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Nuclear waste clean-up drive still lacks leader

From The TimesMarch 6, 2009Nuclear waste clean-up drive still lacks leaderRobin Pagnamenta, Energy and Environment Editor

The Government’s handling of the nuclear power industry’s rebirth was attacked by MPs last night as it emerged that the executive responsible for the £73 billion clean-up operation has still not been replaced eight months after his departure.

Ian Roxburgh quit as chief executive of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a key organisation tasked with the clean-up of 19 toxic UK sites, including Sellafield, Harwell and Dounreay, last July.

But The Times has learnt that the NDA is still struggling to find a replacement, leaving a string of pressing issues building up in his successor’s in-tray, including questions over how the UK should handle waste created by new reactors……………………………. This year alone the NDA will spend £2.8 billion on decontamination, including £1.8 billion from taxpayers. It

Nuclear waste clean-up drive still lacks leader – Times Online

March 6, 2009 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear power is still loaded with problems

Nuclear power is still loaded with problems StarTribune.com By Ken Bradley and Monique Sullivan- March 5, 2009  – “…………………….Shipping and storing one of the most dangerous substances ever created will continue be problem for a quarter of a million years. It isn’t responsible to leave this problem for future generations. It’s even worse to continue to add to existing stockpiles of nuclear waste.

In 2008, Bloomberg News reported that the most recent estimates for building a new nuclear power plant range from $6 billion to $12 billion. According to Cambridge Energy Research Associates, that cost has increased by 185 percent since 2000. Government subsidies are required for any new nuclear plant. These tax dollars could be invested more effectively in wind, solar, efficiency and other alternatives. The Congressional Budget Office assumes that half of all loans to nuclear power projects will default. Our state and nation cannot afford to take on this liability.

The cooling of nuclear power requires significant amounts of groundwater, and thermal energy production is one of the largest users of water in our state. Our present nuclear plants are located along the Mississippi River, where an accident would affect not only the local community but millions of people downstream. The location of plants and the storage of waste has been concentrated near low-income and native communities.

Nuclear power is still loaded with problems

March 6, 2009 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Yucca Mountain Is Dead. Now What?

Yucca Mountain Is Dead. Now What? THE NEW REPUBLIC  4 March 09  So what does this mean for the future of nuclear power in the United States? Not much in the short run, says Allison MacFarlane, a George Mason University professor and author of Uncertainty Underground, a book on Yucca Mountain and the long-term storage of high-level nuclear waste. The nation’s nuclear power plants, MacFarlane told me, will continue storing their spent fuel rods onsite—first in cooling pools and then in slightly more permanent dry-cask storage containers. The Energy Department is still contractually obligated to remove that waste and store it in some sort of permanent repository eventually, so it’s not as if utility companies are worried they’ll be left holding the bag………………………It will be important to construct a permanent geological repository at some point in the next few decades, especially if nuclear power production expands further as part of the push to curb carbon emissions. What’s more, the oft-mentioned option of reprocessing high-level nuclear waste and using it as fuel for fast-breeder reactors won’t make building a storage site any easier. Reprocessing may reduce the volume of high-level nuclear waste that needs to be stored, but it won’t reduce the amount of heat that the remaining waste actually produces—and that’s the main concern in finding a suitably sized repository, since you don’t want to keep hot waste too close together…………………….even if it is situated in a closed basin, there are still people who drink the basin’s groundwater.

Yucca Mountain Is Dead. Now What? – Environment and Energy

March 5, 2009 Posted by | USA, wastes | | Leave a comment

Not yet clear what Belarus will do with waste from nuclear power plant, researcher says | BELARUS NEWS

Not yet clear what Belarus will do with waste from nuclear power plant, researcher says /naviny.by 4 March 09

It is not yet clear what will be done with nuclear waste from Belarus’ would-be nuclear power plant, Valyantsina Brylyova, a senior researcher at the Sosny nuclear research center, said at Wednesday’s meeting with local resident in Astravets, Hrodna region, where the plant is scheduled to be built.

There will be two options to deal with the waste if the plant is built by Russia, the researcher said.

“Either we will give nuclear waste to Russia for processing and storage or will store it in special containers at the plant’s site. The latter is the most common practice,” she said, adding that “modern technologies allowed storing waste in containers for up to 100 years.

Not yet clear what Belarus will do with waste from nuclear power plant, researcher says | BELARUS NEWS

March 5, 2009 Posted by | Belarus, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear Waste

Nuclear Waste The Herald (UK) “……………………A large nuclear power station will produce up to 30 tonnes of high-level waste per year.After reprocessing and vitrification, using current technology, this reduces to a volume of three cubic metres.advertisementWorldwide, to date, there are just over 120,000 tonnes of high-level waste stored above ground at power stations and other sites.

When all this waste is treated, it will have a volume of 12,000 cubic metres; or it will fit into a cube 23 metres on each side.In other words, all of the high-level nuclear waste produced by all the commercial power reactors in the world would fit into 180 40ft shipping containers.

There are 438 commercial power reactors operating in the world today, producing 12,000 tonnes of high-level waste each year.So, our storage problems are increasing at the rate of 18 shipping containers per year………………………..

these numbers only take account of nuclear reactors used to generate electricity: the nuclear weapons industries produce much more high-level waste than commercial power generation (99 times more in the US).

Also, I don’t think shipping containers are the best place to store vitrified nuclear waste.”

Thomas W Durning,

Nuclear Waste (from The Herald )

March 4, 2009 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Officials Fear Vermont Could Be Home To Nuclear Waste

5 WPTZ.com February 27, 2009 BRATTLEBORO, Vt. — Officials in Vermont, Massachusetts and New York say a federal rule change could mean used nuclear fuel will be stored for decades on the site of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon.

The attorneys general from the three states say the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s proposed rule change is unsupported by science and history and violates the National Environmental Protection Act.

The NRC’s proposed rule change would allow spent nuclear fuel to be stored on the site until a permanent disposal facility can reasonably be expected to be available. But Vermont officials said it could be decades, if ever, before a long-term storage facility for spent waste is open. http://www.wptz.com/news/18811594/detail.html

March 2, 2009 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Obama Rejects Nuclear Waste Site After 20-Year Fight.

Obama Rejects Nuclear Waste Site After 20-Year Fight.

yucca-mt
By Daniel Whitten

Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama won’t let nuclear waste be stored at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, rejecting the project after 20 years of planning at a cost of at least $9 billion.

Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu “have been emphatic that nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, period,” said department spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller. The federal budget plan Obama released today “clearly reflects that commitment,” she said.

“The new administration is starting the process of finding a better solution for management of our nuclear waste,” Mueller said in an e-mail today.

Obama’s decision leaves unresolved a long-term plan for nuclear waste, primarily from power plants, even as utility companies seek to build more reactors.

Under the disputed proposal, nuclear waste from reactors around the nation was to be shipped to Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas, to be stored in tunnels 1,000-feet underground. The Energy Department had plans to store more than 109,000 metric tons at the site.

Radioactive waste is now spread among more than 120 sites in 39 states, according to the Energy Department. There are 104 operating commercial reactors in the U.S., and 17 applications are pending at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build 26 more reactors.

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

February 27, 2009 Posted by | USA, wastes | 1 Comment

Yucca – Mountain of Doubt

Mountain of Doubt Will the country’s only planned nuclear waste dump survive Obama? BY JUDITH LEWIS/HIGH COUNTRY NEWS FEBRUARY 25, 2009- “……………As of December 2006, $13.5 billion from utility bills and taxes has gone into researching the site, and utilities have accumulated some 55,000 metric tons of waste. By 2010, the waste will exceed Yucca Mountain’s limit of 70,000 metric tons………………

Doubts about Yucca Mountain’s geologic suitability have piled up as well.

Six hundred earthquakes have rumbled under Yucca Mountain in the last 20 years, one as great as magnitude 5.6. A panel of scientists put the chances of “igneous disruption” in the ridgeline’s ancient field of volcanoes at one in 6,250 over the next 10,000 years—which seems low until you consider that, in most of the United States, the probability of a volcano erupting is zero.

Even the site’s chief meteorological selling point—the dryness of the Nevada desert—may no longer play in its favor. For one thing, climates can change: In the winter of 2004 to 2005, enough rain fell in Death Valley, 20 miles to the West, to revive seedbeds that had lain dormant for a century.

For another, the absence of water may not be as significant as the presence of air. “Yucca Mountain is an oxidizing environment,” said Allison Macfarlane, an associate professor at George Mason University and editor of a book on Yucca Mountain, “and spent nuclear fuel is not stable in the presence of water and oxygen.”

Boise Weekly: Features: Feature: Mountain of Doubt

February 26, 2009 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Chu favors licensing Yucca Mountain dump, but Obama isn’t in favor of construction

Chu favors licensing Yucca Mountain dump, but Obama isn’t in favor of construction THE ELY TIMES STEVE TETREAULTS tephens Washington Bureau February 25, 2009 WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a group of state officials last Wednesday he favors moving toward licensing a nuclear waste repository in Nevada, although whether it would ever be built is another thing altogether………………………But several people who were at the 20-minute session said Chu stressed that President Barack

Obama doesn’t want the Yucca repository, “and I work for the president.”

The Ely Times – elynews.com :: News: Chu favors licensing Yucca Mountain dump, but Obama isn’t in favor of construction

February 26, 2009 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Dirty deal

Dirty deal Salt Lake tribune Lee Badger  02/22/2009 “……………The name EnergySolutions is a misnomer for a company that would make Utah the dumping ground for the world’s nuclear waste. With its ads, scholarships and Jazz arena name, it wants to endear the company to Utahns, hoping that we’ll allow it to bring in more waste. Now it even claims that it might share it profits to help solve Utah’s budget problems — a billion dollars! With that, and its substantial political contributions, clearly it’s trying to buy legislative permission to import hotter and foreign waste.

Of course, if something goes wrong with nuclear waste transportation or storage — well, then, the entire Wasatch Front will be downwinders. Profit sharing ? Why share with EnergySolutions when we’ll be taking all the risk?

 

Dirty deal – Salt Lake Tribune

February 23, 2009 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Anti-nuclear group urges people to be afraid of Drigg ‘secrets’

By Matthew Legg Business editor

Last updated 16:44, Monday, 16 February 2009

An anti-nuclear group has warned west Cumbrians: “Be afraid, very afraid” after bosses at the Drigg waste dump admitted they don’t know what’s buried there.

Management at the Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR), near Sellafield, have placed newspaper adverts appealing for ex-employees who worked at the site in 1960s, 70s and 80s to come forward.

The aim is to build up a picture of what was stored there and how it was buried………………………….Martin Forwood, spokesman for Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (Core), said the admission should send shockwaves through the local community. He added: “Be afraid, very afraid.

“If they can’t even account for the lower category of radioactive wastes, what hope is there for the volumes of significantly more dangerous intermediate and high level wastes they now so desperately want to dump deep underground somewhere in the UK?

“(The) advert implores workers who tipped nuclear waste into the site’s open trenches over a 25-year period from 1960 to try and remember exactly what it was they dumped……………………….

http://www.businessgazette.co.uk/1.514020?referrerPath=home

February 17, 2009 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

The problem of space junk

The problem of space junk The Space Fellowship 13 Feb 09 “………………………………Accumulation of space debris is also increasing radiation levels in the near-Earth environment.
 In its day, the Soviet Union launched 33 spacecraft with nuclear power units aboard. After fulfilling their missions, the units were jettisoned from the satellites and put in the so-called burial orbit (700 to 1,000 kilometers). There, their cores, consisting of fuel clusters, were jettisoned in turn.Currently, 44 radiation sources from Russia are parked in the burial orbit. They are: two satellites with unseparated nuclear power units (Cosmos-1818 and Cosmos-1867), fuel assemblies and 12 closed-down reactors with a liquid metal coolant, 15 nuclear-fuel assemblies, and 15 fuel-free units with a coolant in the secondary cooling loop. They are to spend no less than 300 to 400 passive years in the orbit. That is enough for uranium-235 fission products to decay to safe levels.

The United States is another contributor to the high levels of radiation in near-Earth space. In April 1964, its Transit-SB navigation satellite with a radio isotope generator aboard failed to enter orbit and broke into pieces. While burning up in the atmosphere, it scattered about a kilogram of plutonium-238 over the western part of the Indian Ocean north of Madagascar. The result has been a 15-fold increase in background radiation around the world. A few years later, the Nimbus-B weather satellite with a uranium-235 reactor crashed into the Indian Ocean.

Today, there are seven American radiation sources circling the Earth in orbits ranging from 800 kilometers to 1,100 kilometers, and two more in near-geostationary ones.The lurking threat of both Russian and American nuclear satellites is that, should they fall apart upon collision with space debris, vast expanses of near-Earth space would be contaminated. Additionally, if some of the fragments had a velocity after collision and destruction that was below orbital speed, they would fall out of orbit and pollute some parts of the Earth’s surface. In the worst-case scenario, the atmosphere could be heavily contaminated.

The Space Fellowship

February 14, 2009 Posted by | 2 WORLD, wastes | 1 Comment

Nuclear industry advised to hush up about Yucca

Beyond Nuclear 13 Feb 09 Nuclear industry advised to hush up about Yucca An article in the latest issue of Nuclear Waste reveals that the nuclear industry is being advised to go silent on the failed Yucca Mountain proposed radioactive waste dump site and “repackage its message” including to “stop talking about the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository altogether.” The article quoted Pat Cavanaugh, legislative director to Rep. Mike Doyl (D-Pa) as telling the industry to focus its message on “zero emissions and green jobs” and to disengage from the “yes-toYucca, no-toYucca fight.”

Beyond Nuclear

February 13, 2009 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Bill would limit future Utah nuclear power plants

Bill would limit future Utah nuclear power plants

Associated Press – February 11, 2009 1:15 PM ET SALT LAKE CITY (AP) – Lawmakers have introduced a bill in the Utah House that would effectively stop any nuclear power plant from setting up in the state. The measure introduced on Wednesday would prevent nuclear power plants from operating in Utah unless there is a federally licensed facility with adequate capacity available to dispose of any high-level radioactive waste. The proposed Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada has a capacity limit that is already too low to handle the material expected to be generated by the country’s 104 commercial reactors before they are shut down. Unless Congress removes the 77,000-ton limit on Yucca Mountain, it would have to approve a search for a second repository to handle future waste. A companion bill also has been introduced in the Utah Senate.

February 11, 2009 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste issue remains unaddressed

Nuclear waste issue remains unaddressed
APP.com Paula Gotsch February 10, 2009 If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission chooses to ignore the flashing red lights of unresolved safety problems at the Oyster Creek generating station by relicensing the facility to run for another 20 years, there still remains another unresolved problem no one has found a permanent answer for: What do you do with nuclear waste?

The problem is playing out all over the world as countries scramble to get rid of their poisonous legacy. Italy has entered into agreements to send theirs to the U.S. for temporary storage in places like Texas. The United Kingdom and France are trying to figure out what to do with their failed and leaking reprocessing plants that have contaminated rivers and land areas. Germany is concerned about childrens’ health problems around some of its storage facilities. And everywhere, the cost to even begin clean up is astronomical.

The tons of nuclear waste generated by Oyster Creek will continue to pile up in the spent fuel pool on top of the reactor and in cask storage on the ground………………….At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Toms River Library auditorium, the League of Women Voters of Ocean County will hold a Community Dialogue on options for communities faced with the problem of neighborhood nuclear waste……………………………..The league also will announce a new program, Equal Protection for Women and Children, that will address the problem of low-level radiation and how the most vulnerable are, with the current standard used by federal agencies, the least protected.

Nuclear waste issue remains unaddressed | APP.com | Asbury Park Press

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February 11, 2009 Posted by | wastes | Leave a comment

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