Cover-up? Unreported event of Hanford nuclear workers’sickness
Unreported event at Hanford nuclear site that sickened workers ‘smells like a cover-up,’ advocates say, Workers reported smelling odors, resulting in symptoms such as dizziness and shortness of breath. The contractor denied a chronic problem, toxic vapors, is to blame. https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/hanford-nuclear-site-washington-state-tank-farms-workers-sickened-investigation/281-48a540ea-1fa5-4de9-8ab7-b1dc9db6e5c8 Susannah Frame August 27, 2021
RICHLAND, Wash. — On June 18 of this year, 10 workers at the Hanford nuclear site in eastern Washington digging in what are known as the “tank farms,” were overcome by strange odors. Nine of the workers sought medical treatment, including three who were transported to the hospital for an overnight stay and were given oxygen.
The KING 5 Investigators have found the event went unreported by the contractor involved – Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS).
According to WRPS documents obtained by KING 5, symptoms reported by workers included dizziness, shortness of breath, chest pain, headache, nausea, a metallic taste in the mouth, stomach issues, light headedness and cough.
Smelling unusual odors, followed by adverse medical conditions are hallmark signs of a chronic problem at the nuclear reservation: exposure to toxic vapors that vent from underground nuclear waste holding tanks.
WRPS is under a legal obligation to report vapor events on a publicly available website.
“I’m still amazed that not one piece of paper has been put out about this exposure, there’s been no announcement,” said Tom Carpenter, executive director of the advocacy group Hanford Challenge. “It’s getting to the point where this silence is very suspicious. It’s like: ‘What are you hiding?’”
The contractor said they did not post the event on their website because they’ve determined the worker’s symptoms were not caused by vapors, but “most likely” by a malfunctioning gas-powered wheelbarrow.
“WRPS collected air samples from the small pieces of fuel-powered equipment used in the soil work. One piece of equipment, a small gasoline-powered wheelbarrow that was difficult to start and used during the June 18 event, was smoking when it started and high levels of volatile organic compound emissions were noted,” a WRPS spokesperson said.
Toxic vapor exposures have been a significant problem at Hanford since the 1980s when the operational mission went from producing plutonium, to clean up only.
Several government reports have identified that poisonous vapors, without warning, will vent from underground tanks. Hanford has 177 underground holding tanks that store the deadliest waste at the site.
Tanks in the tank farm near where the workers got ill in June contain contents including plutonium, the radioactive isotopes of americium and strontium 90, mercury, nickel, lead and cyanide.
In 2014 the KING 5 Investigators revealed a record number of vapor exposures in the tank farms. Approximately 56 workers fell ill with symptoms in the rash of exposures. After each incident, WRPS said their testing didn’t show chemicals of concern over regulatory limits. WRPS officials denied chemical vapors were to blame for the events.
That pattern wasn’t new. Expert reports detailed the same cycle happened at Hanford in the 80s and in the 90s: a slew of exposures, followed by denials by the tank farm contractor, and workers left sick and unable to work.
Many workers said they felt betrayed by the contractors over the years for not being honest about the dangers of vapors.
“Until they are in the field and until they smell what we smell and until they feel like we feel and until they get injured like we get injured, they don’t care,” said Mike Cain, a 47-year current Hanford employee who spent 25 of those years in the tank farms. “Everything that we described 30 years ago, 40 years ago, is still there. Yet they keep doing the same thing over and over and over again.”
After the string of exposures in 2014, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, Hanford Challenge and Local 598 all filed lawsuits against WRPS and Hanford’s owner, the U.S. Department of Energy. The complaint accused the contractor and federal government of failing to protect workers from vapor exposures, that can cause adverse health effects including lung disease, nervous system damage and cancers of the liver, lung, blood and other organs. The lawsuit also alleged the Department of Energy had been well aware of the dangers for 25 years, yet “Energy did not fix the problem.”
A settlement agreement was reached in September 2018. Hanford officials agreed to improve health and safety conditions, install engineering to keep vapors out of the breathing space of workers. They also agreed to provide respiratory protections including supplied (fresh) air that is worn in tanks on the backs of workers, if needed.
In the June event, workers were not using supplied air. According to workers, the contractor had downgraded respiratory protection to respirators with cartridges. Respirators are lighter and more cost effective than supplied air.
“(That) never should have happened if they were wearing fresh air. Never should have happened,” Cain said.
“They’re not protecting workers. They have a long history of not doing so, of putting money and profits before workers health and safety which is ironic because they’re all about saying they want to protect health and safety. They’re not doing it,” Carpenter said.
A WRPS spokesperson said the company did not skimp on safety protocols in the June event.
“Respiratory controls at the TX Farm during the June 18, 2021 event complied with the tank farms vapors settlement agreement requirements… workers were wearing air-purifying respirators consistent with interim mandatory respiratory protections consistent with cartridge testing results,” the spokesperson said.
What is Hanford?
Hanford is the most contaminated worksite in America. Located near Richland in eastern, Wash., workers at the site produced plutonium for the country’s nuclear weapons program for approximately four decades. Plutonium produced at Hanford fueled the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, that led to the end of WWII. Since the late 80s, Hanford has been a clean up site only.
The settlement agreement also makes it mandatory for WRPS to report events on its website that fall into the category of an “AOP-15.” On the WRPS website, an AOP 15 is described as an unidentified odor event: “When a worker reports an unexpected and unidentified odor in the tank farms, and reports medical symptoms potentially related to that smell.”
In the June event, WRPS did not characterize it as an AOP-15, therefore, company executives said they had no obligation to report it.
“Smells like a cover-up”
“This lack of information sharing and reporting smells like a cover-up. We do not want to see a return to downgraded worker protections that result in routine vapor exposures. The cycle of exposures must end at Hanford, and meaningful and long-lasting regulations should be enacted to assure that Hanford tank farm workers can conduct a cleanup without risking their own health and safety,” said Carpenter of Hanford Challenge in a press statement sent on Friday.
On Thursday, a WRPS executive told KING 5 that the company’s definition of an AOP-15 had changed in 2020. In an email to employees on Dec. 1, 2020, WRPS Executive Jeremy Hartley said that moving forward, an AOP-15 will occur when personal ammonia monitors worn by workers set off an alarm.
“Ammonia has been verified as a sentinel indicator of changing levels of other chemicals of potential concern. The procedure changes clarify and reinforce a disciplined conduct of operations by recognizing the administrative and engineering controls in place, relying on the ammonia monitors and verifying the conditions when an alarm set point is reached,” Hartley wrote.
Given this change, the WRPS spokesperson said they followed protocol by not reporting the event on the website.
As this event did not involve an ammonia alarm, it is not classified as an AOP-15,” the spokesperson said.
Government scientists have concluded that ammonia does not have to be present for other chemicals of concern to release in concentrations that could harm human health. In 2004 the Department of Energy released a Hanford report concluding the potentially harmful gas, nitrous oxide, can be present without the presence of ammonia.
“Based on…characterization data (the contractor) CH2M HILL has incorrectly assumed that nitrous oxides are present only when ammonia is present,” report authors wrote. “…nitrous oxide vapors in tank headspaces can be present in (dangerous) concentrations, even in the absence of ammonia.”
Stakeholders such as Hanford Challenge and union safety representatives said they were unaware that WRPS had changed its AOP-15 definition.
A WRPS communications specialist said they are committed to the safety of workers.
“The health and safety of the workforce is always paramount,” the company official said.8
Media avoid the truth about nuclear wastes
the hidden message:
scientists and engineers are still bewildered by a mountain of nuclear waste 80-years high. Nobody wants it in their neighborhood. There’s no place to put it
Limp logic of safe nuclear waste storage, https://www.miragenews.com/limp-logic-of-safe-nuclear-waste-storage-621868/ 30 Aug 21, Enriching uranium requires fossil fuels that leave coal ash and/or fracking waste, both of which degrade the quality of soil, water and air. There are tons of containers, gloves, booties, and hazmat suits, etc. that must be discarded as radioactive waste in order to fabricate, use, transport and store the spent fuel generated in service to tens of thousands of electricty-users.
Author, Jan Boudart, Nuclear Energy Information Service1.
The August 19, 2021 Mirage News article “ORNL receives spent fuel canister to support long-term storage studies” has prompted us2 to question the superficiality of ORNL’s analogy to the volume of spent nuclear fuel.
Characterizing spent fuel on less than half of 1000th part of its yearly volume is to ignore, not only the whole story of mining, transporting, milling, transporting, processing, transporting, refueling reactor vessels, storing spent fuel, then more transporting. Spent fuel volume is but a trivial part of how the nuclear fuel cycle impacts humans, animals, plants and the geological earth.
And acres of concrete, whose manufacture is a strong producer of greenhouse gasses, are required for temporary entombment. Fossil fuels are used in trucks and trains to haul radioactive fuel, both new and spent, on water and land. And there are hospital gowns, syringes, and multiple wastes, along with the energy to light, heat and build sophisticated diagnostic and treatment systems to deal with the cancer-stricken victims of the whole fuel cycle of which spent fuel is a small, but important, part.
Relevant metrics easily expose the disconnect between reality and the unsubstantiated and spurious analogy in the article. For example, (i) the hundreds of thousands of tons which will further degrade our fragile roads, rail and bridges in a nuclear-waste transport scheme3, (ii) the hundreds of billions which have been spent worldwide over 70 years trying to find the ever-vanishing ‘solution’ to nuclear waste, and (iii) the hundreds of thousands of years (a million according to the US National Academies) in which spent fuel will remain hazardous and toxic.
Also, a perennial chortle among anti-nuclear activists is the fact that no insurance company in its right mind would consider taking on the risk posed by a nuclear power plant or its waste. In case of an accident, taxpayers will foot most of the bill, per The Price-Anderson Act of 19574. If spent fuel is such a no-big-deal to manage, let the nuclear industry assume full responsibility for paying for and insuring it.
Another egregious statement from the ORNL spokesperson: “The used fuel… can be retrieved at any time for reprocessing and reuse.” BUT, “Incredibly, not a single dry storage cask, once loaded, has ever been unloaded in the U.S.”5 And no one has volunteered to risk their life taking spent nuclear fuel out of a canister. To do so in relative safety would require a “hot cell”6, where workers could be protected from “spent” fuel’s deadly radiation — much more fearsome than when it was “new”.
At present, in the U.S. 95 nuclear reactors are functioning, each producing about 2000 Tons of spent nuclear fuel per year. The inventory of High-Level Nuclear Waste, “Spent” fuel, has exceeded 90,000 tons7. Transporting this monstrous load would be dangerous and very expensive8.
Further, the ORNL speaker implied that spent fuel can be “inertly stored”, saying, “The nuclear energy industry is unique among power generation options in that its used fuel is inertly stored in sealed canisters…”. But it is well-known that the spent fuel, itself, is not inert. It is, in fact, thousands of times more radioactive than the new fuel whose fission produced the heat to run the reactor. It costs about 4 million USD for each cask9 and another half million USD to load each one with fuel. “The concrete pad for casks to sit on costs another 1 million USD. A rough estimated cost to move all of the fuel in the United States that has cooled in pools for at least five years could cost 7 billion USD.”10 You tell me why private power companies are required to spend $4,500,000+ per cask to “inertly store” this dangerous material.
Later the article discusses the foils against criticality that are being tried at ORNL. No concern for “critically” would be necessary if the SNF were “inertly stored” as previously claimed.
The fact of the article in question appearing at this stage— when we are 8 decades (counting from 1942) into the Atomic Age — this immediate and present fact — emphasizes the hidden message: scientists and engineers are still bewildered by a mountain of nuclear waste 80-years high. Nobody wants it in their neighborhood. There’s no place to put it…………..
Continue readingSwedish government decides to increase interim storage capacity for nuclear waste
The Government has decided to allow a capacity increase of the interim
storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, pending a repository for final
disposal being constructed and put into operation. An intermediate decision
on interim storage is necessary to safeguard the energy supply in the
coming years.
The Government is prioritising and working as swiftly as
possible to prepare the decision on the repository. In the Government’s
assessment, it will be a matter of months before such a decision can be
made. However, the permit process following a government decision will take
additional time.
Without a valid permit for increased interim storage in
place before the end of 2023, Sweden’s electricity generation could be
adversely affected. This is why an intermediate decision on interim storage
is necessary.
The Government is examining how spent nuclear fuel and other
nuclear waste will be disposed of. In the next step, the Government will
refer the evaluation of new research on the protective capability of the
copper canister in relation to both copper corrosion and the planned cast
iron insert to the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority and the Swedish
National Council for Nuclear Waste.
In the consultation process, the
Government wants these authorities to determine whether the article on
copper corrosion and the research to which the article refers provide new
information that may be of significance to the Government’s decision on
the case.
Swedish Government 27th Aug 2021
Secret nuclear waste proposals initiated by private landowners and companies
Dr Ruth Balogh, West Cumbria & North Lakes Friends of the Earth.
The NDA is touring West Cumbria with yet another set of proposals for a
deep geological disposal facility for high & intermediate level radwaste in
West Cumbria. The idea of siting this dump in the nuclear industry’s
traditional dumping ground, the Irish Sea, is enjoying favour.
Interest in such proposals has been expressed elsewhere, in Lincolnshire and
Hartlepool, to – unlike in West Cumbria – some political acrimony. In the
NDA press release about the Hartlepool initiative, Steve Reece, Head of
Siting said: ‘This is a process that is driven by communities.’
Yet all of these proposals were initiated in secrecy by private landowners and
companies. In Allerdale’s case the company isn’t even situated in the
Borough. It was followed by the establishment of a small Working Group with
a Borough Council representative on it.
Overtures from at least one community group to take part have been rebuffed. Which community is in the
driving seat here? Not ours. If the NDA want to dig an almighty hole, and
fill it with waste which has been waiting decades for a rational plan- and
which is going to be compounded by far more from Hinkley Point than we have
here already at Sellafield, it’s time they called a spade a spade. We
deserve truthful engagement, not high-minded aspirations.
Times and Star 26th Aug 2021
https://www.timesandstar.co.uk/opinion/
Communities react with shock to news they are being considered as locations for nuclear waste facility
Nuclear storage plans for north of England stir up local opposition
Communities react with shock to news they are being considered as locations for underground facility, Guardian, Tommy GreeneTue 24 Aug 2021 The long-running battle to build an underground nuclear waste facility in the north of England has run into fresh problems, as communities reacted with shock to the news that they were being considered as locations.
The north-east port town of Hartlepool is one of the sites in the frame as a potential site for a geological disposal facility (GDF), while a former gas terminal point at Theddlethorpe, near the Lincolnshire coast, is another. Cumbria, where much of the waste is stored above ground, is also being considered.
Victoria Atkins, a government minister and the MP for Louth and Horncastle, said she was “stunned” by the prospect that her constituency could host a GDF, claiming that the Conservative-controlled Lincolnshire county council’s engagement with the government’s radioactive waste management group had been kept hidden from her.
The facility is intended to deal with the long-running problem of nuclear waste storage by providing a safe deposit for approximately 750,000 cubic metres of high-activity waste hundreds of metres underground in areas thought to have suitable geology to securely isolate the radioactive material. The waste would be solidified, packaged and placed into deep subterranean vaults. The vaults would then be backfilled and the surrounding network of tunnels and chambers sealed……….
Between 70% and 75% of the UK’s high-activity radioactive waste, which would be designated for the GDF, is stored at the Sellafield facility in west Cumbria. The sources of the waste include power generation, military, medical and civil uses.
Existing international treaties prohibit countries from exporting the waste overseas, leading some scientists to argue for underground burial that, they say, would require no further human intervention once storage is complete……………
the proposals have stirred up strong local feeling among both community leaders and residents, and accusations of secrecy have been levelled at councils and the RWM in recent weeks.
In north-east England, the political fallout generated by news of the GDF “early stage” discussions triggered the resignation of Hartlepool council’s deputy leader, Mike Young, on Tuesday evening.
“We are making huge strides in Hartlepool and across Teesside and Darlington,” the Tees Valley mayor, Ben Houchen, said following the decision. “And the last thing we need as we sell our region to the world is to be known as the dumping ground for the UK’s nuclear waste.”
Cumbria county council, which resisted the last efforts to site a GDF locally in 2013, has declined to take part in either of the two existing working groups, saying its involvement would give the process “a credibility it doesn’t deserve”.
There is already considerable opposition from local groups. “The vast majority of people here are horrified by the GDF,” said Jane Bright, a Mablethorpe resident and spokesperson for the Guardians of the East Coast campaign. “I should think it’s no more welcome elsewhere. But there’s a lot of pride in this area and we’ll fight this for as long as it takes.”
Marianne Birkby, a Cumbrian resident and founder of the Radiation-Free Lakeland group, said: “We’re seen as the line of least resistance here. In Cumbria, we’ve been there before with this. Now people are now trying to get their heads around it again, in the middle of a pandemic. This dump would essentially make us a sacrifice zone to the nuclear industry.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/23/nuclear-storage-plans-for-north-of-england-stir-up-local-opposition
Texas lawmakers oppose high level nuclear waste coming into their State
State lawmakers again try to ban most dangerous nuclear waste as feds consider allowing it at West Texas site, https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/23/texas-nuclear-waste-storage-site-legislature/A failed regular session bill sought to give a financial break to a West Texas nuclear waste disposal company. Now, lawmakers have removed what opponents called a giveaway and are again trying to pass a bill to stop highly radioactive materials from coming to Texas.
BY ERIN DOUGLAS AUG. 23, 2021 After failing this spring, Texas lawmakers are again trying to ban the most dangerous type of radioactive waste from entering the state — at the same time as a nuclear waste disposal company in West Texas pursues a federal application to store the highly radioactive materials.
Environmental and consumer advocates for years have decried a proposal to build a 332-acre site in West Texas near the New Mexico border to store the riskiest type of nuclear waste: spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants, which can remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. Strong political interests in Texas, from Gov. Greg Abbott to some oil and gas companies operating in the Permian Basin, have opposed the company’s application.
But a bill that sought to ban the highly radioactive material failed during the regular legislative session that ended in May. That bill, filed by State Rep. Brooks Landgraf, R-Odessa, whose district includes Andrews County where the existing nuclear waste company Waste Control Specialists operates, included a big break on fees for the company. Some lawmakers also thought the previous bill’s language wasn’t strong enough to actually ban the materials.
Now, Landgraf has again filed a bill during this year’s second special session that seeks to ban the highly radioactive materials from coming to the company’s facility in his district. The House Environmental Regulation Committee on Monday passed House Bill 7, which does not include any changes to fees for the existing company, one of the key criticisms that killed the proposed legislation earlier this year.
“So in other words, this is designed to be clean and easy so that we can go on record as a state [opposing high-level nuclear waste storage],” Landgraf said.
Waste Control Specialists has been disposing of the nation’s low-level nuclear waste — including tools, building materials and protective clothing exposed to radioactivity — for a decade in Andrews County. The company, with a partner, is pursuing a federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to store spent nuclear fuel on a site adjacent to its existing facility.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is advancing the company’s license. In July, NRC staff recommended in an environmental review that the site be approved to take the highest level of nuclear waste. The license still needs review by the federal commissioners.
Scientists agree that spent nuclear fuel, which is currently stored at nuclear power plants, should be stored deep underground, but the U.S. still hasn’t located a suitable site. The plan by the WCS joint venture, Interim Storage Partners, proposes storing it in above-ground casks until a permanent location is found.
Landgraf’s HB 7 includes a ban on disposing of high-level radioactive waste in Texas other than former nuclear power reactors and former nuclear research and test reactors on university campuses (nuclear power plants must keep the waste generated from operations on site until a long-term disposal site is created). The bill would also bar state agencies from issuing construction, stormwater or pollution permits for facilities that are licensed to store high-level radioactive waste.
Some opponents of nuclear waste, however, say the bill doesn’t go far enough. Karen Hadden, the executive director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition, an alliance of businesses and organizations that oppose the nuclear waste facility, is opposed to the bill because she said the ban leaves out another type of highly radioactive waste, much of it generated by the decommissioning of nuclear power plants. The material — known as “greater than Class C waste” falls into what experts call a gray area between lower-level categories of radioactive materials and spent nuclear fuel.
“We would support a single, well-written ban on spent nuclear fuel and Greater than Class C reactor waste,” Hadden said in an interview with the Tribune. “We question why the bill isn’t better written.”
Secretive process of Allerdale Working Group studying potential dump sites for UK’s vast stockpile of nuclear waste
Allerdale Working Group met behind closed doors in July and decided which
parts of Allerdale may become the burial site for the UK’s vast stockpile
of nuclear waste.
Cumbria Trust was refused permission to be involved in
the site selection, and Allerdale Working Group is still refusing to reveal
its choice to us as that’s how the rules of the process have been
arbitrarily defined.
The similarities with the previous failed process,
MRWS, are clear. When the geological screening report didn’t produce the
outcome they would have preferred, they supressed it, only to release an
amended version 3 months later in which the Solway Plain had switched from
excluded to included. As with the current process, these meetings and
deliberations were hidden from the public gaze.
Cumbria Trust 21st Aug 2021
GDF – LDNP Back in the mix?
NRC respond’s to New Mexico’s legal bid to stop Holtec’s planned nuclear waste dump
NRC: Court lacks authority in New Mexico lawsuit against nuclear waste site, Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus 20 Aug 21. A proposal to build a temporary nuclear waste storage site near Carlsbad and Hobbs drew a lawsuit against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the agency tasked with permitting the facility, from the State of New Mexico which sought to block the project.
In a Monday filing, the NRC asked the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico to dismiss the State’s lawsuit due to lack of jurisdiction.
The State alleged in the suit that the NRC acted illegally in issuing an environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Holtec project that found the site would have minimal environmental impact and recommended a permit be granted.
Citing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA), New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas argued federal law stipulated a permanent repository be available before an interim storage site, like Holtec’s, could be permitted.
But the NRC argued that in the State’s suit, Balderas ignored the NRC’s authority to issue licenses for nuclear facilities as designated in the Atomic Energy Act (AEA), that allows challenges to licenses applications be raised in the U.S Court of Appeals which New Mexico failed to do.
The NRC argued U.S. District Court was the wrong venue for New Mexico to appeal the decision under the AEA and that the case should be before the U.S. Court of Appeals………..
State leaders cited the alleged risk the project, proposed by Holtec International, would pose to the environment and public safety should it be allowed to operate, along with concerns that it could become permanent as no such repository existed and potential incidents when transporting the waste into New Mexico.
Holtec first applied for a license from the NRC in 2017 to build the facility that would ultimately store up to 100,000 spent nuclear fuel rods on the surface at a location near the Eddy-Lea county line while a permanent repository was developed.
Such a repository does not yet exist, so the Holtec site would see the high-level nuclear waste brought into the remote area in southeast New Mexico via rail from nuclear power plants and facilities across the country to be held temporarily at the site known as consolidated interim storage facility (CISF).
A similar project was also amidst an NRC licensing process in Andrews, Texas, near the New Mexico-Texas state line for another company Interim Storage partners which so far received favorable reviews from the agency with a final decision expected later this year.
Upon announcing the lawsuit against the NRC to block Holtec’s project Balderas sought an injunction to block the licensing process.
He said the project would bring an unnecessary risk to the local communities near the site and along its transportation routes, along with economic drivers like oil and gas extraction and agriculture in the region.
“I am taking legal action because I want to mitigate dangers to our environment and to other energy sectors,” Balderas said. “It is fundamentally unfair for our residents to bear the risks of open ended uncertainty https://www.currentargus.com/story/news/local/2021/08/20/nrc-court-lacks-authority-new-mexico-lawsuit-against-nuclear-waste-site/8185804002/
France returns high level nuclear waste to Germany (What happens to it then?)
France signs billion-euro deal to return nuclear waste to Germany, https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20210820-france-signs-billion-euro-deal-to-return-nuclear-waste-to-germanyThe French nuclear group Orano has signed a contract worth more than 1 billion euros to return high-level nuclear waste processed in France to Germany by the end of 2024.
Orano announced on Thursday that a “package of deals” between electricity companies PreussenElektra, RWE, ENBW and Vattenfall had formalised an in-principle agreement made in June by the French and German governments.
For 44 years German electricity companies have sent spent nuclear fuel to Normandy for recycling.
Train convoys carrying the waste were regularly blocked by environmental activists, some of whom chained themselves to the tracks.
Thorny issue
Under the agreement, which followed years of difficult negotiations, it is not medium-level German waste that will be returned, but high-level French waste from EDF power plants.
Orano said this meant it would take less volume and less time to send the same level of radioactive waste back to Germany.
“In terms of mass and radioactivity, this does not change anything,” Orano said in a statement, describing the deal as a “fairly common practice of equivalence”.
A single train of 100 containers carrying the spent nuclear fuel is to be transported from Orano’s plant in La Hague, Normandy, to Germany within the next three years.
Under French law, nuclear waste that enters France for processing cannot remain in the country.
However Germany does not have a solution for the long-term management and storage of radioactive material.
The final costly burden of Ontaria’s nuclear decommissioning will fall to the great-grandchildren of babies born in 2021
So yes, Ontario’s nuclear program will be a fiscal burden on Ontarians to the tune of around $40 billion CAD which will be spent through roughly 2135, finally being paid off by the great-grandchildren of babies born in 2021.
Ontario’s Unfunded Nuclear Decommissioning Liability Is In The $18-$27 Billion CAD Range eTransport News, 12 Aug 21, Late last year I worked up the likely amount of public money that would have to be thrown at the nuclear industry in order to successfully and safely decommission the 100 operational reactors and the now shut down ones. Unsurprisingly, the nuclear industry had been very optimistic in its estimates of decommissioning costs and timeframes, when the global empirical averages were trending to a billion USD and 100 years per reactor.
Recently I was asked by an Ontario journalist what I thought the likely situation in Ontario would be, and whether the decommissioning trusts were equally underfunded. I was unsurprised to find that Canada is in the same boat as the US, with highly optimistic schedule and cost projections which belie Canadian empirical experience with the CANDU reactor, and that the fund had nowhere near the money necessary for the job. Let’s run the numbers.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is the chunk of the provincial utility that was carved apart in the late 1990s by the Mike Harris Conservatives to handle generation alone. It operates 18 aging CANDU reactors across three sites: Bruce, Pickering, and Darlington.
OPG has a nuclear decommissioning fund of about $5 billion CAD or US$4 billion right now. If the experience of other countries on the actual cost of a billion USD per reactor and an actual timeline of decommissioning of a century holds true, and I see no reason why it doesn’t, that means that there is currently a $17.5 billion CAD gap in Ontario, in addition to the existing $19.3 billion CAD in debt still being serviced from their construction. When the government of the era split up the utility, it moved all of the debt off of the components and into general debt. One of the many appropriate and sensible things that the McGuinty Administration did in the 2000s, in addition to shutting down coal generation entirely, was to move the debt back into the utility and set about servicing it from utility bills.
Most of the reactors at Bruce Nuclear are aging out, with several over 40 years old and the remainder approaching 40. Darlington’s are around 30, so they have a bit of runway. Pickering’s reactors are going to be shut down in 2024 and 2025 and start decommissioning in 2028. While refurbishment could bridge Ontario’s for another 20 years in many cases, that’s expensive and typically won’t pass any economic viability assessment compared to alternatives.
The likelihood is that all reactors in Ontario will reach end of life by 2035, and be replaced by some combination of renewable energy and HVDC transmission from neighboring jurisdictions, with both Manitoba and Quebec having excellent, low-carbon hydroelectric to spare……………….
Nuclear decommissioning funding comes from reactors operating revenue. In the US, it’s 0.01 to 0.02 cents per kWh as a set aside. I wasn’t able to find the required set aside for Ontario’s fleet, but obviously they aren’t setting aside sufficient funds now, or have absurdly optimistic fund growth expectations. They only have a decade to set aside more money from operating reactors, and have only set aside $5 billion CAD after 50 years, so the most generous assumption is that they will set aside perhaps $7 billion CAD in the OPG fund by end of life of the reactors, and have a liability for decommissioning of $15.5 to $27 billion CAD. For the next step, let’s assume $20 billion CAD for the sake of round numbers.
Given the likelihood of all of Ontario’s reactors being off of the grid by 2035, with major decommissioning occurring every few years until then, the kWh generated by Ontario’s nuclear fleet from now through 2060 will be in the range of about 1000 TWh assuming there are no lengthy outages at any of the plants, which to be clear is an awful lot of low carbon electricity.
However, $20 billion is a big number too. It turns into about 19 cents per kWh if you only count electricity generated from today through end of life for the reactors. It’s obviously a lot lower if you calculated from beginning of the lifetime of the reactors. However you count it though, that’s only the unfunded Ontario liability, and it’s on top of subsidized security costs Canada and Ontario and municipalities bear, and it’s on top of the outstanding $19.3 billion in debt that has only been receiving servicing on the interest since the McGuinty government brought it back into the utility. It’s likely that the majority of that debt will be outstanding in 2035 still, as it has gone from $20 billion to $19.3 billion in the last 11 years, so expecting it to be gone by 2035 is not realistic.
So yes, Ontario’s nuclear program will be a fiscal burden on Ontarians to the tune of around $40 billion CAD which will be spent through roughly 2135, finally being paid off by the great-grandchildren of babies born in 2021.
Nuclear, the gift that keeps on giving. https://etransportnews.com/2021/08/06/ontarios-unfunded-nuclear-decommissioning-liability-is-in-the-18-27-billion-cad-range/
America’s nuclear waste non-policy – a treacherous betrayal of future citizens
In “Deep Time: The End of an Engagement” (Issues, Spring 2021), Başak Saraç-Lesavre describes in succinct and painful detail the flawed US policy for managing nuclear waste. She weaves through a series of missteps, false starts, and dead-ends that have stymied steady progress and helped toengender our present state—which she describes as “deadlocked.”
Her description and critique are not meant to showcase political blunders, but to caution that the present stasis is, in effect, a potentially treacherous policy decision. The acceptance of essentially doing nothing and consigning the waste to a decentralized or centralized storage configuration is in fact a decision and a de facto policy.
To make the situation worse, this status quo was not reached mindfully, but is the result of mangled planning, political reboots, and the present lack of a viable end-state option. Although there may be some merit to accepting a truly interim phase of storing nuclear waste prior to an enduring disposal solution, the interim plan must be tied to a final solution.
As decreed in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and reinforced by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, centralized interim storage was to be the bridge to somewhere. But the bridge is now looking like the destination,and it would be naive not to view it as another disincentive to an already anemic will to live up to the initial intent.
Issues (accessed) 17th Aug 2021
UK’s Marine Management Organisation gives the OK for dumping Hinkley radioactive trash in the Bristol Channel
A nuclear power station’s application to deposit hundreds of thousands
of tonnes of sediment as part of works taking place in the Bristol Channel
has been given the go-ahead.
The Marine Management Organisation (MMO), a
government agency which serves to protect and enhance [???] UK marine environment
and sustainable marine activities, has allowed a variation to a marine
licence to Hinkley Point C. This permits the power station to carry out
dredging and disposal of mud at the existing Portishead disposal site in
the Bristol Channel.
North Somerset Times 17th Aug 2021
Reclassifying nuclear wastes, and other ethical and technical problems at Hanford
“DOE sort of granted itself the authority to do that reclassifying,”
“We’re not convinced of any need to reclassify any of the high-level wastes,” said Ecology Department spokesman Randy Bradbury.
“We believe this rule lays the groundwork for the department to abandon significant amounts of radioactive waste in Washington State precipitously close to the Columbia River,”
Reclassifying a significant amount of high-level waste into low-activity waste is key to reaching that 80%, the report said.
Ultimately, this project, originally scheduled to be finished this decade, will likely be completed in the latter half of this century. In other words, it could take 70 to 75 years (mid-1990s to 2069) to deal with the 56 million gallons of radioactive tank waste created by 42 years of manufacturing plutonium.
A plan to turn radioactive waste into glass logs has raised a lot of questions, many of which don’t appear to have public answers. CrossCut, by John Stang, August 16, 2021”……………………..Whistleblower alarm
Red flags have also been raised over the quality of construction of the new treatment facilities.
In 2010, Walt Tamosaitis, a senior manager at a subcontractor designing the pretreatment plant, URS Corp., alerted his superiors and managers at lead contractor Bechtel to a risk of hydrogen gas explosions that could bend and burst pipes in the plant, spraying radioactive fluids. He also pointed out that radioactive sludge could clog the pipes and tanks in the plant, increasing the chance of uncontrolled releases of radiation. And he raised the issue of corrosion causing leaks in the pretreatment plant.
Tamosaitis’ superiors told the Energy Department that the design problems were fixed as of July 1, 2010 — over Tamosaitis’ protests, but in time for Bechtel to collect a $5 million bonus from the department.
For raising the alarm, he was demoted and exiled to an insignificant offsite job, Tamosaitis alleged in a lawsuit against Bechtel. He alleged illegal retaliation, eventually reaching a $4.1 million settlement with the company. Meanwhile, in 2011 and 2012, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, a technical advisory body monitoring DOE, plus the Government Accounting Office, confirmed Tamosaitis’ concerns.
In 2015, the Energy Department announced that it would not have the entire complex operational by 2022, the deadline at the time. Department officials pointed to the same issues Tamosaitis had identified in 2010.
Also on hold is construction of the pretreatment plant — a prerequisite to the high-level waste glassification project, which is scheduled to begin production in 2023, according to the current state and federal agreement.
What the future holds
The U.S. Department of Energy has been giving contradictory signals about new plans for dealing with some of the high-level waste.
Continue readingSecrecy, delays, budget problems as USA tries to clean up Hanford, the most radioactively polluted site in the nation.
Hanford has 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in those 177 underground tanks at this remote decommissioned nuclear production site near the Columbia River in Benton County.
Those leak-prone tanks are arguably the most radiologically contaminated place in the Western Hemisphere.
At least 1 million gallons of radioactive liquids have leaked into the ground, seeping into the aquifer 200 feet below and then into the Columbia River, roughly seven miles away. Since the mid-1990s, Hanford’s plans involve mixing the waste in the tanks with benign melted glass and then storing it in glass logs.
Today, the project’s budget is at least $17 billion, and the first glassification plant for low-activity waste is scheduled to start up in late 2023. So far, the federal government has spent $11 billion on the glassification project, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative agency of Congress.
That one plant, however, will only handle 40% to 50% of the low-activity wastes, depending on who is doing the estimating. A second low-activity waste plant or a stil-to-be-determined new approach is needed to the remaining wastes.is What will happen to the rest of the waste is still up for debate.
All of the single-shell tanks and the majority of the double-shell tanks are way past their design lives
Cleaning up nuclear waste at Hanford: Secrecy, delays and budget debates
A plan to turn radioactive waste into glass logs has raised a lot of questions, many of which don’t appear to have public answers. CrossCut, by John Stang, August 16, 2021 Stephen Wiesman has worked for about three decades on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation’s project to convert the radioactive waste in its huge underground tanks into safer glass logs.
Although he’s retired now and involved in an advisory capacity, he understands the project — and its ongoing challenges — better than almost anyone.
Wiesman sees this task with a mix of cautious optimism, frustration, sympathy for the people dealing with its complexities, and a deep belief that the tank wastes must be dealt with. “There isn’t an emotion that I haven’t felt,” he said.
The project faces a cluster of challenges: financial, technical and political. And the secrecy around the plans to solve these issues makes it difficult for anyone to gauge whether the most polluted spot in the nation will ever become a benign stain on the landscape of eastern Washington.
Continue readingStrong local opposition to a proposed nuclear waste dump
People opposed to the building of a nuclear waste dump have gathered on
Mablethorpe beach in opposition to the move. Around 150 people were at the
beach on Saturday, August 14, to mark their opposition to the proposal –
which would affect the former Theddlethorpe Gas Terminal.
Radioactive Waste Management (RWM) has flagged the site as a potential geological disposal
facility where radioactive waste would be buried deep underground. One of
the organisers of yesterday’s event, who didn’t wish to be named, told
Lincolnshire Live: “There is a lot of anger about what has been done here.
“People have moved to this area because they wanted a quiet, countryside
life and so the idea of having a nuclear waste dump has upset pretty much
all local residents.
“A local estate agent even said that people
immediately started to pull out of house sales when the news about the
proposal first came out. “They think that just to get the spoil out of the
ground will mean about 20 lorries an hour going back and forth, which
doesn’t seem realistic on the roads around here. “We’re waiting to hear
more details at the moment because we’re still in the dark on this, but
we’re going to continue to protest against it.
Lincolnshire Live 15th Aug 2021
https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/news/local-news/people-opposed-nuclear-waste-dump-5789940
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