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The media revels in rockets to Mars, ignores the horrible risk of plutonium pollution

Plutonium, Perseverance and the Spellbound Press https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/24/2017916/-Plutonium-Perseverance-and-the-Spellbound-Press, Karl Grossman 

            With all the media hoopla last week about the Perseverance rover, frequently unreported was that its energy source is plutonium—considered the most lethal of all radioactive substances—and nowhere in media that NASA projected 1-in-960 odds of the plutonium being released in an accident on the mission.

“A ‘1-in-960 chance’ of a deadly plutonium release is a real concern—gamblers in Las Vegas would be happy with those odds,” says Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.

Indeed, big-money lotteries have odds far higher than 1-in-960 and routinely people win those lotteries.

Further, NASA’s Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the $3.7 billion mission acknowledges that an “alternative” power source for Perseverance could have been solar energy. Solar energy using photovoltaic panels has been the power source for a succession of Mars rovers.

For an accident releasing plutonium on the Perseverance launch—and 1 in 100 rockets undergo major malfunctions on launch mostly by blowing up—NASA in its SEIS described these impacts for the area around the Cape Kennedy under a heading “Impacts of Radiological Releases on the Environment.” Continue reading →

February 25, 2021 Posted by | - plutonium, 2 WORLD, space travel | Leave a comment

What would go into the Chalk River Mound? — Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area

December 2020 Canadian taxpayers are paying a consortium (Canadian National Energy Alliance) contracted by the federal government in 2015, billions of dollars to reduce Canada’s $16 billion nuclear liabilities quickly and cheaply. The consortium is proposing to construct a giant mound for one million tons of radioactive waste beside the Ottawa River upstream of Ottawa-Gatineau. […]

What would go into the Chalk River Mound? — Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area
There is considerable secrecy about what would go into the mound; the information that follows has been  derived from the proponent’s final environmental impact statement (EIS) (December 2020) which lists a partial inventory of radionuclides that would go into the gigantic five-to-seven story radioactive mound (aka the “NSDF”). The EIS and supporting documents also contain inventories of non-radioactive hazardous materials that would go into the dump.

Here is what the consortium says it is planning to put into the Chalk River mound (according to the final EIS and supporting documents)

1)  Long-lived radioactive materials

Twenty-five out of the 30 radionuclides listed in Table 3.3.1-2: NSDF Reference Inventory and Licensed Inventory are long-lived, with half-lives ranging from four centuries to more than four billion years.

To take just one example, the man-made radionuclide, Neptunium-237, has a half-life of 2 million years such that, after 2 million years have elapsed, half of the material will still be radioactive. At the time of emplacement in the mound, the neptunium-237 will be giving off 17 million ( check, 1.74 x 10 to the 7th) radioactive disintegrations each second, second after second.

The mound would contain 80 tonnes of Uranium and 6.6 tonnes of thorium-232.

2) Four isotopes of plutonium, one of the most deadly radioactive materials known, if inhaled or ingested.

John Gofman MD, PhD, a Manhattan Project scientist and former director of biomedical research at the DOE’s Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, stated that even one-millionth of a gram of plutonium inhaled into the lung, will cause lung cancer within 20 years. Sir Brian Flowers, author of the UK Royal Commission Report on Nuclear Energy and the Environment, wrote that a few thousands of a gram, inhaled into the lungs, will cause death within a few years because of massive fibrosis of the lungs, and that a few millionths of a gram will cause lung cancer with almost 100% certainty.

The four isotopes of plutonium listed in the NSDF reference inventory are Plutonium-239, Plutonium-240, Plutonium-2441 and Plutonium-242. According to Table 3.3.1-2 (NSDF Reference Inventory and Licensed Inventory) from the EIS, The two isotopes 239 and 240 combined will have an activity of 87 billion Bq when they are emplaced in the dump. This means that they will be giving off 87 billion radioactive disintegrations each second, second after second.

3) Fissionable materials 

Fissionable materials can be used to make nuclear weapons.

The mound would contain “special fissionable materials” listed in this table (avove) extracted from an EIS supporting document, Waste Acceptance Criteria, Version 4, (November 2020)

4) Large quantities of Cobalt-60 

The CNL inventory also includes a very large quantity of cobalt-60 (990 quintillion becquerels), a material that gives off so much strong gamma radiation that lead shielding must be used by workers who handle it in order to avoid dangerous radiation exposures. The International Atomic Energy Agency considers high-activity cobalt-60 sources to be “intermediate-level waste” and specifies that they must be stored underground. Addition of high-activity cobalt-60 sources means that hundreds of tons of lead shielding would be disposed of in the mound.

5) Very Large quantities of tritium

The mound would contain 890 billion becquerels of tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. Tritium readily combines with oxygen to form radioactive water. It moves readily through the environment and easily enters all cells of the human body where it can cause damage to cell structures including genetic material such as DNA and RNA.

Because it is part of the water molecule, removal of tritium from water is very difficult and expensive. There are no plans to remove tritium from the mound leachate. Instead the consortium plans to pipe the contaminated water directly into Perch Lake which drains into the Ottawa River.


6) Carbon-14

The mound would contain close to two billion becquerels of Carbon-14, an internal emitter that is hazardous in similar ways to tritium. Carbon is a key element in all organic molecules. When it is inhaled or ingested it can become incorporated into all manner of organic molecules and cellular components including genetic material.

7) Many other man-made radionuclides 

Radionuclides such as caesium-137, strontium-90, radium, technetium, nickel-59, americium-243 are listed in the partial inventory of materials that would go into the dump. See the partial inventory here: https://concernedcitizens.net/2020/12/17/cnls-partial-inventory-of-radionuclides-that-would-go-into-the-chalk-river-mound/

8) Non-radioactive hazardous materials

Hazardous materials destined for the dump according to the final EIS and Waste Acceptance Criteria include asbestos, PCBs, dioxins, mercury, up to 13 tonnes of arsenic and hundreds of tonnes of lead. (Reference)

 (Reference)

9) Large quantities of valuable metals that could attract scavengers

According the the final EIS, the mound would contain 33 tonnes of aluminum, 3,520 tonnes of copper, and 10,000 tonnes of iron. It is well known that scavenging of materials  occurs after closure of facilities. Scavengers who would be exposed to high radiation doses as they sought to extract these valuable materials from the dump.

10) Organic Materials

80,339 tonnes of wood and other organic material are destined for the mound. These materials would decompose and cause slumping in the mound, therefore potentially compromising the integrity of the cap.

Most of the radioactive and hazardous material would get into the air and water, some sooner, some later. Some would get into ground and surface water during creation of the mound, such as tritium which is very mobile and cannot be removed by the proposed water treatment plant. Others would get into the air, during construction and could be breathed by workers. Some materials would leach slowly into groundwater. Still others would be released when the mounds deteriorates over time and eventually disintegrates several hundreds of years into the future. For details on the expected disintegration of the mound in a process described as “normal evolution” see this po

The mound would actually get more radioactive over time

See the submission entitled “A Heap of Trouble” by Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility for a chilling description of this process. http://www.ccnr.org/Heap_of_Trouble.pdf. Here is a quote from the submission:


The Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF) project is presented not as a temporary, interim
storage facility but as a permanent repository that will ultimately be abandoned. We are
dealing with a potentially infinite time horizon. The proponent seeks approval not just for a
few decades, but forever. Such permission has never before been granted for post-fission
radioactive wastes in Canada, nor should it be granted. Long-lived radioactive waste
should not be abandoned, especially not on the surface beside a major body of water.

“The facility will remain a significant hazard for in excess of 100,000 years.“

This point was raised by Dr. J.R. Walker, a retired AECL radioactive waste expert in his submission on the draft environmental impact statement. You can read his full submission here: https://www.ceaa.gc.ca/050/documents/p80122/119034E.pdf

This dump would not not meet international safety standards for radioactive waste management.


The dump would not meet provincial standards for hazardous waste disposal.

“There is no safe level of exposure to any man-made radioactive material.“

“There is no safe level of exposure to any man-made radioactive material. All discharges, no matter how small,  into our air and water can cause cancer and many other diseases as well as genetic damage and birth defects.”

~ Dr. Eric Notebaert, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.
 

 

February 23, 2021 Posted by | Canada, radiation, wastes | Leave a comment

Opposition to nuclear dump plan for upstream at Chalk River

February 23, 2021 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear, wastes | Leave a comment

South Africa: an example of how nuclear waste costs are passed on to later generations

Questions we should therefore all be asking of government, the Department of Energy, the nuclear regulator, Nersa, Nuclear Waste Disposal Institute, Necsa, Eskom and the South African nuclear sector are: 

  • Who should bear the cost of nuclear plant decommissioning and long-term storage and disposal of high-level nuclear waste – the polluter, the customer or the taxpayer? 
  • Where are the real asset-based funds set aside within Eskom and Necsa for future decommissioning and long-term storage and disposal of high-level nuclear waste? 
  • Does the “polluter pays” principle apply in practice, or will the customer and taxpayer end up paying twice through government bailouts? 

One can only guess who may end up bearing the real decommissioning, high-level waste storage, disposal and final repository costs in due course – perhaps not the polluter at all, but our children’s children as taxpayers in the next generation. 

South African taxpayers exposed to high-level nuclear waste disposal and decommissioning liabilities, Daily Maverick, By Chris Yelland• 21 February 2021  

Citizens and taxpayers in South Africa continue to labour under the misguided belief that Eskom and the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa) make real funding provisions monthly, over the operating life of their nuclear reactors, to cover the costs of decommissioning and disposal of high-level nuclear waste from their nuclear plants, in terms of the ‘polluter pays’ principle.

Page 69 of the 8th National Report prepared by the Department of Energy and the SA National Nuclear Regulator,  and presented to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in August 2019 in terms of South Africa’s obligations  to the Convention on Nuclear Safety, states in respect of Eskom’s Koeberg nuclear power station:

“Financial provision for decommissioning (as well as spent fuel management) continues to be accumulated on a monthly basis since commercial operation of the installation began in 1984. The financial provision is reflected in the annual financial statements of Eskom. These financial statements are audited in accordance with South African national legislation.

“In terms of decommissioning financial plans, the amount of decommissioning and spent fuel provision made each month is determined by the present value of future estimated cash flows. These financial plans are reviewed regularly and adjusted annually, and informed by the South African inflation rate.”

However, the problem with these fine words to the IAEA is that they are misleading, perhaps deliberately so, and that the so-called provision is actually something of a “Potemkin village” to placate and impress the IAEA and the public that all is well and under control.

In fact, no real money, securities or investments of any kind have actually been set aside monthly, annually or at stage and in any fund during operation of South Africa’s nuclear facilities as provision for decommissioning, long-term storage and final disposal of high-level nuclear waste, and/or the construction and operation of a high-level nuclear waste repository.

Continue reading →

February 22, 2021 Posted by | South Africa, wastes | Leave a comment

Problems in decommissioning legacy nuclear waste silos

Machinery Market 19th Feb 2021, Decommissioning legacy nuclear waste silos on the former UK power generating site at Sellafield requires a large number of bins to be machined to close geometrical tolerances to ensure they can be stacked afely. They are three-metre-cube, double-walled, box fabrications that are highly resonant and, to make their production even more difficult, they are made from 6mm thick Duplex stainless steel plate that tends to induce vibrations when it is milled.
One of the firms leading the Sellafield decommissioning work, Stillington-based Darchem Engineering, had been taking delivery of machined bins from contract machinists BEL Engineering in Newcastle-upon-Tyne since 2017. The problem was, in the words of CEO
Jonathan Lamb: “We wanted to increase productivity but realised that further improvements to the machining process were impossible using conventional machinery and fixturing.

https://www.machinery-market.co.uk/news/29278/Kingsbury-awarded-a-patent-covering-novel-fixture-for-machining-nuclear-waste-containers

February 22, 2021 Posted by | UK, wastes | Leave a comment

RESIDENTS fear nuclear waste is buried beneath land being earmarked for development.

February 20, 2021 Posted by | environment, UK, wastes | Leave a comment

EPA awards $220 million for uranium mine cleanup on Navajo Nation

EPA awards $220 million for uranium mine cleanup on Navajo Nation,  12 News, 17 Feb 21, 

From the late 1940s through the 1960s, Kerr-McGee mined more than 7 million tons of ore on or near the Navajo Nation, leaving behind uranium mine sites.

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it will award contracts worth up to $220 million to three companies for the cleanup of some of the hundreds of abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation.

Work could start later this year following the completion of assessments for mining sites coordinated between the EPA and the Navajo Nation’s environmental agency, the federal agency said.

This week’s announcement is just the latest in years of efforts to clean up the mines, the toxic legacy of Cold War mining in the region. More than 30 million tons of uranium ore were mined in the region, according to the EPA, which said more than 500 mines were ultimately abandoned.

“From World War II until the end of the Cold War, millions of tons of uranium were mined on Navajo lands, exposing mine workers and their families to deadly radiation,” said Rep. Tom O’Halleran, D-Sedona, whose district includes the Arizona portion of the Navajo Nation.

“As a result, high rates of cancer, birth defects, and contaminated water sources remain a reality for residents of the Navajo Nation even now,” O’Halleran said in a statement on the contracts.

The agency said it worked closely with Navajo Nation to develop contracts that would incentivize the creation of employment opportunities for Navajo residents in order to build local economic and institutional capacity.

The majority of funding for the contracts comes from a nearly $1 billion settlement made in 2015 with Kerr McGee Corp. for the cleanup of more than 50 mines in Nevada and on the Navajo Nation that the company and its successor, tronox, were responsible for.

From the late 1940s through the 1960s, Kerr-McGee mined more than 7 million tons of ore on or near the Navajo Nation, leaving behind uranium mine sites that included contaminated waste rock piles. Exposure to uranium in soil, dust, air, and groundwater, as well as through rock piles and structural materials used for building can pose risks to human health, according to the EPA

Mining stopped for the most part decades ago, and the Navajo Nation banned uranium mining on its lands in 2005. But the cleanup effort has lingered. The EPA launched five-year programs in 2007 and 2014 to study the issue and identify the biggest risks, and the agency last year added abandoned Navajo uranium mines to its list of Superfund sites “targeted for immediate, intense action.”…….  https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/arizona/epa-awards-220-million-for-uranium-mine-cleanup-on-navajo-nation/75-154a0fae-53e3-477d-a5ce-0a678d97d

February 18, 2021 Posted by | environment, Uranium, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Community fights Canadian govt’s slick propaganda pushing for high-level radioactive waste dump

Radio — A community’s fight to stop a high-level radioactive waste storage facility

https://talkingradical.ca/2021/02/09/radio-a-communitys-fight-to-stop-a-high-level-radioactive-waste-storage-facility/ February 9, 2021 by Scott   Michelle Stein and Bill Noll are members of Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste, a group of concerned residents of South Bruce, Ontario, who have come together in opposition to the proposal to put a high-level radioactive waste storage facility in their community. Stein and her husband raise cattle and sheep on their farm, which sits next to the proposed site. And Noll is a retired engineer who lives right across from the site. Scott Neigh interviews them about their concerns with the proposed facility and their campaign to stop it.

Since the dawn of the nuclear age in the 1940s, humanity has faced stark questions of risk and safety. Some of those questions have to do with the dangers of acute catastrophe, but others are about the less dramatic but no less serious risk posed by the waste that the nuclear industry generates. Among the most challenging of that waste to deal with – designated “high-level radioactive waste” by the industry – is spent fuel bundles from nuclear reactors. Comprised of a highly toxic and radioactive mix of isotopes, the material in these bundles will be dangerous to living things for at the very least hundreds of thousands of years.

Though it has been decades since the industry first started producing radioactive waste, there has yet to be a fully satisfactory answer to the question of what to do with it. The organization currently tasked with figuring that out for the millions of used nuclear fuel bundles in the Canadian context is the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). Currently, used fuel bundles are kept in interim storage facilities on reactor sites, but the long-term plan is to put them in a “deep geological repository” (DGR), a location that is deep underground and geologically stable. A number of countries are currently developing DGRs for high-level radioactive waste, but none are currently operational.

The NWMO is in the middle of an elaborate selection process to find a site for both the plant that will repackage the fuel bundles for long-term storage and the storage facility itself. They began with 22 possible host communities in 2010 – mostly, it should be noted, small financially distressed communities – and they have narrowed their possibilities down to two, Ignace in northwestern Ontario and South Bruce in southern Ontario, near Lake Huron. They hope to announce their decision in 2023.

The concerns that Stein, Noll, and other members of their group have with the facility are many. Despite assurances from the NWMO that it will all be safe, their own investigation of processes for transporting and storing nuclear waste around the world have convinced them that very real risks remain under the NWMO’s plans. They fear that the facility could endanger human and environmental health, local agriculture, local drinking water, and the larger Great Lakes basin. And they argue that it is not just about their community being the wrong choice, but that the whole approach is flawed.

Moreover, they are quite concerned about the process. They have identified a pattern of what they say is incomplete and one-sided information from the NWMO, and a process that takes advantage of communities by downplaying risk and promising economic benefits that they say seem unlikely. The NWMO insists that whatever community ends up hosting the DGR must be willing, but they have refused to clarify exactly what that means.

Much of the group’s work has focused on mounting a local grassroots response to the slick and well-funded PR efforts of the NWMO. Before COVID, that involved knocking on doors. They’ve brought in speakers and hosted events, lobbied politicians, done media work, and made presentations to other local organizations. Last summer, they presented a petition against the DGR with signatures from more than 1500 residents to the local municipal council – and to put that in perspective, the current mayor got fewer votes than that in the last local election. They commissioned Mainstreet Research to do an opinion survey that found 64% of local residents would vote against locating a DGR for high-level radioactive waste in the community. The group is demanding a binding referendum on the issue.

Stein said, “Since they won’t give us a definition of what ‘willing’ is, we are going to just continue to show them what ‘not willing’ looks like.”

February 16, 2021 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear, wastes | Leave a comment

Dangerous nuclear waste casks should stay off roads and rails

Nor was the potential for cracked or corroded canisters to leak radiation studied
proposal only addresses a new destination for the high-level nuclear waste – not the removal and transport of the fuel storage canisters from nuclear power plants
Even transport casks with canisters that are not damaged will release radiation as they are transported from nuclear power plants to the storage facility, exposing populations along the transport routes in a majority of states and tribal communities in New Mexico to repeated doses of radiation.

Radioactive rail wreck,   Dangerous nuclear waste casks should stay off roads and rails ,  rails  https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2020/07/12/radioactive-rail-wreck/,   Beyond Nuclear  By Laura Watchempino 12 July 20, 

If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) conclusion that it’s safe to move spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants across the country to a proposed storage facility in Lea County sounds vanilla-coated, it’s because the draft environmental impact statement for a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility submitted by Holtec International did not address how the casks containing the spent fuel would be transported to New Mexico.

It’s likely the casks would be transported primarily by rail using aging infrastructure in need of constant repair. But our rail systems were not built to support the great weight of these transport casks containing thin-wall fuel storage canisters.

Nor was the potential for cracked or corroded canisters to leak radiation studied because an earlier NRC Generic EIS for the Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel assumed damaged fuel storage canisters would be detected during an intermediary dry transfer system or a pool.

But Holtec’s proposal only addresses a new destination for the high-level nuclear waste – not the removal and transport of the fuel storage canisters from nuclear power plants to New Mexico.

Even transport casks with canisters that are not damaged will release radiation as they are transported from nuclear power plants to the storage facility, exposing populations along the transport routes in a majority of states and tribal communities in New Mexico to repeated doses of radiation.

Other issues not considered in the draft EIS were the design life of the thin-wall canisters encasing the nuclear fuel rods and faulty installation at reactor sites like San Onofre, or the self-interest of the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance in using the land it acquired for a consolidated interim storage site.

Thin-wall canisters cannot be inspected for cracks and the fuel rods inside are not retrievable for inspection or monitoring without destroying the canister. NRC does not require continuous monitoring of the storage canisters for pressure changes or radiation leaks. The fuel rods inside the canisters could go critical, or result in an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction, if water enters the canisters through cracks, admits both Holtec and the NRC. None of us are safe if any canister goes critical.

Yet a site-specific storage application like Holtec’s should have addressed NRC license requirements for leak testing and monitoring, as well as the quantity and type of material that will be stored at the site, such as low burnup nuclear fuel and high burnup fuel.

Irradiated nuclear fuel is safer (but not safe) stored at the reactor site rather than transported thousands of miles to New Mexico. (Image: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

With so many deficiencies in the draft EIS, a reasonable alternative is to leave this dangerous radioactive nuclear waste at the nuclear plants that produced it in dry cask storage rather than multiply the risk by transporting thousands of containers that could be damaged across many thousands of miles and decades to southeastern New Mexico, then again to a permanent repository.

Interim storage of spent nuclear fuel at existing nuclear plant sites is already happening – there are 65 sites with operating reactors in the United States and dry cask storage is licensed at 35 of these sites in 24 states. But since the thin-wall canisters storing the fuel rods are at risk for major radioactive releases, they should be replaced with thick-walled containers that can be monitored and maintained. The storage containers should be stored away from coastal waters and flood plains in hardened buildings.

Attempting to remove this stabilized nuclear waste from where it is securely stored across hundreds or thousands of miles through our homelands and backyards to a private storage facility also raises some thorny liability issues, since the United States will then be relieved of overseeing the spent nuclear fuel in perpetuity.

The states and nuclear plants that want to send us their long-lived radioactive waste will also be off the hook, leaving New Mexico holding a dangerously toxic bag without any resources to address the gradual deterioration of man-made materials or worse, a catastrophic event. It’s a win/win, however, for Holtec International and the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance.

Ironically, just a few years ago, the US Environmental Protection Agency had expressed opposition to mass transportation of another kind of radioactive waste. In a classic example of environmental injustice, the EPA balked at removing uranium mine waste on the Navajo Nation, because, it said, “Off-site disposal, because of the amount of waste in and around these areas, means possibly multiple years of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of trucks going in and out of the community and driving for miles”.

The agency told the affected communities, during discussion about digging up the uranium mine waste and transporting it to a licensed repository in different states outside the Navajo Nation, that this option, also the Nation’s preference, was the most expensive. But now New Mexico is the destination for precisely the reverse, with hundreds and thousands of transports from different states coming to deposit the country’s nuclear waste site radioactive debris on Native soil.

Laura Watchempino is with the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment/Pueblo of Acoma. A version of this article first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal and is republished with kind permission of the author

February 15, 2021 Posted by | safety, USA, wastes | 1 Comment

Canada’s nuclear waste storage ”“cannot and will not go forward without the informed and willing consent of potential host communities”

Consent will be key to nuclear waste storage, The Chronicle Journal, BY CARL CLUTCHEY, NORTH SHORE BUREAU,   15 Feb 21, The incoming executive in charge of overseeing site selection regarding a potential underground storage facility for spent nuclear-fuel rods says consultation with affected neighbouring communities will be paramount.The potential facility “cannot and will not go forward without the informed and willing consent of potential host communities,” Lise Morton said on Jan. 29, in a Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) news release………

One of two sites remaining in Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s search for a potential underground storage facility will permanently house three million spent nuclear-fuel rods.

One candidate site is in South Bruce in southwestern Ontario near an existing nuclear station; the other is located about 35 kilometres west of Ignace, south of Highway 17 and on the traditional lands of Wabigoon Lake First Nation.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization wants to announce a site for its so-called deep geological repository by 2023.

The facility, which would cost $23 billion to build, would be operational by 2035…..https://www.chroniclejournal.com/news/local/consent-will-be-key-to-nuclear-waste-storage/article_b238ff5e-62ad-11eb-a2e8-9f1762ad35bd.html

February 15, 2021 Posted by | Canada, wastes | 1 Comment

Radioactive poisoning of the environment: France’s nuclear legacy of wastes in Algeria

Impact of France’s nuclear tests persists: Algeria  https://www.aa.com.tr/en/africa/impact-of-frances-nuclear-tests-persists-algeria/2143751

Algerian Foreign Minister said nuclear tests were three to four times the size of US bombing of Hiroshima in Japan,  Abdul Razzaq Bin Abdullah   |13.02.2021   ALGIERS

France’s nuclear experiments in the Algerian desert in the 1960s were three to four times equal to the Hiroshima bombing in Japan, Algerian Foreign Minister Sabri Boukadoum said on Saturday.

In a Twitter post on the occasion of the 61st anniversary of the first French nuclear explosion in the Algerian desert, on Feb. 13, 1960, Boukadoum described the impacts of the tests as “catastrophic”.

“On this day in 1960, imperialist France carried out the first nuclear explosion in the Reggane region in the Algerian desert, in a process code-named ‘Gerboise Bleue’ (Blue Desert Rat),” Boukadoum said.

He added that the French nuclear explosion yielded a force of 70 kilotons (kt) and its catastrophic radiological repercussions still persist.

The first atomic bomb dropped 75 years ago by the United States leveled Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and killed an estimated 140,000 people with many more dying in the following years from the effects of radiation. Three days later, Washington dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing around 70,000 people and forced Japan to surrender six days later.

According to French officials, the colonial authorities carried out 17 nuclear experiments in the Algerian desert in the period between 1960 and 1966. Algerian historians, however, put the number at 57.

On Feb. 13 1960, France conducted its first nuclear test, code-named “Gerboise Bleue” (Blue Desert Rat) in the Sahara Desert, southwest of Algeria.

The French nuclear experiments have caused the death of around 42,000 Algerians and injured thousands due to nuclear radioactivity, in addition to the extensive damage to the environment.

France has rejected Algerian demands to reveal the location of the nuclear waste as well as compensating the victims and those suffering from permanent disabilities due to the harmful effects of nuclear radioactivity.

During the course of the struggle for independence, nearly five million Algerians were killed, while hundreds of thousands more injured. *Ibrahim Mukhtar in Ankara contributed to this report

February 15, 2021 Posted by | AFRICA, politics international, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

No apologies from France, over nuclear bomb tests’ pollution in Algeria

The New Arab 12th Feb 2021, President Emmanuel Macron’s recent statement that a “memories and truth” commission will be established to look into the history of the French colonisation of Algeria, has led to much public discussion over this bloody legacy.

And in this context, the absence of apologies or offers of reparations by the French state has not gone unnoticed. One area of particular contention in this process is the ongoing and detrimental effects of France’s nuclear testing in Algeria, conducted throughout the
1960s. France conducted its first nuclear test known as the “Gerboise Bleue” in February 1960 in the Sahara Desert – an atomic bomb that was four times the strength of Hiroshima. A total of 17 tests were carried out, four of them atmospheric detonations, and 13 underground.

https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/comment/2021/2/12/frances-nuclear-colonial-legacy-in-algeria

February 15, 2021 Posted by | AFRICA, Religion and ethics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

As UK govt desperate to promote nuclear industry, it’s even more desperate to solve nuclear waste dilemma

FT 9th Feb 2021,  UK returns to grappling with toxic nuclear waste dilemma. Two communities
in north-west England asked to consider hosting sites to bury radioactive material. In recent weeks the UK government has invited residents from two communities in north-west England to a “virtual exhibition” to gauge their views on whether they would be prepared to solve one of the biggest environmental challenges facing the country: what to do with more than half a century’s worth of toxic nuclear waste.
The boroughs of Allerdale and Copeland in Cumbria are considering whether to become host to an underground storage facility for the most radioactive by-products of the country’s nuclear industry. The process, which is designed to give local residents the final say, is run by the state-owned Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
Like other countries with nuclear industries, the UK government has been grappling with the issue of long-term storage for several decades. This marks the fourth attempt to find a site to bury radioactive waste at depths of up to 1km underground.
But local opponents are outraged. The plans are “like a dog going back to its sick”, said Marianne Birkby, who lives 25 miles from Sellafield and runs Radiation Free Lakeland, which
campaigned against the facility last time.
Reluctance to host such a facility is not unique to the UK. “The reality is nowhere in the world is
there [yet] a functioning deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel,” said Dr Paul Dorfman of University College London’s Energy Institute.
The search for a site is key to the government’s plans for nuclear power — one of its 10 flagship green policies [nuclear  is NOT green]— according tonuclear experts. “My personal position is I don’t think we should have any new nuclear power stations until we have a [long-term] disposal
strategy in place,” said Corkhill.

https://www.ft.com/content/2321bfae-839a-468f-b933-d699b6ff6864

February 11, 2021 Posted by | UK, wastes | 1 Comment

Nuclear Rubberstamping Commission to weaken rules on radioactive trash

“It’s not cotton candy”

Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission may soon consider new regulations that would allow WCS and other commercial sites to accept a higher level of nuclear waste than Texas currently allows.

The WCS facility is permitted to accept Class A, B, and C nuclear waste — categories that fall below high-level material like spent nuclear fuel. But certain material, much of it generated by the decommissioning of nuclear power plants, falls into what experts call a gray area between the lower-level categories and spent nuclear fuel. It has an equally ambiguous name: “Greater than Class C.”

“These are some of the most dangerous materials in the world,”   “It’s not cotton candy.”

”an effort over many years to make it look less threatening, and to sneak it in as less hazardous,”

West Texas is on track to get even more nuclear waste — thanks to the federal government.  A hazardous waste disposal company in Andrews County wants to handle more dangerous levels of nuclear waste. Federal agencies are pondering new rules that could allow more of it to come to Texas. Texas Tribune, BY ERIN DOUGLAS FEB. 10, 2021  To get rid of eight gallons of water, the U.S. Department of Energy spent $100,000.

It’s little more than half a tank of gasoline in a midsize car, but the radioactive shipment from South Carolina to a West Texas company last fall marked one change that could lead to more nuclear waste traveling to Texas — waste that, until recently, was considered too dangerous to be disposed of.

Much of the public debate surrounding Waste Control Specialists’ hazardous waste facility in Andrews County, on the New Mexico border, has focused on the company’s plans, with a partner, to store the riskiest type of nuclear waste: the spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants, which can remain dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.

Scientists agree that spent nuclear fuel should be stored deep underground, but the U.S. still hasn’t located a suitable site. Interim Storage Partners — a joint venture of Waste Control Specialists and Orano USA, a subsidiary of one of the world’s biggest nuclear power companies — proposed bringing the spent fuel to a 332-acre site next to the WCS facility in Andrews County until a permanent storage site is found.

If the plan succeeds, it would be a big expansion for Waste Control Specialists, which has been disposing of the nation’s low-level nuclear waste — including tools, building materials and protective clothing exposed to radioactivity — for a decade. Interim Storage Partners’ website says it expects to get the federal approval for spent nuclear fuel storage, a major step in the plan, this year.

The idea still faces significant legal hurdles and stiff opposition from environmental groups, local oil companies, some residents and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who wrote to federal regulators last year asking them to deny the license application, stating that the proposal presents a “greater radiological risk than Texas is prepared to allow.”

The federal government and the companies involved say radioactive spills during transportation or storage that expose people or the environment to radiation are very unlikely to occur, but opponents fear human error, mechanical failures or geological changes could result in groundwater contamination.

But while the slow-moving plan is wrapped in political turmoil, lower-profile changes and proposals from federal agencies are giving Waste Control Specialists another avenue to accept more radioactive waste than it does today.

The wastewater that traveled from an old South Carolina nuclear weapons facility more than 1,000 miles in three truckloads in late September was an example: It was the first shipment made after a 2019 U.S. Department of Energy decision to reinterpret how different levels of radioactive waste are classified, allowing it to be disposed of at a commercial facility.

The decision lets the DOE categorize waste based on its properties and hazard level rather than how it was created, and allows radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research to be shipped to commercial sites such as the one in Texas, rather than indefinitely stored at a government site.

“They did this eight gallons as a sort of test,” said Tom Clements, the director of Savannah River Site Watch, an advocacy group that monitors the DOE’s site in South Carolina, a nuclear national security complex where materials for nuclear weapons were produced until 1991 at the end of the Cold War. “It is the foot in the door to taking more material to WCS.”

And the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is also considering new rules that could give Waste Control Specialists a green light to pursue bringing more dangerous radioactive waste to its commercial facility than currently allowed by state law.

The company is already permitted to accept low-level nuclear waste in Andrews County. The plan to build a facility to store spent nuclear fuel, the most dangerous kind, would bring what’s considered high-level nuclear waste. In addition, NRC staff recommended in October that the agency consider allowing commercial facilities like WCS to accept materials that fall into a third danger level between those two categories.

“The floodgates may be opening [in Texas],” Clements said.

That’s exactly what many environmentalists and local opponents feared after the hazardous waste facility was built in 1995. At the time, a company official told the community that it had no plans to expand to radioactive waste disposal.

“This is one of the difficulties of a community or state agreeing to one type of waste facility, because it can be changed on you,” said Rodney Ewing, a scientist and professor in nuclear security at Stanford University. “If it’s judged to be safe, that becomes the rationale for accepting more waste.”……………

Radioactivity in West Texas Continue reading →

February 11, 2021 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Opposition to more nuclear waste in Texas – unlikely alliance of environmental groups and oil companies

West Texas is on track to get even more nuclear waste — thanks to the federal government,Texas Tribune, BY ERIN DOUGLAS FEB. 10, 2021 “………..Nuclear debate in Texas The nuclear power industry prides itself on operating no-emissions plants without burning fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, which create the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. By locating in the Permian Basin, one of the most productive oil fields in the world, Waste Control Specialists has found itself in a political fight against fossil fuel interests that its customers often compete with.

Elaine Magruder is co-owner of an Andrews County ranch where her family has raised cattle and pumped oil since 1893. She’s also a member of a coalition of Permian Basin landowners and oil and gas operators that oppose radioactive waste storage and disposal in Andrews County. The coalition is led by Fasken Oil and Ranch, which owns thousands of acres in Andrews County.

Magruder says she’s worried that a transportation accident could expose local residents to radioactive material and disrupt oil and gas operations. She also worries that a leak at the facility could allow radioactive material to seep into the ground, contaminating area drinking water. The facility is near the Ogallala Aquifer of the Great Plains, which provides drinking water for millions in the West………….

Ewing, the Stanford University nuclear security professor, said the larger risk is environmental contamination due to the facility’s proximity to the aquifer — a concern shared by some other nuclear scientists and geologists.

This unlikely alliance of environmental groups and oil companies has Abbott on its side. In November, the governor sent a letter urging the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny the application for storing spent nuclear fuel in Andrews County, arguing in part that the proposed facility “imperils America’s energy security” by making the region an even greater possible terrorism target than it is today due to its oil and gas reserves………… https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/10/nuclear-waste-government-rules/

February 11, 2021 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

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