NRC says it can’t block foreign nuke waste
Tennessee: NRC says it can’t block foreign nuke waste ” .
The Chattanooga Times Free Press 15 April 09 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it doesn’t have the authority to keep foreign radioactive waste from being imported into the United States just because the material is from another country.
A Tennessee congressman says that’s all the more reason to pass his bill giving the NRC that power. Without it, Rep. Bart Gordon said Tuesday, 20,000 tons of Italian nuclear waste could be brought to Kingston, Tenn., for processing. About 1,600 tons of material left after processing would be shipped to Utah for disposal.
.“Our country is the only country in the world disposing of other country’s radioactive trash,” Rep. Gordon, D-Murfreesboro, said in a news release. “The very agency responsible for regulating this waste has stated in no uncertain terms that they cannot prevent other countries from dumping their waste in our country. The bill I authored would change this, effective immediately.”…………
………..The NRC says that as long as the material can be imported safely and someone is willing to accept it, the commission can’t keep the waste out……..
…………..Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman has said he doesn’t want the waste coming to Utah, but EnergySolutions is challenging in federal court the state’s ability to use an interstate compact to keep the waste out.
Chattanooga Times Free Press | Tennessee: NRC says it can’t block foreign nuke waste
Oyster Creek’s waste stockpile just gets larger
Oyster Creek’s waste stockpile just gets larger pressof AtlanticCity.com By BEN LEACH 9 April 09 , Oyster Creek isn’t going anywhere, and neither is a stockpile of accumulated nuclear waste………………………………….While exact figures are not available for the amount at Oyster Creek, there are 2,180 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel in the state, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 2008-2009 Information Digest………………………. the spent fuel at most nuclear plants across the country goes into storage on the site of the nuclear plant. Oyster Creek stores all of its spent fuel on-site……………………. At Oyster Creek, spent fuel rods must be kept in the on-site storage pool for at least 10 years, according to a Lacey Township ordinance. From there, the rods are typically moved to the “dry” method, which involves placing them in a concrete cask.
The structures – 10 feet wide, 15 feet tall and 20 feet long – are made from reinforced concrete. According to David Benson, a spokesman for Oyster Creek, there are 20 modules at the plant, 16 of which are full.
Each chamber weighs about 600 pounds, with almost two-thirds of that weight a result of the spent fuel itself.
Those modules are protected by security around the clock,…………………..
Paul Gunter, director of reactor oversight for Beyond Nuclear Inc., a national nuclear watchdog, said the storage casks remain in plain sight despite security measures.
“Some kind of passing vehicle could just stop and shoot any of these casks from Route 9,” Gunter said.
The protection of nuclear waste is more than just a local issue.
Somali Piracy Exposes Weakness in UN Law of the Sea
Somali Piracy Exposes Weakness in UN Law of the Sea VA News.com By Alisha RyuNairobi 09 April 2009 The explosion of piracy off the coast of Somalia in recent years has exposed a weakness in the United Nations maritime law that makes high seas piracy illegal throughout the world…….
………European countries sent to Somalia thousands of drums of toxic waste, including nuclear waste, to be dumped at sea.…..
………..“Lots of people who are pirates now are not from coastal villages. They are not fishermen. They are from inside, former militiamen and they are motivated entirely by money. The fact that illegal fishing and dumping of toxic waste still goes on in Somalia is excellent PR [public relations] for the pirates. It means that when they capture a ship and they talk to a news organization and say, ‘We are just defending Somali waters,’ and so on, that plays very well in the communities they need to get support from along the coast,” he said.
VOA News – Somali Piracy Exposes Weakness in UN Law of the Sea
Nuclear waste hearing ends in opposition to Taitung site
Nuclear waste hearing ends in opposition to Taitung site Taiwan News 9 April 09
A public hearing discussing the possibility of storing low-grade nuclear waste in a Taitung County village ended on a note of strong opposition yesterday after two protesters had been taken away by police.After years of controversy and protests, the government decided to select Nantien Village in the county’s Tajen Township as one of the possible disposal sites for low-radioactive waste from its three existing nuclear power stations…………………………..Participants in yesterday’s hearing voiced strong opposition to the Tajen site. The area was geologically unstable, making it unsuitable to provide a permanent home for the low-radioactive materials, geologist Chiang Kuo-chang said.The chairman of the county’s tourism association, Yang Wen-ta, said the issue was larger than just Tajen and concerned not only environmentalists and the local aboriginal population, but the whole of Taitung County.
Before the hearing got under way, an organic farmer carrying a banner with an anti-nuclear slogan was prevented entrance to the meeting and shown into a police vehicle. An environmental activist who came outside to ask about the situation was also forced into the car and taken to a police station, reports said. Both said they were kept at the precinct office for two hours.
Power originally stored its waste on Orchid Island, a remote island off southeast Taiwan mainly inhabited by aboriginals.
Nuclear waste hearing ends in opposition to Taitung site – Taiwan News Online
Energy Department presses for license as if nothing’s changed – Las Vegas Sun
YUCCA MOUNTAIN:
Energy Department presses for license as if nothing’s changed
LAS VEGAS SUN 5 April 09 “……………………………………….The biggest of the alleged holes in the Energy Department’s Yucca license application, according to Nevada, is that the project’s safety plans rely on installing 11,000 titanium drip shields 100 years from now, after the waste has been placed inside the mountain. Installing the drip shields would require technology that hasn’t been invented, the state says, and the application does not consider the effects if the drip shields cannot be installed.Nevada, several counties and others would like to bring forward hundreds of other concerns about the Energy Department’s science. They say it fails to take into account expected changes in precipitation tied to global warming, fails to use the right calculations for volcanic activity, fails to properly anticipate how fast waste canisters will corrode and fails to substantiate that the department could block air traffic over the mountain to avoid air crashes.
These groups also argue that environmental impact statements didn’t sufficiently consider the effect of transporting waste to the site.In all, there were 320 contentions from 14 groups.The Energy Department says none of these critiques should be heard because they all violate technical requirements of the regulations.
Energy Department presses for license as if nothing’s changed – Las Vegas Sun
Nuclear-waste contract opposed
Nuclear-waste contract opposed Fairplay Daily News 02 Apr 2009
RUSSIAN environmental groups are urging rejection for a contract renewal to ship radioactive waste through St Petersburg’s port to a storage facility at Ust-Luga on the Gulf of Finland.Greenpeace told Fairplay that it had urged Russia’s government-owned nuclear fuel trading company Techsnabexport (Tenex) not to renew its contract to accept uranium hexafluoride …
NBRI’s radioactive waste being released in Gomti? –
NBRI’s radioactive waste being released in Gomti? THE TIMES OF INDIA 2 Apr 2009, 0215 hrs IST, Neha Shukla, TNN LUCKNOW: Could NBRI be dumping radioactive
waste in Gomti directly through its sewage system? Knowing that radioactive material can induce
cancer, birth defects and infertility in humans directly exposed to it, releasing it in Gomti is a huge big ecological disaster. A Bareilly-based NGO, Shree Mahalaxmi Aushadhiya Paudha Sanrakshan Vikas Samiti, has accused NBRI of polluting Gomti. It filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the high court claiming NBRI is illegally discharging radioactive elements in the river
NBRI’s radioactive waste being released in Gomti? – Lucknow – Cities – The Times of India
Yucca Mountain Plan for Nuclear Waste Dies
Yucca Mountain Plan for Nuclear Waste Dies
The New York Times March 31, 2009, Yucca Mountain Plan for Nuclear Waste DiesBy David M. HerszenhornNothing makes the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, madder than folks pushing for the storage of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Mr. Reid’s home state………………………Senator John McCain of Arizona, the former Republican presidential nominee and a big proponent of the nuclear storage area, declared on Tuesday that Yucca Mountain was no longer a realistic option given the opposition of the Obama administration……………………….Mr. Reid earlier this week said he had received firm assurances from President Obama, that Yucca Mountain would never be operational. “It’s dead,” Mr. Reid said in an interview.
Yucca Mountain Plan for Nuclear Waste Dies – The Caucus Blog – NYTimes.com
The Nuclear Goliath: Confronting Industrial Energy
TOWARD FREEDOM Frank Joseph Smecker 30 March 2009 Lately, many may have heard the affable radio jingles for nuclear energy as a clean and reliable candidate to supplant the U.S.’s reliance on foreign fossil fuels. This is sheer, malignant propaganda. Nuclear energy, along with its requisite mining, is not only unsustainable to a high degree, but is, in all aspects, violently rapacious as it dissolves the planet’s fecundity and ultimately encumbers the creation of life for generations to come. It is imperative that nuclear is removed from the lexicon of domestic energy policy and that we, as a people, consider alternative energy options while significantly reducing our consumption levels.
From its inception through mining processes to enrichment, fission, and post-fission, nuclear energy supplies the human race with more destructive waste than energy. A typical 1,000 megawatt plant produces roughly 500 pounds of plutonium and 20-30 tons of high-level radioactive waste annually. There is no known safe and secure way to dispose of the waste. The rate of decay of a radioactive isotope is called its half-life (e.g., the half-life of Plutonium-239 is 24,000 years). The hazardous life of a radioactive element–that being the amount of time needed before the element stops posing a significant risk to people’s mortal health–is at least 10 half-lives; that means plutonium-239 will remain deadly for at least 240,000 years.
DU (depleted uranium, U-238) has a half-life of 4.5 billion years–its hazardous life is uncertain. Despite there being no known safe and secure riddance of the material, the U.S. has made over 1 billion tons of DU for its own “practical” use. DU is used in armor-piercing incendiaries and has been released over Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Bosnia. According to research done by the World Health Organization (WHO), DU emits an ionizing radiation responsible for irreversible DNA and genetic damage, and ultimately cancer, an assortment of lethal lung/kidney diseases, and/or death; not to mention its fallout rings the globe by way of the jet streams above…………
Uranium mining is culpable for radiological contamination of the environment and for impacting groundwater systems. It requires approximately a ton of ore to extract two pounds of uranium. The leftover debris is known as uranium tailings (“for each ton of uranium oxide approximately 40,000 tons of tailings remain behind”) and they contain 85 percent of the original radioactivity of the ore. These tailings are comprised of alpha-emitting substances such as thorium-230 (half-life of 80,000 years), radium-226, radon-222, lead-210, polonium-210, etc. The tailings emit at least 10,000 times more radon gas than does the undisturbed ore. Radon gas can travel 1,000 miles in a day and can deposit on vegetation, soil, and water. The above mentioned radium-226, ubiquitous in uranium tailings, is a highly lethal “bone-seeking” alpha-emitting carcinogen with a half-life of 1,600 years. This element is “blown in the wind, washed by the rain, and leached into waterways” from the tailings. It concentrates by factors of thousands in aquatic plants and by the hundreds in terra plants. Radon gas from inoperative mines and abandoned tailings can be culpable for radioactive contamination not only on a continental level, but on a global basis as well…………
Strong local opposition to storage site in eastern France
Strong local opposition to storage site in eastern France*
Reuters, Thursday March 26 2009
Areva says hopes to find site in exchange for jobsBy Muriel Boselli and Marie MaitrePARIS, March 26 (Reuters) – Public opposition to storage sites for highly radioactive waste could derail France’s prized nuclear energy programme, the scientific adviser at French nuclear energy group Areva told Reuters on Thursday.France, where 58 nuclear reactors produce 80 percent of the country’s electricity, has not found permanent underground storage with the capacity to bury nuclear energy waste it has generated in the past three decades and the waste it will produce in future.
The highly radioactive waste generated so far is currently stored in above ground facilities at Areva’s nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in La Hague on the northwestern coast of Normandy.
Under French law, Areva will have to bury the waste in a permanent repository by 2025.
French nuclear authorities are considering permanently storing the waste, 500 metres below ground, near Bure in eastern France ……….
……………. But the project is being fiercely resisted by the Bure population, which is calling for a moratorium and a national public debate on radioactive waste management in France………..
……. “A general opposition (to underground storage) in France would eventually kill the nuclear (industry),” Bertrand Barre told Reuters in an interview at Areva’s headquarters.
Low-level waste emerges as hurdle for new nuclear reactors
The New York Times By KATHERINE LING, Greenwire
Published: March 16, 2009
While President Obama’s plan to find alternatives to storing high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev., is grabbing headlines, another problem has begun threatening license applications for new reactors.
What can be done with low-level nuclear waste?
There are dwindling places to put low-level nuclear waste — contaminated resins, filters, wood, paper, plastics, pipes, structural steel and pressure vessels that can be hazardous for up to 500 years. And nuclear-power opponent groups are filing and winning legal fights to force utilities to present disposal plans for low-level waste before they can build a new reactor.
“I’m going to argue low-level waste is a bigger issue than high-level waste right now,” Edward Sproat, then-director of the Energy Department’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, warned at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event last fall.
……………… the low-level waste problem is already affecting reactor applications.
The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy this month won a legal contention from the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board against Southern Nuclear Operating’s Vogtle reactor license application for Georgia. The same contention has already been granted in reviews of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Bellefonte application in Alabama; Unistar’s Calvert Cliffs, Md., application; and Dominion Power’s North Anna application in Virginia.
Advocacy groups plan to similarly contest Progress Energy’s Levy County, Fla., application and have already filed against Detroit Edison’s Fermi application.
Sara Barczak, program director for the Southern Alliance, said the focus on low-level waste represents a significant shift for regulators and utilities. “I think most people, when they see ‘low level,’ they say, ‘Oh, low level of radioactivity,’ but the definition of low level is so broad,” she said.
U.S. low-level waste comes from a wide range of places, including hospitals and laboratories, but the greatest — and most toxic — volume is produced by the Energy Department and the 104 commercial nuclear reactors.
Toxic for up to 100 years, Class A waste has just three storage options — sites at Clive, Utah; Richland, Wash.; and Barnwell, S.C. Only Richland and Barnwell accept Class B waste, which is toxic for up to 300 years, and Class C, toxic up to 500 years.
But there is another complication: Barnwell closed its gates to all states but Connecticut, New Jersey and South Carolina last summer. And Richland only accepts waste from 11 states in the Northwest and Rocky Mountain compacts.
That means 36 states with reactors, hospitals and other industry with radioactive materials have no place to send much of their waste.
……………………………..”The nuclear industry has really been hiding their head in the sand about the waste for all issues,” said Michael Mariotte, executive director of the nonprofit Nuclear Information and Resource Service, which opposes nuclear power…………………….
France’s nuclear wastes
Obama overturns war on science Rolling Stone 9 March 09 “…………………………………………………….There is a reason why France can get away will looking like it has clean nuclear energy. France ships the waste to Russia (big security risk for France). The U.S. can’t do that. Few states will take the waste and few states even want a reactor in their back yard. …………………………
Obama Overturns War on Science : Rolling Stone : National Affairs Daily
Future Dim for Nuclear Waste Repository
Future Dim for Nuclear Waste Repository
The New York Times By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: March 5, 2009
WASHINGTON — President Obama’s proposed budget cuts off most money for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project, a decision that fulfills a campaign promise and wins the president political points in Nevada — but raises new questions about what to do with radioactive waste from the nation’s nuclear power plants.
The decision could cost the federal government additional billions in payments to the utility industry, and if it holds up, it would mean that most of the $10.4 billion spent since 1983 to find a place to put nuclear waste was wasted.
A final decision to abandon the repository would leave the nation with no solution to a problem it has struggled with for half a century.
Lawyers are predicting tens of billions of dollars in damage suits from utilities that must pay to store their wastes instead of having the government bury them, with the figure rising by about a half-billion dollars for each year of additional delay.
The courts have already awarded the companies about $1 billion, because the government signed contracts obligating it to begin taking the waste in 1998, but seems unlikely to do so for years. The nuclear industry says it may demand the return of the $22 billion that it has paid to the Energy Department to establish a repository, but that the government has not yet spent.
The spent fuel that emerges from nuclear power plants has been accumulating for decades in steel-lined pools or giant steel-and-concrete casks near the reactors……………………….. Scientific concerns have since emerged, including the realization that water flows through Yucca Mountain a lot faster than initially believed. That raises the prospect that the nuclear waste would leach over time, polluting the water table. The scientific merit of the site has not been established by independent judges……………… Opponents of nuclear power contend that the nation’s failure to find a permanent repository for the waste is a reason to shut down nuclear reactors and forget about building more.
Abandonment of the Yucca Mountain depository would be a blow for the nuclear industry, which is hoping to begin work on new reactors for the first time in 30 years.
Radioactive waste to be kept above ground at Diablo Canyon
Radioactive waste to be kept above ground at Diablo Canyon
KSBY-TV
March 6, 2009
Reported by: Kelly Bush
The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant will have to keep its radioactive waste in above ground containers, at least for now.
…………. he proposed Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada is no longer an option.
At a hearing Thursday, Chu said the waste can stay at power plants while the Obama administration comes up with another plan.
Last August PG&E won a lawsuit against the Department of Energy. The court ruled the company should get back more than $200 million it spent on storage while waiting for the Nevada facility to be completed.
One island for nuke waste?
One island for nuke waste?
Mb.com .ph By Atty. Romeo V. Pefianco
March 10, 2009, 12:00am
(Editor’s note: Telling 92.2 M of us that one island, of our 7,000, can be converted into a safe nuclear waste facility won’t do as noted by the author.
EVERYTHING seems easy to some proponents to make the Bataan nuclear plant generate energy for the first time in the unseen future: 1) only $1 billion R48,500,000,000) is needed and 2) just one of our 7,000 islands for waste disposal will suffice……………….. Of course, the 113,000 people living within 50 miles of Carlsbad, and the many New Mexicans beyond that radius were understandably opposed and fought its operation since the site was first proposed in 1974.
Carlsbad is not a facility for hazardous/radioactive waste from nuclear plant/reactor fuel as represented by the geologist………………
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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