Japan’s power companies consider opening up Aomari nuclear waste site to other utilities
Aomori spent nuclear fuel site may be opened up to other utilities, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/12/11/national/shared-nuclear-fuel-facility-a Dec 11, 2020
The Mutsu facility is held by Recyclable-Fuel Storage Co., which is jointly owned by Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. and Japan Atomic Power Co. Recyclable-Fuel Storage aims to start facility operations in fiscal 2021, which starts next April.
The federation is in talks with parties including Tepco on allowing power firms other than Tepco and Japan Atomic Power to use the temporary spent fuel storage facility if they pay fees, informed sources said.
The joint use initiative is partly aimed at supporting Kansai Electric Power Co., according to the sources. The Fukui Prefectural Government is urging Kansai Electric, which has nuclear plants in the prefecture, to show by the end of this year a candidate site outside of the prefecture for temporary storage of spent nuclear fuel.
Selecting a candidate location early is a key challenge for Kansai Electric, which heavily relies on nuclear power generation, because it is a condition for local authorities to decide whether to approve the restart of the No. 1 and No. 2 reactors at the firm’s Takahama nuclear plant and the No. 3 reactor at its Mihama plant, all of which have seen more than 40 years pass since the launch of their operations.
“There’s been no contact” from the power industry group about the shared use plan for the temporary storage facility, Mutsu Mayor Soichiro Miyashita told reporters Thursday. “If they are proceeding with the plan within themselves, that shouldn’t be the case.”
A media report said in 2018 that Tepco was considering a joint use of the facility with Kansai Electric and others. The reported plan went nowhere after the mayor opposed it.
Shared use of the facility requires approval by the Aomori Prefectural Government and the city of Mutsu. But it remains to be seen at the moment if such local permission can be obtained.
As of the end of September this year, the amount of spent fuel from nuclear power stations in Japan stood at about 19,000 tons.
Of the total, about 16,000 tons have been kept at locations including storage pools at nuclear power plants. The amount is about 75% of storage capacity as work to reprocess spent nuclear fuel has stalled, a situation stoking concerns among nuclear plant host municipalities.
Three Mile Island – radiation is forever – will nuclear waste storage withstand flooding?
  Radiation is forever’: How long will it take to clean up Three Mile Island? [Lancaster Watchdog] lancaster Online, SEAN SAURO | Staff Writer , 6 Dec 20, Traveling Route 441 across Lancaster County’s northwestern border, motorists, for decades, have been able to look out toward the Susquehanna River to see a pair of cooling towers stretching skyward from the now-defunct Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.For almost as long, Eric Epstein said he’s kept a watchful eye, worrying about safety on the island, where a 1979 partial reactor meltdown remains the worst commercial nuclear accident in U.S. history. And Epstein, a Harrisburg-based nuclear watchdog, said those concerns persist even as plant owners move forward to dismantle its reactors — a process likely to take nearly 60 years. Even after that, he said, some nuclear waste is expected to remain onsite, just north of Conoy Township in the river. Plans exist for both, separately owned reactors on the island. Unit 2, the site of the partial meltdown, has remained inactive since 1979. And Unit 1 was taken offline last year. Epstein shared his concerns last week in the days after it was announced that officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a Unit 2 license transfer that would move ownership of the reactor and related assets from FirstEnergy to TMI-2 Solutions. The subsidiary of Utah-based EnergySolutions would lead the decommissioning. That transfer is likely to wrap up by the end of 2020, FirstEnergy spokeswoman Jennifer Young said………………. “Decommissioning work can begin after the license transfer is completed, but TMI-2 Solutions would have to provide a more specific timeline for its projected start date,” NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said. While most of the highly radioactive fuel was removed from Unit 2 by the mid-1990s, the upcoming decommissioning work is expected to cost at least $1 billion, paid for with ratepayer funds set aside for that purpose. According to an EnergySolutions timeline, the two-phased Unit 2 decommissioning is scheduled for completion in 2037, with “a potential area set aside for waste storage facilities” on the island. All along, Epstein has remained skeptical of the plan for Unit 2, where interior conditions largely remain a mystery due to high radiation levels, which have precluded close inspection. Those fears have only been exacerbated by the idea that waste could be stored on the island, where Epstein believes natural disasters like flooding could lead to released radiation, he said. “The plant was not designed to be a high-level radioactive waste site. Everybody agrees the radioactive waste shouldn’t be on an island,” Epstein said. “This is like putting waste on an airplane with no place to land. At some point, that plane is going to crash.” EnergySolutions officials did not return messages left with them about the decommissioning by Friday afternoon. However, Unit 1 owners at Exelon provide some insight into their separate decommissioning plan, which also will require some on-site storage — likely to begin in 2022, when spent fuel is moved into casks. “Dry cask storage will require robust metal canisters placed in a massive concrete housing,” according to Exelon spokesman David Marcheski. It is storage that officials claim will be able to withstand a 100-year flood. The Unit 1 decommissioning process is expected to wrap up in 2078, costing about $1.2 billion, covered by a related trust fund. https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/radiation-is-forever-how-long-will-it-take-to-clean-up-three-mile-island-lancaster/article_643a5aea-3676-11eb-a87d-1ffabfe61953.html |
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Texas and New Mexico reject interim nuclear waste storage
 Texas, New Mexico resisting interim nuclear waste storage By Gary Martin Las Vegas Review-Journal, 6 Dec 20, WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and Congress moved this year to develop interim nuclear waste storage sites, a temporary fix until the 30-year stalemate over Yucca Mountain is settled.But locations in New Mexico and Texas that were once embraced for their potential for jobs and economic development now face local opposition similar to that in Nevada that has resulted in the decadeslong delay in building a permanent repository.
Governors in New Mexico and Texas have pleaded with the federal government to stop or delay the process that could place tons of spent nuclear fuel rods in their states. Private groups have proposed to take the spent nuclear fuel and temporarily store the waste at locations near Carlsbad, New Mexico, and west of Odessa in Andrews County, Texas. But the welcome has turned to concern by residents who fear the interim storage of nuclear waste will become permanent if the federal government fails to develop the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository north of Las Vegas, as required by law, or find and develop another suitable location. The New Mexico congressional delegation wrote a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission urging the agency to delay the decision-making process and allow more time for public comment on a license sought by Holtec International to build an interim storage facility. “Any proposal to store commercial spent nuclear fuel raises a number of health, safety and environmental issues,” the delegation wrote. Those issues include “potential impacts on local agriculture and industry, issues related to the transportation of nuclear waste, and disproportionate impacts on Native American communities,” the lawmakers warned. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, in a letter to President Donald Trump, said she was opposed to interim storage of nuclear waste, citing the safety of residents. Target for terrorists? In Texas, the facility proposed by Interim Storage Partners has drawn opposition from oil and gas producers, the agriculture industry and Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, who said placing the waste near oil fields would make an inviting target for terrorists. Shipping nuclear waste also would present a hazard to public health, Abbott said in letters to Trump and the NRC earlier this year. Meanwhile, environmental groups in both states have lodged their opposition to the proposed plants and urged Lujan Grisham to create a state agency to prevent an interim site from becoming a permanent storage facility for nuclear waste…………. https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/texas-new-mexico-resisting-interim-nuclear-waste-storage-2206303/
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Hokkaido’s ski areas could lose popularity, due to plans to house nuclear wastes
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The towns of Suttsu and Kamoenai have both applied for preliminary feasibility surveys to be considered for a site that will store waste from the nation’s nuclear power plants. The cash-starved towns struggling with declining populations are poised to each pocket 2 billion yen ($19 million) promised by the government for taking part in the studies alone. Although whole selection process takes 20 years, the applications have touched off an outpouring of opposition from locals as well as from across the country, including from Hokkaido Gov. Naomichi Suzuki, who assailed the central government for “slapping the face with money.” The concern is especially palpable in the resort towns of Niseko and Kutchan, which are part of the Niseko resort area. “To outsiders, it might as well be Niseko that is undergoing a survey,” said Shinichi Maeda, an owner of a restaurant in Kutchan. “It’s possible that foreign investors who had previously valued Niseko will pull out one by one.” Suttsu is located about 40 km west of the town of Niseko, which will see no economic benefit from the study but will surely be hit by the anxiety the plan will generate………… the possibility of hosting a nuclear waste site, however remote, is enough to rail up opposition. The owner of a tourism business in Kutchan believes in local production and consumption, and uses seafood from Shiribeshi. But that may have to change. “Foreign customers are sensitive,” said the owner. “If the nuclear waste issue gains prominence, it’ll become hard to use” locally made seafood. In Japan, there is still no final repository for nuclear waste — it is stored in interim locations. After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster raised public awareness, countries across the globe have struggled to find permanent places to store the waste. When Kamoenai announced it would apply for an initial survey in October, The Associated Press reported the story with the headline “2 remote Japan towns seek to host nuclear waste storage site.” The article was carried by news outlets all over the world. Last month, five citizens groups presented the Hokkaido governor with a petition signed by 450,000 people opposing the feasibility survey for the two towns. The signatures were collected nationwide. The preliminary studies underway in the two towns are becoming an issue that could undermine tourism throughout Hokkaido……….. |
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Shortfalls in planning mean that the USA Waste Isolation Pilot Plant could become full
Weather Channel 2nd Dec 2020, The only underground nuclear waste dump in the United States is suffering from shortfalls in planning and staffing that could lead to disruptions at the facility, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. The report published last month indicated that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico, could become full if the amount of waste shipped to the facility keeps expanding or if a new way of measuring waste is rejected in a pending court challenge, according to the Associated
Press.
The plant, known as the WIPP, was built in the 1980s for the disposal of defense-related nuclear waste, including clothing, tools, rags,
debris, soil and other items contaminated with radioactive elements, according to a fact sheet from the facility. The WIPP’s disposal rooms were carved out of ancient salt beds 2,150 feet below ground.
https://weather.com/news/news/2020-12-02-underground-nuclear-waste-dump-carlsbad-new-mexico
UK and USA nuclear waste clean-up – a $billion here, a $billion there – pretty soon you’re talking real money
US Nuclear Site Cleanup Underfunded By Up To $70 Billion, Clean Technica, December 1st, 2020 by Michael Barnard
Headlines out of the UK are pointing out the horrible state of affairs for nuclear generation decommissioning after a committee of Members of Parliament that the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority really doesn’t have a handle on the 17 sites, their costs, or the vendors they selected for cleanup. They are currently projecting $177 billion and 120 years for the full decommissioning, over $1 billion per site. Some of this is due to botched procurement, with two different cleanup vendors stripped of their contracts.
Certainly the UK cleanup is a fustercluck of epic proportions, equivalent in fiscal sense to building Hinkley. That new reactor, billions and years over budget and schedule, required a commitment for 35 years to pay $150/MWh for every MWh they generated, at a time when onshore wind and solar in the UK are at or under $50/MWh and offshore wind is under $100/MWh.
Some US commenters were feeling chuffed, although that’s not a term they would use, that the US was handling things so much better. But the USA isn’t far behind the UK in problems, it just isn’t as public.
Per the World Nuclear Association:
In the USA, utilities are collecting 0.1 to 0.2 cents/kWh to fund decommissioning. They must then report regularly to the NRC on the status of their decommissioning funds. About two-thirds of the total estimated cost of decommissioning all US nuclear power reactors has already been collected, leaving a liability of about $9 billion to be covered over the remaining operating lives of about 100 reactors (on the basis of an average of $320 million per unit). NRC data for the end of 2018 indicated that there was a combined total of $64.7 billion held in the decommissioning trust funds covering the 119 operational and retired US nuclear power reactors.
An OECD Nuclear Energy Agency survey published in 2016 reported US dollar (2013) costs in response to a wide survey. For US reactors the expected total decommissioning costs range from $544 to $821 million; for units over 1100 MWe the costs ranged from $0.46 to $0.73 million per MWe, for units half that size, costs ranged from $1.07 to $1.22 million per MWe. For Finland’s Loviisa (2 x 502 MWe) the estimate was €326 million. For a Swiss 1000 MWe PWR the detailed estimate amounts to CHF 663 million (€617 million). In Slovakia, a detailed case study showed a total cost of €1.14 billion to decommission Bohunice V1 (2 x 440 MWe) and dismantle it by 2025.
[Brief aside: I love the World Nuclear Association, because they are actually honest and report details that contradict their mission. I cite them on Germany’s wholesale electricity prices, which they freely admit are among the lowest in Europe as that country ramps up renewables rapidly and dumps nuclear. They aren’t just a lobbying organization, although they are an industry-funded lobbying association. Unlike the equivalent oil and gas organizations, they seem compelled to be honest and complete, perhaps because being honest and complete usually isn’t so disgustingly horrific for them, just simply bad.]
Back to the thread. The US has collected a bunch of money from operating reactors into a cleanup fund that they acknowledge is underfunded to the tune of billions already. But the industry estimates show that they are collecting under half of what it will actually take to decommission the sites.
There are about 100 reactors in the United States. Assuming they collect the $320 million per reactor (they won’t, as reactors are closing prematurely), they would have a fund of $32 billion. But they need a fund of closer to $70 billion, and they are short regardless. So the US fleet cleanup is going to cost the taxpayer probably closer to an additional $40 billion, if it all goes according to the estimates.
Note that the UK and Slovakia examples show that it usually doesn’t, just as building new nuclear never seems to come in on time or budget. The reality is going to be closer to the European and Slovakian costs, so let’s assume a billion per reactor as a reasonable number.
The US will have maybe $30 billion. They’ll need $100 billion. Yeah, $70 billion is the more reasonable number.
“A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
– US Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen
Of course, this is on top of the $1.6 billion annual tax breaks nuclear plants in the US get, the $10 billion liability insurance cap with the taxpayer holding the bill should a Fukushima-scale disaster occur and the state-level boondoggles like the $1.1 billion Ohio subsidy that came with a side helping of $60 million in bribes…………….https://cleantechnica.com/2020/12/01/us-nuclear-site-cleanup-underfunded-by-up-to-70-billion/
Nuclear power is dead. Here’s why it’s pretending that it’s not
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US Nuclear Site Cleanup Underfunded By Up To $70 Billion, Clean Technica, December 1st, 2020 by Michael Barnard …………………..Nuclear power is going to be the gift that keeps on returning fiscal dividends for a century.
That’s why Brookfield bought the bankrupt Toshiba Westinghouse division, for the long-term, guaranteed decommissioning revenue. SNC Lavalin bought Canada’s CANDU for the same reason, although I’m sure they are at the trough on the Canadian SMR idiocy too. This isn’t exactly a secret. Nuclear projects always go over budget and over schedule, and there is exactly zero reason to believe decommissioning estimates provided by the industry. So why have jurisdictions been building more nuclear plants, whether at the egregious but at least honest costs of Hinkley, or the massively underestimated but increasingly obvious costs of the Virgil C. Summer and Vogtle sites? Three reasons. The first is the magic of net present value. That calculates the value of future dollars today given inflation. Just as a thousand bucks bought a lot more in 1990 than it does today, in 2050 it will buy a lot less than it does today. That means that liabilities that will be incurred decades in the future approach zero cost in today’s cost benefit analysis. Can you say generational inequity? The second is ideology. When really blatantly obvious economic sense gets thrown out the window, you start looking around for irrationality or graft. A lot of conservatives really hate onshore wind because it spoils the views from their manses (UK) or ranches (US) or country estates (Oz). They also think of wind and solar as inadequate hippy shit. They think nuclear is the answer. These are opinions that they formed in the 1970s or perhaps the 1980s, but conservatives have a stronger tendency to not let empirical reality change their mind. So Hinkley, Vogtle, and Summer are a triumph of ideology over reality. The third is graft. When we start talking about $10 billion or more to build a plant, billions in subsidies, and another billion to take the thing apart, a lot of people start rubbing their hands together and figuring out who they have to bribe now to get a big payoff later. The entire regulatory structure in the two states that had nuclear plants in construction until recently when one was finally put out of the state’s fiscal misery were both structured so that no matter how much the utility spent, it was guaranteed a set profit. If they built a $15 billion nuclear plant, they made a lot of profit off of the rate payers. If they built $2 billion worth of wind and solar instead, they made a lot less money off of the rate payers. It’s dumb as a box of hammers, but it’s part of the reason a lot of utilities love nuclear, and coal-generation carbon capture schemes to boot. They are licenses to print money. Outside of China, where they have trained resources who can build nuclear plants who would be mediocre at building wind and solar (which they are building a lot more of) and nuclear plants will displace coal plants, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to build new nuclear. The looming decommissioning debacle is just the icing on the cake. Wind and solar have proven themselves to be vastly cheaper, completely reliable on grids, and easy to integrate in very large amounts. Their decommissioning costs are trivial. That’s yet another reason why nuclear is dead, but pretending it’s not. https://cleantechnica.com/2020/12/01/us-nuclear-site-cleanup-underfunded-by-up-to-70-billion/ |
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America’s underground radioactive dump – Waste Isolation Pilot Plant facing disruption
 Nation’s Only Underground Nuclear Waste Dump Could Face Disruptions, GAO Report Says, https://weather.com/news/news/2020-12-02-underground-nuclear-waste-dump-carlsbad-new-mexico By Jan Wesner ChildsAt a Glance
The only underground nuclear waste dump in the United States is suffering from shortfalls in planning and staffing that could lead to disruptions at the facility, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
The report published last month indicated that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, New Mexico, could become full if the amount of waste shipped to the facility keeps expanding or if a new way of measuring waste is rejected in a pending court challenge, according to the Associated Press. The plant, known as the WIPP, was built in the 1980s for the disposal of defense-related nuclear waste, including clothing, tools, rags, debris, soil and other items contaminated with radioactive elements, according to a fact sheet from the facility. The WIPP’s disposal rooms were carved out of ancient salt beds 2,150 feet below ground. The U.S. Energy Department (DOE) estimates the facility could be full as soon as 2025, and work to expand storage capacity has been delayed. “DOE does not have assurance that WIPP’s planned additional physical space will be constructed before existing space is full, which would result in a potential interruption to disposal operations,” the GAO said in a summary of its report. The facility was shut down after two accidents in 2014 and has been operating at limited capacity since it reopened in 2017. Two ventilation projects need to be completed to return the WIPP to full operations, the GAO said, but those have been met by challenges in oversight and regulatory approval. Construction on a giant utility shaft, which is part of the project, is in danger of being suspended due to missed planning deadlines and the continued spread of COVID-19 at the facility, the Carlsbad Current-Argus reported. The WIPP had recorded 150 cases of COVID-19 as of Nov. 23, according to a news release. The GAO report cited staffing issues dating back to January, when about one-third of positions were vacant in the DOE’s Carlsbad Field Office, responsible for overseeing the project. The DOE has estimated that the WIPP would need to operate for at least 30 years to meet disposal needs, according to the AP. |
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America’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant needs more space as increasing as nuclear trash amounts increase
Daily Mail 1st Dec 2020, The federal government’s only underground nuclear waste dump could run out of room if the number of drums shipped to the New Mexico site keeps expanding or if a new method for measuring the waste is unraveled as part of a pending legal challenge, according to a nonpartisan congressional watchdog.
The Government Accountability Office in a recent report said better planning is needed at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant to avoid
potential disruptions. The report specifically points to the need for adding more physical space at the repository before it becomes full, which the U.S. Energy Department estimates could happen as soon as 2025. The agency faces statutory limitations on how much waste can be disposed of at the site.
Britain’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority doesn’t know how much the waste clean up wiill cost or when it will finish
David Lowry’s Blog 27th Nov 2020, The nuclear industry has perpetrated a lot of untruths in six decades of dissembling. But the brazen atomic assertion repeated endlessly in the1950s that atomic energy would produce power “too cheap to meter” ( originally said by the then chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Stauss, on 16 September 1954, speech to the US National Association of Science Writers when he opined: “It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter..”)
progress.”
http://drdavidlowry.blogspot.com/2020/11/nuclear-dissembling-from-too-cheap-to.html
Why we shouldn’t be talking about nuclear waste “disposal”
All casked up with nowhere to go https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2020/11/29/all-casked-up-with-nowhere-to-go/ November 29, 2020 by beyondnuclearinternational
Why we shouldn’t be talking about nuclear waste “disposal” By Linda Pentz Gunter, 29 Nov 20
Let’s get one thing clear right off the bat. You don’t “dispose” of nuclear waste.
The ill-suited, now canceled, but never quite dead radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain was not a “disposal” site.
The radioactive mud being dredged from the sea bed at the Hinkley C nuclear site in the UK, is not going to get “disposed of” in Cardiff Grounds (a mile off the Welsh coast).
When Germany dumped radioactive waste in drums into the salt mines of Asse, it wasn’t “disposed” of.
Taking nuclear waste to Texas and New Mexico border towns and parking it there indefinitely is not “disposal”.
To talk about radioactive waste “disposal” is simply dishonest. It’s disingenuous at best and deliberately misleading at worst.
In Cardiff Bay, that radioactive waste will get “dispersed.” At Asse, the waste leaked out of the barrels and “dispersed” into water that has flooded the site.
At Yucca Mountain, were it to get a renewed green light, water will eventually carry off those radioactive particles, sending them into groundwater and drinking water downstream of the dump.
“Once you have made radioactive waste, then you are looking at long-term isolation, not disposal,” says Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear. “And its cost. And if you are looking to manage the liability of cost, then don’t make it.”
That’s the easiest kind of radioactive waste to “dispose” of. The kind you haven’t made. Because, as Gunter says, “there is no alchemy for radioactive detritus.” Once we’ve made it, it’s with us pretty much forever.
Federal agencies and nuclear corporations continue to wrestle over what to do with the already tens of thousands of tons of high-level radioactive waste (at least 90,000 at last count) generated by America’s commercial nuclear power plants — all casked up with nowhere to go (and a lot of it still in the fuel pools). Because, absent alchemy, that waste is always going to be somewhere, even if we can’t see it.
Once upon a time, the general public understood this. In 1986, when the US Department of Energy was looking for a geological burial site for commercial nuclear waste, it began giving serious consideration to the “granite state” of New Hampshire.
New Hampshire towns — some of which would have been seized and razed by eminent domain to make way for the repository — rose up in opposition. A stunning 100 of them signed a resolution that not only opposed the burial, storage, and transportation of high-level nuclear waste in New Hampshire, but also its production.
A law was eventually passed in New Hampshire that forbade siting a nuclear waste repository in the state, but not banning its generation. The construction of the Seabrook nuclear power plant on the New Hampshire coast progressed, and today the single unit of the two originally planned is duly generating radioactive waste for the state of New Hampshire, with still no place to go.
In fact, the law banning a repository in New Hampshire was quietly, almost covertly, overturned in the New Hampshire state legislature in 2011, a fact uncovered by State Rep. Renny Cushing while writing legislation in 2016. (Cushing is a founder of this country’s first anti-nuclear power group, the Clamshell Alliance, which vigorously opposed the construction of Seabrook.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLeYKkA2V7EA German four-part animation piece, humorously demonstrated the impossibility of disposing of radioactive waste. This is the second segment.
In a characteristically stealthy way, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ensured there will be no repeat of that New Hampshire defiance. Today, under what was once called the Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision, but is now termed the “Continued Storage of High-Level Waste”, (presumably because no one dare claim any “confidence” about finding a waste solution), an intervention against a reactor license renewal can be disallowed if it is based on contentions challenging the absence of a long-term radioactive waste solution.
This means that our aging fleet of nuclear reactors are free to generate yet more radioactive waste, some of them for another 20 or even 40 years, even though there is still no sign of land when it comes to finding a safe, long-term management plan for what to do with it.
That’s remarkable hubris this far into the nuclear game. Even if one could (very reluctantly) forgive the initial optimistic procrastination — when Fermi achieved the first chain reaction in 1942, but everyone decided the waste problem would be solved later — there is no forgiving it now, 78 years on. That’s more than ample time to have realized that continuing to make more of a lethal substance that you can never dispose of is scientifically and morally reprehensible.
We cannot dispose of radioactive waste. But we can dispose of nuclear power. We should hesitate no longer and do just that.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International.
UK’s beautiful Lake District – no “final solution” for the nuclear waste problem.
Radiation Free Lakeland 28th Nov 2020, Millom Rock and Deer Parks, This is a lovely description of a walk in an amazingly beautiful area.unbelievable it could be seriously considered as a nuclear waste dump. This quarry and surrounding area is being seriously considered by Radioactive Waste Management (a government quango) for the “disposal” of heat generating nuclear wastes.
In order to justify new nuclear build such as that at Hinkley Point, there needs to be a “final solution” for the
nuclear waste. This is no solution it is an excuse. A very dangerous excuse.
https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2020/11/28/millom-rock-deer-parks/
Dismantling Duke Energy’s Crystal River nuclear plant
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Work begins soon on dismantling Duke Energy’s Crystal River nuclear plant
The utility’s contractor began the decommissioning process this fall, which will ramp up in 2021. By Malena Carollo Nov. 27
CRYSTAL RIVER — Decommissioning of Duke Energy Florida’s nuclear plant is finally underway.Accelerated Decommissioning Partners — Duke Energy’s decommissioning contractor — began its work this fall to dismantle the shuttered nuclear portion of the Crystal River Energy Complex…… The nuclear portion of the plant was shut down in 2009 after Duke Energy’s predecessor, Progress Energy Florida, failed at a do-it-yourself repair to the building housing the reactor, cracking its 42-inch-thick concrete walls in the process…… https://www.tampabay.com/news/business/2020/11/27/what-does-it-take-to-decommission-duke-energys-nuclear-plant/ |
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£132billion and counting – Britain’s nuclear decommissioning mess could take 120 years
UK taxpayers foot huge bill for the incompetence of The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA)
UK’s nuclear sites costing taxpayers ‘astronomical sums’, say MPs
Public accounts committee says ignorance, incompetence and weak oversight to blame, Guardian, Damian Carrington Environment editor @dpcarrington Fri 27 Nov 2020 The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has a perpetual lack of knowledge about the state and location of waste on the 17 sites it is responsible for making safe, a powerful committee of MPs has found.
This results from decades of poor record keeping and weak government oversight, the MPs said. Combined with a “sorry saga” of incompetence and failure, this has left taxpayers footing the bill for “astronomical sums”, they said.
The NDA acknowledges that it still does not have full understanding of the condition of its sites, including 10 closed Magnox stations from Dungeness in Kent to Hunterston in Ayrshire, the MPs report said.
The NDA’s most recent estimate is that it will cost current and future generations of UK taxpayers £132bn to decommission the civil nuclear sites, with the work not being completed for another 120 years.
Since 2017, the NDA’s upper estimate of the cost of the 12-15-year programme just to get the sites to the ”‘care and maintenance” stage of the decommissioning process has increased by £3.1bn to £8.7bn. “Our past experience suggests these costs may increase further,” said the MPs’ report.
The lack of knowledge of the sites was a significant factor in the failure of a 2014 contract the NDA signed with a private sector company to decommission the Magnox sites. The government was forced to take back the contract in 2018 and the botched tender has now cost taxpayers £140m, the MPs found.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, deputy chair of the public accounts committee (PAC), said: “Although progress has been made since our [2018] report, incredibly, the NDA still doesn’t know even where we’re currently at, in terms of the state and safety of the UK’s disused nuclear sites. Without that, and after the Magnox contracting disaster, it is hard to have confidence in future plans or estimates.” ……….
The UK has eight operating nuclear power plants, with all but one due to retire in the next decade. Only one new plant is being built, at Hinkley Point in Somerset, and it is years behind schedule and billions over budget.
Despite recent speculation over another new plant being given the go-ahead at Sizewell in Suffolk, Boris Johnson failed to announce this in his green industrial revolution plan last week. The government’s new national infrastructure strategy, published on Wednesday, said: “The government is pursuing large-scale nuclear projects, subject to clear value for money for both consumers and taxpayers.”
In 2015, the government stripped another private consortium of a £9bn contract to clean up the nuclear waste site at Sellafield. The company had been heavily criticised for its executives’ expense claims which included a £714 bill for a “cat in a taxi”. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/27/uks-nuclear-sites-costing-taxpayers-astronomical-sums-say-mps#_=_
1 This Month
of the week – Shut Down Drone Warfare!
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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