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Nuclear waste storage facility told to take action after breach

Federica Bedendo,BBC News North East and Cumbria, 20 Apr 24, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c88zjl0l8j9o

A nuclear waste storage facility has been told to take action, after it breached its environmental permit.

The Environment Agency (EA) has written to bosses at the Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR) in Cumbria with concerns about a delay in securing waste at the site.

Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), which manages LLWR, said the delays did not have an impact on the surrounding area and that they had taken the time to ensure the right solutions were created for the safe disposal of nuclear waste.

The EA said it could not comment on the matter due to impartiality rules during election periods.

The letter, written by the EA in January, and obtained by the BBC through a Freedom of Information request, sets out new conditions that LLWR must comply with.

It comes after LLWR failed to make sufficient progress on operations to secure the radioactive waste – known as capping – meaning it breached the terms of its environmental permit.

Missed deadline

Martin Walkingshaw, chief operating officer at NWS, said: “Placing the engineered cap over the legacy radioactive waste disposal facilities at the UK’s LLWR is a first of its kind activity for the UK.”

He said Nuclear Waste Services were engaged with the Environment Agency on a regular basis about progress.

He added: “Capping is a key part of the disposal, and we are currently implementing the required design by procuring, importing and emplacing thousands of tonnes of capping materials in line with our planning conditions and stringent quality requirements.”

In their letter, the Environment Agency also told LLWR it had failed to meet a deadline for a previously imposed improvement condition, regarding a request for a written plan to protect waste in certain areas, including capping one of them.

While the plan was delivered, there were delays in implementing it.

An initial date of completion of 2028 had been agreed with the EA, but discussions are now under way to extend the deadline as LLWR believes more time is needed.

NWS has blamed delays on issues with the design of the engineered cap.

“Throughout the design phase a number of assumptions were tested, as is common practice. Not all of these assumptions held true, and one in particular, caused a significant change in design.”

April 23, 2024 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Japan starts 5th ocean discharge of Fukushima nuclear-tainted wastewater despite opposition

(Xinhua) Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Liang Jun, April 19, 2024

TOKYO, April 19 (Xinhua) — Japan on Friday started the fifth-round of release of nuclear-contaminated wastewater from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean.

Despite opposition among local fishermen, residents as well as backlash from the international community, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the plant’s operator, started discharging the radioactive wastewater in the morning, the first round in fiscal 2024.

Similar to the previous four rounds, about 7,800 tons of the wastewater, which still contains tritium, a radioactive substance, will be discharged until May 7.

TEPCO analyzed the water stored in the tank scheduled for release, and found that the concentrations of all radioactive substances other than tritium were below the national release standards, while the concentration of tritium that cannot be removed will be diluted with seawater, Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported.

TEPCO will measure the concentration of radioactive substances such as tritium in the surrounding waters every day during the period to investigate the effects of the release, it added.

The Fukushima nuclear-contaminated water release began in August 2023, and a total of about 31,200 tons of the water was released in four rounds in fiscal 2023, which ended in March.

In fiscal 2024, TEPCO plans to discharge a total of 54,600 tons of contaminated water in seven rounds, which contains approximately 14 trillion becquerels of tritium.

April 21, 2024 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, oceans, wastes | Leave a comment

EDF wants public views on plans for Hinkley Point B decommissioning

By John Thorne Wednesday 17th April 2024 

ENERGY firm EDF is carrying out a public consultation on its plans for the
decommissioning of Hinkley Point B nuclear power station, a process which
will continue into the 22nd century. The two Hinkley B reactors were shut
down in August, 2022, after 46 years of electricity generation, but will
not be able to be removed until about 2107. EDF has since been removing the
used fuel from the reactors in preparation for the station’s
decommissioning phase, which will involve dismantling and demolishing plant
and buildings on the site. More than half of the spent fuel stringers have
been removed from the first reactor and sent on in flasks for storage in
Sellafield, Cumbria.

West Somerset Free Press 17th April 2024

https://www.wsfp.co.uk/news/edf-wants-public-views-on-plans-for-hinkley-point-b-decommissioning-680621

April 21, 2024 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear expert fears flooded radioactive dump sites in Siberia can threaten Arctic Ocean

 https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/nuclear-safety/2024/04/expert-fears-flooded-radioactive-dump-sites-could-leak-river-system-flow

Floodwaters in Tomsk region threatens to submerge the river banks in Seversk where highly radioactive liquid waste from the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons program for decades were injected into two unprotected underground reservoirs.

Water level on Monday continues to rise in the Tom River in Western Siberia.

The record floods are among the worst ever in the region and local emergency services help in evacuation of people living near tributaries of the Ob river system, including Tobol, Irtysh and Tom rivers. 

Thousands of houses and tens of thousands of people live in the emergency zones, according to Kremlin information platform RIA Novosti. High snow falls in winter combined with swiftly rising spring temperatures and heavy rains are the reasons for the current extreme flood, Reuters reports.

Drone photos by RIA Tomsk shows how the swelling Tom River is inundating villages on the westside river banks. According to NEXTA news channel, water in Tom River has risen by nearly a meter over the day.

On the east side, a short 15 kilometers north of the city of Tomsk, is the closed city of Seversk. Until 1992, the secret city was code-named Tomsk-7 and was home to one of three production facilities for weapons-grade plutonium for the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons program.  

“There ain’t one single public message that Rosatom is monitoring the situation, that they have the situation under control,” says Aleksandr Nikitin, an exile nuclear safety expert working for the environmental foundation Bellona.

Nikitin was until the all-out war against Ukraine a member of Rosatom’s Public Council. The Council involved civic organizations and scientists in Russia and was aimed at raising public awareness of Rosatom’s core operations

“It’s surprising that there aren’t even simple statements like we have everything under control,” Nikitin adds. 

According to the World Nuclear Association, the Siberian Chemical Combine in Seversk had five plutonium production reactors, an uranium enrichment plant and a processing plant for plutonium warheads. Although shut down, enormous amount of nuclear waste is still on site.

Most challenging are the liquid radioactive waste, both on the surface and pumped down in deep-well injections. The nuclear dump is likely Russia’s largest, by IAEA estimated to be 70 million cubic meters. 

Widespread contamination in an area up to 28 kilometers came after a concrete cover blew off a reaction vessel at the plutonium extraction facility in 1993. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) listed it as a major radiological accident.

In 2000, a joint U.S.-Russian study found dangerous levels of radioactivity flowing into Russia’s Tom River from the Siberian Nuclear Combine. 

Critics crumbled 

Local environmentalists in Tomsk filed a lawsuit against the company in the late 1990s in an attempt to revoke a dumping permit for highly radioactive liquid waste down under. They feared for the city’s drinking water. 

In Putin’s Russia, critical voices are gone. Environmental groups like Greenpeace, World Wide Fund for Nature, and Bellona are all listed as undesirable by law. 

TV2 in Tomsk, known for its independent journalism and free debate since the early years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, got its broadcast shut down in 2014. After the start of the full-scale war in 2022, the reporters closed their YouTube producing newsroom and left Russia. 

Aleksandr Nikitin is worried radioactivity could leak out to the river system under the current flood, but that information will not come before it is too late. 

“Putin doesn’t give a fuck about these floods and other shitty lives of people in Russia.., he has a war and geopolitical goals of fighting the damned West,” Nikitin says. 

For Rosatom, he adds, the logic is simple: “.. if you say that everything is under control, and then something happens, then you will have to answer for it.” 

Nikitin says Rosatom is sure that in any case it will not bear any responsibility.

“Rosatom is today Putin’s “favorite child,” he explains.

It was Lavrenty Beria, director of Joseph Stalin’s secret police, who lead the establishment of the first plutonium production facilities east of the Ural mountains in the late 1940ties, early 1950ties. KGB and the Soviet nuclear establishment walked hand-in-hand for decades. What nowadays is Ulitsa Pervomayskaya (May 1st Street) in Seversk, was previously named Ulitsa Beria. 

Arctic Ocean 

A major concern for Aleksandr Nikitin and Bellona is that no one can exclude that leakages from a possible overflowed radioactive waste site could reach the Arctic Ocean.

Tom River is a tributary of the Ob which flows out in the Ob Bay and Kara Sea above the Arctic Circle. 

During the years 1948-56, liquid radioactive waste from the Mayak reprocessing plant north of Chelyabinsk was discharged directly into the nearby river Techa which is connected to the river system Iset, Tobol, Irtysh and Ob. Especially Strontium-90, but also other isotopes, were carried by the water more than 2,000 kilometers downstream and measured in the Kara Sea, first time in 1951.

A joint Norwegian-Russian expedition to the Kara Sea in 1994 found traces of the same radionuclides, although in lower levels. 

“Everything is now possible,” says Aleksandr Nikitin when seeing the photos of the flooded riverbanks of the Tom River. 

“It all depends on the scale of leakages.”

“I’m sure the Siberian Chemical Combine sit quietly and wait. Hoping for it all to go over,” Nikitin says to the Barents Observer. 

April 19, 2024 Posted by | climate change, Russia, safety, wastes | Leave a comment

Spent nuclear fuel mismanagement poses a major threat to the United States. Here’s how.

Restricting its analyses to a severe earthquake scenario allowed the NRC to help allay public fears over the dangers of spent fuel pool accidents. There is good reason to question whether severe earthquakes pose the greatest threat to spent fuel pools.

Solar storms, physical attacks, and cyberattacks have the potential to cause a nightmare scenario …….

Bulletin, By Mark Leyse | April 2, 2024

Irradiated fuel assemblies—essentially bundles of fuel rods with zirconium alloy cladding sheathing uranium dioxide fuel pellets—that have been removed from a nuclear reactor (spent fuel) generate a great deal of heat from the radioactive decay of the nuclear fuel’s unstable fission products. This heat source is termed decay heat. Spent fuel is so thermally hot and radioactive that it must be submerged in circulating water and cooled in a storage pool (spent fuel pool) for several years before it can be moved to dry storage.

The dangers of reactor meltdowns are well known. But spent fuel can also overheat and burn in a storage pool if its coolant water is lost, thereby potentially releasing large amounts of radioactive material into the air. This type of accident is known as a spent fuel pool fire or zirconium fire, named after the fuel cladding. All commercial nuclear power plants in the United States—and nearly all in the world—have at least one spent fuel pool on site. A fire at an overloaded pool (which exist at many US nuclear power plants) could release radiation that dwarfs what the Chernobyl nuclear accident emitted.

Many analysts see very rare, severe earthquakes as the greatest threat to spent fuel pools; however, another far more likely event could threaten US nuclear sites: a widespread collapse of the power grid system. Such a collapse could be triggered by a variety of events, including solar storms, physical attacks, and cyberattacks—all of which are known, documented possibilities. Safety experts have warned for decades about the dangers of overloading spent fuel pools, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Congress have refused to act.

The threat of overloaded spent fuel pools. Spent fuel pools at US nuclear plants are almost as densely packed with nuclear fuel as operating reactors—a hazard that has existed for decades and vastly increases the odds of having a major accident.

Spent fuel assemblies could ignite—starting a zirconium fire—if an overloaded pool were to lose a sizable portion or all of its coolant water. In a scenario in which coolant water boils off, uncovered zirconium cladding of fuel assemblies may overheat and chemically react with steam, generating explosive hydrogen gas. A substantial amount of hydrogen would almost certainly detonate, destroying the building that houses the spent fuel pool. (Only a small quantity of energy is required to ignite hydrogen gas, including electric sparks from equipment. It is speculated a ringing telephone initiated a hydrogen explosion that occurred during the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.)

A zirconium fire in an exposed spent fuel pool would have the potential to emit far more radioactive cesium 137 than the Chernobyl accident released. (The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has conducted analyses that found a zirconium fire at a densely packed pool could release as much as 24 megacuries of cesium 137; the Chernobyl accident is estimated to have released 2.3 megacuries of cesium 137.) Such a disaster could contaminate thousands of square miles of land in urban and rural areas, potentially exposing millions of people to large doses of ionizing radiation, many of whom could die from early or latent cancer.

In contrast, if a thinly packed pool were deprived of coolant water, its spent fuel assemblies would likely release about 1 percent of the radioactive material predicted to be released by a zirconium fire at a densely packed pool. A thinly packed pool has a much smaller inventory of radioactive material than a densely packed pool; it also contains much less zirconium. If such a limited amount of zirconium were to react with steam, most likely too little hydrogen would be generated to threaten the integrity of the spent fuel pool building.

After being cooled under water for a minimum of three years, spent fuel assemblies can be transferred from pools to giant, hermetically sealed canisters of reinforced steel and concrete that shield plant workers and the public from ionizing radiation. This liquid-free method of storage, which cools the spent fuel assemblies by passive air convection, is called “dry cask storage.”

A typical US storage pool for a 1,000-megawatt-electric reactor contains from 400 to 500 metric tons of spent fuel assemblies. (Dry casks can store 10 to 15 tons of spent fuel assemblies, so each cask contains a far lower amount of radioactive material than a storage pool.) Reducing the total inventories of spent fuel assemblies stored in US spent fuel pools by roughly 70 to 80 percent reduces their amount of radioactive cesium by about 50 percent. And the heat load in each pool drops by about 25 to 30 percent. With low-density storage, a pool’s spent fuel assemblies are separated from each other to an extent that greatly improves their ability to be cooled by air convection in the event that the pool loses its coolant water. Moreover, a dry cask storage area, which has passive cooling, is less vulnerable to either accidents or sabotage than a spent fuel pool.

In the aftermath of the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan, in which there was a risk of spent fuel assemblies igniting, the NRC considered forcing US utilities to expedite the transfer of all sufficiently-cooled spent fuel assemblies stored in overloaded pools to dry cask storage. The NRC decided against implementing such a safety measure.

To help justify its decision, the NRC chose to analyze only one scenario that might lead to a zirconium fire: a severe earthquake. In 2014, the NRC claimed that a severe earthquake with a magnitude “expected to occur once in 60,000 years” is the prototypical initiating event that would lead to a zirconium fire in a boiling water reactor’s spent fuel pool.

The NRC’s 2014 study concluded that the type of earthquake it selected for its analyses would cause a zirconium fire and a large radiological release to occur at a densely packed spent fuel pool once every nine million years (or even less frequently). Restricting its analyses to a severe earthquake scenario allowed the NRC to help allay public fears over the dangers of spent fuel pool accidents. (At the time of the Fukushima Daiichi accident, the New York Times and other news outlets warned that a zirconium fire could break out in the plant’s Unit 4 spent fuel pool, causing global public concern.)

There is good reason to question whether severe earthquakes pose the greatest threat to spent fuel pools. A widespread collapse of the US power grid system that would last for a period of months to years—estimated to occur once in a century—may be far more likely to lead to a zirconium fire than a severe earthquake. The prospect that a widespread, long-term blackout will occur within the next 100 years should prompt US utilities to expedite the transfer of spent fuel from pools to dry cask storage. Utilities in other nations, including in Japan, that have overloaded pools should follow suit.

Solar storms, physical attacks, and cyberattacks have the potential to cause a nightmare scenario in which the US power grid collapses, along with other vital infrastructures—leading to reactor meltdowns and spent fuel pool fires, whose radioactive emissions would aggravate the disaster.

Vulnerability to solar storms……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Vulnerability to physical attacks.……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Vulnerability to cyberattacks. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Insufficient public safety.…………………………………………………………………………………….

Overloading spent fuel pools should be outlawed. Safety analysts have warned about the dangers of overloading spent fuel pools since the 1970s. For decades, experts and organizations have argued that in order to improve safety, sufficiently cooled spent fuel assemblies should be removed from high-density spent fuel pools and transferred to passively cooled dry cask storage. Sadly, the NRC has not heeded their advice.

In the face of the NRC’s inaction, Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts introduced The Dry Cask Storage Act in 2014, calling for the thinning out of spent fuel pools. The act, which Senator Markey has reintroduced in subsequent congressional sessions, has not passed into law.

The relatively high probability of a nationwide grid collapse, which would lead to multiple nuclear disasters, emphasizes the need to expedite the transfer of spent fuel to dry cask storage. According to Frank von Hippel, a professor of public and international affairs emeritus at Princeton University, the impact of a single accident at an overstocked spent fuel pool has the potential to be two orders of magnitude more devastating in terms of radiological releases than the three Fukushima Daiichi meltdowns combined. If the US grid collapses for a lengthy period of time, society would likely descend into chaos, as uncooled nuclear fuel burned at multiple sites and spewed radioactive plumes into the environment.

The value of preventing the destruction of US society and untold human suffering is incalculable. So, on the issue of protecting people and the environment from spent fuel pool fires, it is surprising when one learns that promptly transferring the nationwide inventories of spent fuel assemblies that have been cooled for at least five years from US pools to dry cask storage would be “relatively inexpensive”—less than (in 2012 dollars) a total of $4 billion ($5.4 billion in today’s dollars). That is far, far less than the monetary toll of losing vast tracts of urban and rural land for generations to come because of radioactive contamination.

One should also consider that plant owners are required, as part of the decommissioning process, to transfer spent fuel assemblies from storage pools to dry cask storage after nuclear plants are permanently shut down. So, in accordance with industry protocols, all spent fuel assemblies at plant sites are intended to eventually be placed in dry cask storage (before ultimately being transported to a long-term surface storage site or a permanent geologic repository).  https://thebulletin.org/2024/04/spent-nuclear-fuel-mismanagement-poses-a-major-threat-to-the-united-states-heres-how/

April 5, 2024 Posted by | Reference, safety, USA, wastes | 1 Comment

How much will extra decades of nuclear decommissioning work at Dounreay cost?

 By Gordon Calder gordon.calder@hnmedia.co.uk, 28 March 2024

The cost of extending the decommissioning work at Dounreay is expected to
be published in the summer, according to a spokeswoman at the site.

She was responding to questions from the John O’ Groat Journal, following last
week’s announcement that the clean up-operation at the nuclear plant will
continue until the 2070s – almost 40 years longer than the previous date of
2033. The cost of the programme was previously said to be about £2.9
billion.

Asked about the estimated cost of extending the decommissioning,
the spokeswoman said: ” The estimate for delivering the revised lifetime
plan to take the Dounreay site to its interim end point, will form part of
the Nuclear Provision, and be published in the NDA (Nuclear Decommissioning
Authority) 2023/24 annual report in the summer. We are committed to
delivering the Dounreay mission as effectively and efficiently as
possible.”

John O’Groat Journal 28th March 2024

https://www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk/news/how-much-will-extra-decades-of-work-at-dounreay-cost-346451

April 3, 2024 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Radioactive nuclear waste burial ground in Pittsburgh area to be cleaned up by federal government

By Andy Sheehan, April 1, 2024 ,
 https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/radioactive-nuclear-waste-burial-ground-armstrong-county-parks-township/

KISKIMERE, Pa. (KDKA) — An untold number of 55-gallon drums containing radioactive waste are buried in shallow trenches on a 144-acre site in Armstrong County.

They pose a health and safety danger to those who live nearby. But now after decades of lawsuits and public outcry, the federal government is getting ready to finally clean it up.

Debbie Secreto has lived next to the contaminated field in Parks Township all of her life. She played on it as a kid, unaware of the hidden danger. She was diagnosed with breast cancer at 44 years old.

There are 10 shallow trenches filled with haphazardly disposed of radioactive nuclear waste. Though she and other cancer survivors won a class action settlement years ago, she’s remained in her childhood home.

“It’s hard living like this, but what are you going to do? Move? I don’t want to move. I’m 71 years old,” Secreto of Kiskimere said.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the company MUMEC in nearby Apollo produced nuclear fuels for power plants and nuclear submarines and buried the waste in Parks Township. Now, after decades of fighting for it, neighbors like Secreto have won another major victory.

The United States government is finally taking action, now building the needed infrastructure to commence a six-year, $500-million project to excavate all of that nuclear waste to decontaminate and clean the entire 144-acre site.

Beginning next year, contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will begin the slow and methodical process of excavating an estimated 30,000 cubic yards of contaminated waste. They will unearth a little bit at a time, scanning it with X-rays and radiation detectors before encapsulating it in steel containers. 

The waste will then be trucked and shipped by rail to a disposal site in Utah, where it will be permanently buried deep underground.

But while happy the waste is going elsewhere, neighbors are concerned the unearthing could spark a nuclear event, releasing toxins into the air and water.

“Everybody up here is worried about it. It’s going to be dangerous,” said Karen Brenner of Kiskimere.

“I can promise that we are committed to protecting the health and welfare of the community and the environment,” said Steven Vriesen, project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 

In participating in reports like this, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it is committed to transparency with the public and will be holding meetings to assure the community every safeguard to safely remove the waste will be taken.

“We have multiple layers of safety,” said David Romano, deputy district engineer. “From air monitors on the workers that are right on the site, groundwater monitoring, surface water monitoring, air monitors around the perimeter, all to ensure our actions ensure the health and safety of our environment.”

If all goes well, this six-year project will restore the site and make this Armstrong County community a safe place to live again.

April 3, 2024 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Japan confirms experts met in China to ease concerns over discharge of treated radioactive water

Japan said Sunday its experts have held talks with their Chinese
counterparts to try to assuage Beijing´s concerns over the discharge of
treated radioactive wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
power plant into the sea. The discharges have been opposed by fishing
groups and neighboring countries especially China, which banned all imports
of Japanese seafood. China´s move has largely affected Japanese scallop
growers and exporters to China. During the talks held Saturday in the
northeastern Chinese city of Dalian, Japanese officials provided
“science-based” explanation of how the discharges have been safely carried
out as planned, according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

 Daily Mail 31st March 2024

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-13257021/Japan-confirms-experts-met-China-ease-concerns-discharge-treated-radioactive-water.html

April 2, 2024 Posted by | China, Japan, oceans, politics international, wastes | Leave a comment

Experts from Japan and China held talks on treated radioactive wastewater

 Experts from Japan and China held talks on treated radioactive wastewater
being released from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the Foreign
Ministry in Tokyo said late Saturday, in the first public announcement of
such a meeting.

The two Asian powerhouses have faced off over the issue
since Japan began releasing the water into the Pacific Ocean last August,
with Beijing — a major importer of Japanese seafood — slapping a ban on
all such products immediately after.

 Japan Times 31st March 2024

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/03/31/japan/politics/fukushima-china-japan-experts

April 2, 2024 Posted by | China, Japan, wastes | Leave a comment

 Dounreay decommissioning date ‘never achievable’ says Caithness councillor

CAITHNESS has been misled for the past 20 years over the
timescale for the decommissioning of Dounreay. The work was due to be
completed by 2033 but that target was “never technically practicable” and
“never achievable”, according to Struan Mackie, the chairman of the
Dounreay Stakeholder Group (DSG).

Mr Mackie, a Thurso and Northwest
Caithness Highland councillor, said: “We all know that the publicised
dates, the milestones communicated to our community, to our politicians and
to our supply chain for the last two decades have not been founded in
reality.

John O’Groat Journal 28th March 2024

https://www.johnogroat-journal.co.uk/news/dounreay-decommissioning-date-never-achievable-says-caithn-346428

April 1, 2024 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear waste clean-up company to be prosecuted over alleged cyber blunders

Sellafield Ltd accused of lax IT security at Europe’s largest nuclear facility

Jonathan Leake, 28 March 2024 ,  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/28/sellafield-nuclear-waste-prosecuted-cybersecurity/

A state-owned company responsible for cleaning up decades of nuclear waste at the Sellafield site in Cumbria is being prosecuted over alleged cybersecurity blunders.

It follows an investigation prompted by fears that the business’s digital defences were breached by hackers acting for hostile states such as Russia and China.

Sellafield is Europe’s largest nuclear facility, serving as a testing ground and waste dump since 1947. It houses a massive range of highly radioactive wastes, including 140 tonnes of plutonium – a key ingredient for nuclear weapons.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) has told Sellafield Ltd, the business tasked with clean-up, that it will be prosecuted under the Nuclear Industries Security Regulations 2003.

The charges relate to alleged information technology security offences during a four-year period between 2019 and early 2023.

The announcement coincides with reports today that Richard Meal, who is chief information security officer at the Cumbrian site, is to leave later this year.

It follows the departure of Mark Neate, the director responsible for safety and security, who announced in January that he intended to quit in a move that had been planned for some time.

Sellafield has denied claims the site had suffered serious security breaches and the ONR has supported this. The new charges are thought to relate to alleged failures in compliance – meaning they are more about lax security than actual breaches.

An ONR spokesman said there was no suggestion that public safety had been compromised. Details of the first court hearing will be announced when available.

Sellafield Ltd is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a quango overseen by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which is tasked with cleaning 17 decaying nuclear sites across the UK. Sellafield is the most expensive, costing taxpayers £2.5bn last year.

Some government estimates suggest the total cost of the clean-up will reach £263bn, with Sellafield accounting for the largest portion. The site employs 11,000 people and comprises more than 1,000 buildings, many not designed to house the radioactive material now stored in them.

Sellafield is so expensive that the Office for Budget Responsibility, which monitors threats to the UK Government’s finances, has warned that it and other legacy sites pose a “material source of fiscal risk” to the country.

The ONR investigation is in addition to another by the National Audit Office, Britain’s public spending watchdog, which is probing risks and costs at Sellafield and is due to report this autumn.

A Sellafield spokesman said: “The ONR’s Civil Nuclear Security and Safeguards (CNSS) has notified us of its intention to prosecute the company relating to alleged past nuclear industry security regulations compliance. As the issue is now the subject of active court proceedings, we are unable to comment further.”

It follows separate reports by Radioactive Waste Management Ltd (RWM), another government-owned company, that hackers unsuccessfully attempted to breach its defences using LinkedIn.

RWM, now part of Nuclear Waste Services, is the company tasked with designing the long-awaited Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) project,  a vast underground nuclear waste store which would become the final destination for toxic waste now stored at Sellafield.

Nuclear Waste Services is currently seeking a site that would be geologically stable for the millions of years the waste would need to become safe – and which would be acceptable to the local communities hosting it.

Two sites remain in the running, one off the coast of Cumbria and the other off the coast of Lincolnshire, with the choice of site still surrounded in secrecy.

The development is expected to cost taxpayers up to £53bn.

A report filed at Companies House by Nuclear Waste Services said the attempted hacks had failed.

March 31, 2024 Posted by | legal, safety, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Sellafield nuclear waste dump to be prosecuted for alleged cybersecurity offences

Charges relate to four-year period between 2019 and early 2023, and follow Guardian investigation

Alex Lawson and Anna Isaac, Fri 29 Mar 2024 , https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/28/sellafield-nuclear-waste-dump-to-be-prosecuted-for-alleged-it-security-offences


The Sellafield nuclear waste dump is to be prosecuted for alleged information technology security offences, the industry watchdog has said.

The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said on Thursday that it had notified the state-owned Cumbrian nuclear company that it would be prosecuted under industry security regulations.

The prosecution follows the Guardian’s revelations last year of multiple cyber failings at the vast site, part of a year-long investigation into cyber hacking, radioactive contamination and an unhealthy workplace culture at Sellafield.

The ONR said: “These charges relate to alleged information technology security offences during a four-year period between 2019 and early 2023. There is no suggestion that public safety has been compromised as a result of these issues. The decision to begin legal proceedings follows an investigation by ONR, the UK’s independent nuclear regulator.”

Sellafield, which has more than 11,000 staff, was placed into a form of “special measures” for consistent failings on cybersecurity in 2022, according to sources at the ONR and the security services.

Among the Guardian’s revelations in December were that groups linked to Russia and China had penetrated its computer networks, embedding sleeper malware that could lurk and be used to spy or attack systems. At the time Sellafield said it did not have evidence of a successful cyber-attack.

The site has the largest store of plutonium in the world and is a sprawling rubbish dump for nuclear waste from weapons programmes and decades of atomic power generation.

Other findings in the Guardian’s Nuclear Leaks investigation included concerns about external contractors being able to plug memory sticks into its computer system while unsupervised.

The Guardian also revealed that cyber problems have been known by senior figures at the nuclear site for at least a decade, according to a report dated from 2012, which warned there were “critical security vulnerabilities” that needed to be addressed urgently.

Sellafield’s computer servers were deemed so insecure that the problem was nicknamed Voldemort after the Harry Potter villain, according to a government official familiar with the ONR investigation and IT failings at the site, because it was so sensitive and dangerous.

At the time, Sellafield said that “all of our systems and servers have multiple layers of protection”. “Critical networks that enable us to operate safely are isolated from our general IT network, meaning an attack on our IT system would not penetrate these,” it said.

This week, the Guardian revealed that Richard Meal, Sellafield’s chief information security officer, is to leave the site after more than a decade. He will be the second senior leader to leave this year, after the top director responsible for safety and security, Mark Neate, announced in January that he planned to leave.

In January, Sellafield appointed Graeme Slater as its chief digital information officer, responsible for cybersecurity.

The ONR said details of the first court hearing would be announced “when available”.

Britain’s public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, last month launched an investigation into risks and costs at Sellafield.

A spokesperson at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which funds Sellafield, said: “Safety and security at our former nuclear sites is paramount and we fully support the Office for Nuclear Regulation in its independent role as regulator.

“The regulator has made clear that there is no suggestion that public safety has been compromised at Sellafield. Since the period of this prosecution, we have seen a change of leadership at Sellafield and the ONR has noted a clear commitment to address its concerns.”

Sellafield said: “The Office for Nuclear Regulation’s Civil Nuclear Security and Safeguards has notified us of its intention to prosecute the company relating to alleged past nuclear industry security regulations compliance.

“As the issue is now the subject of active court proceedings, we are unable to comment further.”

March 30, 2024 Posted by | Legal, safety, UK, wastes | 1 Comment

New nuclear reactor types will not solve waste and safety issues

26 March 2024  https://www.modernpowersystems.com/news/newsnew-nuclear-reactor-types-will-not-solve-waste-and-safety-issues-11634478

Novel nuclear power plant designs do not resolve the technology’s fundamental challenge of hazardous nuclear waste, a 22 March report commissioned by Germany’s Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) has concluded. “None of the alternative reactor types would make a final repository redundant,” the government agency said, according to a report by online news agency Clean Energy Wire.

Despite efforts by producers of Generation IV reactors to “intensively advertise” the concept’s supposed benefits, said BASE, it “could not detect any trends that would make the construction of alternative reactor types at an industrial scale likely in the next years.” On the contrary, the disadvantages and uncertainties from a security perspective would continue to outweigh the technology’s advantages, the study led by the Institute for Applied Ecology (Öko-Institut) found.

New nuclear plant designs, such as small modular reactors (SMR), would not only perpetuate the difficult long-term question of nuclear waste disposal, but also had little to offer for solving short-term climate action problems, BASE added.

The report looked at seven novel reactor types, which according to their producers are more efficient in nuclear fuel use and run more safely and reliably, are economically viable, and cause less radioactive waste. While some of these improvements seem plausible, the report said that central questions regarding safety remain unanswered with all new concepts. “In some areas, there are even disadvantages compared to today’s light water reactors,” which remain the favoured technology in six surveyed countries (USA, Russia, China, South Korea, Poland and Belgium). Alternative reactor types still required “substantial“ research and development, and it would likely still take several decades before they can be deployed at a relevant scale, the researchers added. Promises about new concepts in nuclear technology as a potential boost for climate action therefore had to be considered “not realistic,” they concluded.

While Germany closed down its three last reactors in spring 2023 after a decades-long debate, many other countries continue to rely on nuclear technology or even plan to considerably expand it in a bid to bring down their energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. At the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) first ever nuclear energy summit in Brussels earlier March, more than two dozen states called for a revival of the technology, including France, the Netherlands, the USA and Japan. “Without the support of nuclear power, we have no chance to reach our climate targets on time,” International Energy Agency (IEA) chief Fatih Birol said in a report carried by news agency Reuters.

Nuclear power in Europe

The role of nuclear power in Europe’s emissions reduction plans has been a contentious issue for many years, with Germany and France emerging as the main opposing forces between two groups of countries aiming to rely entirely on renewable power or to also use nuclear power in a future climate neutral energy system. While Germany has achieved a substantial expansion of its renewable power capacity and now sources more than half of its electricity that way, the country still faces challenges regarding the required grid modernisation and back-up and storage capacity to complement wind turbines and solar panels. France, on the other hand, has the largest share of nuclear power production of any country but struggles to secure funding for new projects and to comply with cost and construction time plans for existing ones.

March 29, 2024 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, wastes | Leave a comment

Man blames nuclear meltdown for deformities in city more radioactive than Chernobyl

Ozersk – code named City 40 – was the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear weapons programme, now it’s one of the most contaminated places on the planet with residents exposed to high radiation levels.

By Kelly Williams, Assistant News Editor (Live)  https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/man-blames-nuclear-meltdown-deformities-32405120

A man living in a secret city five times more radioactive than Chernobyl has been left with facial deformities he blames on huge nuclear meltdowns.

Vakil Batirshin has massively swollen lymph nodes said to be caused by radiation-related illness. He lives in Ozersk – code named City 40 in Russia – which was built in total secrecy around the huge Mayak nuclear power plant by the Soviets in 1946.

For the first eight years after City 40 was built, Ozersk residents were forbidden from communicating with the outside world. Like Chernobyl, it was designed as a place to house the scientists working at the plant who – unbeknownst to the world – were leading the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons programme during the Cold War era.

Locals were told they were “the nuclear shield and saviours of the world,” and everyone on the outside was an enemy.

They also kept it a secret that the extreme exposure to radiation was affecting the health of the city’s inhabitants. They started to get sick and die and the authorities were clandestine about the mortality rate.

However, the city’s graveyard with all its young victims tells the story.

Ozersk, nicknamed “The graveyard of the Earth,” was surrounded by guarded gates and barbed wire fences and did not appear on any maps.

Its inhabitants’ identities were also erased from the Soviet census to guard their secret.

The Mayak nuclear plant went through Russia’s biggest nuclear disaster when the facility allegedly dumped 200million curies worth of radioactive material into the environment around Ozersk.

The residents also suffered the Kyshtym disaster in 1957, the worst nuclear disaster the world had seen before Chernobyl.

Radiation bathed the city when a cooling system exploded at Mayak with the force of 100 tons of dynamite.

One of the nearby lakes has been so heavily contaminated by plutonium that locals have renamed it the “Lake of Death” or “Plutonium Lake”.

In an interview which resurfaced earlier this week on X (formerly Twitter), Vakil Batirshin struggles to speak, his neck is painfully swollen from lymph nodes that have grown to triple their normal size.

His exact diagnosis remains steeped in mystery as doctors say it can be hard to trace any one condition to radiation.

But asked if he has any doubt his symptoms are related to radioactivity, he said: “Well, when I lived in my home village, I didn’t have anything. Everything was great.

“When I came here, it all started.”

Another resident, Gilani Dambaev is riddled with diseases doctors think are linked to a lifetime’s exposure to excessive radiation. He and his family have government-issued cards identifying them as residents of radiation-tainted territory.

He said: “Sometimes they would put up signs warning us not to swim in the river, but they never said why. After work, we would go swimming in the river. The kids would too.”

Although the secret is now out and Ozyorsk resembles “a suburban 1950s American town” according to The Guardian, residents know their water is contaminated, their crops are poisoned, and their children may be sick.

Half a million people in Ozersk and its surrounding area are said to have been exposed to five times as much radiation as those living in the areas of Ukraine affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

But most refused to leave, because while the Soviet population were suffering from famine and living in extreme poverty, the city was regarded as a paradise as authorities gave them private apartments, plenty of food, good schools and healthcare, and a plethora of entertainment and cultural activities.

Even still, residents opt against leaving. The Guardian reported that “it is prestigious to live in Ozersk.”

Residents describe it as a town of “intellectuals”, where they are used to getting “the best of everything for free”.

Living in Mayak’s nuclear shadow and resigned to her fate, one said: “I don’t hope for anything anymore. If we get sick, we get sick.”

Some locals, however, claim that long term dumping by the nuclear plant’s management continues today.

The government has started resettling residents to new homes away from the river, but the process only began in 2008.

March 27, 2024 Posted by | environment, Reference, Russia, wastes | Leave a comment

‘The graveyard of the Earth’: inside City 40, Russia’s deadly nuclear secret

The city’s residents know the truth, however: that their water is contaminated, their mushrooms and berries are poisoned, and their children may be sick. Ozersk and the surrounding region is one of the most contaminated places on the planet, referred to by some as the “graveyard of the Earth”.

City 40’s inhabitants were told they were “the nuclear shield and saviours of the world”

 From the late 1940s, people here started to get sick and die: the victims of long-term exposure to radiation.

‘The graveyard of the Earth’: inside City 40, Russia’s deadly nuclear secret,    https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/20/graveyard-earth-inside-city-40-ozersk-russia-deadly-secret-nuclear Samira Goetschel, Wed 20 Jul 2016   Ozersk, codenamed City 40, was the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear weapons programme. Now it is one of the most contaminated places on the planet – so why do so many residents still view it as a fenced-in paradise?

“Those in paradise were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.” (From the dystopian novel We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1924)

Deep in the vast forests of Russia’s Ural mountains lies the forbidden city of Ozersk. Behind guarded gates and barbed wire fences stands a beautiful enigma – a hypnotic place that seems to exist in a different dimension.

Codenamed City 40, Ozersk was the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear weapons programme after the second world war. For decades, this city of 100,000 people did not appear on any maps, and its inhabitants’ identities were erased from the Soviet census.

Today, with its beautiful lakes, perfumed flowers and picturesque tree-lined streets, Ozersk resembles a suburban 1950s American town – like one of those too-perfect places depicted in The Twilight Zone.

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March 27, 2024 Posted by | psychology and culture, Reference archives, Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties, wastes | Leave a comment

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