperson Fred Kuntz said the organization is negotiating hosting agreements with both First Nations.
Success is far from assured.
SON’s grievances with the nuclear industry date back to the 1960s, when Ontario Hydro (the predecessor of Ontario Power Generation) began constructing Canada’s first commercial nuclear power plant. For SON, the commissioning of the Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station marked the beginning of “the nuclear industrialization” of its territory. Douglas Point was followed by the much-larger Bruce station, built immediately next door.
SON ruefully watched its neighbours benefit as tax revenues rolled into local municipalities, while its members were largely shut out. In 2013 SON secured an undertaking from Ontario Power Generation that the utility wouldn’t establish an intermediate-level waste repository (proposed for construction at Bruce station) on its territory without its consent.
That undertaking had far-reaching consequences. It led to a 2020 plebiscite in which SON’s membership overwhelmingly rejected that repository. And it set an important precedent: In 2016, the NWMO granted SON the same ability to veto the South Bruce repository. SON plans to hold a referendum of its members, once it has received all the information it seeks from the NWMO.
“I’d say we’re at least halfway halfway home to having our questions satisfied,” said Gregory Nadjiwon, chief of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation, one of SON’s two member nations.
But reaching an agreement this year – or at all – could prove challenging. The NWMO has accepted responsibility for disposing of all Canadian spent fuel, whether from the Point Lepreau station in New Brunswick, or from long-defunct research reactors at Chalk River, or even wastes from reactors yet to be constructed. SON’s leadership, though, is focused on the wastes in its own territory.
“If the [repository] is going to be in the SON territory, why should we be accepting waste that comes from Pickering, Darlington, Chalk River or Point Lepreau?” Chief Nadjiwon said.
“I mean, that’s ludicrous.”
As part of any agreement with NWMO, SON’s leadership seeks resolution to its long-standing concerns, such as the fact that wastes have been stored in its territory for decades without compensation.
“When I go in my truck to a garage in Toronto, I’m charged a cost” to park it, he said. “It’s no different than when you park waste in an Indigenous territory or homeland. We expect an agreement for the cost of doing business.”
William Leiss, an emeritus professor at Queen’s University’s School of Policy Studies, worked as a paid consultant for the NWMO between 2002 and 2011. He wrote a book, Deep Disposal, about the site selection process; the book is scheduled for publication in September. Prof. Leiss said SON’s opposition is so firm that it’s hard to fathom why South Bruce is still in the running.
“Its negatives are so pronounced that one wonders if it is being kept alive solely as a negotiating card so that Ignace does not regard itself as the only viable option,” he wrote.
“It has all the markings of an elaborate charade.”
But Prof. Leiss said the Ignace site is a long shot, too.
The Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation has roughly 1,000 members, 200 of which live on a reserve 20 kilometres from the Ignace area site. Its chief, Clayton Wetelainen, said the community has been negotiating a hosting agreement with the NWMO for roughly eight months.
The community has had far less interaction with the nuclear industry than SON has, so its historical baggage is perhaps lighter. Whereas the Ignace and South Bruce agreements would prevent future councils from backing out of the project, Wabigoon Lake’s leadership does not regard the agreement it’s negotiating as irrevocable – in part because there’s insufficient information available on many aspects of the project.
“The current vote that we’re talking about is just to go down to one site,” Chief Wetelainen said.
“This has to go through regulatory approvals, and our own approval, when we get more information about the detailed site.”
Some, he added, have misconstrued the vote as final and binding, “but that’s not the case.”
Prof. Leiss said even if Wabigoon Lake voted in favour of the project, other First Nations throughout the region might launch lawsuits to block the project. “There’s intense fighting among the First Nations in the Treaty 3 area over this issue,” he said.
Chief Wetelainen said his goal is to set a date in the fall for his 1,000 members to vote. Some community members began informing themselves about the project a decade ago, but others are only now beginning to ask the same questions. Getting all members up to speed is proving a challenge, he said – and as with SON, his community does not regard itself as bound by the NWMO’s timetable.
This position is admired by some of the repository’s non-Indigenous opponents. Bill Noll is vice-president of Protect Our Waterways, an opposition group in South Bruce. He said municipal officials have followed the NWMO’s timeline “blindly,” whereas SON is on its own schedule.
“They have a veto capability for the project, which is really an important dimension,” Mr. Noll said.
Prof. Leiss said Ontario is the only logical province for the repository – that’s where the bulk of Canada’s nuclear waste is already stored temporarily. But it’s home to 133 First Nations, whose often-overlapping traditional territories span nearly the entire province. It’s “entirely possible” that no First Nation will agree to accept a repository, he said.
But there’s another wrinkle: The NWMO’s willingness principle is not a legal requirement. OPG’s earlier proposed repository received regulatory approval of its environmental assessment without one. The NWMO’s promise to First Nations, he said, is “not worth the paper it’s written on.”
Prof. Leiss said the NWMO from the outset should have focused on First Nations, which he regards as the repository’s true hosts.
He wrote: “A sardonic take on this siting strategy might go something like this: entice a municipality with a dream of economic riches beyond its wildest imaginings, give it a phone book and tell it to place some calls to the nearest Indigenous communities, and then hope for the best.”
Two small communities are competing to receive Canada’s inventory of nuclear waste. They can’t be sure what they’ll get
“They’re basically surrendering any kind of fundamental right of public dissent on the part of the mayor and town council,”
“We’re talking about binding future generations.”
The Globe and Mail, MATTHEW MCCLEARN, JUNE 10, 2024
Two Ontario municipalities are vying to become hosts for an underground disposal facility for Canada’s nuclear waste. Both must formally announce in the coming months whether they’ll accept the facility – but they cannot know exactly what wastes they’d be agreeing to receive.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) designed its $26-billion facility, known as a deep geological repository, to receive spent fuel from Candu reactors located in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. This year, it plans to choose between the last two sites still in the running: the Municipality of South Bruce, Ont., located more than 120 kilometres north of London; or near Ignace, Ont., a town of 1,200 more than 200 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay.
But since the project was conceived, two of NWMO’s three members (Ontario Power Generation and New Brunswick Power) proposed to build new reactors that would burn different fuels and produce novel wastes. The organization guarantees reactor developers that it will dispose of these wastes, even though their nature might not be understood for decades. And in the past few months, both candidate municipalities signed agreements that spell out how the project could be modified to receive such wastes, while limiting their ability to refuse.
These provisions help reduce uncertainty for the nuclear industry. A roadmap produced last year by the Nuclear Energy Institute, a U.S. lobby group, noted that because most small modular reactors (SMRs)being developed would burn different fuels from those of existing reactors, “technology neutral” criteria for accepting spent fuel into repositories was needed as soon as this year in both Canada and the United States.
But the provisions could make it harder to find willing hosts.
Ignace will decide through a council resolution whether it will accept the repository by July 30. South Bruce will hold a by-election in late October.
Consent from First Nations is also required. NWMO spokesperson Fred Kuntz said the organization is negotiating hosting agreements with both Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation for the Ignace project and Saugeen Ojibway Nation for the one in South Bruce. Both are in a position to effectively halt the project, and both have indicated they are not open to accepting SMR wastes at this time.
Mark Winfield, a professor of environmental and urban change at York University, said the NWMO’s decision to accept responsibility for non-Candu wastes means the host communities can’t know the nature of some of the waste they’ll receive, nor the quantity.
“They really are being asked for a blank cheque.”
Canada’s waste inventory includes 3.3 million Candu fuel bundles as of last year, and grows by about 90,000 annually. Each is about the size of a firelog and weighs slightly less than 20 kilograms. They’re highly radioactive upon removal from a reactor, and must be stored in pools of water for about a decade before they can be moved to storage containers. Utilities have considerable experience handling the bundles, and the industry has developed copper-clad containers to place them in, which in turn would be encased in bentonite clay in underground chambers.
The municipalities also agreed to accept fuel owned by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., a Crown corporation that operated several research reactors. There are dozens of types of wastes from these reactors, in far smaller amounts.
The hosting agreements detail what the NWMO is offering in return. South Bruce says it’s expecting $418-million over nearly a century and a half. Ignace anticipates $170-million. Jake Pastore, a spokesperson for Ignace, said its lower amount in part reflects the fact that the repository’s site is more than 30 kilometres west of the town, whereas the South Bruce site is on farmland within its boundaries and subject to local taxes.
And the agreements clarify what the repository won’t be receiving: Both agreements explicitly prohibit storing liquid nuclear waste. Waste originating from another country is similarly verboten.
Beyond these provisions, however, the agreements afford the industry considerable flexibility.
Ignace has agreed that the repository could accept spent fuel from SMRs and other non-Candu sources, provided a licence application has been filed with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. The commission is considering three SMR-related applications.
The agreement also lays out a process by which the repository’s scope can be changed to accept other forms of spent fuel. Mr. Pastore said the NWMO would have to complete an “intense” regulatory review before introducing non-approved wastes. The organization has provided assurances, he added, that it would not bring such wastes unless there was “full agreement on moving forward.”
Both agreements contain dispute-resolution mechanisms, but the municipalities have agreed to support the NWMO in any regulatory process, including proposals to modify the project’s scope. Ignace has agreed not to support any resident or other municipality that opposes a regulatory approval sought by the organization.
“They’re basically surrendering any kind of fundamental right of public dissent on the part of the mayor and town council,” said Gordon Edwards, a consultant who runs a non-profit organization called the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
“We’re talking about binding future generations.”
South Bruce’s agreement is less permissive than Ignace’s. It doesn’t make direct references to accepting SMR wastes. And it stipulates that before making a regulatory application to modify the repository’s scope, the NWMO must notify the municipality at least three years in advance. ……………………………………………………..
The types of waste produced in Canada could change significantly if the nuclear industry’s plans come to fruition.
Candus consume natural uranium with minuscule concentrations of the more fissile uranium-235. But most reactors in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere use “enriched” fuel containing higher quantities of U-235. Virtually all SMRs would use enriched fuels. And some would use exotic fuels for which there is limited international experience.
For example, New Brunswick Power proposes to build an ARC-100 reactor at its Point Lepreau plant, which would use a metallic uranium alloy fuel. The vendor, ARC Clean Technologies, said its reactor will need to be refuelled only every 20 years, and wastes from the proposed facility “will be fully characterized” and placed in appropriately sized and approved on-site storage containers while awaiting final disposal.
New Brunswick Power also seeks to build a molten salt reactor called the Stable Salt Reactor-Wasteburner. A 2021 study of reactor technologies by the Union of Concerned Scientists warned that all molten salt reactors it reviewed lacked “a well-formulated plan for management and disposal” of spent fuel.
“There’s so many different SMR designs, and I don’t think we can predict, in 2024, if many or any of them are ever going to go into production,” said Brennain Lloyd, a project co-ordinator with the environmental group Northwatch, which opposes the Ignace repository.
“But there’s potential that we could have a number of different designs, and all of them might behave differently. That’s a dog’s breakfast of additional risk.”………………………………………………………………………………
The Saugeen Ojibway Nation,from whom the industry seeks consent, has objected in writing to receiving SMR waste in its territory, adding that this “fundamental change in circumstances” means its discussions with the NWMO must be “reset.” It said its concerns about these wastes have not been addressed, and it’s not satisfied with the information it provided. “The ground is shifting beneath us, and the original project description no longer reflects the reality,” it declared in a regulatory submission in November.
In an interview, Chief Gregory Nadjiwon of the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation – one of the two member nations of Saugeen Ojibway Nation – said his organization is looking for resolution to wastes that have long been in its territory at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station. It’s disinclined to receive wastes from other Candu stations outside its territory, let alone from SMRs.
“If you have a complex issue that hasn’t been resolved, why would you add another layer to it?”
………………………………………………………………. More controversial still is the possibility that the repository might accept wastes from reprocessing – which means applying physical and chemical processes to spent fuel to recover fissionable products, which could be used for new reactor fuel.
……………………………………… Mr. Edwards said that when a Candu fuel bundle is demolished for reprocessing, all of the radioactive materials contained within are released into a solid or liquid form. “You no longer have these nicely packaged fuel bun
Mr. Edwards said that reprocessing is the dirtiest segment of nuclear fuel chains. Sites where it has taken place, such as Hanford, Wash., in the U.S., Sellafield in Britain, and La Hague in France, are heavily contaminated and could cost hundreds of billions of dollars to clean up. The two candidate municipalities should have obtained legally binding vetoes against receiving reprocessing wastes, he said.
“Otherwise, they’re being led by the nose, assuming that one thing is going to happen when instead, something very different may end up happening – something that’s much more threatening to the community.”dles, you have something that’s much more complex and more difficult to manage.”
Documents released by New Brunswick Power under the province’s freedom of information legislation, and supplied to The Globe and Mail by nuclear issues researcher and activist Susan O’Donnell, show the corporation regarded long-term storage of reprocessing wastes as critical for attracting investors for its next-generation reactor projects. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-two-small-communities-are-competing-to-receive-canadas-inventory-of/—
Are the prospects for Small Modular Reactors being exaggerated? Five key characteristics examined
June 11, 2024 by Ed Lyman, Ed Lyman is Director, Nuclear Power Safety, at the Union of Concerned Scientists
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are being presented as the next generation of nuclear technology. While traditional plants face cost overruns and safety issues, SMRs are seen by their champions as cheaper, safer, and faster to deploy. But Ed Lyman at UCS cites evidence that cast these claims into doubt.
In five sections of this article, he lists the reasons why. SMRs are not more economical than large reactors. SMRs are not generally safer or more secure than traditional large light-water reactors. SMRs will not reduce the problem of disposal of radioactive waste. SMRs cannot be counted on to provide reliable and resilient off-the-grid power (for facilities like data centres, bitcoin mining, hydrogen or petrochemical production). SMRs do not use fuel more efficiently than large reactors.
And where problems might be ironed out over time, the learning cycle of such technology is measured in decades during which costs will remain very high. SMRs may have a role to play in our energy future, says Lyman, but only if they are sufficiently safe and secure, along with a realistic understanding of their costs and risks.
Even casual followers of energy and climate issues have probably heard about the alleged wonders of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). This is due in no small part to the “nuclear bros”: an active and seemingly tireless group of nuclear power advocates who dominate social media discussions on energy by promoting SMRs and other “advanced” nuclear technologies as the only real solution for the climate crisis. But as I showed in my 2013 and 2021 reports, the hype surrounding SMRs is way overblown, and my conclusions remain valid today.
Unfortunately, much of this SMR happy talk is rooted in misinformation, which always brings me back to the same question: if the nuclear bros have such a great SMR story to tell, why do they have to exaggerate so much?
What are SMRs?
SMRs are nuclear reactors that are “small” (defined as 300 megawatts of electrical power or less), can be largely assembled in a centralised facility, and would be installed in a modular fashion at power generation sites. Some proposed SMRs are so tiny (20 megawatts or less) that they are called “micro” reactors. SMRs are distinct from today’s conventional nuclear plants, which are typically around 1,000 megawatts and were largely custom-built. Some SMR designs, such as NuScale, are modified versions of operating water-cooled reactors, while others are radically different designs that use coolants other than water, such as liquid sodium, helium gas, or even molten salts.
To date, however, theoretical interest in SMRs has not translated into many actual reactor orders. The only SMR currently under construction is in China. And in the United States, only one company — TerraPower, founded by Microsoft’s Bill Gates — has applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a permit to build a power reactor (but at 345 megawatts, it technically isn’t even an SMR).
The nuclear industry has pinned its hopes on SMRs primarily because some recent large reactor projects, including Vogtle units 3 and 4 in the state of Georgia, have taken far longer to build and cost far more than originally projected. The failure of these projects to come in on time and under budget undermines arguments that modern nuclear power plants can overcome the problems that have plagued the nuclear industry in the past.
Developers in the industry and the US Department of Energy say that SMRs can be less costly and quicker to build than large reactors and that their modular nature makes it easier to balance power supply and demand. They also argue that reactors in a variety of sizes would be useful for a range of applications beyond grid-scale electrical power, including providing process heat to industrial plants and power to data centres, cryptocurrency mining operations, petrochemical production, and even electrical vehicle charging station
Here are five facts about SMRs that the nuclear industry and the “nuclear bros” who push its message don’t want you, the public, to know.
1. SMRs are not more economical than large reactors. 2. SMRs are not generally safer or more secure than large light-water reactors. 3. SMRs will not reduce the problem of what to do with radioactive waste. 4. SMRs cannot be counted on to provide reliable and resilient off-the-grid power for facilities, such as data centers, bitcoin mining, hydrogen or petrochemical production. 5. SMRs do not use fuel more efficiently than large reactors
Continue readingChina urges long-term supervision over Japan’s radioactive water discharge
08-Jun-2024. CGTN https://news.cgtn.com/news/2024-06-08/China-urges-strict-supervision-over-Japan-radioactive-water-discharge-1ugaDo6lH8I/p.html
A Chinese envoy on Friday called for strict, independent and effective long-term international supervision over Japan’s discharge of nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the ocean.
Japan has recently carried out its sixth round of the Fukushima wastewater release. The Chinese envoy stated that the discharge continues to raise deep concerns among the international community, especially among Japan’s neighboring countries.
Li Song, China’s permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), expressed doubts about the long-term reliability of Japan’s wastewater purification equipment, the effectiveness of the current monitoring arrangements, the weak supervision from the Japanese government, and the chaotic management of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the Fukushima plant’s operator, during a meeting of the agency’s board of governors.
Li stressed the importance and urgency of establishing a long-term international supervision mechanism for nuclear-contaminated wastewater discharge as an addition to the regulation of the Japanese government and monitoring by Japanese nuclear power regulators, rather than replacing them.
He emphasized that only through such an arrangement can Japan dispel the concerns and panic of the people of China and other stakeholder countries. Such an arrangement is also conducive to further strengthening the authority and function of the IAEA in the field of international nuclear security and serves the fundamental interests of Japan and the Japanese people, Li added.
The Chinese envoy also stated that China and Japan have agreed to find an appropriate solution to the issue of the Fukushima wastewater discharge through consultation and negotiation. China hopes that Japan will show sincerity, seriously address the legitimate concerns from home and abroad, earnestly fulfill its responsibilities and obligations, and join hands with China, the IAEA, and the international community to work out more effective supervision measures to ensure that the Fukushima wastewater release will not cause long-term harm to the marine environment and humankind.
No nuke waste down under: Nuclear Free Local Authorities spokesperson receives assurance MOD still committed to decommissioning British nuclear subs at home
Nuclear Free Local Authorities, 4 June 24
Defence chiefs have written to the NFLA Spokesperson on Nuclear Submarine Decommissioning reassuring him that ‘the Ministry of Defence remains committed to disposing its decommissioned submarines, including the waste they produce, within the UK’.
Councillor Brian Goodall, who represents the Rosyth Ward in Scotland where decommissioning is currently taking place, wrote to the outgoing Defence and Foreign Secretaries on 17 May seeking their assurance that redundant British nuclear submarines will not be sent to Australia for disposal.
In Australia, in relation to the AUKUS defence pact, legislators have proposed a new Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2024, which appears to provide under Clauses 7 and 12 of the Bill for the disposal of high level radioactive waste from British and American submarines on Australian soil, and also for the storage of such materials in Australia from ‘a submarine that is not complete (for example, because it is being constructed or disposed of)’.
Councillor Goodall is concerned that this could theoretically mean the British Government ‘permitting towing redundant UK boats from Rosyth and Devonport down under for disposal’. Councillor Goodall fears that, were this to become practice and not just theory, local expertise and the jobs of his constituents could be lost.
In their response, defence officials say they continue to work on completing the decommissioning of the submarine Swiftsure at Rosyth by 2026 ‘by adopting a unique approach that will maximise the amount of the submarine that can be recycled and minimise the amount of waste that needs to be disposed of’. Radioactive waste will be taken to Capenhurst, Cheshire for interim storage until a Geological Disposal Facility is completed for its eventual disposal. This includes the reactor from each dismantled submarine.
Knowledge acquired as a result of the submarine decommissioning work will be shared by the MOD with Australia.
The letter sent to Lord Cameron and Grant Shapps on 17 May read:……………………………………………………… more https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/no-nuke-waste-down-under-nflas-spokesperson-receives-assurance-mod-still-committed-to-decommissioning-british-nuclear-subs-at-home/
Plutonium found in Indiana Street air filters near Rocky Flats; Boulder Commissioners reconsider trail project
High winds carry plutonium-laden dirt from former weapons plant to filters on Indiana Street, experts say
ARVADA PRESS, by Rylee Dunn, May 30, 2024
A recent discovery of plutonium in air filters on Indiana Street near Rocky Flats has given Boulder County Commissioners pause as they appear to reconsider involvement in the Rocky Mountain Greenway Project trail system.
The Greenway project began in 2016 as an effort to connect three National Wildlife Refuges — Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Two Ponds and Rocky Flats — through an interconnected trail system.
The project calls for the installation of an underpass connecting Rocky Flats to Boulder Open Space through the Rock Creek Corridor and an overpass to connect Westminster trails to the Greenway.
When gale-force winds hit on April 6, chemist and DU Professor Michael Ketterer and retired FBI agent Jon Lipsky — who led the 1989 raid of Rocky Flats that eventually led to the plant being shut down and designated as an EPA Superfund site — set up air filters in three locations nearby to conduct a study on the contaminated soil’s activities in high winds.
Ketterer said he has taken air filter samples near Rocky Flats a handful of times, but that the high wind event of April 6 drew special interest because dirt was visibly moving in the air.
“We both observed large, rapidly moving suspended dust clouds extending from ground level up to heights of hundreds of feet, originating from areas on the (Central Operating Unit of Rocky Flats) and/or contaminated buffer zone,” Ketterer said in an affidavit written after collecting the samples.
Two samples were collected along Indiana Street while high winds were blowing from the west. Ketterer sent the samples to the radiochemistry lab at Northern Arizona University, where scientists used mass spectronomy to study the filters.
“Plutonium was unequivocally detected in the two Indiana Street air filters,” a statement from Ketterer said. “With less than 30 minutes sample collection time, quantities ranging from 47 to 128 milligrams of filter ash were recovered from air filters; plutonium was detected in all six of the individual preparations of ash from the two Indiana Street samples.”
The concern surrounding Ketterer’s findings, he says, is that if the Greenway is constructed, increased foot traffic will spread the contaminated soil to neighboring communities.
“The more that people walk on the refuge, and the more land use that is taking place… undisturbed soil is pretty well protected against wind erosion, but once people and animals start walking on the development, then the erodibility, if you will, of the soil surface is going to greatly increase,” Ketterer said.
He added that this could mean more contaminated soil being transported off the refuge toward neighboring properties.
Radioactive plutonium is a material that is produced by nuclear reactors, and has been known to cause lung, bone and liver cancer in people exposed to it, according to the CDC.
The two isotopes of plutonium Ketterer found near Rocky Flats are 239 and 240, which have a “fingerprint” that confirms they originated at the former nuclear weapons plant.
Now, Ketterer’s findings are giving some governmental agencies pause about the construction of the Greenway Project, which calls for the Federal Highway Administration to install the underpass and overpass.
At an April 4 Boulder County Commissioners meeting, Lipsky warned county leaders of the dangers of building such structures on the site, referencing the Colorado State construction standard that forbids building when more than 0.9 picocuries per gram are found in soil.
Ketterer’s recent samples ranged from 0.15 to 1.19 picocuries of plutonium per gram of soil.
“I have a couple concerns: there is going to be digging, and the standard at Rocky Flats changes dramatically, exponentially, when it goes below three feet,” Lipsky said. “If it goes below six feet, there is no standard, and there’s no consideration for the workers, no consideration for the residents, like Superior, that will be receiving contaminants from this digging.”
Ketterer also gave comment at the April 4 meeting and did not mince words in his caution to commissioners.
“Commissioners, it’s not a marvelous idea to dig up and disturb plutonium-contaminated soils,” Ketterer said. “It’s all very unsettling to me. Not only do the soils near Rocky Flats and the Indiana Street corridor have plutonium in them, but a lot of it is in these discreet particles… I think this whole area is generously sprinkled with that.
“Commissioners,” Ketterer continued, “Rocky Flats is just one of the unsettling places in the U.S. and the world that we should worry about plutonium at — there’s a whole mess of uncontained plutonium at the central operating unit (of Rocky Flats) buried under… and we’re seeing a few breadcrumbs on the surface.”
………………………………………………………. legal action was brought in January when the advocacy group Physicians for Social Responsibility Colorado filed a lawsuit that seeks to block construction of trails in and around Rocky Flats. That litigation is ongoing as of press time…………………………………. https://coloradocommunitymedia.com/2024/05/30/plutonium-found-in-indiana-street-air-filters-near-rocky-flats-boulder-commissioners-reconsider-trail-project/
Fukushima nuclear debris removal to begin as early as August
Crucial work at devastated plant has been delayed for three years
AYAKA OTAKA, Nikkei staff writer, May 31, 2024,
TOKYO — Trial removal of melted fuel rods at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will begin as early as August, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings announced on Thursday, a critical step in a decommissioning process that is expected to take decades.
Removal of the fuel rods, which is now three years behind schedule, had been slated to start by October, but TEPCO now says it will happen between August and October. Necessary equipment will be set up at the plant in northeastern Japan as early as July.
“We will continue to proceed with the work carefully, with safety as our top priority, so as not to impact the surrounding environment,” said Akira Ono, the TEPCO official in charge of decommissioning efforts.
The radioactive debris consists of fuel and other materials that melted, then cooled and solidified, after the plant lost power in the devastating March 2011 tsunami. An estimated 880 tonnes of debris are in reactor units 1 to 3.
As the melted fuel is highly radioactive, people cannot come near it, and removal must be done in small amounts to prevent leakage during the process.
A device similar to a fishing rod will be used to carry out the work. On Tuesday, a video was released showing the device being tested at a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard in Kobe, using a full-scale model of a nuclear reactor.
According to TEPCO, a 3- to 4-meter cable with a mechanical claw will be hung from the device down towards the bottom of the reactor. Less than 3 grams can be collected at a time.
Shortening shifts to reducing workers’ exposure to radiation will be necessary. The trial removal is expected to take about two weeks.
Removal was originally to be carried out in 2021. The plan was to use a robot arm to remove the debris, but development of the arm was delayed. A large amount of non-fuel debris blocking access also caused delays………………………………
The government has said that it will take 30 years to 40 years from the 2011 incident to decommission the plant.
The reactor building cannot be dismantled unless the debris is removed. Cooling water, as well as rainwater, that comes in contact with the debris becomes contaminated.
TEPCO began releasing treated wastewater in August 2023, but as long as the debris remains, the cycle of water being contaminated and requiring treatment and release will continue.
Some critics say the government’s decommissioning plan is unrealistic. The process could take more than 100 years, say some scientists in the Atomic Energy Society of Japan. After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union, decommissioning was abandoned, and a shelter structure was built to completely cover the area with radioactive waste.
There is also the issue of how to dispose of soil and rubble contaminated by scattered radioactive materials. The government has promised to transport this waste outside of Fukushima prefecture by 2045, but a destination has not been decided. https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Environment/Fukushima-nuclear-debris-removal-to-begin-as-early-as-August
A robot will soon try to remove melted nuclear fuel from destroyed Fukushima reactor
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, May 29, 2024, https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15284702
The operator of Japan’s destroyed Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant demonstrated Tuesday how a remote-controlled robot would retrieve tiny bits of melted fuel debris from one of three damaged reactors later this year for the first time since the 2011 meltdown.
Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings plans to deploy a “telesco-style” extendable pipe robot into Fukushima No. 2 reactor to test the removal of debris from its primary containment vessel by October.
That work is more than two years behind schedule. The removal of melted fuel was supposed to begin in late 2021 but has been plagued with delays, underscoring the difficulty of recovering from the magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami in 2011.
During the demonstration at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ shipyard in Kobe, western Japan, where the robot has been developed, a device equipped with tongs slowly descended from the telescopic pipe to a heap of gravel and picked up a granule.
TEPCO plans to remove less than 3 grams (0.1 ounce) of debris in the test at the Fukushima plant.
“We believe the upcoming test removal of fuel debris from Unit 2 is an extremely important step to steadily carry out future decommissioning work,” said Yusuke Nakagawa, a TEPCO group manager for the fuel debris retrieval program. “It is important to proceed with the test removal safely and steadily.”
About 880 tons of highly radioactive melted nuclear fuel remain inside the three damaged reactors. Critics say the 30- to 40-year cleanup target set by the government and TEPCO for Fukushima Daiichi is overly optimistic. The damage in each reactor is different, and plans must accommodate their conditions.
Better understanding the melted fuel debris from inside the reactors is key to their decommissioning. TEPCO deployed four mini drones into the No. 1 reactor’s primary containment vessel earlier this year to capture images from the areas where robots had not reached.
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