Riverkeeper celebrates bipartisan Assembly passage of bill to stop radioactive wastewater discharges into the Hudson River; Governor Hochul must sign.
Riverkeeper, the leading environmental organization dedicated to protecting the Hudson River, celebrates the Assembly taking the final legislative step after the unanimous bipartisan Senate passage of crucial legislation aimed at safeguarding the economic vitality of the Hudson River from the imminent threat of radioactive wastewater discharge at Indian Point by Holtec International, the firm responsible for decommissioning the nuclear power plant. With the legislation now at Governor Hochul’s desk, she must sign the bill immediately to prevent Holtec from releasing radioactive wastewater into the Hudson River.
“The unanimous bipartisan support in the Senate and the bipartisan vote in the Assembly sends a clear signal that New Yorkers of all stripes are opposed to Holtec’s plans. Governor Hochul must sign the legislation to draw a firm line against the use of our river as a dumping ground for radioactive waste and pave the way for a prosperous future for the Hudson River and its surrounding communities,” said Tracy Brown, President of Riverkeeper, “We cannot underestimate the impact of the public perception of a severely polluted Hudson River. Together we have made great strides in cleaning up the Hudson, which has supported increased water-based recreation and tourism. We cannot let outmoded “business-as-usual” polluting practices undercut that work and our goal of a clean and healthy Hudson for all.”
Riverkeeper thanks Assemblymember Dana Levenberg and Senator Pete Harckham for their relentless efforts in championing this important legislation, S6893/A7208. We also thank Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins for their leadership in ensuring the legislation received a vote.
Instead of allowing Holtec to discharge the wastewater, Riverkeeper together with a coalition of partners are calling for the secure on-site storage of the contaminated water on the Indian Point site for at least a period of 12.5 years. This would allow for one half life to elapse and reduce the radioactivity of the spent fuel pool water and protect the economic interests of the state, while alternative disposal methods are thoroughly evaluated. Riverkeeper is a member of the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board and provides expertise on issues related to water quality, public health, and impacts to wildlife.
The overwhelming opposition from the public against Holtec’s profit-driven discharges has resonated across the state, as concerned citizens and communities rally together to protect the Hudson River as the vital resource it is.
Riverkeeper stands firm in its commitment to defending the Hudson River and urges Governor Hochul to immediately sign the legislation before Holtec proceeds with the release of radioactive wastewater.
Concerned citizens can take action by urging Governor Hochul to sign the legislation immediately.
New Mexico leaders fear nuclear waste could endanger oil and gas in the Permian Basin
Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus, 23 June 23 https://www.currentargus.com/story/news/2023/06/23/new-mexico-leaders-fear-nuclear-waste-holtec-endanger-oil-gas-fossil-fuel-permian-basin/70338508007/
State land managers in New Mexico doubled down on their opposition to a proposed project to store spent nuclear fuel at a site near the border of Eddy and Lea counties amid the Permian Basin oilfield.
The New Mexico Land Office owns and oversees operations on State Trust land, largely consisting of fossil fuel extraction in southeast corner of the state, generating revenue used to fund public schools, hospitals and other public services.
Sunalei Stewart, deputy commissioner of operations at the office said it owns mineral rights beneath Holtec International’s proposed project location.
He added that means the agency has the right to oppose and block the project which Commissioner of Public Lands Stephanie Garcia Richard signaled disapproval of due to concerns nuclear waste storage could impact other nearby industries like oil and gas.
Stewart’s comments came before the June 15 meeting of the New Mexico Legislature’s interim Radioactive and Hazardous Material Committing in Santa Fe.
“One thing about Holtec that not everybody appreciates, is that the land, the mineral estate is actually owned by the State Land Office,” said Stewart. “The surface is where the project will occur, but we own all of the mineral rights.”
Holtec International recently received a license from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate the site on about 1,000 acres owned by the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance (ELEA), a consortium of the cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs and Eddy and Lea counties.
The project would see up to 100,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel rods shipped via rail into southeast New Mexico for storage at the surface on a 40-year license, potentially reprocessed for more fuel or sent to final disposal if such a facility becomes available.
The U.S. does not have a permanent repository for disposal of the waste, igniting fears from New Mexico leaders that the Holtec site could become the “de-facto” resting place for the waste.
Stewart said the Land Office has existing oil and gas leases targeting the minerals beneath Holtec’s proposed location, and that multiple analysis conducted by the NRC failed to account for extraction activities.
“We have expressed a lot of frustration and concern,” Stewart said before lawmakers. “The assumptions for the safety analysis, the environmental analysis, all assumed there would be no oil and gas activity at the site, there would be no potash mining at the site, so sand and gravel at the site. There would be no mineral activity at the site.
“We remained very concerned about the project and how it could impact State Trust land specifically.”
The Permian Basin region, which southeast New Mexico shares with West Texas, is the U.S.’ most productive oilfield, generating up to 5.7 million barrels per day, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
That industry was estimated to generate almost half of New Mexico General Fund revenue in the last fiscal year, according to the most recent state budget analysis – about $7 billion.
That industry and its economic support of the state could be imperiled, Stewart said, by Holtec’s proposal.
“This is really in the heart of the Permian,” he said of the proposed site. “If there was an accident, if there was an incident, we could be in a lot of trouble in terms of other operations that are out there. There are active wells out there.”
Committee Chair Rep. Joanne Ferrary (D-37) said the project would draw waste from about 70 sites in 35 states, which could lead to dangers along the route on the U.S. rail system.
She pointed to Senate Bill 53, sponsored by the committee’s Vice Chair Jeff Steinborn (D-36), that barred New Mexico from issuing various permits the Holtec site would need to operate such as for wastewater discharge or air quality impacts.
“From back east, they’re coming to New Mexico. Most of the time, they would not have to come through New Mexico,” said Ferrary. “Hopefully we can head that off with our legislation.”
Sen. Brenda McKenna (D-9) also voiced concerns for the transportation of the waste, arguing any accidents along the route could imperil New Mexicans or any nearby community.
“They have had accidents,” she said of Holtec. “I hope we will succeed in block in entirely.”
1
£485m clean-up operation for UK’s 10 nuclear reactors
A team featuring Keltbray and Costain is one of several firms to win spots
on a £485m framework to carry out demolition and asbestos removal work
across all of the UK’s 10 nuclear reactors. The pair and a second team
called Celadon Alliance, comprising Altrad Support Services, KDC Veolia
Decommissioning Services and NSG Environmental, have been awarded framework
contracts for both Lots 1 and 2.
In addition, Kaefer UK & Ireland has been
awarded a framework contract for Lot 1 and a team featuring Nuvia, Rainham
Industrial Services and Hughes and Salvidge has been awarded a framework
contract for Lot 2. Called the Decommissioning and Asbestos Removal
framework, work includes jobs at all 10 reactor sites, two research sites
and one hydro-electric plant, which are all operated by Magnox on behalf of
the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
The framework is initially for four
years with an option to extend up to a further two years. Jobs will include
demolition and deplanting, turbine hall cleaning, removal and treatment of
radioactively contaminated plant, including cooling ponds and water
treatment facilities.
Building 22nd June 2023
Plan to discharge water into Hudson River from closed nuclear plant sparks uproar
Michael Hill, Independent 21 June 23
The Indian Point nuclear plant along the Hudson River is at the
center of a controversy two years after it was shut down. The latest
flashpoint revolves around plans to release 1.3 million gallons of water
with traces of radioactive tritium into the river as part of the plant’s
decommissioning…………..
opponents along the river question the health and safety claims. They say the releases of radioactive water could be a step back for a once notoriously polluted river that is now a popular summer attraction for sailors, kayakers and swimmers.
Communities along the river have already passed resolutions opposing the discharges, and an online petition has gathered more than 440,000 signatures. Now a bill being considered in state Legislature on Tuesday sponsored by two Hudson Valley Democrats would ban those radiological discharges into the river.
“It leaves a bad taste in your mouth … the idea that we would be polluting our beautiful Hudson River with waste when we’ve spent so many years trying to clean it up. This shouldn’t be a dumping ground,” Assembly member Dana Levenberg said at a state Capitol rally for her bill.
The bill, approved by the state Senate earlier this month, was opposed by some union officials, who say it could interrupt the decommissioning and cause layoffs…………….. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hudson-river-ap-new-york-city-kathy-hochul-communities-b2361202.html
‘Truly shocking’: UK has enough plutonium to make almost 20,000 nukes
A study published by a university in Nagasaki has revealed that the UK has enough stockpiled plutonium to make almost 20,000 atomic warheads with the same power as the bomb which totally-destroyed that Japanese city in August 1945.
The 2023 Fissile Material Directory[i] is published in June each year by the Research Center for Nuclear Weapons Abolition (RECNA)[ii], based at Nagasaki University. RECNA has been established for over twenty years as an educational and research institute at a university that has a medical faculty with a first-hand experience of the horror of nuclear weapons. Its primary goal is achieving a world free from nuclear weapons.
In January, the institute was visited by UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities Secretary Richard Outram, where he met Vice-Director Professor Tatsujiro Suzuki.
The study lists the UK as holding 119.7 tons of plutonium, the second highest stockpile in the world after Russia with 191.5 tons, and 22.6 tons of Highly Enriched Uranium. The plutonium stockpile is said to be sufficient to arm 19,947 atom bombs, like the ‘Fat Man’ bomb dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, whilst the uranium stockpile has the potential to be turned into a further 355 devices comparable to the ‘Little Boy’ bomb dropped on Hiroshima three days earlier.
The Nagasaki bomb is estimated to have killed 35,000 – 40,000 people on the day and the Hiroshima bomb about twice that many.
The UK Government and nuclear industry has conceded in the 2022 UK Radioactive Material Inventory that 113 tons of UK-owned plutonium are currently managed by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, whilst a further 4 tons are in semi-assembled MOX or other fuel components. An additional 24 tons of foreign-owned plutonium are also held, a further legacy of the costly failure of the UK’s experiment with reprocessing[iii].
Across the world, RECNA estimates that 552 tons of plutonium and 1,260 tons of HEU are held, much of the latter in military hands. These are all deemed to be fissile materials and together could arm 92,000 plutonium bombs like the one used at Nagasaki and almost 20,000 uranium devices like that deployed at Hiroshima.
The Nuclear Free Local Authorities are gravely concerned about the future use of Britain’s plutonium stockpile. In recent weeks, the UK Government and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority have published plans suggesting that some of this material should be used as fuel for a new generation of nuclear reactors.
The NFLA fears that burning plutonium as fuel will simply lead to the creation of more nuclear waste, that such material could be a target for terrorists or hostile state actors, especially in transit, and that these actions could lead to nuclear weapon proliferation. In its response to the government and industry plan the NFLA called for fissile material to be put ‘beyond use’ for all time[iv].
Responding to the RECNA report, Councillor Lawrence O’Neill, Chair of the NFLA Steering Committee, said:
“The data published by RECNA is both astonishing and truly shocking. If only a tiny fraction of Britain’s stockpile of fissile materials ended up in the wrong hands for use by terrorists or in military action then the consequences could be too awful to contemplate. In the UK, and elsewhere in the world, anti-nuclear campaigners need to continue to work together to lobby our respective governments to make these stockpiles safe and beyond use, and the time to do that is now.”
Central Europe’s nuclear plans – fraught with problems
CENTRAL EUROPE’S NUCLEAR PLANS: HOT STUFF
Claudia Ciobanu, Edit Inotai, Tim Gosling and Nicholas Watson, Budapest, Prague, Warsaw, BIRN. June 20, 2023 https://balkaninsight.com/2023/06/20/central-europes-nuclear-plans-hot-stuff/
Since the war in Ukraine, CEE countries have stepped up efforts to build more nuclear power plants and reduce nuclear supply chain dependency on Russia’s Rosatom. Yet the disposal of waste remains an issue and could impact financing of new reactors.
Central Europe has put nuclear power at the forefront of efforts to quit Russian oil and gas and decarbonise economies, yet breaking the region’s dependency on Russia’s giant nuclear holding company Rosatom – for fuel, financing and waste disposal – promises to complicate those efforts.
The region’s reliance on Rosatom is historic. Until last year, all 14 reactors operating in Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia were built by Russia (Slovakia’s third reactor at Mochovce, of Soviet design but not built by Rosatom, started up this year). Furthermore, Rosatom is building two more reactors in Hungary.
That latter project, thrown into some disarray by the war in Ukraine, epitomises this longstanding dependency. Rosatom dominates the global nuclear industry because of its ability to act as a “one-stop nuclear shop”, which is attractive to countries because it can finance the plant; build the plant; provide training, support and maintenance for the plant; dispose of the nuclear waste produced at the plant; and finally decommission the plant.
While Europe is taking steps to reduce its 30 per cent reliance on Russian nuclear fuel – Czech energy company CEZ has signed contracts with US-based Westinghouse Electric Company and French company Framatome – waste disposal will be a much harder nut to crack.
Nuclear energy produces mainly low-level radioactive waste, while high-level radioactive waste, which includes the hot spent fuel, accounts for about 1 per cent of total nuclear waste. Most of this spent fuel – over 60,000 tonnes stored across Europe – is kept in cooling pools located within or near the plants that generated it.
Last year’s EU taxonomy of what it considers green energy makes having existing disposal facilities for low-level waste and a detailed plan to have in operation by 2050 a disposal facility for high-level radioactive waste strict requirements for any new nuclear energy projects to qualify as sustainable investments – a definition needed to keep down the huge financing costs of new reactors. In addition, the technical screening criteria for nuclear energy prohibit the export of radioactive waste for disposal in third countries.
While there are many existing disposal facilities for low-level waste dotted around Europe, Finland is the only country currently constructing a permanent disposal facility for used fuel, the deep geological repository (DGR) under construction at Olkiluoto, which is scheduled to be operational around 2025.
From Rosatom with love
Hungary is pretty much stuck with Rosatom, most experts in Hungary believe. They tend to praise the technology and cooperation provided by Russia, though most are aware that political realities have significantly changed since the war in Ukraine. Yet restructuring the current Paks 1 power plant (four VVER440 reactors) and replacing Rosatom as the main contractor for Paks 2 (two VVER1200 reactors) is regarded as a non-starter by most industry experts. If the EU slaps sanctions on Russia’s nuclear industry, a move currently being debated, it would cause major difficulties for Hungary.
Rosatom is Hungary’s sole provider of nuclear fuel, which since the war in Ukraine began has had to be airfreighted to Hungary across Belarusian and Polish airspace. “The fact is that Russian nuclear fuel is both technologically and economically excellent,” Tamas Pazmandi, head of the Radiation Protection Department of the Centre for Energy Research, tells BIRN.
Pazmandi admits that diversification of the nuclear supply chain is probably necessary, but warns it will take longer than many might hope or expect. “Replacing Rosatom with another supplier would require years, due to the complicated process of development, production and licensing. In a best-case scenario, it would be possible around 2026-2027,” he explains.
Others point out that currently no alternative fuel is even available for the VVER440-type reactors, dismissing speculation that Westinghouse or Framatome could offer an immediate alternative to Rosatom.
Even for the Paks 2 project, where construction work has not started, a switch to a different company would mean starting again from scratch. “If you want to buy a Mercedes, you don’t ask Volvo to manufacture it – it is an entirely different car,” Pazmandi says by way of example. “It is the same with nuclear power plants. This is a Russian-designed plant, with all its licenses. On the supplier level there are possibilities for diversification, but the main design and the main contractor cannot be replaced or you will have a completely different project.”
Government-close experts like Otto Toldi from the Climate Research Institute have argued that Rosatom holds another unique advantage: it takes care of the nuclear waste, which none of its rivals can do. Yet this, it turns out, is not actually true: although the original contract between Hungary and the Soviet Union in the 1980s included a paragraph about the repatriation of nuclear waste, that ceased in the mid-1990s on Russia’s request. When Hungary joined the EU in 2004, it came under Euratom regulations, which basically forbids the export of nuclear waste. Spent fuel is now stored for five years in a cooling pond on-site, and then put in a dry storage facility. Last year, an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team of experts reported that, “Hungary is moving ahead in the development of a deep geological disposal facility for high level waste.”
Media friendly to the government, however, have been speculating that Rosatom could offer in the case of the Paks 2 project to take back some of the spent fuel and recycle it. Remix technology, which was tested in the Balakovo nuclear power plant in southwest Russia, is based on extracting uranium and plutonium from spent fuel and converting it into new fuel rods. The recycled fuel rods could then be used for nuclear fuel, with the remaining waste sent back to Hungary. Western companies can offer similar technology, called MOX fuel (mixed oxide fuel, consisting of plutonium blended with uranium), with France being one of the pioneers in Europe.
Hungary’s only real alternative to Russian-built reactors would be small modular reactors, or SMRs. Though touted as the future of nuclear energy, the technology is still in its infancy: there are only three SMRs operational in the world – in Russia, China and India – with three under construction and another 65 in design. Hungarian Energy Minister Csaba Lantos said recently SMRs are a viable option for the future.
“In an ideal situation, one-third of Hungary’s electricity demand would be covered by a regular nuclear power plant, one-third by SMRs and one-third by renewables,” Pazmandi says.
Czech nuclear problem: Where to store toxic waste?
Prague wants to accelerate plans to store nuclear waste underground, but is running into strong local resistance.
Politico, BY TIM GOSLING, JUNE 16, 2023
PRAGUE — The Czech Republic is betting big on nuclear as part of a shift away from polluting fossil fuels. But it’s struggling to find the answer to a key question: Where will it dump all of that radioactive waste?
The government’s new long-term energy strategy involves adding up to four new reactors to the six aging units that currently provide around 35 percent of the country’s electricity. The government hopes to finalize a tender for the first in 2024.
“It is vital” for the Czech Republic “or any country expanding its nuclear fleet, to have a comprehensive strategy for managing the radioactive waste,” said Miluš Trefancová, a spokesperson at the ministry of industry and trade.
Spent fuel from its existing reactors is currently stored at the country’s two nuclear power plants, Dukovany and Temelín. But with the country building out its nuclear fleet, it will need to find a new solution.
Prague is now racing to speed up highly ambitious, decades-old plan to build a deep geological repository that would see the high-level detritus buried half a kilometer underground for the next 100,000 years. Finland hopes to launch the world’s first such facility in the next year or two.
Time is running out for the Czechs, though, with new EU rules on what counts as a sustainable investment demanding that new nuclear projects secure a building permit by 2045 and file detailed plans for storing high-level radioactive waste by 2050 in order to qualify for a green label.
Those deadlines have focused minds in Prague, which lobbied hard alongside like-minded EU countries to have nuclear technology included in the EU’s list of sustainable investments.
The Czech government is already struggling to find a financing model to build new nuclear units, the first of which is widely expected to cost significantly more than the original estimate of €6 billion. A failure to qualify such projects as sustainable investments under the EU rules would make them unfeasible.
Building a deep geological repository is “an essential component” of the country’s energy strategy, said Trefancová. Plans are in place “to accelerate the preparation by 15 years,” she added.
Prague vs. the NIMBYs
Selecting a site has proved to be a major headache. Not only do countless geological, hydrological and other tests need to be undertaken, but the government has run into strong resistance from locals, who are wary of hosting the waste facility.
If the technical evaluation process was the only issue, plans could easily be sped up, but the social dimension is trickier, said Lukáš Vondrovic, head of the state’s Administration of Radioactive Waste Repositories.
The government is now favoring locations close to existing nuclear power plants in the hope that local resistance there will be lower. But the four municipalities shortlisted in 2020 are also putting up a fight, accusing the government of poor planning and a lack of communication. They also say their concerns about the likely impact on the environment, house prices or tourism are being ignored.
“The municipalities are not anti-nuclear,” said Hana Konvalinková from the Platform Against Deep Storage NGO, a group that involves three of the four municipalities. “They understand that the waste must be dealt with, but they want full transparency and participation.”
As part of a bill aimed at accelerating the plans, presented to parliament in May, the government pledged to give municipalities a greater say in the process.
But the NGO is highly skeptical of the move, saying the bill is vaguely worded and has too many loopholes, according to Konvalinková. The municipalities want the right to veto any nuclear waste project, pointing to Finland as the example to follow………………………
the Czech authorities are wary of allowing the localities the option of blocking decisions. Trefancová said the government “cannot guarantee the right to veto.”
Prague appears determined to push ahead: The ministry now says it hopes a site will be identified by the end of the decade. All of the preparatory and construction work would then likely need to be completed by 2050 to meet the EU’s taxonomy requirements.
Trefancová pointed out that Finland’s Onkalo project took 27 years to build, but suggested that Prague continue its push to convince Brussels to offer flexibility on the deadline. https://www.politico.eu/article/czech-republic-nuclear-power-problem-where-store-toxic-waste/
USSR Sprinkled More Than 2,500 Nuclear Generators Across The Countryside
Hundreds of these tiny atomic terrors are still unaccounted for in the rugged landscape of the former Soviet Union.
By Erin Marquis, 16 June 23, https://jalopnik.com/ussr-sprinkled-more-than-2-500-nuclear-generators-acros-1850501190
Ah, the USSR. It was a strange place with strange ideas. Ideas such as planting unprotected mini nuclear power sources into inhospitable and hard-to-reach areas. I mean, nothing should go wrong as long as the government always exists to maintain them, right?
Welcome to the world of Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators or RTGs. It’s a piece of nuclear history I only recently learned about and thought I should bring this whole new horror to your attention as well. These things are just kind of rolling around famously stable Russia, and it seems like it should be a cause for concern.
RTGs are not nuclear reactors, nor are they “nuclear batteries.” Rather they work by converting the heat caused by radioactive decay into electricity. Due to the dangerous nature of the materials used however, countries like America only use RTGs in applications such as space exploration. Voyager, Cassini and New Horizons uses RTGs for power, as do the Mars rovers Perseverance and Curiosity. These probes however, use expensive plutonium-238 as their power sources and we launch them far the hell away from us.
The USSR though? Nah. It’s going to use super cheap, super radioactive Strontium-90 instead, though later, smaller RTGs used equally cheap Caesium-137 or Cerium-144. These three isotopes all have one thing in common; they’re all the products of spent nuclear fission. In other words, waste. The terrestrial Beta-M RTG is about 1.5 meters wide and 1.5 meters tall and weight about one metric ton, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The entire unit put out about between 1 and 1000 watts (quite the spread) and had a working life of 10 to 20 years.
Originally built by the USSR’s Navy to power lighthouses and radio navigation beacons along Russia’s expansive arctic coastline, the RTGs provided power hundreds or even thousands of miles from civilization, occasionally completely unprotected and always unsupervised. They were occasionally secured by metal frames or sheds, but sometimes these lighthouses and radio beacons were set up on little more than rough structures hastily constructed out of nearby timber with the RTG stuck outside to face the harsh arctic elements. While the USSR provided regular rolling patrols to maintain the RTGs, that came to a screeching halt in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell. After that, there was no money to maintain the hard-to-reach RTGs, and they became victims of neglect and metal thieves.
After it proved useful for the Navy, the Soviets put the RTGs into service in other rough terrains. That’s how several ended up in the mountains of the former Soviet state of Georgia. Three residents from the village of Lia, Georgia, found a canister high up in the mountains. Since this strange material gave off heat, the three used it to stay warm overnight, but they woke up vomiting and dizzy. A week later, a military hospital diagnosed the three with radiation sickness. Two of the men would make it out with the help of dozens of skin grafts and months in the hospital. But the man who slept closest to the radioisotope source and handled it the most could not be saved.
Their arrival at the hospital launched a mad scramble from the international atomic community to find the orphan source of radiation. Footage of the clean-up crew both training for retrieval and actually snaring the Strontium-90 core shows just how dangerous RTGs are:
That wasn’t the only incident involving RTGs however. In 2001, scrappers broke into a lighthouse on Kandalashka Bay and stole three radioisotope sources (all three were recovered and sent to Moscow). Three men in the mountains of Georgia were also exposed in 2002 after stumbling upon cores left out in the woods. In 2003, scrappers hurled a core into the Baltic Sea, where a team of experts retrieved it.
The profligate use of our stressed freshwater resource by the nuclear industry.
Stressed Freshwater in our Lakes and Rivers Cooling the Heels of the Nuclear Industry – while the Industry wants More and Hotter Waste.
BY MARIANNEWILDART, https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2023/06/15/stressed-freshwater-in-our-lakes-and-rivers-are-cooling-the-heels-of-the-nuclear-industry-and-the-industry-wants-more-and-hotter-waste/
There is a deeply worrying unspoken aspect of this heatwave and that is the profligate use of our stressed freshwater resource by the nuclear industry. The hotter the weather the more freshwater is required for processes including the one absolutely essential to protect all life on planet earth from humanity’s greatest hubris – and that is the cooling of high level radioactive wastes. The industry requires top quality water not the rubbish that was given to folk in West Cumbria from the boreholes near Sellafield – nope the industry requires the coolest freshest waster including from Britain’s most iconic lake.
For Fifteen years now Radiation Free Lakeland have been flagging up the nuclear industry’s eyewatering use of our most precious resource, freshwater. For fifteen years the main stream media have shied away from the issue preferring to flag up the freshwater use of fracking which is big and very nasty but on a different scale both in time and quantity of freshwater involved .
Despite the nuclear industry insisting that the public should not have access to information on fresh water use for reasons of ‘national security’ we now have a body of documentation from (largely blacked out) Freedom of Information requests and research which shows that the nuclear industry’s freshwater use is on a scale second to none. The nuclear industry’s abuse of fresh water continues long after other industrys’ fracking, fossil fuel etc will have come and gone.
We have been told by diligent fracking activists that the figure from the hydraulic fracture plan for Cuadrilla was up to 31,000 cubic metres of water to frack the first well. This was based on up to 765 cubic metres per stage. The number of stages in the fracture plan was 41. That is a lot, it is too much and thanks to diligence of fracking campaigners (nuclear campaigners also fought fracking) this was stopped in its tracks. The ALREADY monstrous freshwater use by the nuclear industry in the Preston area was flagged up by nuclear campaigners.
Springfields Nuclear Fuels just off Preston New Road discharges at least 2400 cubic metres A DAY into the River Ribble. The fresh water discharge contains chemical and radioactive contamination – but the industry say this is fine as the super large quantities of fresh water used “dilute and disperse” the nasties.
Springfields Nuclear Fuels which is slap bang in the middle of Cuadrilla’s fracking plans on the Fylde has recieved no, nada, zilch attention over its fresh water use.
The video illustrates information painstakingly gleaned about Springfields freshwater use along with Sellafield’s. The front and the back end of the nuclear industry which are neatly tucked away under a cloak of invisibility in the NW. Sellafield’s abusive use of the Lake District’s freshwater is detailed in the video taken from a talk at New Horizons, St Annes. Lets hope the rain falls soon to replenish our Lakes and Rivers which have been flushing cool water over hot nuclear wastes since the 1940s. The new build plan would mean more and ever hotter wastes to cool into infinity . Our Lakes and rivers are finite.
This abuse of our fresh water has been going on now since the 1940s. Who knew? and Who Cares?
Talks ongoing over plans for Vulcan base to move into hands of Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
By Iain Grant
Talks ongoing over plans for Vulcan base to move into hands of Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority. Discussions are continuing with moves to put the
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) in charge of the clean-up of the
Vulcan military base in Caithness. Officials are working on smoothing the
way for the NDA, which already runs the redundant civil fast reactor plant
at Dounreay, to take over the next-door site from the Ministry of Defence
(MoD).
The MoD had put the wheels in motion towards the end of 2021 to seek
bids from private firms to carry out the clean-up of Vulcan, whose
pressurised water reactor shut down eight years ago. But the tender process
was halted soon after, since when the focus has been on paving the way for
the NDA to move in.
The MoD announced the start to the decontamination and
dismantling of the Royal Navy’s long-time nuclear submarine test base had
been put back until early 2026. In the meantime, the plant will continue to
be run by the MoD’s long-time contractor, Rolls-Royce.
Commander Ian
Walker, who heads the small Royal Navy presence at Vulcan, said the NDA
takeover is a credible option. But he said putting Vulcan and Dounreay
under the same operator is not straightforward, as the sites come under
different licensing and regulatory regimes and government departments. He
said: “We’re still looking at how the transfer to the NDA could be enacted
and a decision is expected later this year.” The move has been supported by
Struan Mackie, chair of the Dounreay Stakeholder Group.
John O’Groat Journal 13th June 2023
The US Energy Department is spending $26M to help find a temporary site to store spent nuclear fuel
Federal energy regulators have announced that they are spending $26 million
to find communities willing to accept a temporary federal site to store
spent nuclear fuel while a permanent repository is completed. Thirteen
groups made up of industry, academic, nonprofit, government and community
representatives will each get $2 million to explore the most equitable
approach to picking an interim site to store highly radioactive waste from
nuclear power plants, according to a recent news release from the U.S.
Energy Department. The approach will include a dialogue with residents and
local governments, the department said.
Daily Mail 13th June 2023
Fukushima waste-water plan a nuclear threat to Asia-Pacific
By Shaun Burnie | chinadaily.com.cn 2023-06-13 https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202306/13/WS6487d3e0a31033ad3f7bbf92.html
Japan has decided to start discharging radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean very soon. The operator of the wrecked plant began tests on Monday of newly constructed facilities for discharging treated radioactive wastewater into the sea. Many myths and untruths have been spread about the nuclear-contaminated water. For example, the Japanese government has said, that according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the global nuclear industry and some scientists, there is nothing to worry about the effects of the radioactive wastewater.
The Japanese government also claims that nearly all the radioactive materials will be removed from the wastewater using the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) with only tritium remaining before it is released into the Pacific. It is constantly stated that tritium cannot be removed from the wastewater, but would emit very weak radiation and therefore it will have no impact on either the marine environment or human health in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.
False claims to mislead the Japanese public
As for Tokyo Electric Power Company, the owner of the Fukushima nuclear plant, it claims discharging the wastewater is necessary due to insufficient space for more storage tanks and for it to be able to fully decommissioning the Fukushima plant between 2041 and 2051. TEPCO also says the discharges will meet regulatory standards and will be lawful.
In the real world, it is a lot worse and a lot more complicated than what TEPCO, the Japanese government and the IAEA claims. The ALPS has been a spectacular failure, with major doubts about its effectiveness. In addition to tritium, all the radioactive carbon (C-14) in the wastewater will be released into the ocean along with many other radionuclides (plutonium isotopes, iodine-129, strontium-90). But despite the Japanese government and TEPCO “planning” to keep them below the regulatory limit, they will still be significant.
There is no safety threshold for artificial radioactivity in the environment, and technology does exist to process tritium from the tanks’ water. However, TEPCO and the Japanese government do not want to spend huge amounts of money needed to do so. Tritium is indeed a low energy radioactive material but that does not mean its effect is weak; if ingested, it has the potential to damage plants, animals and humans.
Recent research published by a leading radiation biologist shows scientific literature of the past 60-plus years is clear — tritium, in particular organically bound tritium (OBT), is biologically harmful to all forms of life. The persistence, bioaccumulation and potential biomagnification and increased toxicity of OBT increases the potential impact on the environment if tritiated water is discharged on land or in the sea.
Tritium more dangerous than previously believed
None of the current regulations in Japan (or worldwide) takes into full account the nature of organic forms of tritium. That organic forms of tritium have been found to bioaccumulate in phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, is deeply worrying. The fact that there has been no comprehensive environmental impact assessment of these and many other issues is outrageous, and suggests there is a deliberate underestimation of the accumulation and potential toxic effect of tritium on the environment.
Equally important, the many other radioactive materials in the Fukushima wastewater have the potential to cause damage to the environment and human health. In fact, Japan has sufficient storage capacity, including in the areas around the Fukushima plant. And storing the toxic wastewater, TEPCO cannot fully decommission the reactors at Fukushima in the next 20-30 years — probably not in this century. Rather than being lawful, the release of the wastewater into the sea will violate international law, specifically the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
One reason why the untruths and myths continue to be spread is that there is a lot at stake for the Japanese government and the nuclear industry. Japan’s energy policy is dependent on restarting many nuclear reactors shut down after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. So far, nine have resumed operations — but according to government policy, Japan needs 30-plus reactors by 2030.
Public opinion in Japan has been influenced by the government’s claim that it is safe to operate these nuclear reactors and that it is possible to recover from a three-reactor meltdown without consequences for human health and the environment. Of course, it’s not.
Sweeping real issue under the carpet
TEPCO, the Japanese government or the IAEA refuses to accept that the wastewater crisis points to a deeper nuclear crisis at the Fukushima plant. And it is getting worse, because groundwater entering the plant continues to become highly contaminated, while the water in the tanks requiring ALPS processing increases.
In November 2021, based on TEPCO data, there were 1,284,284 cubic meters of contaminated ALPS water in the storage tanks, of which 832,900 cu m needed further ALPS processing. As of April 20, 2023, the total volume of radioactive wastewater stored in the tanks was 1,330,944 cu m — a 3.6 percent increase in less than 2 years.
Worse, about 70 percent or 931,600 cu m of the wastewater needs to be processed again (and probably many times again) by the ALPS to bring the radioactive concentration levels below the regulatory limit for discharge. This is an increase of nearly 12 percent in less than 2 years.
TEPCO has succeeded in reducing the concentration levels of strontium, iodine and plutonium in only 0.2 percent of the total volume of the wastewater, and it still requires further processing. But no secondary processing has taken place in the past nearly three years. Neither TEPCO nor the Japanese government nor the IAEA wants to talk about this. They have not said how many times the wastewater needs to be processed, how long it will take to do so or whether the efforts will ever be successful.
Problems not new but none solved in 5 years
Greenpeace wrote about these problems and why the ALPS failed nearly five years ago; none of those issues has been resolved. Also, there is a high possibility of the ALPS failing in the future.
To proceed with their discharge plan, the Japanese government and TEPCO have been creating a false impression on the public that significant progress has been made in decommissioning the Fukushima plant. But fact is, the source of the problem — the highly radioactive fuel debris in reactor pressure vessels 1, 2 and 3 — continues to contaminate groundwater. Nearly 1000 cu m of water becomes highly contaminated every 10 days. So until the nuclear fuel is isolated from the environment, contaminated groundwater, potentially hundreds of thousands of cubic meters, will continue to accumulate.
While the Fukushima plant, after being destroyed by the earthquake-triggered tsunami in March 2011, released large amounts of radioactive particles into the environment, most of the radioactive inventory remains inside the melted fuel. As such, the damaged Fukushima plant on the edge of ocean is a long-term radioactive threat to the environment, including the marine environment. And this threat will be aggravated once Japan begins dumping the toxic water into the ocean.
TEPCO, the Japanese government and the IAEA refuse to acknowledge the fact that the decommissioning plan for the Fukushima plant is not attainable, and that they must embark on a comprehensive reassessment of the plan.
Crisis compounded by damage to reactor
The nuclear crisis in Fukushima is compounded by the damage to the reactors, in particular unit 1. The rapid meltdown of the nuclear fuel in March 2011 severely damaged the large concrete block the 440-ton reactor pressure vessel sits on. One of the agencies responsible for its decommissioning has recently demanded that TEPCO work out immediate countermeasures to prevent the possible collapse of the reactor. But with very high radiation levels inside the plant, it’s not clear whether any countermeasures are possible.
Building a very large containment structure covering the reactor buildings, like it was done at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine after the nuclear disaster in 1986, is probably the only way to prevent highly radioactive dust entering the lower atmosphere in the event of a future collapse. But such a “solution” is not a currently an option for the Japanese government or the nuclear industry, as it would send the wrong message that the decommissioning process is not going according to plan.
There is no scientific, legal or moral justification for Japan to deliberately contaminate our shared and common marine environment. And concerned citizens, scientists, maritime lawyers, the fishing communities across the Asia-Pacific and the world’s leading oceanography universities and institutes have spread public awareness about the nuclear dangers, something that has rarely been done before.
There is a very strong legal case for challenging Japan’s decision to dump the wastewater into the sea but doing so is a major undertaking. For many reasons, no state or group of states may take up the challenge through UNCLOS this year. But since the environmental threat from the Fukushima plant will only intensify, future legal action should not be ruled out.
At a time when our oceans are under so many multiple threats, including from melting glaciers and related climate emergencies, overfishing and biodiversity loss and plastic pollution — there is no reason why Japan should be allowed to dump the radioactive water into the sea.
Greenpeace has been campaigning for protection for our oceans from radioactive contamination since the 1970s. And the most important thing I have learned in my 30 years with Greenpeace is that positive change is possible even if it does not often happen as early as it should but it can happen and people must never give up their efforts or hope.
The author is a senior nuclear specialist with Greenpeace East Asia and has worked in Japan and wider Asia for over 30 years.
Fukushima nuclear plant begins tests of wastewater release plan; fishing officials remain opposed
The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant has begun tests of newly constructed facilities for discharging treated radioactive wastewater into sea, a plan strongly opposed by local fishing communities and neighboring countries
By MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press. abc news, June 12, 2023,
TOKYO — The operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant began tests on Monday of newly constructed facilities for discharging treated radioactive wastewater into the sea, a plan strongly opposed by local fishing communities and neighboring countries.
The tests at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant use fresh water instead of the treated water, operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said……………………………….
The plan has faced fierce protests from local fishing communities concerned about safety and reputational damage. Nearby countries, including South Korea, China and Pacific Island nations, have also raised safety concerns. Japan’s government has set up a fund to promote Fukushima seafood and provide compensation in case sales fall due to safety concerns.
Fishing officials said they remain opposed to the plan when they met Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura on Saturday when he visited Fukushima and the neighboring prefectures of Ibaraki and Miyagi.
“We stand by our opposition,” Tetsu Nozaki, head of the Fukushima prefectural fisheries association, told Nishimura. Nozaki, however, said the association supports progress in the plant’s decommissioning and hopes to continue the dialogue. “At the moment, our positions remain wide apart.”
………….. In South Korea, fishermen staged a rally in front of the National Assembly in Seoul on Monday against the plan to release treated radioactive water. https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/fukushima-nuclear-plant-begins-tests-wastewater-release-plan-100006333
Canada’s controversial nuclear waste disposal design for Chalk River
How safe is the Ottawa River from nuclear waste? Canada’s National Observer April 8th 2019 “……..Nuclear disposal site design
The proposed Near Surface Disposal Facility is not new technology, according to its proponents. The same technology set for Chalk River has also been adopted in the U.K. and Belgium, the company says.
The key component is an engineered containment mound. It is contained by a large cover system designed to keep out rain and other elements. Below the cover, a liner system is meant to collect contaminated water — and alert monitoring systems to leaks — and direct the effluent to treatment systems.
The timeline for the project is monumental. The mound will be filled with low-level nuclear waste that is currently held on site at Chalk River, as well as a small amount of waste that will be transported to the facility from other locations such as hospitals, universities and other nuclear facilities in Canada. Five per cent of the total waste will come from Whiteshell Laboratories in Manitoba, which is undergoing its own decommissioning process.
The waste in the mound would be split into cells according to contaminants or time for decay. A temporary cover would allow time to add radioactive waste for 50 years. When the site is full it would be permanently sealed.
The site would be monitored for 300 years after the permanent cover is installed at which point the radioactive material will have decayed. The facility is designed to last 550 years, the company says.
The radioactive waste inside the mound will break down. The half-life for tritium is around 12 years, and the half-life for strontium-90 is about 29 years. That means half of the tritium or strontium stored on the site decays during that period, with half of the remainder taking a further 12 or 29 years to decay. The process keeps repeating itself until ultimately all the material has broken down.
The engineered containment mound is CNL’s preferred nuclear waste storage option. In its draft environmental impact statement, CNL includes a discussion of the various other types of disposal options and techniques including deep-underground repositories, above-ground cement vaults and different on-and off-site locations.
In an opinion article in the Ottawa Citizen in April 2018, Eva Schacherl, a former executive director of the Canadian Environmental Network, argued the project was “the wrong plan at the wrong site,” and a vault buried hundreds of metres deep below the grounds should have been chosen.
In a draft environmental assessment, the lab did not conduct geological tests far below the surface. Although the deep-underground method provides additional protections against leakage, CNL says there is not enough evidence to outweigh the benefits of its chosen model.
A deep-underground vault would be much more expensive to monitor and maintain over its life cycle, according to CNL’s analysis. CNL has made several changes to the proposal since public consultations began in May 2016, in response to some of the hundreds of initial comments by the public during an ongoing environmental assessment.
Ottawa Riverkeeper advocates a type of facility that does not come into contact with water. “We want a solution that will safeguard all species from the radioactive waste that is currently onsite at Chalk River and Rolphton,” Riverkeeper said in a Nov. 1 update. “We would like to see Canada look to countries like Finland who have constructed siloed geological repositories to safeguard all levels of radioactive waste. We want a disposal facility where radioactive waste does not come into contact with water.”
CNL acknowledged during an interview for this story that it was not transparent enough during the environmental impact statement process in explaining why the particular location near the Ottawa River on the CRL site was the best choice.
Subsequent studies, analyses and updates to the document are part of the delay that will push the delivery of CNL’s final environmental impact statement to the CNSC for approval back to around spring 2020, according to the company. The delay was also caused by technical questions from provincial and government agencies that have required additional study, including a notable point where nuclear waste is discharged into Perch Lake.
The public comment process has led to other significant changes to the project design. The original project was meant to hold predominantly low-level intermediate waste, but also allowed for about one per cent intermediate-level waste or mixed wastes. The company has now decided to restrict the waste going into the storage facility to only the low-level category.
The change was purely driven by feedback from the community, the company representatives said. The site was never intended to hold high-level waste, such as spent nuclear fuel from a reactor.
“It’s in response to concerns from the public or interest groups,” said Meggan Vickerd, director of the nuclear waste facility project for CNL. “Intermediate-level waste was only a fraction of the inventory, plus it was not all of the intermediate-level waste, so we knew we still needed another facility.”
Controversy over near-surface disposal
The company says the project prompted hundreds of public comments during its opening consultation phase. Pat Quinn, CNL’s communications director, says the company is dedicated to transparency and open communication.
Activist organizations and Indigenous groups have raised a number of red flags about the suggested nuclear waste site and the overall security of decommissioning, including its construction about one kilometre away from the river.
Riverkeeper has also emphasized that despite the Canadian government’s rhetoric about the importance of a Nation to Nation relationship, “there has been no consultation with Indigenous Governments to develop a radioactive waste policy on terms that would be acceptable to Indigenous peoples.
“Likewise, there has been no consultation with the Algonquin Anishinaabe people about consolidating all federal radioactive wastes within their traditional, unsurrendered territory.”
Some local farmers have also expressed concern. One is Taylor Hanrath, an organic pork farmer and the owner of Butternutty Farm who lives downstream in Pembroke.
“If there’s a leak at all, in some way, shape, or form it would have the pretty big Ottawa River right beside it to transport it quickly and there’s always going to be the potential for human error, on top of a possible earthquake or tornado.” Hanrath said. “Even right now I don’t know what the plan would be for my farm if a leak were to happen at the current site.”
………The International Atomic Energy Agency indicates better ways to store nuclear waste are to bury it in “caverns, vaults, or silos, at least a few tens of metres below ground level, and up to a few hundred metres below ground level.” It does state, however, that a near-surface facility would be sufficient for low-level waste, such as decommissioned structures, old laboratory materials and soil.
Chalk River: Radioactive Wastes and the Honour of the Crown
Background: May 9, 2023
A consortium of multinational corporations, operating under the banner CNL (Canadian Nuclear Laboratories), is contracted to manage all of the federal government’s nuclear facilities. The contract obliges CNL to “reduce the liability” associated with the multibillion dollar legacy of radioactive wastes created in the name of the Crown by uranium processing (mainly at Port Hope, Ontario) and by nuclear fission (mainly at Chalk River). CNL has been given close to a billion dollars a year for the last five years from Canadian taxpayers.
The Port Hope and Chalk River nuclear facilities are outgrowths of the World War II Atomic Bomb project and the subsequent Cold War era. Canada sold uranium and plutonium almost exclusively for nuclear weapons use from 1941 to 1965. In a very real sense, the “legacy radioactive wastes” at these two sites are in large part leftovers of the American bomb program and the Cold War arms buildup.
How does CNL propose to deal with the radioactive legacy of the nuclear age? At Chalk River, CNL proposes to build a huge earthen mound of “low-level” radioactive and toxic chemical wastes within one kilometre of the Ottawa River. The low-level waste is a minute fraction of the total radio-toxic burden at Chalk River, which includes highly radioactive reactor cores, tanks of reprocessing liquid, plutonium handling facilities, and large quantities of high-level and intermediate-level radioactive wastes for which there is as yet no plan at all. The mound is a cheap and convenient way of dealign with the most voluminous material, clearing the decks for building new facilities that will produce even more challenging forms of nuclear wastes, while ignoring the bulk of the radioactivity that afflicts this “Nuclear Sacrifice Zone”.
The engineered mound – a glorified landfall 5 to 7 stories high – will hold a million cubic metres of toxic waste, on a site that drains into Perch Lake and then into the Ottawa River. Called a “Near Surface Disposal Facility” (NSDF), this megadump is planned to be built on lthe unsurrendered territory of several Algonquin communities that have inhabited the Ottawa Valley for thousands of years.
Canada’s nuclear regulator, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) conducted an environmental assessment of the NSDF and held a week of public hearings in February 2022. Since then, two Algonquin communities – the Keboawek First Nation (KFN) and the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg (KZA) community, have demonstrated their strong opposition to the proposed megadump, as have more than a hundred communities downstream from Chalk River, including the 18 municipalities comprising the Montreal City Agglomeration Council. KFN has done outstanding work in documenting several key species inhabiting the proposed site that have been totally ignored by the environmental assessment process.CNL is now asking CNSC to grant CNL a licence amendment to prepare the contested site for the NSDF.
Public hearings will be held remotely on June 27 with no opportunity for intervenors to appear in person before the Commission, despite strong requests from the Indigenous communities to allow face-to-face meetings.
All those who intervened in the February 2022 hearings are allowed no more than 5000 words to give their final input on this issue before CNSC renders its decision. Here is the final submission from the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.
Radioactive Wastes and the Honour of the Crown
Final report submitted to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
by Gordon Edwards, president, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
www.ccnr.org/CCNR_CNSC_NSDF_final_2023.pdf
Contents –
1. The Honour of the Crown
2. Protecting the Environment & the Health and Safety of Persons
3. Communicating with Future Genera>ons
4. Safety Culture and the Justification Principle
5. A Tale of Two Dumps
6. List of radioactive poisons
1 This Month
18 March Webinar @ 1 PM EST: An Assessment of SMR Projects: The Case of Canada
register for the zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_o8BIIOUvQ2ONJR1nta65DQ#/registration
of the week – STOP SMALL MODULAR REACTORS IN CANADA
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