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USA Energy Department nuclear waste backlog goes as far back as WWII

Federal News Network, Tom Temin@tteminWFED, May 25, 2022 The Energy Department has a backlog of nuclear waste clean up responsibilities, with material dating back to World War II. But continuing turnover in program leadership means things just aren’t happening. For more, Government Accountability Office natural resources and environmental team Director Nathan Anderson spoke with the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: So what is going on here, the Energy Department says it needs something like a half a trillion dollars to do the cleanup of nuclear waste. Give us the scope of what it is they’re trying to do here in the first place?

Nathan Anderson: Well, you’ve got the dollar figure, right, in terms of the best estimates that we can give to this point. It is looking like almost a half a trillion dollar future financial responsibility of the federal government. I want to take it back a little bit to how we got here. You know, for decades, we were in the Cold War. And we were producing nuclear weapons. And we had sites across the country that were engaged in the Manhattan Project, and ultimately in the arms race that we were involved in until the late 1980s. And then around that time, the switch was flipped, if you will. And all of a sudden, we had to embrace the cleanup responsibilities that came with the end of the Cold War and kind of embracing both environmental and moral responsibilities of cleaning up the waste. And that’s where we’re at now, you know, we’ve been at this for a little more than 30 years, in a way trying to figure out the best way forward in terms of addressing the environmental and human health risks. And also, you know, the financial risks.

Tom Temin: And what is the scope of the issue geographically is there material that needs to be dealt with all over the place?

Nathan Anderson: There are 15 active cleanup sites that the Department of Energy is responsible for addressing. The biggest site in terms of financial risk and scope of waste is probably the Hanford Site out in southwestern Washington. There’s also a massive cleanup operation at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, there’s a nuclear repository down in New Mexico at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. DOE recently kind of completed some of their activities at the Brookhaven Lab in New York. But as I’m kind of going through this list, you can see it really is all across the country, where we have these sites and have these cleanup responsibilities.

Tom Temin: And what does cleanup actually entail? It has to be removed and put somewhere else and buried in concrete or what?

Nathan Anderson: Well, I think one of the best ways to describe this is you’ve got nuclear waste, and radioactive waste that is in a tank, a couple sites around the country. There are 177 underground tanks at the Hanford Site, these tanks are massive, I’ve stood in a mock up of one. They hold, you know, up to a million gallons of waste. You’ve also got contaminated soil and groundwater. Decades ago during the nuclear weapons production mission, not as much as understood about the risks that some of these liquids and some of these contaminants contained, and so some of it was dumped directly into the ground. And that has permeated into the groundwater at certain sites. And then you’ve also got contaminated facilities that need to be demolished and that contamination needs to be dealt with appropriately. So I would say the three big cleanup activities are addressing the waste that’s in the tank. That’s the really nasty stuff, the soil and groundwater that needs to be remediated. And then also the excess facilities that need to be demolished, and that contamination needs to be remediated.

Tom Temin: And does that put the Energy Department in the position of being a buyer of contracted services to actually do this? Are there companies that handle this type of thing?

Nathan Anderson: Yes, it does. DOE is one of the largest contracting departments out there, probably right behind DoD (Department of Defense) in terms of the percentage of money that is put out the contracts. And now you’ve got companies around the country that are technically equipped to do this. And what DOE needs to do is ensure that for the taxpayer, you get the benefits of competition at each one of these sites. And then you also have the kind of like the accountability frameworks that are embedded within the contracts themselves, to make sure that cleanup is happening in a risk informed way. I like to say that contractors can do anything we ask them to do in this country. It’s up to the Department of Energy, and specifically the Office of Environmental Management to make sure that what they are asking the contractors to do is aligned with the risks that some of this waste poses. You recently commented about cement. That’s a perfect example. There are opportunities to take some of this tank waste like out of Hanford and put it in cement rather than glass because it’s very low levels of risk and cement, or grout as a term in the industry is significantly cheaper than the alternatives.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Nathan Anderson, a director in the Natural Resources and Environmental Team at the GAO. And the thesis of your report this time around is not really though how big the task is. But the fact that a revolving door of leadership at the Environmental Management Office of DOE is one of the hindrances to steady progress here. Tell us more about what you found.

Nathan Anderson: You’re hitting the nail on the head in terms of what this most recent report does touch on. We’ve just spoken about kind of the size and complexity of the issues. And what you’ll see across government oftentimes when you have a set of issues that are technically challenging and huge in scope, and long lasting and enduring is you have a leader of those federal responsibilities who has either a fixed term appointment, and in many cases, also an elevated level within the department. And that’s what we are leaning towards in this new report is that Congress should take those two actions to address the frequent turnover by having like a fixed term appointment of four to five years, to make sure that you’ve got a strong signal inside and outside government that this is a position that requires stability, and then also, that there should be an undersecretary position within the Department of Energy to again, provide that signal that there needs to be a high level of organizational clout that these are issues that are long lasting, and require stability and commitment from the senior leader within the department.

………………………. Nathan Anderson: We do have a very dedicated cadre of technicians and public servants that serve in the Office of Environmental Management, you know, there have been tremendously capable senior leaders, assistant secretaries at the Department of Energy that are responsible for this mission. But at the end of the day, resources are scarce. At the end of the day, priorities need to be set. Not everything can be done. And what we’re seeing is an increase in cost, substantially increasing costs for the long term mission of environmental cleanup within the Department of Energy. And I think it’s over the last seven or eight years, it’s almost doubled in terms of what we call the environmental liability, that total cost to the government for the cleanup mission. And that is a kind of a strong prompt or a catalyst to say, OK, is the status quo working? I would argue that the status quo needs to change.

………………………. I would say that GAO has identified a handful of options that could really fly down that half a trillion dollar cost estimate that you kind of lead with, there are opportunities and I would submit that while those opportunities are tens of billions of dollars or more, it will require like elevated leadership attention to be able to get there. And yet another reason why a fixed term appointment and an undersecretary position could really help here. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2022/05/energy-department-nuclear-waste-backlog-goes-as-far-back-as-wwii/—

May 26, 2022 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

US Government Secret Files: Human Experiments With Plutonium Side Effects

by SOFREP, 22 May 22, ” ……………………………………   The Manhattan Project…………..    The most famous development of the Manhattan Project was when they produced atomic bombs, two of which were the Little Boy Bomb and the Fat Man Bomb, that were dropped on the two cities of Japan, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. There was also this not-so-famous bomb that was supposed to be the third bomb to be dropped in Japan had they not surrendered, known as the Demon Core (know why it was called as such here.)

Although a huge chunk of the Manhattan Project was dedicated to the development and production of the weapons, a small portion of it was dedicated to studying the health effects of the radioactive materials involved in the project, which was Plutonium.

Human Experiments

………………….     the huge amounts of radioactive materials used in the experiments also led to widespread contamination even outside of the research facilities. They wanted to know exactly the risks and dangers that these researchers were facing, so they began studying the effects of radiation on human bodies.

The plutonium toxicity studies began with rats as the main subject. These were quickly deemed inconclusive, so they decided to move the experiments onto human trials beginning in 1945. They didn’t realize at the time that rats are pretty resistant to radiation. At that time, details about plutonium were not yet disclosed to the public, so they decided that for the secrecy of it, they would not inform anyone outside of scientific circles about the trials, not even the human test subjects.

A total of eighteen human subjects were selected and injected with plutonium without their knowledge from 1945 until 1947, their ages ranging from 4 to 69. One common thing about them was their diagnosis of a terminal illness.

Patient CAL-1

One of the involuntary subjects of the human radiation experiment was a house painter from Ohio in his late 50s named Albert Stevens, or patient CAL-1. At that time, he had checked into the University of California Hospital in San Francisco and was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It was suggested that a gastroscopy be performed to make sure that the diagnosis was accurate, but it never really happened. And so Stevens was chosen for the study because, according to acting chief of radiology Earl Miller, “he was doomed” to die.

Before he underwent the operation that would try to rid him of cancer, Stevens was injected with what would be known as the highest accumulated radiation dose in any human, 131 kBq (3.55 µCi) of plutonium. After that, stool and urine samples were taken from Stevens for analysis. He then underwent an operation to remove his cancer, which included taking out parts of his liver, entire spleen, lymph nodes, part of his pancreas, part of his omentum, and most of his ninth rib.

When some of the materials removed from Stevens were analyzed, they discovered that Stevens was misdiagnosed and did not have cancer in the first place. He was, in fact, suffering from a large gastric ulcer. He and his family were not informed about it and were instead told that his recovery was speedy. …………..  https://sofrep.com/news/us-government-secret-files-human-experiments-with-plutonium-side-effects/

May 23, 2022 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

Entergy shuts down Palisades nuclear station ahead of time

 Entergy Corp said on Friday it has permanently shut a nuclear power
station in Michigan despite a Biden administration plan to rescue plants
like it because they generate electricity virtually free of carbon
emissions. Entergy closed the 800-Megawatt Palisades plant in Michigan that
had operated for more than 50 years. “After careful monitoring, operators
made the conservative decision to shut down the plant early due to the
performance of a control rod drive seal,” Entergy said in a statement about
the plant.

 Reuters 21st May 2022

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/blow-biden-climate-plan-entergy-shuts-nuclear-power-plant-2022-05-20/

May 23, 2022 Posted by | decommission reactor, USA | Leave a comment

Seismic Concerns at Los Angeles Nuclear Laboratory and Expanded Plutonium Pit Production

Seismic Concerns at LANL and Expanded Plutonium Pit Production http://nuclearactive.org/, May 19th, 2022, Ongoing  Plutonium operations at Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Technical Area 55 are centered in the middle of the 36-square mile national nuclear weapons facility.  LANL is the only U.S. facility with the capabilities to fabricate plutonium triggers, or the fissile pits, for nuclear weapons.  However, Technical Area 55, or TA-55, is located within the complex Pajarito Fault Zone between two young, north – south running faults called the Guaje Mountain and    Rendija Canyon faults.  Visual evidence of faulting     can be found in the canyons to the north of TA-55.  http://nuclearactive.org/gilkeson/ see Seismic Documents.

The U.S. Department of Energy owns LANL.  It has plans for expansion of all things plutonium-pit production at the Plutonium Facility and at least five new support buildings at TA-55.  CCNS anticipates that DOE will continue its efforts to conceal and ignore the reality of the growing seismic threats of the young faults.

We witnessed similar efforts in the mid-2000s when DOE began to design a new super Walmart-sized Nuclear Facility within TA-55 next door to the Plutonium Facility.  DOE was so bold as to dig into the volcanic tuff with heavy equipment to prepare a pad for future construction.  http://www.nuclearactive.org/news/030510.html  In the end, public opposition and escalating costs forced the cancellation of its plans.  http://nuclearactive.org/livestreamed-nuclear-safety-board-hearing-on-february-21st-in-albuquerque/

Fabricating plutonium pits for nuclear weapons involves many steps – some using aqueous processes that result in water contaminated with radiation and hazardous materials.  That water is treated across the street from the Plutonium Facility at the Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility and for decades was discharged through an industrial outfall into Effluent Canyon.  Since November 2011, though, the treated water has been evaporated into the air at a mechanical evaporator.  

In April, the Environmental Protection Agency renewed the five-year industrial permit for LANL to discharge through Outfall 051 into Effluent Canyon.  https://www.epa.gov/nm/los-alamos-national-laboratory-lanl-industrial-wastewater-permit-final-npdes-permit-no-nm0028355

We note that on May 11th, CCNS, Honor Our Pueblo Existence, and the Albuquerque Veterans for Peace, Chapter No. 63, appealed the EPA decision to permit the outfall and five others to the Environmental Appeals Board.  https://yosemite.epa.gov/oa/EAB_Web_Docket.nsf/f22b4b245fab46c6852570e6004df1bd/ba987f24df0c356085258837004f3dcd

Then on May 5th, the New Mexico Environment Department approved for the first time a ground water discharge permit for not only for the Radioactive Liquid Waste Treatment Facility, the outfall and Mechanical Evaporator, but for two large solar evaporative tanks, and a new low-level radioactive liquid waste treatment facility.  In addition, DOE plans to build a liquid waste treatment facility for the transuranic plutonium liquid waste.  https://www.env.nm.gov/public-notices/, go to Los Alamos County, and scroll down to DP-1132 where the draft permit is posted, but not the final permit.

These facilities are all in support of DOE’s plans for expanded plutonium pit production at LANL.

May 21, 2022 Posted by | - plutonium, safety, USA, weapons and war | 1 Comment

UK Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee sets out the grim facts on costs of decommissioning nuclear reactors

Despite government already having had to provide additional funding of
£10.7 billion, there remains a strong likelihood that more taxpayers’
money will be required to meet the costs of decommissioning the seven
Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor nuclear power stations.

The Nuclear Liabilities Fund, which was set up to meet the decommissioning costs of these stations,
has not kept up with the increased costs of decommissioning or met its
investment targets. In response, government has chosen to top up the Fund
with taxpayers’ money, providing an injection of capital of £5.1 billion
in 2020–21 with a further £5.6 billion expected in 2021–22. HM
Treasury and the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy have
opted to maintain an investment strategy for the Fund whereby around 80% of
its assets are invested in the National Loans Fund currently earning
minimal returns.

Estimated decommissioning costs on the other hand have
almost doubled since March 2004, estimated at £23.5 billion in March 2021,
and there remains a significant risk that the costs could rise further
putting strain on the Fund.

 Public Accounts Committee 20th May 2022

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmpubacc/118/summary.html

May 21, 2022 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

UK nuclear power stations’ decommissioning cost soars to £23.5bn

UK nuclear power stations’ decommissioning cost soars to £23.5bn  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/20/uk-nuclear-power-stations-decommissioning-cost Failures in government’s investment strategy mean taxpayer has contributed £10.7bn in just two yearsm Sandra Laville Environment correspondent Fri 20 May 2022

The cost of decommissioning the UK’s seven ageing nuclear power stations has nearly doubled to £23.5bn and is likely to rise further, the public accounts committee has said.

The soaring costs of safely decommissioning the advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs), including Dungeness B, Hunterston B and Hinkley B, are being loaded on to the taxpayer, their report said.

Failures in the government’s investment strategy for the fund, which was set up to pay for the decommissioning, have led to the taxpayer topping it up by an additional £10.7bn in just two years.

The nuclear power stations are owned by EDF Energy and provide much of the UK’s nuclear power-generated electricity, which makes up 16% of the energy mix. But the stations are nearing the end of their lives and are scheduled to stop generating electricity during this decade.

The government has recently agreed that once the stations have been defuelled by EDF, which involves the removal of all the spent fuel from the reactor core and cooling ponds, ownership of the stations will be transferred to the government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to complete decommissioning.

“The pace at which the stations can be defuelled could have a big impact on the costs, between £3.1bn and £8bn depending on the time taken,” the inquiry report said. “Successful defuelling will depend on all parties being ready and working together, including the NDA being ready to receive and dismantle the volume of fuel arriving at Sellafield. Any delays in the defuelling process could result in costs increasing substantially.

“The handover agreement does not appear to sufficiently ‘incentivise cost efficiency and ensure a smooth transfer of defuelled stations to the NDA’.”

The public accounts committee also said it had concerns over whether the NDA had the capacity to take on the seven AGR stations in addition to its other responsibilities, which includes decommissioning the older Magnox reactors.

It will cost the UK taxpayer £132bn to decommission all the UK’s civil nuclear sites and the work will not be completed for another 120 years, according to latest estimates.

Boris Johnson has pledged to build eight nuclear power stations in eight years. But the UK has no facility for permanently and safely storing the waste from past, present or future nuclear power stations. Most is currently stored at Sellafield, one of the most complex and hazardous nuclear sites in the world.


Nuclear Waste Services, an arm of the government, is seeking a site to build a geological deposit facility deep underground for all the UK’s nuclear waste.

MPs on the public accounts committee said in their report on Friday the government must learn lessons from the rising costs of decommissioning the seven AGR reactors and be clear how the decommissioning of proposed new nuclear stations would be funded.

The seven stations were sold by the government to EDF in 2009, with the later agreement that the French company would remove the fuel from the stations when they closed, and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority would take on the decommissioning of the sites. But the cost of decommissioning the seven AGR reactors that began to close last year, plus Sizewell B, has more than doubled from £12.6bn in 2004-05 to £23.5bn in 2020-21, the public accounts committee report said.

“There remain significant uncertainties that will need to be managed to prevent further increases in costs and ease pressures on the fund,” the report said. “The cost of defuelling will depend on the stations not closing significantly earlier than planned and how quickly they can be defuelled once electricity generation ceases.”

The public accounts committee, in a previous report, said the cost of decommissioning the older Magnox reactors – which were the first generation of UK nuclear stations – had increased by billions of pounds because of uncertainty over the condition of the sites and how to tackle the decommissioning.

The PAC report said the closure of seven nuclear stations by 2028 would have a significant impact on energy production, but EDF has said there can be no extensions to the life of the reactors while the UK waits for new generating capacity to come online.

May 21, 2022 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | 1 Comment

Five new plutonium buildings for Los Alamos National Laboratory, with the costly funding details rather obscure

Nuclear agency plans five new plutonium buildings at Los Alamos lab, Santa Fe New Mexican , By Scott Wyland swyland@sfnewmexican.com, May 18, 2022  

As a further sign Los Alamos National Laboratory is inching toward its 2026 target for making 30 warhead triggers a year, nuclear security managers plan to construct five buildings in the lab’s plutonium complex over the next five years, in part to support that effort.

A new building would be funded annually, beginning in fiscal year 2023, with the aim of supporting production of the bomb cores, known as pits, and other plutonium operations, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s budget request for the coming year.

The total cost of the five buildings will be more than $240 million………………….

One critic of the lab’s pit production plans said each of the buildings was priced just under the $50 million threshold that would trigger a more rigorous congressional review.

That might allow the lab to change the office buildings into something else later for a different purpose, such as producing more pits, said Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group.

“No one ever talked about these costs before,” Mello said. “We don’t think this is the end of the surprises. There are more surprises to come.”

The federal budget for plutonium operations has climbed steeply in recent years, both at the lab and at Savannah River Site in South Carolina, where officials hope to make an additional 50 pits yearly by the mid-2030s.

Under the U.S. Department of Energy’s draft budget, the lab’s plutonium modernization funding would climb to $1.56 billion in 2023 from the current year’s $1 billion, more than a 50 percent increase.

At the same time, the nuclear security agency, an Energy Department branch, has proposed funneling $700 million this coming year toward converting Savannah River Site into a pit factory. That’s a sizable jump from the $475 million spent for that purpose in the last budget cycle………………….

Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, said federal officials want the lab’s pit plant to be able to produce up to 80 pits for short periods.

He contends the lab is likely to use this “surge capacity” given the longer time it will take for Savannah River to begin production……………..  https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/nuclear-agency-plans-five-new-plutonium-buildings-at-los-alamos-lab/article_48acffdc-d5fb-11ec-985e-5b26a02df8f5.html

May 21, 2022 Posted by | - plutonium, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Cost of shutting down UK’s old nuclear reactors is doubling and then some

 The cost of decommissioning the UK’s seven ageing nuclear power stations
has nearly doubled to £23.5bn and is likely to rise further, the public
accounts committee has said. The soaring costs of safely decommissioning
the advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs), including Dungeness B, Hunsterston
B and Hinkley B, are being loaded on to the taxpayer, their report said.
Failures in the government’s investment strategy for the fund, which was
set up to pay for the decommissioning, have led to the taxpayer topping it
up by an additional £10.7bn in just two years. The nuclear power stations
are owned by EDF Energy and provide much of the UK’s nuclear
power-generated electricity, which makes up 16% of the energy mix. But the
stations are nearing the end of their lives and are scheduled to stop
generating electricity during this decade. The government has recently
agreed that once the stations have been defuelled by EDF, which involves
the removal of all the spent fuel from the reactor core and cooling ponds,
ownership of the stations will be transferred to the government’s Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to complete decommissioning.

 Guardian 20th May 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/20/uk-nuclear-power-stations-decommissioning-cost

May 21, 2022 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

The U.S. energy secretary says it is critical to find a solution for storing the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.

Energy Secretary: We Must Find a Solution for Nuclear Waste The U.S. energy secretary says it is critical to find a solution for storing the nation’s spent nuclear fuel. By Associated Press, May 20, 2022,  JENNIFER McDERMOTT, Associated Press

WATERFORD, Conn. (AP) — It is critical to find a solution for storing the nation’s spent nuclear fuel, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Friday during a visit to a nuclear power plant in Connecticut……………………

There’s renewed momentum to figure out a storage site, or sites, to free up the land where the waste is currently being stored and move it away from population centers, fault lines and flood plains………….

There is roughly 89,000 metric tons of used commercial fuel at nearly 80 sites in 35 U.S. states, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s trade association. At 20 of the sites, there’s no longer an operating reactor, the institute said………………..

Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney is part of a bipartisan congressional caucus working to change how spent nuclear fuel is stored. Its members believe the current system is not sustainable, particularly for sites that could be redeveloped. Many are along the coastline, in flood plains — the worst geology for spent fuel to be stranded, Courtney said.


WATERFORD, Conn. (AP) — It is critical to find a solution for storing the nation’s spent nuclear fuel, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Friday during a visit to a nuclear power plant in Connecticut……………………

There’s renewed momentum to figure out a storage site, or sites, to free up the land where the waste is currently being stored and move it away from population centers, fault lines and flood plains………….

There is roughly 89,000 metric tons of used commercial fuel at nearly 80 sites in 35 U.S. states, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s trade association. At 20 of the sites, there’s no longer an operating reactor, the institute said………………..

Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney is part of a bipartisan congressional caucus working to change how spent nuclear fuel is stored. Its members believe the current system is not sustainable, particularly for sites that could be redeveloped. Many are along the coastline, in flood plains — the worst geology for spent fuel to be stranded, Courtney said.

Congress has provided about $40 million to fund the consent-based siting process that would be used to identify sites to store the nation’s spent nuclear fuel, and the administration asked for $53 million more for fiscal 2023, Courtney said.

Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said his main concern is that planning for consolidated interim storage could undermine efforts to figure out a permanent storage repository underground.

If there’s a place to ship fuel, there won’t be the political momentum to site an underground repository, which is the only plausible, safe, long-term solution for this waste, he said Friday…………… https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2022-05-20/energy-secretary-to-visit-nuclear-plant-discuss-waste-issue

May 21, 2022 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Japan OKs plan to release Fukushima nuclear plant wastewater

Japan’s nuclear regulator has approved plans by the operator of the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant to release its treated radioactive wastewater into the sea next year, saying the outlined methods are safe and risks to the environment minimal

By Mari Yamaguchi Associated Press, May 18, 2022, 

……….   There is still concern in the community and neighboring countries about the potential health hazards of the release of the wastewater that includes tritium — a byproduct of nuclear power production and a possible carcinogen at high levels.

The government and TEPCO say more than 60 isotopes selected for treatment can be lowered to meet safety standards, except for tritium, but that it is safe if diluted. Scientists say impact of long term low-dose exposure to the environment and humans are unknown, and that tritium can have a bigger impact on humans when consumed in fish than in water.

,,,,,,,,,, Under the plan, TEPCO will transport water that has been treated to below releasable levels through a pipeline from the tanks to a coastal facility, where the water is diluted with seawater.

From there, the water will enter an undersea tunnel to be discharged at a point about 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) from the plant to ensure safety and minimize the impact on local fishing and the environment, according to TEPCO.

The plan will become official after a 30-day public review, a formality that is not expected to overturn the approval.

………..The contaminated water is being stored in about 1,000 tanks at the damaged plant, which officials say must be removed so that facilities can be built for its decommissioning. The tanks are expected to reach their capacity of 1.37 million tons next year — slower than an earlier estimate of later this year………..   https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/japan-oks-plan-release-fukushima-nuclear-plant-wastewater-84800836

May 19, 2022 Posted by | Fukushima continuing, wastes | Leave a comment

The dangerous business of dismantling America’s aging nuclear plants

The NRC has given Holtec permission to pare back safety and security requirements at its plants, including security personnel, cybersecurity, emergency planning, terrorist attack drills and accident insurance, according to documents on the agency’s website.

“The NRC has not figured out a permanent solution” to nuclear waste………. “They are using Holtec as a Band-Aid.”

  Accidents at New Jersey’s Oyster Creek power plant have spurred calls for stricter oversight of the burgeoning nuclear decommissioning industry  Washington Post, By Douglas MacMillan  PORKED RIVER, N.J. — The new owner took over the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in 2019, promising to dismantle one of the nation’s oldest nuclear plants at minimal cost and in record time. Then came a series of worrisome accidents.

The new owner took over the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in 2019, promising to dismantle one of the nation’s oldest nuclear plants at minimal cost and in record time. Then came a series of worrisome accidents.

One worker was struck by a 100-ton metal reactor dome. Another was splashed with radioactive water, according to internal incident reports and regulatory inspection reports reviewed by The Washington Post. Another worker drove an excavator into an electrical wire on his first day on the job, knocking out power to 31,000 homes and businesses on the New Jersey coast, according to a police report and the local power company.

All three incidents occurred on the watch of Holtec International, a nuclear equipment manufacturer based in Jupiter, Fla. Though the company until recently had little experience shutting down nuclear plants, Holtec has emerged as a leader in nuclear cleanup, a burgeoning field riding an expected wave of closures as licenses expire for the nation’s aging nuclear fleet.

Over the past three years, Holtec has purchased three plants in three states and expects to finalize a fourth this summer.  The company is seeking to profitably dismantle them by replacing hundreds of veteran plant workers with smaller, less-costly crews of contractors and eliminating emergency planning measures, documents and interviews show. While no one has been seriously injured at Oyster Creek, the missteps are spurring calls for stronger government oversight of the entire cleanup industry.

In the nearly three years Holtec has owned Oyster Creek, regulators have documented at least nine violations of federal rules, including the contaminated water mishap, falsified weapons inspection reports and other unspecified security lapses. That’s at least as many as were found over the preceding 10 years at the plant, when it was owned by Exelon, one of the nation’s largest utility companies, according to The Post’s review of regulatory records.,…………………

Holtec is pioneering an experimental new business model. During the lifetime of America’s 133 nuclear reactors, ratepayers paid small fees on their monthly energy bills to fill decommissioning trust funds, intended to cover the eventual cost of deconstructing the plants. Trust funds for the country’s 94 operating and 14 nonoperating nuclear reactors now total about $86 billion, according to Callan, a San Francisco-based investment consulting firm.

After a reactor is dismantled and its site cleared, some of these trust funds must return any money left over to ratepayers. But others permit cleanup companies to keep any surplus as profit — creating incentives to cut costs at sites that house some of the most dangerous materials on the planet.

Even after reactors are shut down, long metal rods containing radioactive pellets — known as spent fuel — are stored steps away, in cooling pools and steel-and-concrete casks. Nuclear safety experts say that an industrial accident or a terrorist attack at any of these sites could result in a radiological release with severe impacts to workers and nearby residents, as well as to the environment.

(Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the independent federal agency tasked with overseeing safety at nuclear sites, conducts regular inspections during the decommissioning process. But state and local officials say the NRC has failed to safeguard the public from risks at shut-down plants, deferring too readily to companies like Holtec.

“The NRC is not doing their job,” said Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who has pushed the agency to adopt stricter regulations around plant decommissioning. “We need a guaranteed system that prioritizes communities and safety, and we don’t have that right now.”

The NRC’s leadership is divided over the role regulators should play. The agency was created in 1974, as the first generation of commercial reactors was going online, and its rules were mainly designed to safeguard the operation of active plants and nuclear-material sites. As reactors shut down, the NRC began reducing inspections and exempting plants from safety and security rules.

Last November, the NRC approved a new rule that would automatically qualify shut-down plants for looser safety and security restrictions.

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May 14, 2022 Posted by | business and costs, decommission reactor, USA | Leave a comment

Company Agrees to Further Tests of Nuke Plant’s Wastewater

The company dismantling a former nuclear power plant along Cape Cod Bay won’t release radioactive water into the bay unless tests confirm local marine life won’t be harmed, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey’s office said Wednesday.The Massachusetts Democrat held a hearing in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on Friday about nuclear safety and security issues, where the decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station by Holtec International was discussed.

Markey said Holtec officials assured him they wouldn’t discharge radioactive water from the plant into the bay without the consent of stakeholders. The company followed up with a letter this week to Markey, which his office released…….. 

Local residents, shell fishermen and politicians fiercely oppose discharging the water into the bay. Alternatively, Holtec could evaporate the contaminated water or truck it to a facility in another state.

Local residents, shell fishermen and politicians fiercely oppose discharging the water into the bay ……. https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/company-agrees-to-further-tests-of-nuke-plants-wastewater/2717659/

May 12, 2022 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Cost of living: Ministers consider delaying nuclear power decommissioning to help ease crisis

Government will consider plans  only if nuclear regulator believes it is safe to keep reactors online  

 inews    By Richard Vaughan  Ministers are looking into delaying the decommissioning of existing nuclear power stations in a bid to keep soaring energy prices down in the coming years, i understands.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has demanded his Cabinet look into ways to tackle the cost of living crisis, urging them to be “as creative as possible” in devising measures to ease the burden on households.

Whitehall sources have told i that among the options being examined are plans to keep existing nuclear reactors going beyond the date they are due to be taken off grid……..

Six of the UK’s seven nuclear reactors are due to go offline by 2030. Due to the rampant cost of fossil fuels, nuclear power is now among the cheaper energy sources for the UK, prompting Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng to look at whether they could be kept operational.

Nuclear industry insiders believe the Hinkley Point B reactor, which is due for decommission in July, could be extended for several more years.

Six of the UK’s seven nuclear reactors are due to go offline by 2030. Due to the rampant cost of fossil fuels, nuclear power is now among the cheaper energy sources for the UK, prompting Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng to look at whether they could be kept operational.

Nuclear industry insiders believe the Hinkley Point B reactor, which is due for decommission in July, could be extended for several more years.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,    https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/cost-of-living-ministers-consider-delaying-nuclear-power-decommissioning-to-help-ease-crisis-1625223

May 12, 2022 Posted by | decommission reactor, UK | Leave a comment

The future of nuclear waste: what’s the plan and can it be safe?

The future of nuclear waste: what’s the plan and can it be safe? The Conversation , Lewis Blackburn, EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow in Materials Science, University of Sheffield  11 May 22,  The UK is planning to significantly expand its nuclear capability, in an effort to decrease its reliance on carbon-based fossil fuels. The government is aiming to construct up to eight new reactors over the next couple of decades, with a view to increasing power capacity from approximately 8 gigawatts (GW) today to 24GW by 2050. This would meet around 25% of the forecast UK energy demand, compared to around 16% in 2020

As part of this plan to triple nuclear capacity, also in the works is a £210 million investment for Rolls-Royce to develop and produce a fleet of small modular reactors (SMRs). …………

New reactors will inevitably mean more radioactive waste. Nuclear waste decommissioning, as of 2019, was already estimated to cost UK taxpayers £3 billion per year. The vast majority of our waste is held in storage facilities at or near ground level, mostly at Sellafield nuclear waste site in Cumbria, which is so large it has the infrastructure of a small town.

But above-ground nuclear storage isn’t a feasible long term plan – governments, academics and scientists are in agreement that permanent disposal below ground is the only long-term strategy that satisfies security and environmental concerns. So what plans are underway, and can they be delivered safely?


………..  Previous ideas have included disposing of the extra waste in space, in the sea and below the ocean floor where tectonic plates converge, but each has been shelved as too risky.Now, almost every nation plans to isolate radioactive waste from the environment in an underground, highly engineered structure called a geological disposal facility (GDF). Some models see GDFs constructed at 1,000 metres underground but 700 metres is more realistic. These facilities will receive low, intermediate or high level nuclear wastes (classified as such according to radioactivity and half-life) and store them safely for up to hundreds of thousands of years.

The process for creating such a facility is not simple. The organisation responsible for delivering the GDF, which in the UK is Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), must not only overcome huge environmental and technical issues but also earn the public’s support.

Will all GDFs look the same?Although generic design concepts do exist, each GDF will have unique aspects based on the size and constitution of the waste inventory and the geology of where it is installed. Every nation will tailor its GDF to its individual needs, under the scrutiny of regulators and the public.Underpinning all GDFs, however, will be what is known as the multi-barrier concept. This combines man-made and natural barriers to isolate nuclear waste from the environment, and allow it to steadily decay.

The system for preparing high-level waste for storage in such a system will start with spent nuclear fuel rods from reactors. First, any uranium and plutonium that is still usable for future reactions will be recovered. The residual waste will then be dried and dispersed into a host glass, which is used because glass is tough, durable in groundwater and resistant to radiation. The molten glass will then be poured into a metal container and solidified, so that there are two layers of protection.

This packaged waste will then be surrounded by a backfill of clay or cement, which seals the excavated rock cavities and underground tunnel structures. Hundreds of metres of rock itself will act as the final layer of containment.

How is the UK programme going?The UK GDF programme is in its early stages. The siting process operates on a so-called volunteerism approach, in which communities can put themselves forward as potential sites to host the facility. At present, a working group (Theddlethorpe, Lincolnshire) and three community partnerships (Allerdale, Mid Copeland and South Copeland in Cumbria) have formed. Whilst working groups are at earlier stages of the siting process, the next steps for community partnerships are to begin more extensive geological surveys, followed by drilling boreholes to assess the underlying rock………………..

The UK government aims to identify a suitable site within the next 15-20 years, after which construction can start. The timescale from siting to closing and sealing the first UK GDF is 100 years, making this the largest UK infrastructure project ever……….

Is there another way?

It is the scientific consensus, internationally, that the GDF approach is the most technically feasible way to permanently dispose of nuclear waste. ………

The only other approach that has received any traction is the deep borehole disposal (DBD) concept. At face value, this is not too dissimilar from a GDF approach; drilling boreholes much deeper than a GDF would be (up to several kilometers) and putting waste packages at the bottom. Countries such as Norway are considering this approach. https://theconversation.com/the-future-of-nuclear-waste-whats-the-plan-and-can-it-be-safe-181884

May 12, 2022 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

Vitrification of Hanford’s nuclear waste is plagued with problems, would emit toxic vapours

Turning Hanford’s nuclear waste into glass logs would emit toxic vapors, says document,  https://www.opb.org/article/2022/05/09/turning-hanfords-nuclear-waste-into-glass-logs-emits-toxic-vapors-says-document/

By Allison Frost (OPB) May 10, 2022  The Hanford nuclear reservation in south central Washington state holds 56 million gallons of radioactive waste. The facility produced plutonium for U.S. atomic bombs in WWII, and it kept producing for the country’s nuclear weapons through the late 1980s.

The plan to contain that waste by turning it into glass logs, or vitrification, has been plagued with problems for decades. Some of the waste contained in underground tanks is leaking into the Columbia River. Workers have sued over exposure to toxic waste, and the current federal funding for cleanup is less than federal and state lawmakers say is needed.

Now, an internal Department of Energy document says that the vitrification process would create a toxic vapor. The next public hearing on the nuclear plant will be held Tuesday, May 10, and public comments are being accepted through June 4. We’re joined by freelance reporter John Stang who’s been covering Hanford for three decades and obtained the internal DOE document.

May 10, 2022 Posted by | - plutonium, USA | Leave a comment

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