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Reprocessing is no solution

Reprocessing is no solution

Rutland Herald July 7, 2009 “………………The Bush administration began the new push for a Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. In 1979 a United States naval nuclear engineer and president, Jimmy Carter, ended this dangerous program.Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel was supposed to be one alternative to lots and lots of mining forever and forever. The biggest experiment in reprocessing was at Sellafield in Britain. In 2005, after decades of contamination and leaks and general spewing of horrible matter into the ocean, air, and land around the reprocessing plant, Sellafield was shut down because a bigger-than-usual leak of fuel dissolved in nitric acid —some tens of thousands of gallons — was discovered. It contained enough plutonium to make about 20 nuclear bombs.A nuclear dump site just six miles from the famous Champagne vineyards in France is leaking radioactive waste into the groundwater. According to the French nuclear safety authority, the “wall of a storage cell fissured” while concrete was being added to a recent layer of nuclear waste.It showed levels of radioactivity leaking from another dump site run by the same company in Normandy — at up to 90 times above European safety limits.That waste has seeped into underground water used by farmers, with contamination spreading into the countryside and threatening dairy production. The Champagne site will receive a total of 4,000 terabequerels of tritium — more than three times the amount of tritiumwaste as the dump site in Normandy.
Reprocessing is not a new idea. In fact, more than $40 billion has been spent globally on reprocessing technologies that have never become commercially successful. A 1996 report by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the costs of reprocessing and transmutation of irradiated fuel from waste produced by existing U.S. reactors alone easily could be more than $100 billion, in the addition to the cost of a geologic repository.

Reprocessing is no solution: Rutland Herald Online

July 8, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive | Leave a comment

IAEA calls on Serbia to address nuclear waste problem

AEA calls on Serbia to address nuclear waste problem 3 July 2009 | 15:00 | Source: B92 BELGRADE — The head of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) has warned that Serbia must dispose of any remaining atomic fuel as soon as possible. Mohammed ElBaradei and Serbian Science Minister Božidar Đelić today signed an additional protocol on cooperation between Belgrade and the IAEA, after visiting the Vinča Nuclear Science Institute yesterday.

ElBaradei warned that Serbia needed to dispose of its remaining supplies of atomic fuel to prevent any possible incidents.

B92 – News – Society – IAEA calls on Serbia to address nuclear waste problem

July 6, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive, uranium, wastes | Leave a comment

High-level forum stresses need to tackle radioactive waste in Central Asia

High-level forum stresses need to tackle radioactive waste in Central Asia UN News Centre 29 June 2009 – A high-level forum organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) wrapped up in Geneva today with the adoption of a joint declaration stressing the need to tackle the challenge of radioactive waste in Central Asia.The meeting brought together over 100 representatives from the region, international organizations, donors and others to discuss the problems associated with the uranium tailing deposits – left over from mining during the Cold War in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan – which contain more than 800 million tons of radioactive and toxic waste.

These countries have not been able to deal with the problem adequately due to lack of resources and capacity.

UNDP Administrator Helen Clark said the legacy of nuclear waste and related environmental management issues has a direct impact on human development in the region.

“As most of the uranium tailing sites are located in densely populated and natural-disaster prone areas of Central Asia’s largest river basins, they represent a major potential risk to the region’s water supply and the health of millions of people,” she said in a statement to the forum.

“Many more are likely to suffer if uranium contamination moves downstream to other areas,” she added.

High-level forum stresses need to tackle radioactive waste in Central Asia

June 30, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes | Leave a comment

NUCLEAR LEGACY

NUCLEAR LEGACY Soviet nuclear tests still haunt Kazakhs canada.com By Maria Golovnina, ReutersJune 25, 2009 “…………………………

Moscow tested about 500 bombs here between 1949 and 1989, exposing 1.5 million people like Abishev to extreme levels of radiation and contaminating an area roughly the size of Germany.

The Soviet Union conducted its last test here in 1989 and the facility was officially closed in 1991 as the Soviet collapse brought the global nuclear arms race to an end.

Twenty years on, the Semipalatinsk test range is silent, a steppe wind blowing gently through the abandoned site dotted by ruined concrete buildings and giant hunks of rusty metal.

But hundreds of thousands of residents, subjected to the equivalent of 20,000 Hiroshima bombs during 40 years of Russian experiments, are still sickened by the legacy of their past.

The incidence of cancer, mental illness and fertility problems in this region is among the highest in Kazakhstan, a vast Central Asian nation west of China, and infant mortality is five times higher than in other regions………………………………scientists say more needs to be done to study the effect of 40 years of tests on the people. It is an issue still little understood by science, and researchers say mutations are already being passed down from parents to their children.

“The biggest issue is not so much those who experienced the explosions directly but the impact on their children and grandchildren,” said Mikhail Panin, an environmental scientist who is researching the matter in the Semipalatinsk area.

NUCLEAR LEGACY

June 26, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Kazakhstan, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste cargo sailing the Barents Sea –

Nuclear waste cargo sailing the Barents Sea barents Observer 19 June 09

40 year old rusty spent nuclear fuel containers from Russia’s abounded submarine base Gremikha were shipped to Murmansk this week.

The voyage from Gremikha to Murmansk normally takes one day. This is the same route as the Russian retired submarine K-159 took when it sank northeast of the inlet to the Kola Bay in August 2003. The vessel which is sailing with the highly radioactive spent fuel this week is the 35 year old Serebryanka.

The rusty spent nuclear fuel containers have been stored outdoor at Gremikha for 40 years, posing a grave radiation threat. They contain uranium fuel from some of the Soviet Union’s first nuclear powered submarines, which at that time were based at Gremikha. The submarines reloaded their deadly radioactive spent fuel to the onshore open-air storage site.

Nuclear waste cargo sailing the Barents Sea – BarentsObserver

June 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive, wastes | Leave a comment

A potential nuclear mess

A potential nuclear mess LAS VEGAS SUN 19 June 09 Many companies are not setting aside enough money for closing of nuclear plants The companies that own most of the nation’s aging nuclear reactors are not putting aside an adequate amount of money to properly close them when the time comes, an Associated Press review of financial records found……………………..

Instead of planning for closure, plant owners are delaying the inevitable, with the help of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC has given 19 plants permission to mothball their reactors for as many as 60 years before closing them. The commission has also granted 20-year license extensions for 54 reactors, more than half of the nation’s plants, which could mean closure would come in 80 years.

The hope, apparently, is that the plant owners will be able to afford closure several decades down the road, and that is dangerous. The plants could become a safety and security risk if the owners don’t have the money to properly maintain and close them. Nuclear power critics wonder whether the companies that plan to mothball their plants will even be around in 60 years.

“Our concern is that they’ll just walk away from it,” said Jim Riccio of Greenpeace. “It’s like a sitting time bomb. The notion that you can just walk away from these sites and everything will be hunky-dory is just not true.”

Supporters of nuclear power like to portray it as a clean, environmentally friendly source of power, but that is not true. Nuclear power has created tremendous environmental and health hazards and the contamination the plants have created will be around, in some cases, for tens of thousands of years. These issues must be adequately addressed, yet the NRC appears to be letting the nuclear plant operators push off the problems to the next generation.

A potential nuclear mess – Las Vegas Sun

June 20, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive, wastes | Leave a comment

With nuclear waste piling up, FPL seeks Turkey Point rezoning

With nuclear waste piling up, FPL seeks Turkey Point rezoning Miami Herald 19 June 09 Florida Power & Light is seeking a zoning change at Turkey Point that most environmentalists know nothing about.

BY JOHN DORSCHNER

jdorschner@MiamiHerald.com

After more than two million pounds of nuclear waste has piled up in South Dade over 35 years, Florida Power & Light is quietly seeking a zoning change to allow six acres of its Turkey Point site to be used for new above-ground storage casks.

Environmentalists have known for a long time FPL planned to use casks but they knew little, if anything, about the need for a zoning change, which generally allows for public discussion that could lead to modifications of the utility’s plans……………………………….

Environmentalists emphatically want a hearing. ”There are very important issues here,” said Reynolds. “Because this site is so close to the water, we’re concerned about rising water levels with global warming and storm surges from hurricanes.”

LAST CHANCE

A county hearing may be the environmentalists’ last chance to stop expansion of the storage area. Last month, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection gave its approval for the site change.

For more than 30 years, FPL has stored the Turkey Point waste in stainless steel-lined covered concrete pools. Those pools will be filled in the next two years, Veenstra wrote in an e-mail, and FPL plans to switch to dry-cask storage in silo-shaped structures six feet wide and 16 feet tall, consisting of ”stainless steel containers secured inside concrete modules,” two to four feet thick………………………………..The environmentalists’ main concern is protecting the water. ”You’re asking for all kinds of trouble with water intrusion,” said Oncavage of the Sierra Club. “You could have hurricanes on top of global warming — how high do you have to have the casks raised so they’d be safe from storm surge?”

With nuclear waste piling up, FPL seeks Turkey Point rezoning – Miami-Dade – MiamiHerald.com

June 19, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear wastes, radioactive, wastes | Leave a comment

SC jobseekers line up to clean nuke waste

SC jobseekers line up to clean nuke waste google News By MEG KINNARD 19 June 09 “…………………..The jobs, most of them cleaning up the nuclear waste, are only temporary, funded through September 2011 as part of the federal stimulus package…………………….The new employees will be hired by the end of this summer and will focus on closing down several unused facilities, cleaning up about 600 acres of contaminated soil and disposing of or storing about waste created by processing spent nuclear fuel. Workers will also be tasked with closing several old reactors and evaporating millions of gallons of contaminated water.

June 19, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive, wastes | Leave a comment

Utah a nuclear dumping ground?

Globe Salt lake community College Tamara M. Wright & Tiffany Jacobs

6/10/09 EnergySolutions, Inc. – moniker of the famed Utah Jazz’s Arena, major political lobbyist, scholarship funder, and international nuclear services company-filed a lawsuit because a regional compact was forbidding them from allowing the disposal in Utah of 1600 tons of low-level radioactive waste (LLRW). The Northwest Compact, made by congress in 1985, is comprised of Utah and seven other states to responsibly oversee the disposal of nuclear waste.

These 3.2 million pounds of waste in question would likely enter the country through the ports of Charleston, South Carolina or New Orleans, Louisiana as 20,000 tons-40 million pounds-of LLRW, get processed in Tennessee, then move to its new home–or final resting place–specially selected in Clive, Utah…………

……..that is, if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) grants the company an import license, allowing this glamorous gunk to enter the U.S………

……….Many people in Utah, as well as in the rest of the United States, are concerned about this because the waste was to be coming from out of the country, from Italy. Statewide concern primarily consist of Utahns not wanting nuclear waste-especially not alien waste- in their own backyard; national concern is that this precedent could open the door for other states to be able to do the same thing, further contaminating backyards from foreign sources.

June 11, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive | Leave a comment

Hanford report shows repeated stoppages

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Seattle.pi.com 10 June 09 RICHLAND, Wash. — Work to clean out nuclear waste from underground tanks and to build a plant to treat the waste at the Hanford nuclear reservation was stopped 31 times over nine years to address safety or construction quality issues, according to a new report.

The Government Accountability Office report released Monday says more needs to be done to track the costs of the work stoppages.

June 11, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive | Leave a comment

Recycled radiation shows up at home | The Journal Gazette, Fort Wayne, Ind.

Recycled radiation shows up at homeLow levels revealed in consumer goods

journalgazette.net 7 june 09 Isaac Wolf

Scripps Howard News Service

Thousands of everyday products and materials containing radioactive metals are surfacing across the United States and around the world.

Cheese graters, reclining chairs, women’s handbags and tableware manufactured with contaminated metals have been identified, some after having been in circulation for as long as a decade. So have fencing wire and fence posts, shovel blades, elevator buttons and steel used in construction………………………One of the most conservative estimates comes from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, which put the number of radioactively contaminated metal objects unaccounted for in the United States in 2005 at 500,000. Others suggest the amount is far higher. The most recent NRC estimate – made a decade ago – is 20 million pounds of contaminated waste.

Recycled radiation shows up at home | The Journal Gazette, Fort Wayne, Ind.

June 8, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive, wastes | Leave a comment

Fight against foreign nuke waste in Utah continues

SALT LAKE CITY Google News (AP) 4 June 09 — An eight-state radioactive-waste-management entity plans to appeal a federal court ruling that said a company can dispose of foreign nuclear waste at its facility in the western Utah desert.

A judge last month ruled against the Northwest Compact, which includes Utah and seven other states. The compact’s executive director, Mike Garner, said officials decided Monday to take the case to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions Inc. wants to import up to 20,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from Italy. After processing in Tennessee, about 1,600 tons would be disposed of in Utah.

Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman had used the state’s veto power on the compact to try to keep the foreign waste out.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hMSdLzDAdHpYWegCkb41SXyjNZqgD98JH2880

June 4, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive, uranium | Leave a comment

Push is on for full cleanup of NY nuclear site

Push is on for full cleanup of NY nuclear site
newsday.com By CAROLYN THOMPSON | Associated Press Writer May 29, 2009 BUFFALO, N.Y. – With a little more than a week left to be heard in the decades-old debate over how to clean up a western New York nuclear site, supporters of complete decontamination say anything less would jeopardize the health of the Great Lakes and its vital freshwater.State and federal energy officials in November recommended a two-phase plan that would have them spend $1 billion to remove contaminated buildings and soil from the West Valley site over the next several years, while deferring for up to 30 years the larger question of whether to leave some radioactive waste forever buried…………..

………Environmentalists and others say removing all traces of high- and low-level waste is the only way, given the erosion-prone geology, to ensure that it will not eventually seep into nearby creeks, make its way into Lakes Erie and Ontario and contaminate drinking water supplies.

“Common sense dictates we make a decision now to protect the Great Lakes and protect the water,” Diane D’Arrigo of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service said Friday…………………….

………U.S. Reps. Brian Higgins and Eric Massa, both New York Democrats, support a full cleanup and said they would ask Energy Secretary Steven Chu for a 90-day extension of the public comment period that began in November.

Among others weighing in to support a full cleanup have been the Presbytery of Western New York, which passed a resolution citing its “Christian commitment to caring for creation,” Catholic Charities and the Western New York Council on Occupational Safety & Health.

Push is on for full cleanup of NY nuclear site — Newsday.com

May 30, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | antinuclear | Leave a comment

Kyrgyzstan: Radioactive Legacy Vexes Bishkek

Friday, May 29, 2009EURASIANET.org KYRGYZSTAN: RADIOACTIVE LEGACY VEXES BISHKEK David Trilling 5/27/09 – “…………………..In March 2008, officials from Kyrgyzstan’s Emergencies Ministry began moving radioactive uranium waste from Soviet-era dumps — located in poorly fortified ravines and along riverbeds downstream — into the hills just above his home. “It gives us headaches; our eyes itch,” Toko says as he gestures across the road. Now he grows his fruits and vegetables in water potentially contaminated by the radioactive materials.

A few kilometers downstream from Toko’s house there are even more lethal radioactive deposits — known as tailings. They line the river and surround the former industrial town of Mailuu Suu, now home to acres of derelict factory buildings. Not too long ago, the area was a desirable place to live. ………………………….as much as 10,000 tons of yellowcake (U3O8), a refined form of uranium that can be used either to produce nuclear energy or atomic weapons, was produced in Mailuu Suu for Soviet weapons programs. The first Soviet atomic weapon was made from uranium mined at Mailuu Suu, say officials at Kyrgyzstan’s National Academy of Science. Communist central planners tended to care about results, not the potential consequences of their decisions. Thus little thought was given to the disposal of radioactive waste. Approximately 2 million cubic meters of uranium tailings were buried in the area, according to Kyrgyz government statistics. It is the largest such site in the country. In addition to the 23 tailings dumps, workers sprinkled almost a million cubic meters of uranium waste rock atop 13 dumps nearby, on land still exposed to the rain and annual mudslides.

Many of the tailing sites and waste rock dumps are now poorly marked. Sheep graze on them. Water drains through the radioactive material and downstream into Uzbekistan and the Syr Darya, which winds its way through Central Asia’s most densely populated areas.

Mailuu Suu residents complain of goiter, anemia, cancer and early death. Radiation in some areas is 30 times normal levels. Former Mailuu Suu mayor Bumairam Mamaseitova, currently an MP in Bishkek with the opposition Communist Party, says rates of cancer in Mailuu Suu are the highest in Kyrgyzstan. “All of the diseases are related to those uranium tailings in the area.” For her, it is a personal issue. “This issue of uranium tailings worries me a lot because my father died when he was only 52 years old. He used to work in the uranium mines. I was born and have lived in Mailuu Suu. Most of my relatives died in their 50s.”

Dumps there are thought to be the most dangerous in Kyrgyzstan, due to the valley’s higher-than-avera

EurasiaNet Civil Society – Kyrgyzstan: Radioactive Legacy Vexes Bishkek

May 29, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Kyrgyzstan, wastes | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive, uranium | Leave a comment

Tribes protest nuclear waste plan

Tribes protest nuclear waste plan By Loa Iok-sin
STAFF REPORTER
TAIPEI TIMES May 24, 2009 Led by a royal descendant of an ancient line of Aboriginal Paiwan kings, residents and environmentalists yesterday staged a parade in Daren Township (達仁), Taitung County, to protest Taiwan Power Co’s (Taipower) plan to build a storage facility for nuclear waste there………………Opposed to the plan, more than 100 Paiwan and Puyuma Aborigines and environmentalists rallied outside a local elementary school yesterday morning, where they were blessed by Paiwan elders in a traditional ritual before they departed. The demonstrators then carried a cross on a two-hour march to the site selected for the facility.

After arriving at the site, the demonstrators erected the cross and made a smoke signal to inform their ancestral spirits of their determination to defend their ancestral homeland………………………..“This region has long been a traditional domain of the Tacupul Kingdom, and it’s the job of all descendants of Tacupul to defend it,” said Sauljaljuy Ruvaniyaw, a member of the Ruvaniyaw family — the royal family of the Tacupul Kingdom that ruled in Daren and its neighboring areas hundreds of years ago………………….The rally and the march are only the beginning of the mobilization against the nuclear waste dumping ground, Ruvaniyaw said.

Taipei Times – archives

May 24, 2009 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Taiwan, wastes | antinuclear, indigenous, nuclear, nuclear wastes, radioactive | Leave a comment