Obama Rejects Nuclear Waste Site After 20-Year Fight.
Obama Rejects Nuclear Waste Site After 20-Year Fight.
By Daniel WhittenFeb. 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.
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.”
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.”
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?
Anti-nuclear group urges people to be afraid of Drigg ‘secrets’
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……………………….
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.
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.”
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.
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
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive
Gulfnews: Cleaner solutions lead to murky problems
Cleaner solutions lead to murky problems By Leah Bower, Special to Gulf News February 09, 2009, 23:11Everybody is going nuclear – or at least everyone seems to be thinking about it as a shortcut to cheap plentiful electricity.I don’t know that I buy into it being an alternative energy source. ……………it certainly isn’t green………………………..everyone is going to have to find storage facilities for the radioactive waste produced by these plants.
Already it is almost impossible to build a waste site in the US or Europe without encountering incredibly hostile opposition from nearby residents. While China might not have that problem, most other nations are going to be hard-pressed to find dump sites inside their borders.
If everyone starts building reactors, who’s going to take the waste from nations desperate for safe storage?
Here in lies the problem with a band-aid energy solution like nuclear power: Everyone could end up with enough energy, but also with a load of radioactive waste that no one will touch.
Gulfnews: Cleaner solutions lead to murky problems
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, uranium, radioactive
Nuclear’s Nemesis
Nuclear’s Nemesis Baltimore Examiner
A Senate committee in Kentucky just passed a bill that could potentially allow for the new construction of nuclear power plants in the Bluegrass State.Essentially, the bill would repeal a 1984 law that placed a moratorium on nuclear power plant construction until the federal government can figure out how to dispose of the waste.So has the federal government figured out how to dispose of this waste?Not a chance.
One of the biggest problems with nuclear is that there is still no safe way to dispose of the waste. And no matter how hard they try, there’s simply no way to spin this one. Sure, there have been attempts.If you have to put something in a highly-engineered container, capable of withstanding enormous impact…then it ain’t safe!Still, nuclear power plants have been sending massive amounts of juice to the grid for years. And as a result, we now have tons of nuclear waste – and no safe, centralized place to put it………………………That $96.2 billion (right now) will be enough to develop a repository large enough to handle 77,000 metric tons. Here’s the problem – more than 56,000 tons are already stored at more than 77 reactor sites across the country. And this number increases by about 2,000 tons each year. So by 2036 (when Yucca would be filled to capacity), we’ll be looking at about 110,000 tons – or 33,000 tons above what Yucca can store. Translation – problem NOT solved!……………………………..Today, nuclear provides us with about 20 percent of our electricity. But between energy efficiency and conservation, and the large-scale integration of renewables, that 20 percent could easily be replaced – and without contributing to the safety and environmental issues that are undoubtedly associated with nuclear power.
Baltimore Renewable Energy Examiner: Nuclear’s Nemesis
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Experts say Vt. Yankee’s nuke waste is here to stay: Times Argus Online
Experts say Vt. Yankee’s nuke waste is here to stay
Times Argus By Daniel Barlow Vermont Press Bureau – Published: January 30, 2009
MONTPELIER – Don’t count on Yucca Mountain or any other national solution for the long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel, a consulting group told lawmakers Thursday.
As the Vermont Legislature considers Vermont Yankee’s proposal to continue operating past its 2012 expiration date, lawmakers should assume that all the radioactive spent fuel left will be stored on-site in Vernon, nuclear consultants said.
Bruce Lacy, the founder of Iowa’s Lacy Consulting Group, told members of several House and Senate committees that dry cask storage of this waste material at nuclear power plants has become the default United States policy……………………..Here in Vermont, lawmakers are considering a request by the owners of Vermont Yankee to extend the Vernon plant’s operating license for another 20 years beyond its 2012 end date. Storage of the nuclear waste – the byproduct of creating nuclear power – is one of the chief concerns lawmakers are struggling with………………………Rep. Sarah Edwards… said she worried about the long-term storage of the waste at the Vernon facility, especially if there is a natural disaster there, such as flooding.
She was surprised Thursday to learn that federal regulators did not consider the possible implications of global warming in their flooding predictions for the facility.
Experts say Vt. Yankee’s nuke waste is here to stay: Times Argus Online
Nuclear waste bound for U.S. | www.tennessean.com | The Tennessean
Nuclear waste bound for U.S. Tennessean.com 2 Feb 09 c: U.S. should just say no to imported hazard
For a nation that still hasn’t found a sure-fire way of storing its own nuclear waste without worry, it certainly shouldn’t be taking waste from other nations.
U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon, a Democrat, and Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Republican, have teamed on legislation that would ban foreign nuclear waste. The legislation follows efforts by a Utah company, EnergySolutions, to import up to 20,000 tons of nuclear waste from Italy that would go through ports at Charleston, S.C., or New Orleans, and through Tennessee on its way to the EnergySolutions site in Utah………………….. for each load that goes through a community, there could be a problem. Alexander says he agrees with Gordon that the U.S. shouldn’t become “the world’s nuclear garbage dump.”The bill offered by Gordon and Alexander should be a no-brainer. Foreign nuclear waste should be prohibited from being brought into this country…………………………..The fact is no one is in position to guarantee the safety of domestic nuclear energy, and no amount of trouble from coal-fired power plants completely erases nuclear concerns. The fight against foreign waste is hard to square with a gung-ho cry for more domestic power generated from nuclear technology.
Nuclear waste bound for U.S. | www.tennessean.com | The Tennessean
Rebound of nuclear plants raising worries over waste
Rebound of nuclear plants raising worries over waste International Herald Tribune (New York times with Reuters) by James Kanter and Matthew Wald
January 30, 2009 As France presses ahead with building more next-generation nuclear reactors, new evidence emerged Friday to suggest that industry and governments may be unprepared to handle the increasingly toxic waste that will result.Highlighting the importance of the technology in France, both as its main source of electricity and as a major export industry, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France announced late Thursday that Électricité de France, Europe’s biggest power producer, was awarded the contract to develop a second atomic reactor using next-generation technology……………………………an anti-nuclear group said that information it gleaned from industry reports – publicly available but which have received little attention so far – show that waste from the EPR will be more radioactive by a factor of seven because more uranium is burned up. That will make it more expensive to handle and store safely, according to Greenpeace, which provided the details on Friday to the International Herald Tribune.“Despite the French government’s global marketing of the EPR as cheap and safe, the evidence proves otherwise,” said Rianne Teule, an international nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace who is based in Amsterdam.
The next wave of reactors “poses an ever-increasing burden on people’s budgets and danger to their health, now and far into the future,” Teule said……………………..here are no EPRs in operation anywhere in the world, but the first is under construction at Olkiluoto, an island in the West of Finland, and the second in Flamanville, in northern France.
Teule said the evidence about the radioactivity of the waste was drawn from a report by Posiva, a waste disposal company owned by Finnish nuclear operators, and from the Swiss organization Nagra, which oversees management of nuclear waste.
Teule said the waste would pose greater dangers to workers from higher radiation doses during transfer and storage than current waste. She also said the waste would need to be stored for longer in areas above ground, where it is potentially exposed to terrorists.
Those factors, among others, would increase the overall cost of nuclear energy – costs that Teule said were not properly accounted for by industry and governments.
There are no long-term facilities for disposing or burying high-level nuclear waste anywhere in the world,…………………………….Hans Riotte, the head of the Radiological Protection and Radioactive Waste Management Division at the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris, said waste from the EPR, although smaller in volume, would be more radioactive than existing forms of high-level waste because it would be denser……………………….ny reports about the cost, or safety, of its EPR model still are a sensitive matter for the company, which is competing to become the designer of reactors for the next generation of nuclear plants in the United States and elsewhere………………………………
Problems at the EPR site in Finland mean the reactor already is badly overdue and vastly over budget, even though it was designed to have a shorter construction period than previous models.
The site has been plagued by water-logged concrete, faulty welds and flawed pipes, delaying the reactor start date by at least three years and raising costs by roughly 50 percent…………………………………Areva also is vying sell the technology to the United Arab Emirates as part of a project led by Total and GDF Suez.
Rebound of nuclear plants raising worries over waste – International Herald Tribune
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
Selling out Nevada
Selling out Nevada Las vegas Sun 25 Jan 09
Gibbons plans to cut fight against Yucca Mountain, and some in GOP want blood money Gov. Jim Gibbons. proposed budget guts the state’s Agency for Nuclear Projects, which is responsible for pressing Nevada’s case. He cut the staff from seven to two. He also slashed funding for the state’s legal challenges.
………………..Nevada is at a critical juncture in its fight. The Energy Department last year asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to build the dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and Nevada needs to put on a strong case to the commission. Nevada also has a series of legal challenges against the Energy Department and has put the department on its heels. Nevada has continually shown the department’s work to support the project is shoddy and incomplete. The momentum has turned against a dump at Yucca Mountain.
President Barack Obama has said he is against the project, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has led the congressional delegation’s effort to stop a Yucca Mountain repository, is preparing for a knockout.
Gibbons is undermining that, and some of his Republican colleagues, particularly state party Chairwoman Sue Lowden, say Nevada should negotiate a deal to drop its opposition in exchange for money……………………..Disgraceful. They should be ashamed. The Legislature should reject Gibbons’ plan.
Selling out Nevada – Las Vegas Sun
Tags: nuclear, antinuclear, radioactive, uranium
1 This Month
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
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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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