Whistleblower on dangers at Hanford nuclear waste facility
During her testimony to the board she gave different answers than top-
level officials with the Department of Energy and contractors Bechtel National and URS. Afterward, she says her managers asked her to change her answers. Busche said “No.”
She says she was … “Raised by a very good mother, that said, ‘Just don’t lie. ‘Cause once you tell your first one it’s real hard to … they just continue to grow.’”…
Audio http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=145326474&ft=3&f=145326474 Hanford Nuclear Safety Manager Questions Waste Treatment Plant NPR by ANNA KING January 17, 2012 from N3 RICHLAND, Wash. – Waste in underground tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation may have much more plutonium than previously thought. That’s according to a report by a Hanford contractor that’s just been leaked to public radio. It’s also according to the latest high profile whistleblower to raise serious concerns about a waste treatment plant being built at the Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington. Continue reading
Indigenous peoples fight against nuclear waste dumping on their land
No nuclear Northwest: Grand Chiefs Kenora Daily Miner and News, By Jon Thompson, 10 Jan 12 Grand chiefs representing every inch of Northwestern Ontario are publicly taking a hard line against burying nuclear waste in their traditional territory, claiming it would violate international law. Continue reading
Slovakia wrestles with nuclear question, and costs of “decommissioning”
amidst the country’s nuclear quandary, one state agency seems poised for growth. Jadrova a vyradovacia spolocnost, a.s., Slovakia’s nuclear decommissioning company,
Slovakia’s Nuclear Schizophrenia: Shut Down, Continue As Usual, or Boldly Go — Where? Minyanville, by John C.K. Daly of Oilprice.com.Jan 06, 2012 The answer is anything but clear. “…….the last two decades have devolved into a series of unseemly squabbles between Brussels and new Eastern European members, with the EU demanding the prompt shutdown of Soviet-era nuclear power plants, while governments east of Berlin plead understanding and extended timelines to shut down the facilities that provide major electrical input as they search for alternatives.
The latest post-Cold War post-Soviet space energy front line is Slovakia. What to do in Bratislava on the way to becoming good, clean, green members of the European Union? “……Slovakia currently has four operational nuclear reactors at complexes in Jaslovske Bohunice and Mochovce, commissioned between 1984 and 1999. The facilities’ threeoldest reactors have been shut down in accordance with EU mandates….. Continue reading
Dilemma of USA’s Nuclear Waste Confidence Rule
Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is part of the agency’s 2010 Waste Confidence Decision and Rule regulations,
“There has been talk of creating regional disposal sites but really there should not be any new nuclear power plants built until they can figure out what to do with the nuclear waste we have now.’’
Federal regulators seek public comment on nuclear fuel storage, Agency to review 200-year storage plan, APP.com by Bob Vosseller, 4 Jan 12 The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is seeking public feedback on a report about the impact of storing spent fuel from the nation’s commercial nuclear power plants for as long as 200 years.
According to a release from NRC officials Tuesday, the feedback would be used for the agency’s plan to update its Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS.
The EIS is a document used for decision-making and to determine whether there are any negative environmental effects caused by a proposed action. Continue reading
Murmank, the world’s atomic dustbin, has fire on nuclear submarine
Bellona, a respected Norwegian NGO which monitors Russia‘s nuclear fleet, said the number of casualties may have been higher…..
The desolate region around Murmansk contains the biggest concentration of old nuclear reactors in the world and, since the cold war ended, has become the world’s atomic dustbin.
Russian nuclear submarine blaze injures nine after crew remain inside, Guardian UK, 31 Dec 11 President orders inquiry into fire on board vessel docked in Arctic but officials play down any fears of radiation leak
The Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, has ordered an investigation after a nuclear submarine caught fire during repairs in the Arctic, injuring at least nine people. Continue reading
America no closer to finding a tomb for its accumulating nuclear wastes
In July, with little fanfare, the Obama administration’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future released a draft report to the Secretary of Energy on a post-Yucca Mountain solution. The report calls for development of “one or more geologic disposal facilities.”
So far, federal officials say they haven’t even started looking for a specific state or single site.
Northland rock considered for nuclear waste storage With Nevada’s Yucca Mountain out of the running as the permanent graveyard for U.S. nuclear waste, scientists now are looking for other places to entomb the stuff, including rock formations common in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. That’s the message from a 114-page study from the Sandia National Laboratory that surfaced last week. By: John Myers, Duluth News Tribune, 25 Dec 11, Continue reading
Desperate international quest for nuclear waste disposal
Nuclear nations wrestle with problem of permanent waste storage CANADA.COM BY IAN MACLEOD, POSTMEDIA NEWS DECEMBER 20, 2011 Ottawa Citizen With more than 400 nuclear power plants in 32 countries, nuclear waste disposal is no longer an afterthought. A global nuclear waste race is underway.
International research and co-operation has exploded. So has public decision-making in the once-private affairs of the nuclear power industry. Deep underground burial in hard rock cavities for hundreds of thousands of years is now considered the best long-term solution for the 240,000 tonnes of highly radioactive spent reactor fuel stacked in temporary storage around the globe.
No nation yet has opened a permanent geological repository. But plans are well advanced in some countries, notably Finland and Sweden. Canada plans to open a deep repository for high-level waste around 2035, though much work lies ahead, including finding a suitable site. Transferring the estimated four million spent fuel bundles into the vault will take an additional 30 years.
The United States, meanwhile, is in an increasingly desperate situation. The Obama administration’s recent decision to cancel the 2015 opening of a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada’s remote desert country has left jittery and angry American nuclear power producers sitting on enormous amounts of spent fuel crammed into interim storage for an indefinite additional period. The country’s 104 commercial power reactors churn out more every day……..
The biggest issue for any repository design is assessing how it will perform far into future to allow the spent fuel products to decay into harmlessness. No one alive today, or for generations to come, will ever know the answer – hopefully. That means extensive, lengthy and expensive scientific studies. In geology alone, where time scales are measured in billions of years, research requires time.
There’s also hydrology, thermohydrology, hydrogeology, geochemistry, climate change modelling, materials behaviour, radionuclide migration and much, much more. Paying for the repositories is far simpler. Most countries, Canada included, require the radioactive waste producers to finance all the multibillion-dollar costs… http://www.canada.com/Nuclear+nations+wrestle+with+problem+permanent+waste+storage/5889554/story.html
Canadian tribes say NO to nuclear waste
No nuclear waste here, North Shore Tribal Council says,SooToday.com, December 20, 2011 Chiefs of the North Shore Tribal Council say no! to a multi-billion dollar nuclear waste disposal project in their territory CUTLER, ON – The First Nations of the North Shore Tribal Council strongly reject the prospect of the North Shore of Lake Huron becoming a site for the long-term storage of nuclear waste for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). The City of Elliot Lake has publicly expressed interest in possibly becoming one of the sites for the long-term disposal of nuclear waste for Canada’s nuclear industry.
Elliot Lake has a long history of uranium mining that resulted in the boom and bust of the city, as well as significant and lasting environmental damage to the local watershed and nearby ceremonial grounds. In addition, there are dozens of tailings ponds surrounding Elliot Lake currently waiting for a solution for their safe disposal.
“We cannot idly stand by and watch as they inject Mother Earth with this cancer,” says Chief Lyle Sayers, chairman of the North Shore Tribal Council. “We must ensure that the future natural resources of this area are there for our children, generations to come, and businesses alike.”
The half-life of this material is hundreds of thousands of years old and could impact generation after generation. No site can ever be totally safe for nuclear waste storage. “Natural disasters sometimes happen, such as we’ve seen in Japan. It could make this whole area a nuclear wasteland suitable for only that industry,” says Chief Sayers.
Our statement to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization is: Do not waste your financial resources if you plan to conduct a study in this area because a nuclear waste dump is not going to happen here.
The North Shore Tribal Council represents seven First Nation communities across the North Shore of Lake Huron.Chief Lyle Sayers is the chief of the Garden River First Nation and also the chairman of the North Shore Tribal Council. http://www.sootoday.com/content/news/details.asp?c=37141
The world’s 240,000 tonnes of intensely radioactive civilian waste
Nuclear’s environmental costs No nation has come up with a permanent, safe way to dispose of radioactive waste Montreal Gazette, By IAN MACLEOD, Postmedia News December 17, 2011 “……More than 240,000 tonnes of intensely radioactive civilian waste has piled up around the globe since the dawning of the atomic age.
Sixty years on, no one is sure yet how to safely and permanently dispose of the stuff, much of it harmful to living organisms for thousands of years. Canada’s share of the highlevel heap stands at 44,000 tonnes. Virtually all is spenturanium fuel bundles – 2.3 million of them – that powered the commercial and research reactors that made Canada a leading nuclear nation…..
Spent fuel bundles are just one piece of fallout from the nuclear fuel cycle. Continue reading
USA no nearer to solving its huge nuclear waste problems
Three decades after the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act said the federal government would handle disposal of high-level radioactive waste, the United States still has no agreed-upon solution for where and how to dispose of about 70,000 metric tons of it. About 10 percent is from the military’s nuclear weapons programs; most of the rest is piling up at commercial reactor sites around the country……
Nuclear waste site hunt could point to granite, WSJ, 18 Dec 11, MONTPELIER, Vt. — The likely death of a planned nuclear waste site at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain has left federal agencies looking for a possible replacement. A national lab working for the U.S. Department
of Energy is now eying granite deposits stretching from Georgia to Maine as potential sites, along with big sections of Minnesota and Wisconsin where that rock is prevalent. Continue reading
Nuclear waste disposal problem looming large and urgent for USA
U.S. anxious to secure nuclear waste disposal site as China emerges on scene Mainichi Daily News, Japan, By Haruyuki Aikawa, Europe General Bureau, December 14, 2011 “……As the world shifts away from the business of recycling plutonium-based nuclear fuel, the construction of facilities to handle nuclear waste remains a nagging issue. After plans to construct an international disposal facility in Australia fell through, the United States and Japan moved forward in negotiations to build such a facility in Mongolia, an inland country which is believed to hold rich deposits of uranium…..
After the Mainichi Shimbun reported the plans in May, an opposition campaign was launched in Mongolia, and in September this year, Mongolian President Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj issued an order prohibiting negotiations, effectively putting an end to the plans…… at the end of March that the rise of emerging nations had weakened the United States’ grip. While it still has power, it wants to secure a place that will accept spent nuclear fuel. The project previously proposed in Mongolia strongly highlights the United States’ anxiousness. … http://mdn.mainichi.jp/features/news/20111214p2a00m0na013000c.html
Many thousands of tons of radioactive water accumulating at Fukushima
Tepco estimates that the amount of treated water requiring storage is increasing by 200 to 500 tons every day.
Japan’s earthquake-hit nuclear plant scraps plan to dump water in sea, Reuters Tokyo December 12, 2011 Japan’s utility operating the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant said on Friday it has scrapped a plan to dump water it treated for radiation contamination into the sea following fierce protests from fishing groups. Continue reading
Turmoil over Hanford’s huge radioactive wastes, whistleblowers targeted?
the worst of the waste is still decades away from being completely removed. Millions of gallons of a highly radioactive stew — enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools — are stored in aging underground tanks. Some of those tanks have leaked, threatening the groundwater and the river.
Hanford workers filed suit as whistleblowers, claiming they were targeted for reprisals after raising safety concerns.
New concerns about Northwest nuclear waste plant Google News, By SHANNON DININNY,12 Dec 11 RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) — The federal government says a one-of-a-kind plant that will convert radioactive waste into a stable and storable substance that resembles glass will cost hundreds of millions of dollars more and may take longer to build, adding to a string of delays and skyrocketing price tag for the project.
In addition, several workers at southeast Washington’s Hanford nuclear reservation have raised concerns about the safety of the plant’s design — and complained they’ve been retaliated against for voicing their issues. Continue reading
Anxiety in Ontario at the prospect of nuclear waste dump
Peabody said Walkerton’s tainted water tragedy a decade ago should be
reason enough to stay out of the radioactive-waste business.
“I would (also) question the wisdom of putting all of Canada’s nuclear
waste beside or close to Lake Huron under some of Canada’s best farm
land.”
Nuclear waste dump idea sparks unease in Ontario The Canadian Press, Dec. 11, 2011 TORONTO — A community on the shores of Lake Huron has cracked open the door to southern Ontario’s becoming the permanent storage site for Canada’s spent, but still dangerously radioactive, nuclear fuel. Continue reading
Will Los Alamos plutonium nuclear lab be USA’s Fukushima?
Questions swirl around $6 billion US nuclear lab Canadian Business, By AP | December 04, 2011 SANTA FE, New Mexico (AP) — At Los Alamos National Laboratory, scientists and engineers refer to their planned new $6 billion nuclear lab by its clunky acronym, CMRR, short for Chemistry Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility. But as a work in progress for three decades and with hundreds of millions of dollars already spent, nomenclature is among the minor issues.
Questions continue to swirl about exactly what kind of nuclear and plutonium research will be done there, whether the lab is really necessary, and — perhaps most important — will it be safe, or could it become New Mexico’s equivalent of Japan’s Fukushima? Continue reading
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Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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