UK’s nuclear decommissioning problems
What’s the future of nuclear decommissioning? Building.co.uk, 16 November 2012 | By Will Hurst Last week’s devastating National Audit Office report on decommissioning facilities at Sellafield has led many to question whether the UK has the skills needed to deal with nuclear waste. But does the problem really lie with a Nuclear Decommissioning Authority overly occupied with cutting costs? Will Hurst investigates. Continue reading
USA Congress paralysed on the question of nuclear wastes
Will a Lame Duck Congress Confront Nuclear Waste? NYT, By MATTHEW L. WALD , 12 Nov 12, When Congress returns to Washington on Tuesday, it has a very long “to do” list. One item, probably not near the top, is figuring out what to do with nuclear waste, given that President Obama killed a proposed repository in Nevada in March 2010. This summer, a blue-ribbon commission advised that the process of seeking a storage site be restarted.
There has been little action so far, but Congress may soon get a push from the courts: a federal appeals panel indicated in August that it might order the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission to restart a licensing hearing to rule on whether the Nevada site, Yucca Mountain is suitable, even though President Obama has declared the site “off the table.” The court gave the executive and legislative branches a few months to provide funding for the licensing hearing as part of the budget for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Still, Congress has not acted yet, and it is far from clear that it will. (There is no final budget either, speaking of “to do” items.) Continue reading
Nevada staunchly opposing Yucca nuclear waste dump plan
Nevada Opposition to Yucca Mountain Strong as Ever http://www.ktvn.com/story/20074747/nevada-opposition-to-yucca-mountain-strong-as-ever Nov 12, 2012 A state official says last week’s elections did nothing to change Nevada’s staunch opposition to southern Nevada becoming home of a high-level nuclear waste dump for the nation.
Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Executive Director Bob Halstead says President Barack Obama’s re-election and Democratic gains that strengthened Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s position have eased fears the Yucca Mountain project could be resurrected.
He told the Las Vegas Review-Journal (http://bit.ly/TAnWD0 ) there were no changes in the state’s congressional delegation or in the Legislature that sent a message that the state’s opposition is weakening.
The Obama administration and Reid were instrumental in shutting down the Nevada nuclear waste repository site beginning in 2009.
Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com
Nuclear wastes from USS Enterprise headed for Idaho
Spent nuclear fuel from USS Enterprise is Idaho-bound The Spokesman Review, by Betsy Nov. 12, 2012 Spent nuclear fuel from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise will be sent to eastern Idaho for study and storage, the Idaho Falls Post Register reports. The Enterprise, the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is being decommissioned after participating in every major conflict with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Its spent nuclear fuel is expected to arrive in Idaho in 2015…….
Dougan said the spent nuclear fuel once in Idaho will be examined to help with future reactor design research before being placed in storage.
“(The) fuel is transported via rail in specially designed railcars that meet the Department of Transportation shipping requirements for spent nuclear fuel,” he said. “The Navy has been managing spent fuel in Idaho since the late 1950s.”
The Navy will officially deactivate the Enterprise on Dec. 1, but it will take several more years for it to be decommissioned as its reactors are taken out.
After spent fuel is removed at Norfolk, the Navy plans to tow the Enterprise to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard at Bremerton in Washington state. The nuclear reactors will be cut out of the ship and barged to the Hanford nuclear reservation.
The reactors will be buried in a trench the Navy has been using since 1986 to bury radioactive reactors from other nuclear-powered vessels, mostly submarines.
Reactor disposal will take six to eight years. The rest of the Enterprise will be scrapped at Bremerton. http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/boise/2012/nov/12/spent-nuclear-fuel-uss-enterprise-idaho-bound/
Nuclear waste dump near Great Lakes – a threat to 40 million people’s drinking water
“If this has to exist, it would make more sense away from the Great Lakes” where 40 million people get their drinking water”
Flood of concern over nuclear dump 3, By Paul Morden, Sarnia Observer, November 14, 2012 Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley is asking his fellow Great Lakes mayors to join him in raising concerns about plans to bury nuclear waste near Lake Huron. Continue reading
Concerns over transport of nuclear wastes through Northern Ontario
the project hasn’t been discussed enough in communities that might be close to the transportation corridors used to move the waste.
Nuclear waste disposal up for debate in northern Ontario MP hosting meetings across region to shed more light on plans to store nuclear waste in north CBC News Nov 12, 2012 A northern Ontario MP is holding a series of town hall meetings about the possible transportation and disposal of nuclear waste in northern
Ontario to make sure everybody knows what the project entails. Continue reading
Danger of Kyrgyzstan’s uranium-polluted rivers extends way beyond national borders
the more we delay the process of lands reclamation and conservation, the more risk of trans-border catastrophe we have
the country has 92 tailing dumps with the total volume of 254.4 million cubic meters (457 billion tons) of mining wastes.
Kyrgyzstan’s uranium-polluted rivers threaten Central Asia
http://en.tengrinews.kz/disasters/Kyrgyzstans-uranium-polluted-rivers-threaten-Central-Asia-14023/ , 30.10.2012, Pollution of Kyrgyzstan’s water resources with the wastes of uranium tailing dumps poses a threat to the whole Central Asian region, KazTAG reports.
“Regional risks of degradation and destruction of the uranium tailing dumps are related to a whole range of factors, especially since many of the dumps are located very close to water resources. Since they are located at the river heads (of the rivers that start in Kyrgyzstan),
the potential catastrophe may cause major mass and ecological disasters and have a long-term effect on health of millions of people in the lower reaches of the rivers,” first Vice-PM of Kyrgyzstan Dzhoomart Otorbayev said at the international conference called
Uranium tailing dumps in Central Asia: Join Efforts on Lowering Risks on Wednesday, October 24. Continue reading
$125 billion and decades to clean up Fukushima – says TEPCO
The clean-up is expected to take decades, with scientists warning that some settlements may have to be abandoned.
The company said it would need more government help to meet the colossal figure
Fukushima operator warns clean-up ‘may cost $125 bn’ By Kyoko Hasegawa (AFP) 7 Nov 12 TOKYO — The cost of the clean-up and compensation after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster may double to $125 billion, the plant’s operator warned Wednesday. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said decontamination of irradiated areas and compensating those whose jobs or home lives have been affected would cost much more than the five trillion yen it estimated in April. Continue reading
Germany’s lengthy process of dismantling nuclear power plants
Fears of low nuclear radiation run high, DW, 08.11.2012 Wolfgang Dick Decommissioned German nuclear power plants will be dismantled over the long term. Though no incidents have occurred in Germany, some citizen initiatives say legal safety measures are too lax.
Vattenfall, the company that runs the Brunsbüttel nuclear plant, recently applied to the Environment Ministry in the state of Schleswig Holstein for a permit to tear down the facility. The whole unit is supposed to be completely dismantled, rather than sealed over with a
concrete sarcophagus in the style of the Chernobyl reactor.
Since the German government decided to phase out nuclear power last year, the country has been gathering some experience dismantling nuclear power plants: Continue reading
50 years of shocking neglect- the danger of UK’s Sellafield nuclear site
The plant is the UK’s largest and most hazardous nuclear site, storing enough high and intermediate level radioactive waste to fill 27 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Sellafield nuclear waste storage poses ‘intolerable risk’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-20228176 7 November 2012 Sellafield is the UK’s largest and most hazardous nuclear site An “intolerable risk” is being posed by hazardous waste stored in run-down buildings at Sellafield nuclear plant, a watchdog has found.
The National Audit Office (NAO) also said that for 50 years, the operators of the Cumbria installation failed to develop a long-term plan for waste. Costs of plant-decommissioning has also spiralled out of control, it said. Operator Sellafield Ltd, said it welcomed the report’s findings and was “making improvements”. Continue reading
Haphazard storage of radioactive rubble in Japan
local officials are breaking the law by failing to inform residents and ensure the sites are properly monitored.
Koriyama’s case illustrates that much related to nuclear power – and its very powerful business interests – remains hidden from an increasingly distrustful public.
Laws don’t require signs to be posted at these sites or ground water nearby to be monitored
“I’m very angry,” “The city isn’t protecting us.”
Japan’s nuclear dilemma: What to do with all that nuclear waste?
Japanese citizens are balking at the lack of information and supervision of waste stored in public places, such as playgrounds. By Winifred Bird | Christian Science Monitor, 5 Nov 12, The small sandy square in front of Yasushi Takemoto’s apartment in Koriyama, a city of 328,000 about 150 miles north of Tokyo , looks like a normal public park. On a recent weekday morning, a group of children played on the swings while the retired dentistry professor strolled under the trees.
Beneath the soil in one unmarked, unfenced corner, however, lie hundreds of bags packed with radioactive dirt, sludge from drainage ditches, and other contaminated debris. Continue reading
USA -Questions arise about shuttering of Kewaunee Nuclear PP -Waste storage problems!
According to that report, about 3,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel is in storage at nine sites across the country where commercial reactors have been shuttered.
“This all came as an awful surprise,” said Paplham. “That waste may be sitting there for 200 years.”
In the meantime, the residents around the Kewaunee plant are preparing for life without one of the area’s biggest employers and an indeterminate number of years living next to an impromptu nuclear waste storage facility.
“They were going to bury those rods under a mountain,” said Hardtke. “And yet now they are just going to let them sit there. I have kids here and grandkids, and we’re leaving them a mess.”
WSJ, 4 Nov 12 Residents who live near the Kewaunee Power Station with its 556-megawatt nuclear reactor still are absorbing the recent news that the plant will shut down in May, taking with it 655 jobs and leaving behind — possibly for decades — scores of concrete canisters filled with spent nuclear waste.
The loss of the jobs as well as the hundreds of thousands of dollars Dominion Resources pays locally in lieu of property taxes is unsettling enough, local officials say. More disturbing, they say, are the 42 containers of nuclear waste that will remain sitting just off the shore of Lake Michigan.
“We’ve been lied to for 35 years,” Dave Hardtke, chairman of the town of Carlton, said of the waste. “When they built that plant, the federal government said they were going to move the waste. That was 35 years ago, and look where it is sitting.”
The impending shutdown of the plant renewed attention on the national impasse over the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. And it is not just an issue at Kewaunee. More than 300 assemblies of spent nuclear fuel rods are submerged in a cooling pool on the site of the now-closed nuclear reactor at the Genoa Generating Station on the banks of the Mississippi River near La Crosse. The small reactor, adjacent to a traditional coal plant, was closed in 1987 but the fuel rods, with no central federal storage available, remain.
Will the USA again make a ridiculous nuclear “Waste Confidence” rule?
Nuclear-Waste Rule Rewritten by September 2014, NRC Staff Says http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-19/nuclear-waste-rule-rewritten-by-september-2014-nrc-staff-says.html By Kasia Klimasinska – Oct 19, 2012 The staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said new court-ordered rules on storage of spent nuclear fuel to be completed by September 2014.
NRC’s staff plans to continue reviewing license applications and holding hearings, and final action is “the only licensing milestone that the staff will be unable to complete” before the waste rule is issued, according to documents posted today on NRC website.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington ruled on June 8 that NRC rules on storage failed to fully evaluate risks and new standards must be drafted. The agency on Aug. 7 suspended final decisions pending the reassessment.
New Texas radioactive waste dump raises questions on water safety
“Our biggest concern of all is the water, and the risk of radioactivity getting into the water,” she said, adding that dumps are too close to the Ogalla Aquifer, which provides drinking water and farming water across a large band of the central-west United States
Nuclear waste dump opens offers a “Texas Solution” to nuclear waste. Courier Journal October 19, 2012 by James Bruggers It’s not every day that one gets to stand in the bottom of a nuclear waste dump.
But yesterday I did just that, along with about a dozen other journalists one of the new low-level nuclear waste landfills operated by Waste Control Specialists in West Texas,….At the federal dump, we went down 90 feet and were standing atop several feet of natural
and designed protective barrier, including concrete, plastic, clay and caliche, a sedimentary rock. Continue reading
Plutonium a nuclear servant that will become a nuclear killer
five years of meetings between Soviet and American scientists from the Federation of American Scientists about what to do with the separated plutonium. There is a tremendous pressure to use it. . . . It is as if we don’t know what to do with this unless we make it serve us, and that is exactly what I am beginning to think, that we cannot ask of the poison fire. If we want to make it serve us, it will kill us
Nuclear Guardianship The Search for New Perspectives Lecture by Joanna Macy reprinted with permission from Poison Fire, Sacred Earth, TESTIMONIES, LECTURES, CONCLUSIONS, THE WORLD URANIUM HEARING, SALZBURG 1992 pages 256-258
To call this stuff “waste” is a misnomer, it is hardly an accurate term, because the strange and almost mythic character of the poison fire — uranium — and our processing of it has been that at every stage of the fuel cycle, everything that we have employed, every glove, every boot, every truck, every reactor, every facility, every mine, every heap of mill tailings, everything becomes not only contaminated, but contaminating.
And governments and industry and scientists themselves don’t know what on earth to do with it. They don’t know what to do with this stuff, and it is our most enduring legacy. They say they have a final solution to bury it in the ground in deep geological disposal, hiding it out of sight and out of mind, as if the earth were dead, as if the earth were not a living being, shifting with underground waters and seismic activities, as if the containers themselves could outlast a generation, which they cannot!
For nothing lasts as long, no container lasts as long as the poison fire itself. And it will leak out and out to contaminate. Continue reading
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23-25 October – on Zoom – World BEYOND War’s annual global conferenc
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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