USA desperately needing solution to nuclear waste problem
Wanted: A Nuclear Waste Solution to Replace Yucca Mountain
About.com By Larry West 30 August 09
“…………………Here is the problem:
1. There is a lot of radioactive nuclear waste temporarily stored at sites all over the country.
2. Leaving nuclear waste in place and transporting it to some central and supposedly secure location both pose public safety and national security risks.
3. Nuclear waste can remain toxic, and potentially lethal, for 100,000 years or more (roughly equivalent to the length of time between the emergence of modern Homo sapiens and today), and no one knows whether we can safely store radioactive waste for that long.
4. America is not going to stop producing nuclear energy and nuclear weapons; both are considered far too important to our national security.
5. Nobody wants the waste, making nuclear-waste disposal one of the most controversial NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) issues in history.There are already about 63,000 tons of used radioactive fuel at 104 operating U.S. nuclear power plants; it is currently stored either underwater or in so-called “dry storage.” Waste from nuclear weapons production, dating back to World War II, is an even bigger problem. It is currently stored at 16 federal sites in 13 states, although most of it is at Hanford in Washington state, the Idaho National Laboratory and Savannah River in South Carolina.Quoting from the McClatchy article:“At Hanford alone, there are 53 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste, 2,100 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and nearly 2,000 capsules containing radioactive cesium and strontium.
Nuclear waste court case- a national test case
Appeal begins in high-profile fight over hot waste Court battle
Two more regions to weigh in on EnergySolutions case
By Judy Fahys The Salt Lake Tribune 08/28/2009
Utah’s court fight over who controls the flow of radioactive waste is turning into a national test case, as the state and its allies formally launched their appeal on Thursday and waste agencies representing eight more states prepared to join the fray. Continue reading
Kazakhstan: Lingering effects of nuclear tests
60 Years After First Soviet Nuclear Test, Legacy Of Misery Lives On In Kazakhstan
Radio Free Europe, August 28, 2009By“First Lightning,” a 22-kiloton nuclear bomb, exploded at 7 a.m. local time on August 29, 1949, at the Semipalatinsk testing site in northern Kazakhstan. Thousands of cases of birth defects, cancer, and neurological illnesses have since been reported in the Semipalatinsk region. Livestock living within range of the site also suffer from deformities and other defects. Continue reading
Decommissioning aging nuclear reactors
nixing nukes
The Wire by Matt Kanner Friday, 28 August 2009
Russian activists discuss nuclear plant decommissioning in Portsmouth
Few people are as familiar with the inherent complications of shutting down nuclear power plants as Oleg Bodrov. In 2002, the Russian nuclear engineer-physicist was attacked while walking home from his office. He suffered a serious head injury and spent weeks in the hospital.Bodrov believes the attack was motivated by his activism against a Russian plant that was re-smelting radioactive metal. Continue reading
Malaysia: where would we put nuclear waste?
Where do we store nuclear waste?
The Sun2 Surf , Malaysia 27 August 09
THE sun has been the main energy source for all life on the planet for billions of years. In Malaysia, we are blessed with sunlight. Yet, our government is pushing for nuclear energy as if it is a safe energy alternative to save our planet from the perils of climate change.
The government seems to be brushing aside the hazards related to nuclear power plants, as if they were issues that didn’t exist or could easily be remedied in the near future………………….
From what I have seen, there is no detailed information available to the public on Malaysia’s nuclear plans. Where will the reactors be located? What type of reactors will be used? Who will be selling us the uranium to run the reactors? How much will it all cost and who will pay for it?
What about the waste generated from the proposed nuclear power plants? Where and how will Malaysia dispose its nuclear waste which remains radioactive for thousands of years…………….
….we do know that nuclear energy will produce highly radioactive waste, even if it is in small amounts, every day a nuclear plant is running. We do know that this highly radioactive waste must be disposed of somewhere on our finite planet. We do know that we have no technology to make this waste safe.
And as more countries build nuclear power plants, more of this waste is dumped into our Earth, the planet that sustains our lives.
It is unforgivable that we, as governments and responsible adults, knowingly create such dangerous waste, so that we can have “modern conveniences” today, without a concern for tomorrow.
We are already leaving our children with our legacy of global warming, and choking pollution. And now we wish to leave this massive mess of nuclear waste and closed reactor sites to our grandchildren, leaving them with the burden of trying to figure out how to solve the problem that we ourselves had no idea how to solve.
The search for a nuclear graveyard
The search for a nuclear graveyard
The Globe and Mail 26 August 09
40,000 metric tonnes of radioactive waste is stored at sites across Canada. Anna Mehler Paperny reports on the hunt for a permanent solution
Wanted: Friendly, open-minded community in need of jobs and a whack of infrastructure cash. Must be willing to play host to nuclear waste, perhaps until the end of time.More than six decades after joining the nuclear club, Canada is home to 22 nuclear reactors, 18 of them in operation, producing about 15 per cent of the country’s electricity. Canada also has 40,000 metric tonnes of radioactive waste – and counting.
For years, the issue of how to best dispose of this waste has plagued policy-makers, scientists and citizens. Suggestions have included shooting it into outer space or exporting it to the South Pole.
Now, Canada is preparing to get rid of its nuclear detritus once and for all – by burying it. Continue reading
Russia’s nuclear legacy
Bowermaster’s Adventures — Russia’s nuclear legacy
Gadling.comby Jon Bowermaster
Aug 24th 2009
Just around the corner from Petropavlovsk, ten miles by land or sea, located across Avachinskaya Bay on a small peninsula called Krasheninnikova sits Russia’s largest nuclear submarine base. It is off limits to outsiders and a shell of what it was during the Soviet Union’s heyday. Today – judging by a simple Google map search – there are just a half-dozen active nuclear subs sitting at its docks. Worrying to those who pay attention to such things are the shadows on the far edge of the docks on the same map, indicating somewhere between a dozen and twenty subs piled up next to each other. They are said to be at varying degrees of decommissioning………………….
The operation of nuclear-powered submarines generates considerable amounts of nuclear waste. Liquid and solid radioactive wastes need to be removed from submarines and stored. In addition, periodically the submarine needs to be refueled, thus spent fuel needs to be removed from the submarine and also stored. Decommissioning a nuclear submarine generates these streams of waste and in addition, the refueled reactor compartment must be dealt with…………………This is from a U.S. State Department report: “In Russia every step of the process is facing problems. The support complex which was already in poor shape and accident-prone during Soviet times has been particularly burdened in the last few years. Shore-side waste sites are full of low-level radioactive waste and spent fuel. Shipments of the spent fuel for reprocessing have been delayed due to lack of funds and equipment. The service ships, which unload the spent fuel from submarines, are also full and in poor shape (and some have suffered accidents).
The shipyards where the work is done are facing financial shortages, power blackouts and strikes. There are no final land-based storage sites for decommissioned reactor compartments removed from submarines, so they are being stored afloat in bays near naval bases. Finally, contamination is widespread at waste storage sites in the North and Far East due to accidents. Lower-level contamination is thought to plague virtually every support facility for the fleet. In addition, accidents on submarines have lead to contamination of the surrounding area.
Bowermaster’s Adventures — Russia’s nuclear legacy | Gadling.com
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump plan is being killed off
Yucca Mountain funding nears its demise
Government Executive By Darren Goode Congress Daily August 21, 2009
House and Senate Democrats are well on their way to helping the Obama administration kill Nevada’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.Both chambers have approved fiscal 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations bills that match the administration’s $197 million request to let the Energy Department officially keep the project open on paper for a year while funding Energy Secretary Stephen Chu’s blue ribbon panel to develop an alternative plan for storing and managing nuclear waste.
The current 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste are held in temporary surface storage facilities at 131 sites in 39 states.
Yucca Mountain funding nears its demise (8/21/09) — www.GovernmentExecutive.com
Sellafield nuclear waste: Cumbrian Council doesn’t want it
(UK) Nuclear waste sites set for thumbs down
Charlie, The Whitehaven News 20 August 09
Why do Sellafield want to store their waste in other peoples back yards? If it safe to be stored at Lillyhall then why not dig a big hole on the site of the old reactors? If waste is contained within a defined site it will not give surprises to future generations when the paperwork has been mislaid. This is proved by the problems over what is stored at Drigg. If we can’t trust them to keep track of dangerous waste for fifty years how can we expect them to know what is buried in hundreds of years to come.
The Whitehaven News by Alan Irving 20 August 09
TWO local sites earmarked for radioactive waste disposal are set to get the thumbs down from Cumbria County Council even though one – at Lillyhall – has already taken small amounts.
Cabinet councillors next week are expected to approve a recommendation that the low level radioactive waste is kept at Sellafield rather than sent to Keekle Head or Lillyhall…………
……………..yesterday Councillor Knowles said: “Sellafield waste should be dealt with at Sellafield. What we don’t want is a proliferation of radioactive waste, it should not be put in holes around West Cumbria and imposed on people.” At Keekle Head, French company subsidiary Endecom is already drilling boreholes to see whether it will be suitable. It also has an agreement to buy the derelict 173-acre site……………………
Consultations on the national strategy to manage future arisings of waste will close on September 11. Cabinet members will consider a county council response on the lines that “LLW produced at Sellafield should be disposed of near to Sellafield and should not be dispersed in sites further afield in West Cumbria.”
Whiitehaven News | News | Nuclear waste sites set for thumbs down
Overcoming Nuclear Power’s Biggest Hurdle
Nuclear Power’s biggest hurdle
Strategy and Business 4 August 09 Nuclear power supporters had long hoped that the solution to the nuclear waste problem could be found in a storage facility hollowed out of Yucca Mountain, deep in the Nevada desert roughly 80 miles north of Las Vegas.But questions about Yucca’s long-term ability to keep radioactivity from leeching into groundwater energized nuclear opponents, as well as nearby residents and Nevada political leaders.
Soon after taking office, President Obama defunded the project.Pending another solution, the roughly 60,000 tons of nuclear fuel waste currently in the U.S. is stored on-site at nuclear plants, either in subsurface canisters or in secure “ponds” filled with boric acid.
If this approach continues much longer, it could cost Washington a lot of money: Utilities have successfully sued the federal government for failing to provide a permanent storage solution after they ponied up roughly US$30 billion in fees paid over several years to fund the Yucca project.
Indeed, untangling the nuclear waste problem may be more a matter of economics than of location.
Germany’s nuclear waste problem shows long term danger for waste storage
Salting it Away (and Other Problems with Nuclear Waste)
Miller McCune By: Michael Scott Moore | July 29, 2009
Germany’s vaunted salt mine solution for low-level nuclear waste has proven to be full of holes……………………….
Around 12,000 liters of groundwater leak into the mine every day. Some of it mixes with the radioactive waste. A few weeks ago, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) finally admitted that some brine collected in Asse II had traces of tritium and caesium 137.
But last year the German public learned that the group in charge of maintaining Asse II at the time had known about the accumulation of suspect water since 2005…………………….The public outrage led German politicians to take the mine out of the Helmholtz Institute’s hands and place it under the BfS. But Asse II has also leaked groundwater since at least 1988 — meaning, at the very least, that decades of Cold War research conducted there failed to solve some of the most basic problems of nuclear storage……………….Along with 120,000-odd barrels of radioactive slop, according to a report last year, highly radioactive plutonium waste and even a few spent fuel rods were dumped in the mine………….
It’s hubris for a government to think it can safely store nuclear waste beyond the lifetime of the government itself. The trouble with Asse II has been a chastening example. Political promises, stern-sounding policies, and even scientific assessments from 1989 (which said the mine had no leaks) all proved to be as full of holes as the mine itself.
Environmentalists show no confidence in nuclear waste site’s safety
Environmentalists show no confidence in nuclear waste site’s safety THE HANKYOREH, 30 July 09
Lawmaker Cho and environmental researchers disclose prior site assessment reports on Gyeongju waste facility site that reveal base rock instability
Environmental organizations asked for further investigation into the safety of the nuclear waste disposal site currently under construction in the Gyeongju area on Tuesday. The organizations are basing its demands for a complete stop to construction on a review of previously released reports. The completion of the facility’s construction originally set for the end of 2009, has already been delayed by some two and a half years due to problems in the site’s base rock.
Cho Seung-soo, a lawmaker with the New Progressive Party, and members the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement (KFEM) and other environmental organizations, held a press conference at the National Assembly and said, “We cannot confirm the safety of the site because a site assessment (in 2005) confirms the condition of the base rock is unstable and weak.”
Nuclear decommissioning: the problem that won’t go away
“…………………………IT IS A sprawling landscape of chimneys, storage ponds filled with nuclear waste and radioactive buildings awaiting demolition. The UK’s Thorpe nuclear-processing plant at Sellafield – nestled somewhat incongruously among the picturesque hills of Cumbria, northern England – is unlikely ever to become a tourist attraction, despite its fame.
For decades, Sellafield has been officially the most hazardous building in western Europe (according to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority). And disposing safely of its crumbling, highly radioactive edifices, its hastily dumped reactor parts and decaying fuel rods is a slow and painstaking job that will probably ensure Sellafield holds the same dubious accolade for decades more…………..http://www.petroleum-economist.com/default.asp?Page=14&PUB=46&SID=721393&ISS=25450
Israeli Nuclear Waste ‘Leads to Palestinian Cancer’
Israeli Nuclear Waste ‘Leads to Palestinian Cancer’
The Media Line by Rachelle Kliger , July 21, 2009
Radiation from Israel’s nuclear facility in Dimona is being buried in Palestinian territory and causing an increase in cancer cases among West Bank Palestinians, a Palestinian doctor and anti-nuclear activist says.“The waste from Dimona is buried west of Dahriyya and the radiation from this buried waste reaches the people and causes cancer,” said Dr. Mahmoud Sa’ada, a Palestinian general practitioner and head of the Middle East division at International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, referring to a small West Bank Palestinian village just north of Hebron and just over 12 miles from the Dimona nuclear reactor.
“What’s new over the past two months is that the radiation has reached Tul Karem,” he told The Media Line, referring to a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank over 100 miles from the Dimona site.
Allegations that Israel’s nuclear facility is causing health hazards are not new, but researchers say the scope of the damage is expanding and putting an increasing number of both Israelis and Palestinians in danger……..
………….. the Dimona nuclear facility was built in the 1960s and has not undergone an overhaul as required after 1993.
Israel admits to having a nuclear facility in Dimona, a city in the south of Israel, but will not confirm or deny allegations that the facility is being used to build nuclear weapons.
Israel maintains a policy of ambiguity regarding its alleged nuclear program whereas it will not confirm or deny the existence of nuclear weapons in its arsenal.
Non-Israeli sources have claimed Israel has more than 200 nuclear warheads in its possession.
Waste storage is dark cloud over nuclear power industry |
Burlington Free Press By Crea Lintilhac • July 20, 2009 –
“……………decommissioning of civilian nuclear reactors has been performed only seven times in the industry’s 60-year history and there is a shortage of data to make projections. Moreover, in recent times, the decommissioning of Connecticut Yankee ran half a billion dollars over budget and Yankee Rowe of Massachusetts ran four times over the projected costs. Since the financial collapse, I think we all believe that forecasting our financial future is ever more challenging…….
…….The lack of a disposal site is the dark cloud hanging over the entire enterprise of nuclear power. Until a deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel opens, existing spent fuel should be stored in dry casks; the 150-ton concrete and metal cylinders each holding 10 tons of spent fuel and placed at the 104 reactor sites throughout the U.S…………
…………here are some of the critical points about the dangers of reprocessing and why it’s not the way to go as a waste disposal solution. To “reprocess” spent fuel, different elements like plutonium, are separated so they can be used in new fuel. The problem is, separated plutonium can be readily used to make nuclear bombs…………..
……….The Ford administration, and later the Carter administration, concluded that reprocessing was both uneconomic and dangerous.
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……………..In June 29, President Obama decided to scrap nuclear reprocessing in the United States. It is an encouraging first step towards building an international consensus on reducing the threat from nuclear weapons.Even if no new reactors are built, it is estimated that by mid century, the amount of spent fuel will double………..……We have only a temporary solution with dry cask storage. In the meantime we should at least shut the faucet off and stop generating more waste for the sake of our children’s future.
1 This Month
26 April – Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown airs on National Geographic on Sunday 26th April from 4pm
29 April – Nuclear Expert Webinar #1 – Radiation Impacts on Families with Mary Olson and Cindy Folkers
- 12:15 PM MT – 1:45 PM MT
- Location: Virtual – REGISTER TODAY
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
Pine Ridge Uranium is the real threat, not Tehran- Tell Burgum: Stop the Extraction.
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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