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………………
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
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
1 This Month
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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