Plutonium contamination in Ohio, USA
Russian nuclear warheads bought, processed and material shipped to Southern Ohio, https://local12.com/news/investigates/russian-nuclear-warheads-bought-processed-and-shipped-material-to-southern-ohio-cincinnati-duane-pohlman-investigate-investigative-weapons-ship-russia-government-contaminated-radioactive by DUANE POHLMAN, 9 May 22,
QUESTIONS OF CONTAMINATION AND CANCER
The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS) is a massive facility, dominating the landscape in Pike County. It was also a massive fixture in America’s front lines during the Cold War.
For nearly five decades, from 1954 to 2001, PORTS processed uranium, critical to making America’s nuclear arsenal and fueling its nuclear navy.
Now closed and partially dismantled, PORTS is considered “ground zero” for claims of radioactive contamination in nearby communities, now riddled with rare cancers that are claiming children.
“We’ve got alarming cancer rates,” said Matt Brewster, noting Pike County is number one in Ohio for cancer rates, as compiled by the state health department.
THE PLUTONIUM PUZZLE
The US Department of Energy (DOE) which continues to oversee PORTS, insists radiation around the plant is at safe levels.
However, some of the radioactive particles in the air around PORTS are not the uranium you would expect to find, but something much more deadly: plutonium.
“The chemical and radiological toxicity associated with plutonium is many, many times worse than uranium,” notes Dr. David Manuta, who was the chief scientist at PORTS from 1992 to 2000.
Plutonium and plutonium-related particles are being picked up around Ports, both by the DOE’s own instruments and by independent studies.
In 2017, a DOE air monitor across from the now-closed Zahn’s Corner Middle School, picked up Neptunium-237. The following year, the same monitor found Americium-241. Both elements are byproducts of plutonium.
Ketterer Report by Local12WKRC on Scribd AT TOP https://local12.com/news/investigates/russian-nuclear-warheads-bought-processed-and-shipped-material-to-southern-ohio-cincinnati-duane-pohlman-investigate-investigative-weapons-ship-russia-government-contaminated-radioactive
Why shoreline nuclear power plants pose problem for Great Lakes
Carol Thompson, The Detroit News, 4 May 22, The dozens of nuclear power reactors situated along the Great Lakes shoreline have produced a sizeable amount of electricity for Canada’s Ontario province and the midwestern United States since they first came online in 1963.
But the reactors also will produce a sizeable problem for the region in the coming decades, as the majority of them are scheduled to shut down and be decommissioned without places to send their nuclear waste for permanent storage. ………. (Subscribers only) https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/environment/2022/05/04/why-shoreline-nuclear-power-plants-pose-problem-great-lakes/7445044001/?gnt-cfr=1
Czech state looking for place to store nuclear waste as EU deadline shortens
English Radio CZ 05/02/2022 The Ministry of Industry is looking for ways to speed up the planned construction of a nuclear waste facility in the Czech Republic, which would enable the country to fulfil the EU’s taxonomy plan for using nuclear energy as a clean source. However, the plan is running into opposition from local districts who don’t want nuclear waste stored near their homes. The Czech Republic has two nuclear power plants, but nowhere to store its nuclear waste. At least in the long term. For now, nuclear waste is being stored in barrels located inside the power plants themselves, says Jiří Bezděk, the spokesman for the Dukovany nuclear power plant, who took Czech Radio on a tour of the facility.
You can see we are now in the storage facility for used nuclear fuel. This fuel can be stored in containers for a period of up to 60 years. Thereafter, you can take it out, check the container and put the fuel back in for another six decades.”
……….. the RWRA has nowhere to store the waste.
Originally, the Czech government counted on building a deep nuclear waste storage facility by 2065, but the EUs taxonomy plan which was agreed earlier this year, has cut that deadline to the year 2050.
Both Deputy Industry Minister Tomáš Ehler and the head of the country’s Nuclear Safety Office Dana Drábová have said that fulfilling the shorter deadline is possible on paper. However, it necessitates speeding up relevant research activities as well as finally deciding on where the state wants to build the storage facility.
Founded in 2001, the state’s Radioactive Waste Repository Authority has had over 20 years’ time to find a suitable storage location. And it has. Four locations were approved by the government as suitable prospective sites for a deep storage facility.
However, local residents of each of these proposed sites are strongly against the construction. Some of them have banded into the “Platform against deep storage”, a civic organisation that lobbies for an alternative to deep nuclear waste storage and for the construction of any such facility to be subject to a local district vote. The organisation’s secretary, Edvard Sequens, says that locals have more say in the process in other countries…………….. https://english.radio.cz/czech-state-looking-place-store-nuclear-waste-eu-deadline-shortens-8749305
Where will Connecticut’s nuclear waste go?
Connecticut has been living more than half a century with what was supposed to have been temporary spent fuel storage.
On any day since the mid 1950s, there might be multiple reactors in or around the Thames River, welded into the nuclear powered submarines stationed at the U.S. Naval Submarine Base in Groton
The Navy won’t discuss how it disposes of its spent nuclear waste.
It’s in question as the state pushes toward a green future, By Edmund H. Mahony, Hartford Courant, May 01, 2022, The federal government is jump-starting its long-stalled search for a place to store the tons of spent nuclear fuel piling up in Connecticut and other states.
…… The U.S. Department of Energy is reviewing responses to a request for information it issued to nuclear industry stakeholders late last year as a first step in another attempt to resolve one of the thorniest challenges of the nuclear age: how and where to store the highly-radioactive, spent uranium that is the waste product of nuclear energy production.
The state legislature this session approved a bill requiring all electric power consumed in Connecticut to be produced from carbon free sources by 2040. Another bill, written with smaller, better reactors in mind, is pending. It would lift a state moratorium on new nuclear power production — a moratorium enacted decades ago over the same concerns about the state’s spent fuel stockpiles — but limit new production to the Millstone nuclear complex in Waterford, where Dominion Energy has what was intended to be a temporary nuclear waste storage facility.
The country’s inability to figure out what to do with waste stockpiles has become an impediment for nuclear-generating states like Connecticut…… That has power industry and private capital looking toward the development of a new generation of smaller [really?] safer, more efficient [really?] nuclear reactors — reactors that will continue to produce waste that needs to be disposed of someplace safe.
……………………….. “Disposal is absolutely an issue,” State Sen. Norm Needleman said. “That is why this is limited to a site that is a going plant today where they already are dealing with that problem. I would not at this moment support any expansion until the Department of Energy finds someplace. If you are going to build nuclear power plants and you are going to be siting 200 piles of nuclear waste, it is better to have it buried 2,000 feet below ground someplace, rather than having it spread all over.”
……………………… Connecticut has been living more than half a century with what was supposed to have been temporary spent fuel storage.
On any day since the mid 1950s, there might be multiple reactors in or around the Thames River, welded into the nuclear powered submarines stationed at the U.S. Naval Submarine Base in Groton, or just down river at the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics where the ships are built. For years the Navy operated an experimental reactor in Windsor.
Beginning in the late 1960s, four commercial reactors produced power in Connecticut — one at the Connecticut Yankee plant on Haddam Neck, a peninsula stretching into the lower Connecticut River, and three on Millstone Point at the east end of Long Island Sound.
Two of the three Millstone reactors remain operational. Connecticut Yankee has been closed and decommissioned.
The Navy won’t discuss how it disposes of its spent nuclear waste. Because the federal government has not been able to find a politically acceptable commercial disposal solution, every bit of radioactive uranium expended in the production of commercial power in Connecticut remains under guard in what are designed as impregnable — but temporary — storage containers at the Millstone and Connecticut Yankee sites……………………………………
as much as 90,000 metric tons of spent fuel continues to pile up and remain stranded at what were supposed to be temporary sites around the country.
On Haddam Neck, there are 43 enormous concrete and steel storage casks containing radioactive material on the site of the decommissioned Connecticut Yankee plant. At the Millstone site in Waterford, waste is divided between a storage pool and 47 storage modules. Plant operator Dominion Energy says it has the capacity to store a total of 135 modules.
The storage costs, which involve protecting the spent fuel from hazards running from terrorist attacks to natural disasters, is enormous. The cost at Connecticut Yankee is about $10 million a year — at a plant that shut down in 1996 because it was no longer cost effective after 28 years of operation.
The federal government and, ultimately, taxpayers are picking up the cost. The law that was to make Yucca Mountain a national repository carried a provision obligating the Department of Energy to remove and store spent fuel from commercial reactors beginning in 1998. Without a repository, the department cannot meet its obligation. Plant operators sued, and the government has been held responsible for incurred storage costs.
There are intangible costs to temporary storage, too…………………………….
Just how dangerous are the nuclear wastes at WIPP waste dump in New Mexico, and at Los Alamos National Laboratory?
Report: Some Los Alamos nuclear waste too hazardous to move via Santa Fe New Mexican, The Atomic Age, By Scott Wyland Oct 28 2017, https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/atomicage/2021/08/04/report-some-los-alamos-nuclear-waste-too-hazardous-to-move-via-santa-fe-new-mexico/comment-page-2/
Los Alamos National Laboratory has identified 45 barrels of radioactive waste so potentially explosive — due to being mixed with incompatible chemicals — that crews have been told not to move them and instead block off the area around the containers, according to a government watchdog’s report.
Crews have worked to ferret out drums containing volatile compounds and move them to a more secure domed area of the lab after the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board issued a scathing report last year saying there were possibly hundreds of barrels of unstable nuclear waste.
The safety board estimated an exploding waste canister could expose workers to 760 rem, far beyond the threshold of a lethal dose. A rem is a unit used to measure radiation exposure. In its latest weekly report, the safety board said crews at Newport News Nuclear BWXT Los Alamos, also known as N3B — the contractor in charge of cleaning up the lab’s legacy waste — have pegged 60 barrels with volatile mixtures and have relocated 15 drums to the domed area.
[…]
Officials at the U.S. Department of Energy’s environmental management office said they couldn’t comment on the report or on how the lab stores waste, citing lack of time to answer questions.
Volatile waste mixtures have received more attention since 2014 when a waste container from the Los Alamos lab packaged with a blend of organic cat litter and nitrate salts burst in an underground chamber of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. The radioactive release contaminated the storage site so extensively it shut down for three years and cost $2 billion to clean up.
Hirsch noted some radioactive vapors escaped from WIPP’s underground site to the open air amid the leak. Federal reports have described a small amount of radioactivity slipping through exhaust vents that have since been sealed.
The fact that any radiation was emitted from below ground illustrates how destructive a waste barrel blowing up above ground could be, Hirsch said.
In the October report, the safety board said lab personnel had failed to analyze chemicals present in hundreds of containers of transuranic nuclear waste, making it possible for incompatible chemicals to cause a container to explode. Crews also never sufficiently estimated how much radiation would be released by such an event.
Waste with that kind of hair trigger should only be analyzed in a “hot cell,” with walls several feet thick, blast-proof glass and robotic arms that a technician operates to handle the materials, Hirsch said.
Read more at Report: Some Los Alamos nuclear waste too hazardous to move
Scientists: Japan’s Plan To Dump Nuclear Waste Into The Pacific Ocean May Not Be Safe
CIVIL BEAT, By Thomas Heaton , 25 Apr 22,
A panel of scientists has identified critical gaps in the data supporting the safe discharge of wastewater into the Pacific.
Independent scientists are questioning Japan’s plans to dump just over 1 million tons of nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, following a review of the available evidence.
The panel of multi-disciplinary scientists, hired by the intergovernmental Pacific Islands Forum, has not found conclusive evidence that the discharge would be entirely safe, and one marine biologist fears contamination could affect the food system.
Last year Japan announced that wastewater from the Fukushima-Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, destroyed in March 2011 following the Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami, would be dropped into the Pacific in 2023.
The announcement triggered immediate concern from nations and territories in the Asia-Pacific region and led the Pacific Islands Forum to hire a panel of five independent experts to review the plan.
Previously, it was broadly believed that dropping the wastewater into the ocean would be safe, given it had been treated with “advanced liquid processing system” technology, which removes radioactive materials from contaminated water.
But panel scientist Robert Richmond, director of the University of Hawaii Kewalo Marine Laboratory, says the panel unanimously believes that critical gaps in information remain.
Previous discussions over the safety of Japan’s plans emphasized the chemistry of the discharge, but not how it could interact with marine life, he said.
“If the ocean were a sterile glass vessel, that would be one thing,” Richmond said. “But it’s not, you know, there’s lots of biology involved.”
Richmond has been particularly concerned about the potential for tritium – a key compound of concern – being absorbed into the food system because the radioactive isotope can bind to phytoplankton.
Through phytoplankton, Richmond says, the radioactive element could then find its way into the greater food system as the microscopic plants are consumed by mollusks and small fish, which are later consumed by other fish and eventually humans.
“Things like mercury in fish are now of an international concern. Radionuclides will be the same,” Richmond said.
The situation is dynamic too, as climate change affects the temperature of waters and weather patterns change.
“As temperatures go up, many chemicals become more interactive, they become a little bit different in terms of break down,” he said. “So these are all the things we need to consider.”
……………………………………. the information seen by the panel showed less than 1% of the tanks of wastewater had been treated and less than 20% had been adequately sampled, Richmond says.
Based on those numbers alone, we’re uncomfortable in making predictions of where things are going to end up,” Richmond said.
The Pacific Perspective
Community groups and environmental organizations were quick to respond to the news last year, raising concerns about the longterm effects to their region, with its legacy of nuclear testing and the fallout. And coastal communities and fishermen in Japan have also raised concerns.
The U.S. expressed its support for the plan in April last year, which has since been criticized by U.S. territories and affiliated states.
Rep. Sheila Babauta of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands introduced a resolution to CNMI’s House of Representatives opposing any nuclear testing, storage or waste disposal in the Pacific.
It was passed in December, months after the U.S. stated its position and after other Pacific groups and governments condemned the move.
“I’m really disappointed in the lack of engagement, the lack of information and the lack of free, prior and informed consent,” Babauta, who chairs the Natural Resources Committee, said.
The mistrust that is harbored by many in the Pacific stems back to U.S nuclear testing in the Republic of Marshall Islands following World War II, British testing in Kiribati and the French in French Polynesia, which had flow-on effects to the environment and long term health of Pacific people. And in 1979, Japan provoked backlash when it revealed plans to dump 10,000 drums of nuclear waste in the Marianas Trench.
Babauta says she introduced the resolution as a show of solidarity for the rest of the Pacific.
“The ocean is our oldest ancestor. The ocean is our legacy,” Babauta said. “It’s what we’re going to leave for our children.” https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/04/scientists-japans-plan-to-dump-nuclear-waste-into-the-pacific-ocean-may-not-be-safe/
”Decommissioming” of UK’s dead nuclear reactors is likely to cost the tax-payer much more than planned for.
significant additional taxpayer support has been required, and more is likely to be necessary.
there is a risk that the taxpayer will have to make further
contributions.
A report from the UK’s National Audit Office examines whether the
government’s arrangements for decommissioning Britain’s fleet of
advanced-gas-cooled reactors offers value for money.
The UK has eight second generation nuclear power stations accounting for around 16% of total
UK electricity generation in 2020. Seven of the eight stations are Advanced
Gas-cooled Reactors (AGRs), the design of which built on that of the first
generation of now closed Magnox reactors.
Under current plans, all the AGR
stations will have stopped generating electricity by 2028. Decommissioning
is envisaged to take just over 100 years under current plans. The Nuclear
Liabilities Fund (the Fund) was established to meet the costs of
decommissioning all seven AGRs plus a pressurised water reactor at Sizewell
B, but significant additional taxpayer support has been required, and more
is likely to be necessary.
The UK government has provided a guarantee to
underwrite the Fund if its assets are insufficient to meet the total costs
of decommissioning. In 2020, government contributed £5.1 billion ($6.8bn)
to strengthen the Fund’s position and the Fund has recently requested a
further £5.6 billion. The Fund’s assets were valued at £14.8 billion at
the end of March 2021. The aim is that growth in the Fund’s investments
will be sufficient to meet the long-term costs of decommissioning
(currently £23.5 billion).
However, cost estimates have doubled in real
terms since 2004/5. If this trend is maintained and investment growth is
not sufficient, there is a risk that the taxpayer will have to make further
contributions. Last year, the government entered into new arrangements to
decommission the seven AGR nuclear power plants, making EDF Energy
responsible for defueling. The decommissioning of the AGR nuclear power
stations, a 66-page report published by the National Audit Office (NAO)
examines whether these arrangements will lead to better value for money.
The NAO scrutinises public spending to help Parliament hold government to
account and improve public services. It says that while the arrangements
could deliver savings, their success will ultimately depend on the relevant
parties working collaboratively to overcome risks.
Nuclear Engineering International 20th April 2022
https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurearrangements-for-decommissioning-the-agrs-9640510/
UK’s Nuclear Free Local Authorities join in Wales’call to Japan not to dump radiactive wastewater at sea
The Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) have joined with leading Welsh
anti-nuclear environmental campaign groups in writing to senior Japanese
Government ministers urging them not to dump radioactive waste from the
Fukushima disaster at sea.
Operated by the Tokyo Electric Power Company
(TEPCO), the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was hit by an earthquake
and a tsunami on 11 March 2011. A disaster unfolded with three nuclear
meltdowns, three hydrogen explosions and a release of radiation from three
reactors, and Government authorities were forced to evacuate 154,000 people
from the surrounding area over a 20-mile radius. An average of 150 tons of
radioactive water was produced each day last year as rainwater and
groundwater flowed into the damaged reactor buildings mixing with seawater
which has been used to cool the melted nuclear fuel.
One million tons of this water is now stored in barrels on the site. Although the contaminated
water is treated it cannot remove deadly tritium, a beta-emitting
radioactive isotope of hydrogen, and other radioactive materials.
NFLA 21st April 2022
America’s nuclear waste dump in New Mexico is found to have serious safety issues.
The U.S. government´s nuclear waste repository in New Mexico has major
issues in fire training and firefighting vehicles, with its fleet in
disrepair after years of neglect, according to an investigation by the U.S.
Energy Department´s Office of Inspector General.
The investigation was
spurred by allegations regarding fire protection concerns at the
repository, which is the backbone of a multibillion-dollar effort to clean
up Cold War-era waste from past nuclear research and bomb making at
national laboratories and defense sites across the U.S.
Daily Mail 21st April 2022
New Mexico Governor concerned over plans for plutonium waste being disposed of in Carlsbad.
Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus, 20 Apr 22,
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signaled support for an activist group opposing a plan at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant to dispose of diluted, weapons-grade plutonium in the underground nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad.
Lujan Grisham, in an April 8 letter to U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, shared a petition circulated by Santa Fe-based group 285 All in opposition of the plan and called on the federal Department of Energy to “take action” to address the concerns.
The plan proposed by the DOE would see 35 metric tons of down-blended plutonium waste sent from the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas to Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico for processing.
It would then be sent to the DOE’s Savannah River in South Carolina for final preparation and then to the WIPP site in southeast New Mexico for disposal…………..
Critics of the proposal argued the plan would transport nuclear waste across New Mexico multiple times, and the inclusion of down-blended plutonium would mark an “illegal” expansion of WIPP’s statutorily allowed waste streams.
The petition expressing those fears was signed by 1,146 people in New Mexico and delivered to Lujan Grisham’s office in Santa Fe on March 1.
In her letter to Granholm, Lujan Grisham called on the agency which owns and operates WIPP to consider the concerns raised in the petition. https://www.currentargus.com/story/news/2022/04/20/carlsbad-waste-isolation-pilot-plant-plutonium-disposal-concern-michelle-lujan-grisham/7309367001/
No room at the dump: NFLA fears Johnson’s nuclear ambitions will lead to need for second unwanted underground facility
Like the standing joke about buses turning up late and in pairs, the
Nuclear Free Local Authorities fear that Boris Johnson’s commitment to
treble Britain’s nuclear generating capacity by 2050 will create so much
new toxic nuclear waste that the government will want to build a second
underground nuclear dump in the next two decades.
A large, and much maligned, element in last week’s UK Energy Security Strategy was the
pledge to build up to eight new large nuclear power stations over the next
three decades, generating 24 gigawatts of electricity, and the UK could run
out of room to store the resultant radioactive waste if the Prime
Minister’s plan becomes reality.
Professor Claire Corkhill is Chair in
Nuclear Material Degradation and EPSRC Early Career Research Fellow and
Reader at the University of Sheffield, and a member of the Committee on
Radioactive waste Management (CORWM) which advises the government.
Professor Corkhill has publicly commented that existing plans for the dump
will only provide sufficient capacity to take the legacy waste from 70
years of operations and waste from up to 16 gigawatts of nuclear new build,
and has expressed concern about ‘rushing to expand nuclear power until
the implementation of radioactive waste policy [i.e. the GDF] has
progressed further’.
NFLA 13th April 2022
A call for World-class Cleanup at Chalk River Laboratories
https://concernedcitizens.net/2022/04/14/a-call-for-world-class-cleanup-at-chalk-river-laboratories/ Canada’s $16 billion nuclear waste legacy is in danger of being abandoned in substandard facilities and allowed to leak into our rivers and drinking water. Instead, let’s use our expertise to turn Canada into a world leader in the cleanup and safe storage of radioactive waste.
WORLD-CLASS NUCLEAR WASTE CLEANUP would protect health, drinking water, property values and peace of mind.
What do experts say is needed?
The International Atomic Energy Agency says that radioactive waste facilities must be carefully sited and waste placed below ground to keep radioactive materials out of air and water and protect current and future generations. The IAEA says that siting a facility for long-lived waste in a “stable geological formation” is “fundamentally important.” It says that nuclear reactor entombment should only be used in the case of an emergency, such as a meltdown.
Retired AECL scientists say that IAEA guidance must be followed, that Canada has an obligation to follow the guidelines as a signatory to the Joint Convention on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management.
First Nations, in a Joint Declaration, endorsed by resolution at the Assembly of First Nations, say that nuclear waste should be managed according to five principles: 1) no abandonment, 2) monitored and retrievable storage 3) better containment, more packaging, 2) away from drinking water and major water bodies and 5) no unnecessary transport (exports and imports)
The Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility says radioactive waste should be carefully managed in monitored and retrievable condition so that repairs to packaging can be made as needed, to keep the contents out of the biosphere, our air, soil and drinking water. The CCNR suggests that a “rolling stewardship” strategy whereby each generation teaches each subsequent generation how to look after the wastes and keep them out of the biosphere.
Some countries such as Finland have made good progress building facilities to keep radioactive waste out of the biosphere. Finland puts radioactive wastes produced by its four nuclear reactors in bedrock geological facilities 100 meters deep. It has over 25 years of experience with these facilities. They will also house the radioactive remains of the reactors when they are shut down and dismantled.
WORLD-CLASS NUCLEAR WASTE CLEANUP would bring money into the Ottawa Valley economy and support good careers for generations of valley residents.
WORLD-CLASS NUCLEAR WASTE CLEANUP would involve:
WORLD-CLASS NUCLEAR WASTE STORAGE FACILITIES would protect the Ottawa River and future generations.
What should America do with its nuclear waste?
What Should America Do With Its Nuclear Waste?
Currently there are about 80 locations in 35 states where spent fuel is being stored, with no long-term plans for disposal., WP, By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow 1 Apr 22, ”……………………………………….. (closure of SanOnofre nuclear power station) Magda and other activists realized that all of the high-level radioactive waste that had accumulated at the plant over the course of its lifetime — 1,600 tons of spent fuel rods — would remain at the site for the foreseeable future. Although the federal government is legally responsible for disposing of commercial spent nuclear fuel in a permanent underground repository, there has been no plan for fulfilling that obligation since the Obama administration halted the project at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain in 2010. There are currently about 80 locations in 35 states — mostly at operational and decommissioned nuclear plants — where spent fuel is being stored indefinitely.
Since the San Onofre plant shut down, Magda has been trying to get the spent fuel moved to a more suitable site and to ensure that, until then, it is stored as safely as possible. As of 2017, she has represented her local chapter of the Sierra Club on the Community Engagement Panel, an entity established by SCE that holds quarterly meetings with the public. In her garage, she showed me a gray filing cabinet with four vertically stacked drawers, her granddaughter’s teal bike propped up against the side. The drawers contain hundreds of manila files with hand-scrawled labels: ………. In addition to earthquakes and tsunamis, Magda and other activists are worried about coastal erosion and sea level rise caused by climate change. “We can’t leave it here,” Magda says.
The question of what to do with the nation’s spent nuclear fuel has recently garnered renewed attention. This is thanks in part to U.S. Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), who represents the district encompassing San Onofre and has taken up the cause as one of his signature issues. An environmental lawyer by training, he told me he ran for Congress partially to make progress on reviving the nation’s stalled efforts. In January 2019, he established a task force of local stakeholders to study the situation at San Onofre. He has also co-founded the bipartisan Spent Nuclear Fuel Solutions Caucus, with Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), and introduced the Spent Fuel Prioritization Act, which would ensure that the material is moved first from the most sensitive locations, including San Onofre.
Among scientific experts and government officials, there is broad consensus that the optimal solution is to eventually bury nuclear waste in a deep geological repository. But that is a long-term goal, and in the near future, Levin and many others are pushing for “consolidated interim storage.” This would mean that the spent fuel scattered at sites across the country would be moved to one or more facilities, in appropriate settings, that would be devoted entirely to safely storing the fuel until a geological disposal facility is ready.
There is also agreement, of a limited sort, between many nuclear opponents and supporters on the importance of addressing the waste issue. But for many opponents, such as Magda, the waste is a reason to abandon this form of energy altogether. ……………..
Despite recent momentum to break the spent fuel impasse, the obstacles are considerable. “Frankly we have a real problem in the U.S., not just at San Onofre,” Levin told me. “San Onofre is just the symptom, with 9 million people within 50 miles and two earthquake faults and rising sea level. The actual problem is that we’ve got nowhere to move it to.”
…………. The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act was the first major law to address spent nuclear fuel, and assigned the federal government the task of constructing and operating such facilities. By that time, there were dozens of commercial nuclear plants that had been accumulating spent fuel and storing it on-site with no plans for disposal. According to the law, the Department of Energy was required to move promptly to site two geological repositories for permanent disposal.
In 1987, however, amendments to this law identified only a single location: Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The selection was based on the Energy Department’s assessment of the site’s geological features and was also thought to reflect political dynamics at the time. In the state, the legislation became known as the “Screw Nevada Bill.” Nevada’s powerful long-serving senator, Harry M. Reid, made it his mission to see that this repository would never come to pass. In 2010, the Obama administration announced that it would withdraw the license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the project. “We’re done with Yucca,” Carol Browner, President Barack Obama’s energy adviser, said. (The United States does have a deep geological repository for defense waste, in New Mexico, but not for commercial spent fuel.)
Meanwhile, Obama’s secretary of energy convened the bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to devise a new strategy. The commission issued a report in January 2012. “The overall record of the U.S. nuclear waste program has been one of broken promises and unmet commitments,” the report stated.
The report’s first recommendation, highlighting its importance, was a “consent-based approach to siting future nuclear waste management facilities” for both permanent underground disposal and temporary aboveground storage. That is, instead of selecting sites based strictly on physical characteristics, the new approach would solicit volunteers, and engage communities, states, tribes and other stakeholders to obtain their approval before proceeding with plans…………
The spent fuel at San Onofre is stored in 123 canisters, in what’s called an independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI, pronounced “ISSfuhsee”). Contrary to the popular impression of nuclear waste as green goo, the fuel rods consist of solid pellets, each slightly larger than a pencil eraser. The fuel rods, bundled into fuel assemblies, were retrieved from the reactors over the course of decades. After cooling for at least five years in pools of water, they were transferred into stainless-steel canisters, with walls five-eighths of an inch thick. Workers then transferred the loaded canisters, each of which weighs 50 tons, to a concrete pad overlooking the ocean and lowered them into stainless-steel cavities beneath the pad’s surface………….
the ongoing demolition of the plant — major decommissioning work is expected to continue through 2028 — as well as the construction of a rail yard. It was a reminder that radioactive spent fuel is not the only kind of waste produced by nuclear plants: Millions of pounds of metal and steel, and tens of thousands of titanium tubes, will eventually be loaded onto rail cars and shipped away, some to be recycled, some to a landfill. One day, according to the plan, the spent fuel will be shipped away on this rail line as well, though no one knows to where……………………………….
The 1957 National Academy of Sciences report stated, “Unlike the disposal of any other type of waste, the hazard related to radioactive waste is so great that no element of doubt should be allowed to exist regarding safety.” Being in the same room with unshielded nuclear waste, fresh out of the reactor, could very quickly give you a fatal dose of radiation……………………………………
Magda points out that for real progress to occur, the law needs to change so that Yucca Mountain is not the only permissible site for a permanent repository. Levin has not yet introduced legislation to change that, but he told me he plans to. One arguable reason for optimism is that an improved waste management strategy, unlike so many other causes, has bipartisan support. “Nuclear waste doesn’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican,” Levin says……………………….. https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/04/11/america-nuclear-waste-san-onofre/
No community in the UK has agreed to host a nuclear waste facility
Under normal conditions, generating nuclear power produces hazardous
radioactive waste. This needs to be safely managed and stored for hundreds
of years.
However, a House of Lords paper from October 2021 said the issue
of nuclear waste remains “unresolved in the UK”. It is currently stored in
temporary facilities that are not designed for the permanent storage of
“high-level” radioactive waste.
The Government’s preferred solution is
“geological disposal” – placing waste deep in a rock formation that would
prevent radioactivity from escaping. However, no community has agreed to
host such a facility.
National World 8th April 2022
Hanford report reveals problem with nuclear waste solution
Hanford report reveals problem with nuclear waste solution
An internal federal document says the preparation for turning nuclear waste into glass logs will produce toxic vapors. Crosscut, by John Stang, April 11, 2022 Fourteen years behind its original deadline, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation is scheduled to begin turning radioactive wastes into benign glass in 2023.
However, an internal federal document said the preparatory process for this work will produce toxic vapors from a substance called acetonitrile, which would be unsafe for workers and people and animals that live nearby.
In fact, that complication has not been studied, said the U.S. Department of Energy report dated Aug. 27, 2021.
On March 2, 2022, the Washington State Department of Ecology sent a message to the U.S. Department of Energy, asking for answers on this issue. That came after the state agency received a March 1 letter on the matter from the Seattle-based watchdog organization Hanford Challenge, which obtained the internal document.
As of Friday, the state has not received a reply from the DOE. And DOE’s Hanford headquarters declined to provide anyone to discuss the matter with Crosscut. A spokesperson wrote in an email that the issue has been resolved, but did not provide any details.
In emails, the DOE and major contractor Washington River Protection Services, which designed the glassification equipment, both said the public can ask questions about this matter at a May 10 public hearing related to permits for acetonitrile-related equipment at the glassification plant. But neither the federal government nor its contractor would elaborate on the internal memo that raised concerns about acetonitrile, which will be used to re-treat the nuclear waste before it is turned into glass logs.
Written public comment is being accepted through June 4.
Acetonitrile, which exists in liquid and vapor forms, is easily ignited by heat, sparks or flames. When ignited, it gives off hydrogen cyanide fumes and potentially flammable vapors. Short-term effects from exposure can range from eye, nose and lung irritation to heart irregularities and death. Long-term, exposure could enlarge the thyroid gland and damage the liver, lungs, kidneys and the central nervous system.
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation was created in late 1942 to create plutonium for America’s atomic bombs in World War II and the Cold War. Producing plutonium required nuclear reactors and massive radioactive chemical extraction plants. The worst of the radioactive wastes from those facilities ended up as liquids, sludge and gunk in 177 leak-prone underground tanks on the 586-square-mile complex along the Columbia River in Benton County in south-central Washington. These tanks hold 56 million gallons of waste on what is arguably the most radioactively and chemically contaminated spot in the Western Hemisphere. The site’s overall cleanup began in 1989.
Hanford’s longtime master plan has been to convert those wastes into benign glass. Originally, glassification was supposed to begin in 2009 and completed by 2021 at a cost of $4 billion. Numerous budget, technical and engineering problems have bumped the price to $17 billion, with glassification to begin in late 2023 and end by 2069.
The first glassification facility is scheduled to start its work glassifying the least radioactive wastes in late 2023. Dubbed the “direct-feed low-activity-waste” plant, or DFLAW. It will glassify the least radioactive and least complex of the tank wastes following some preprocessing of the material. That pretreatment and acetonitrile are the subject of the 2021 memo.
While Washington River Protection Solutions did computer-model testing on the possibility of a liquid acetonitrile leak during the pre-treatment process, it did not calculate for the possibility of acetonitrile vapors, according to the internal DOE memo…………………………. https://crosscut.com/environment/2022/04/hanford-report-reveals-problem-nuclear-waste-solution
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