nuclear-news

America’s paralysis on nuclear waste, as radioactive trash continues to accumulate.

GAO urges Congress to tackle nuclear waste storage impasse

‘The ghost of Yucca still stalks the policy debate and … there hasn’t been enough sustained pressure to find solutions’ By TERI SFORZA | tsforza@scng.com | Orange County Register, October 17, 2021 Who’s to blame for the paralysis that strands millions of pounds of radioactive waste at reactor sites all over the nation, and will cost taxpayers some $40 billion — and perhaps a lot more?

Congress, the U.S. Government Accountability Office says. And Congress must fix it.

In a dispassionate but merciless examination of the string of follies that has put the federal government nearly a quarter-century behind accepting waste from commercial reactors like the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station — where 3.6 million pounds of waste must sit for years or possibly decades — the GAO chronicled the weeds that have choked the effort, then hacked through them to clear a path forward.

“Commercial spent nuclear fuel is extremely dangerous if not managed properly,” the report said. “About 86,000 metric tons of this fuel is stored on-site at 75 operating or shutdown nuclear power plants in 33 states, an amount that grows by about 2,000 metric tons each year.”

The radioisotopes produced in a reactor can remain hazardous from a few days to many thousands of years, the GAO said.

“The longer it takes the federal government to resolve the current impasse and develop a solution for the permanent disposal of commercial spent nuclear fuel, the greater the potential risk to the environment and public health, or of security incidents associated with temporary on-site storage,” the report said. “(T)he safety of long-term dry cask storage is unknown, and the risks, such as environmental and health risks, of on-site storage increase the longer the fuel is stored there.”

Attempted sabotage and theft of radioactive material are also potential security risks, the report said…………….

How to fix

Obama assembled a Blue Ribbon Commission that laid out a path forward in 2012, and it’s largely the path that the GAO urges lawmakers to embrace now. It recommends that Congress:

• Amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to allow the DOE to implement a new, consent-based process for siting temporary storage and permanent geologic disposal facilities.
• Restructure the Nuclear Waste Fund, which has about $43 billion in it to ensure reliable and sufficient funding.
• Create an independent board or similar mechanism to provide political insulation for a nuclear waste disposal program, as well as continuity of leadership.
• Direct DOE to develop a temporary waste management strategy that includes plans for the transportation, interim storage and permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel.
• It’s not as if officials don’t know what to do with nuclear waste. In 1957, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that disposal in a geologic formation was the safest way to isolate nuclear waste. Myriad studies in the decades since have reached the same conclusion…………………………..  https://www.ocregister.com/2021/10/17/gao-urges-congress-to-tackle-nuclear-waste-storage-impasse/

October 18, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Nuclear power is not a good option for Kentucky. Radioactive waste is still a problem 

Nuclear power is not a good option for Kentucky. Radioactive waste is still a problem   https://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/2021/10/08/nuclear-power-plants-bring-radioactive-waste-problematic-kentucky/5951188001/, David Ross Stevens   Proponents of nuclear power plants speak eloquently about the efficiencies and safety of uranium-powered electrical generation. However, they cavalierly pass by the major problems of radioactivity — both before and after power generation. This is exactly what happened in the recent Courier Journal op-ed piece by Julian Colvin, a nuclear engineering student at North Carolina State University. He contends that Kentucky’s best option for transitioning from coal to something else is to nuclear power because of its new safety measures and efficiencies. That is all well and good, perhaps, but the major knock against nuclear power is what happens before electrical generation and after electrical generation.

Kentucky already has experience with both. The “before” example is the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant that turned raw uranium ore into a more usable gas to be sent to the Oak Ridge, TN, plant for nuclear rods and for bomb-making. The “after” example is the Maxey Flats low-level radioactive waste deposit site 10 miles northwest of Morehead, KY.  Both places are now closed but still are staffed by people who are trying to “manage” the migration of radioactive water aimed at the Ohio River. These jobs are “forever” jobs because the Department of Energy sees no end to the need for cleanup and environmental protection.

The Paducah plant, one of sixteen such U.S. facilities, is now labeled a Superfund high-priority environmental disaster site. In the year 2020 alone the Department of Energy requested $277 million for the Paducah cleanup plan which is decades behind schedule. After all, there are 750 acres with highly polluted land and 400 more buildings to be decontaminated and demolished. Many people there have sued because of radioactive-caused diseases. Their cases are pending. The plant has been closed to production for 27 years, but still employs hundreds of workers trying to contain the wastes. None of these costs are ever reflected in “efficiency claims” by nuclear engineers.

And then there is Maxey Flats, a facility that the late Governor Bert Combs thought would be the beginning of a great economic boon for Kentucky. Anything that uranium comes into contact with ends up as waste — desks, brooms, coveralls, tanks, pipes, you name it. The private company that operated the site dug 64 trenches, each one more than two football fields long. They were 30 feet deep and then covered with 10 feet of soil.

Apparently no one thought that the rain would seep down onto the half million pounds of material. And that the rainwater might pick up some radioactivity. And that it might flow off with other groundwater toward the nearby Ohio River. That is precisely what happened, according to the monitoring wells surrounding the 770 acres. So for 14 years the material was trucked in until the monitoring wells started to tell their tale. In 1977 the dump was closed to dumping but not to the ensuing cleanup. By 1979 the state took over “management” duties for the next 42 years. The state has had to dig six more rubber-lined trenches to receive wastes generated by the very site itself. It would be interesting to see a cost/benefit study for the Commonwealth of Kentucky during the decade and a half of activity and the four decades of post-activity.

There are many people like engineering student Julian Colvin, who advise Kentucky to forgo solar and wind energy in favor of nuclear power as the substitute for coal. Here are two numbers I like to think of in response. Nuclear waste lasts for hundreds of thousands of years before they are half-decayed. Our United States government — perhaps the longest continuous government in the world — is only 232 years old.  Who will be around to manage uranium wastes?

David Ross Stevens was the first investigative environmental writer for The Courier Journal, a former adjunct professor at Indiana University Southeast, New Albany teaching a sustainability course and the designer/builder of his own solar house 42 years ago.

October 9, 2021 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | Leave a comment