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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.

Continue reading →

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

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Opened 25 Years Ago; It Was Supposed to Close Next Week

https://nuclearactive.org/ March 21st, 2024 

Did you know that on Friday, March 26, 1999, the first shipment of plutonium-contaminated nuclear weapons waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) reached the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)?

Earlier that week, on Monday, March 22, 1999, Federal Judge John Garrett Penn lifted a seven-year injunction allowing the shipment of purely radioactive waste to WIPP.  The shipment did not contain any hazardous waste.  In fact it wasn’t even Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear weapons waste.  It was NASA waste from the production of the plutonium batteries for the Cassini space vehicle.

On Tuesday, March 23rd, LANL loaded waste drums into the three TRUPACT shipping containers.

On Wednesday, March 24th, final testing was done and the truck and trailer with three TRUPACTS was ready.

Peaceful protesters with signs had gathered at the intersection of Airport Road and 599 on the south side of Santa Fe.  National Guard, police and other security personnel dressed in combat gear lined the intersection for about a block in each direction.  Black Hawk helicopters flew over the area.  A little snow fell.  Nevertheless, tensions were high.

LANL checked the weather conditions and it was determined that the shipment could not leave LANL.  To ship, a five-hour clear weather window was required.  A dense fog had developed around Santa Rosa, New Mexico and the shipment did not depart from LANL.

LANL tried again, successfully, on Thursday, March 25th.  Again peaceful protesters and security personnel were at the intersection.

Early on the morning of Friday, March 26th, the shipment arrived at WIPP to cheers from those waiting to see the truck and trailer.  https://www.energy.gov/em/articles/fight-wipp-history-nations-deep-geologic-nuclear-waste-repository

Prior to the arrival of the first shipment at WIPP, DOE had promised the People of New Mexico that it would clean up all the transuranic, or plutonium-contaminated, waste across the nuclear weapons complex,

including LANL, and dispose of it in the underground salt bed at WIPP in 25 years and begin a 10-year closure of the facility.   For example:  http://nuclearactive.org/elected-officials-question-doe-plans-to-keep-wipp-operating-forever/ (Aug. 11, 2022); http://nuclearactive.org/doe-breaks-its-promises-to-new-mexico-part-i/ (Jan. 12, 2021); and http://nuclearactive.org/doe-breaks-its-promises-to-new-mexico-part-2/ (Jan. 19, 2021).

Next Tuesday, March 26, 2024, is the 25-year deadline.  But DOE and WIPP will not make its deadline.  In fact, DOE plans to keep WIPP open until 2083, basically forever, for LANL waste from fabricating new and provocative nuclear weapons. …………………………………………………more https://nuclearactive.org/

March 24, 2024 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

World Water Day Prompts Submission to Parliamentary Committee on Risks of NWMO’s Nuclear Waste Project to Water

Thunder Bay – A Northern Ontario alliance concerned about a risky project to transport and bury nuclear fuel waste has chosen World Water Day to submit their brief to a parliamentary committee studying freshwater.

We the Nuclear Free North submitted the ten-page brief to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development today, outlining the set of risks the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) project poses to the lakes, rivers and groundwater of Northern Ontario. The Committee is carrying out a comprehensive study of the role of the federal government in protecting and managing Canada’s freshwater resources in Canada.

The opposition group points to the risks during transportation, processing and burial of the highly radioactive nuclear fuel waste, including from operations at the site of the proposed deep geological repository.

“The NWMO plan is still largely theoretical, but according to their own limited descriptions of the operating period, it is evident that freshwater in the area of the site will be impacted”, explained Wendy O’Connor, one of the report authors.


“Water used for washing down the nuclear waste transportation packages will become contaminated with radionuclides. According to the NWMO’s published details, that water will be sent to a settling pond and then released to natural water bodies in the vicinity of the site, as will the contaminated water that will be pumped from the underground repository”, said O’Connor.

“Despite assurances from the nuclear industry, it remains entirely possible that the nuclear waste itself, deposited underground, will contaminate the deep groundwater in the near or long term – contamination that will eventually reach surface water in the vast watershed”.

The NWMO’s candidate site in Northwestern Ontario is located half-way between Ignace and Dryden. Because it is at the height of land for the Wabigoon and the Turtle River systems, there are concerns about releases to the downstream communities, including Rainy River and Lake of the Woods. The group notes that if and when the radioactive releases occur from the deep geological repository there will be no means to reverse the impacts.


World Water Day, held on 22 March every year since 1993, is an annual United Nations Observance focusing on the importance of freshwater.

“It’s ironic that the UN theme for World Water Day in 2024 is “Water for Peace”, given the level of division and conflict that the NWMO’s proposal has brought to our region”, commented Kathleen Skead, a member of Anishinaabe of Wauzhushk Onigum Nation, one of several downstream Treaty 3 communities.

“Hopefully people will pause today and recognize that water is life and the NWMO’s promise of money is not worth the risk. Water is vital for all forms of life.”

The brief is posted HERE.

We the Nuclear Free North is an alliance of people and groups opposing a Deep Geological Repository for nuclear waste in Northern Ontario. We oppose the transport, burial and abandonment of this radioactive waste in our northern watersheds.

Our alliance is honoured to have received the name Tataganobin: looking far ahead into the future. Learn more about who we are, and the origin and meaning of this name.

March 24, 2024 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear, wastes | Leave a comment

Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility – Letter to the Editor.

Re: Radiation in Elliot Lake homes (Toronto Star, March 21 2024)

from Gordon Edwards, PhD, President,, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.22 Mar 24

The government will not take responsibility for radioactive contamination of homes in Elliot Lake, built using radioactive waste from uranium mines. Officials claim that “waste rock” is not “radioactive waste”, although the federal Government has always classified

waste rock as a part of the radioactive waste inventory (over 380 million tonnes) from uranium mining.

Excess radiation in Elliot Lake homes, from radon gas and gamma radiation, was subjected to a provincial inquiry in 1977-78. The Elliot Lake miners’union asked me to testify as an expert witness.

Using the government’s own published radon mortality figures, I showed that the “acceptable limit” for exposures in homes could cause a 31 percent increase in the male lung cancer rate for those living in those homes. That means an additional 17 lung cancer deaths per 1000 males exposed, over and above the 54 lung cancer deaths already reported in Ontario per 1000 males. These figures represent lifetime exposures.

Today’s so-called “safe” level referred to in the Star article is the same “acceptable” level of radon used back then. 

Based on my testimony, the Panel recommended that radon “standards” be re-examined. It never happened. Instead, the regulator commissioned an independent study by an epidemiologist from McGill, Duncan Thomas. His study confirmed my estimate of radon-induced deaths. The regulator rejected the results of its own expert study.

Excess exposures in Elliot Lake should have been corrected 45 years ago, but was not. Canada’s regulator still refuses to address the problem.

The $1.6 billion radioactive cleanup now underway in Port Hope, involving hundreds of homes contaminated with radon-generating waste, was known to the regulator as early as 1965. But the Port Hope problem was ignored by officialdom and specifically by Canada’s nuclear regulator until the scandal became too much to bear when, in 1975, St Mary’s elementary school was evacuated because the radon levels in the cafeteria were greater than those allowed in Elliot Lake uranium mines.

Gordon Edwards, PhD, President,

Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

March 23, 2024 Posted by | wastes | 1 Comment

Disadvantaged Canadian towns look at the $billions promised by nuclear waste hosting

Offended tribal elders formed the Committee for Future Generations and initiated what they called the 7,000 Generations Walk Against Nuclear Waste, which saw participants trudge nearly 1,000 kilometres from Pinehouse to the legislature in Regina.

No local DGR debate has been harder fought than the 30-month marathon of psychological and ground warfare that unfolded in Saugeen Shores, one of several contestant municipalities in Bruce County, between 2011 and 2014.

Inside the race for Canada’s nuclear waste: 11 towns vie to host deep burial site Canada’s nuclear waste will be deadly for 400,000 years. What town would like the honour of hosting it?CHARLES WILKINS TheGlobe and Mail Feb. 26 2015,

“……..There are 11 rural and wilderness municipalities vying for the DGR, survivors of an original roster of 22. The aspirants include veteran northern encampments such as Hornepayne, Ontario, where, as Brennain Lloyd of the environmental education group Northwatch describes it, there is “a really fierce desire” on the part of at least a few municipal administrators to “bring the nuke dump to town.”

And Schreiber, a struggling railway town on the north shore of Lake Superior. And Ignace, another struggler, in the boreal wilds to the west. And, to the east, Manitouwadge.

And Creighton, Saskatchewan, directly across the Manitoba border from Flin Flon (Creighton is a town described by a former resident as “having had its fiscal balls to the wall for half a century”).

And Blind River, Ontario, on the north shore of Lake Huron, where survival has for years depended on the uncertain flow of traffic along the Trans-Canada Highway.

And Elliot Lake, some 50 kilometres north of Lake Huron, where uranium mining was the sustaining industry during the 1950s and ’60s but which these days survives on the pensions of retirees who moved to the town to take advantage of discount housing left over from the boom years.

“What makes it all so attractive to competing municipalities is, of course, the money,” says Tony McQuail.

While billions of dollars will flow directly through the chosen town over a period of four or five decades, Lloyd suggests that most of the money is likely to end up in the pockets of big-city consultants and other outside beneficiaries.

Mainly, the price tag will buy decades’ worth of infrastructure and construction costs, as well as maintenance, monitoring and employment training. It will also pay for the transportation of the waste to the spanking new DGR, which will, by the time it opens, have been a reality for its “willing host” for a quarter of a century or more.

Finishing just the first phase of the preliminary assessment brings $400,000 of NWMO money to candidate towns, so they can “build sustainability and well-being.” It has been speculated that some towns had no intention of staying in the process beyond the early payout.

While some towns applied to participate of their own volition, others were, according to Lloyd of Northwatch, courted by the NWMO. “What bothers me most about the process,” says Lloyd, “is the ‘siloing’ that the NWMO practises on the municipal politicians they choose to target.

“They approach them not in the context of their communities, where the politicians are immediately answerable to their constituencies, but at municipal conferences and conventions where they’re away from home, isolated, perhaps a little unsure of themselves. They wine and dine them and soft-talk them about the unimaginable benefits that could accrue to their towns should they consider hosting the DGR.

“Then they fly them to Toronto and put them up in the best hotels and take them up to the Bruce Power site, or other nuclear generating stations, and show them what of course appears to be secure and flawless waste storage. The politicians are just snowed—they’re made to feel like important players. They take this dream of hope and prosperity and safe science back to their communities and in effect go to work for the NWMO.”

Other northern councils—at Ear Falls, at Nipigon, at Wawa—have been more divided over the DGR and so were eliminated early, or withdrew, from the process. Similarly, Brockton, near the site of Bruce Power, was cut late in 2014 after its residents elected a largely anti-DGR council. (The NWMO says Brockton’s assessment simply didn’t pan out.)

The aboriginal communities of Pinehouse and English River, Saskatchewan, were dropped from the process when community debate over land and water issues, as well as a growing distrust of the NWMO, became irresolvable.

While Pinehouse was still in the running, three community leaders, including a cousin of the mayor, received money from the NWMO. Offended tribal elders formed the Committee for Future Generations and initiated what they called the 7,000 Generations Walk Against Nuclear Waste, which saw participants trudge nearly 1,000 kilometres from Pinehouse to the legislature in Regina.

No local DGR debate has been harder fought than the 30-month marathon of psychological and ground warfare that unfolded in Saugeen Shores, one of several contestant municipalities in Bruce County, between 2011 and 2014………..http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/inside-the-race-for-canadas-nuclear-waste/article23178848/

March 23, 2024 Posted by | Canada, Reference archives, wastes | 3 Comments

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