Inadequate testing of Hinkley mud being dumped off Cardiff
testing of the sediment from the construction of Somerset’s Hinkley C
nuclear power station. EDF Energy has applied to dispose of the sediment in
the sea two miles from the South Wales coast.
without an agreed sample plan between them and NRW. But the Welsh
Government’s environmental watchdog has now backed those proposals.
and organisations opposing the dump had informed NRW that EDF’s sampling
plan does not meet international requirements set by OSPAR (Oslo-Paris
Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East
Atlantic), that there are too few samples in the cores collected by EDF and
the testing does not use procedures to detect the nuclear fuel
microparticles uranium and plutonium.
sampling is insufficient to meet the prerequisites of the Environment
(Wales) Act, 2016 and the Well-being of Future Generations Act, 2015. The
Environment (Wales) Act stipulates that wide consultation is always
required in light of uncertainties.
https://nation.cymru/news/national-resources-wales-under-fire-over-hinkley-point-mud-sampling-plan/
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Nuclear waste transport , and legal action – UK
Due to numerous safety issues with storage of high-level waste at Biblis, the BUND Hessen has filed a lawsuit saying it will take legal action against the now reinstated transport licence. With last Sunday’s local German elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, the Greens achieved a record result with 20% and there will be green mayors in the former capital Bonn, Münster and the anti-nuclear stronghold Aachen.
http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Plain-sailing.docx
Huge costs of decommissioning Britain’s ”Magnox” nuclear failities just keep going up
UK spending watchdog warns on costs of cleaning up old nuclear plants
Decommissioning charge has risen by £3bn since 2017 and there remains ‘inherent uncertainty’ over final bill, NAO finds, Nathalie Thomas in Edinburgh, SEPTEMBER 11 2020, Estimates of the cost to clear up 12 of the UK’s earliest nuclear power sites have increased by nearly £3bn since 2017 and there remains “inherent uncertainty” over the final bill, the country’s public spending watchdog has warned.
Egypt supports Bamako Convention banning import of hazardous waste, especially radioactive, into Africa
Egypt supports Bamako Convention banning import of hazardous waste into Africa: Minister. https://www.egypttoday.com/Article/1/91884/Egypt-supports-Bamako-Convention-banning-import-of-hazardous-waste-into Egypt Today, CAIRO – 12 September 2020: Environment Minister Yasmine Fouad has asserted Egypt’s support to the Bamako convention and called for cooperation among African countries to face the coronavirus pandemic without affecting the environment.
This came during her speech at a virtual meeting of the Bureau of the Bamako Convention on Saturday.
The minister also asserted that hazardous materials and waste were banned from being imported into Africa, noting the importance of controlling their trans-boundary movement.
She also underlined the importance of finding new measures to build African capabilities to deal with such hazardous materials and waste.
The Bamako Convention is a treaty of African nations prohibiting the import into Africa of any hazardous (including radioactive) waste.
The convention was adopted in 1991 and came into force in 1998 with the aim of protecting human and environmental health.
Suttsu, Hokkaido, residents oppose radioactive waste dump plan
Residents Oppose Hokkaido Town’s Radioactive Waste Site Plan https://www.nippon.com/en/news/yjj2020091000878/residents-oppose-hokkaido-town%27s-radioactive-waste-site-plan.html Suttsu, Hokkaido, Sept. 11 (Jiji Press)–Many residents of a Japanese town considering hosting a final disposal facility for high-level radioactive waste have voiced opposition to the plan at a briefing session organized by the municipal government.The meeting was the fourth of its kind for residents of the town of Suttsu in the northernmost Japan prefecture of Hokkaido. The first such session was held on Monday.
At Thursday’s meeting, which was opened to the press, Suttsu Mayor Haruo Kataoka explained the reasons for considering applying for a literature survey, the first stage of a three-stage research process to select the location of the final disposal site for high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.
Some 260 residents attended the session, which lasted for over three hours from 6:30 p.m. (9:30 a.m. GMT).
Participating residents voiced concerns that the move will lead to harmful rumors about the town, and that if the town receives subsidies from the Japanese government as a result of applying for the literature survey, it will have no choice but to become a final disposal site. Some said that detailed discussions should be held after the mayoral election in the town next year.
U.S. federal government must speed up Los Alamos nuclear waste cleanup and do it properly
State lawmakers: Tougher tactics needed to speed Los Alamos waste cleanup, Santa Fe New Mexican , By Scott Wyland swyland@sfnewmexican.com Sep 10, 2020 The pace of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s legacy waste cleanup drew sharp criticism Wednesday from two state lawmakers who argued regulators should toughen oversight and consider suing federal agencies to spur quicker action.
The lab has made five shipments of higher-level nuclear waste this year to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad and hopes to move that number to 30 per year, with the aim of removing all of the lab’s legacy waste by 2027.federal governme
A U.S. Department of Energy official presented the figures to the state Radioactive and Hazardous Waste Committee on Wednesday.
But state Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, called that volume far too low, especially when compared to Idaho sending 100 to 150 waste shipments to WIPP each year.
“I frankly find that unacceptable,” Chandler said.
Chandler asked state Environment Department officials what their strategy was to prod the Department of Energy to accelerate cleanup.
We’re pushing for that progress, to not slow down at all, to make sure the cleanup continues,” replied Stephanie Stringer, director of the Environment Department’s Resource Protection Division. “So making sure that we’re pushing very, very hard and demanding a robust cleanup plan.”
Chandler said she wanted to know how the agency planned to enforce demands.
One avenue is legal action, she said. The Idaho National Laboratory is getting its nuclear waste removed at a faster rate after the state of Idaho sued the federal government……. https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/state-lawmakers-tougher-tactics-needed-to-speed-los-alamos-waste-cleanup/article_fc9fcdc8-f211-11ea-8e9b-77b752e1c0f9.html
Nuclear waste disposal problem National Nuclear Security Administration’s elephant in the desert
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Post-WIPP Disposal ‘Far and Away’ Biggest TRU Waste Challenge for NNSA Pit Mission, Official Says https://www.exchangemonitor.com/pit-waste-far-away-biggest-challenge-nnsa-pit-mission-official-says/
BY EXCHANGEMONITOR 11 Sept 29, Addressing the elephant in the desert, an official with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) on Wednesday warned that ongoing nuclear-weapon maintenance will require a transuranic waste disposal site that is open beyond 2050: the current,BEST-CASE AVAILABILITY FOR THE WASTE ISOLATION PILOT PLANT IN NEW MEXICO.
“From an NNSA perspective, with an enduring mission, we are going to continue to have a need to dispose of transuranic waste past 2050,” James McConnell, the Department of Energy agency’s associate administrator for safety, infrastructure, and operations, said Wednesday at the ExchangeMonitor’s virtual RadWaste Summit. “Far and away the biggest challenge for NNSA is to make sure that the disposal system for transuranic waste is robust enough to not become a choke point for our mission,” McConnell said. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is DOE’s only deep-underground disposal facility for transuranic waste. In order to operate the facility into the 2050s, the agency needs New Mexico to modify the site’s operating permit. As written, the permit requires the federal government to stop burying waste at the site in 2024, then spend a decade safely closing down the facility. The NNSA plans in 2024 to start casting new war-ready plutonium cores for nuclear warheads at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. It expects to expand production to a combined 80 pits annually at Los Alamos and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina by around 2030. The associated waste stream from the mission will one day make the nuclear weapons agency the largest generator of transuranic waste in the Department of Energy complex. That will not happen until 2038 or so, “so there’s time to figure out what this means, both in terms of management and availability of continued disposal,” McConnell said. Transuranic waste, or TRU waste, is equipment and material contaminated with elements heavier than uranium, typically plutonium. Pits are the fissile cores of nuclear weapons, and the first to be cast later this decade will be for warheads to tip the planned fleet of Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent intercontinental ballistic missiles. After starting production four years from now, the NNSA plans to produce 30 pits a year at Los Alamos starting in 2026, then 80 a year by 2030 by adding another 50 pits annually at the Savannah River Site. Either site could, at least temporarily, handle all 80 pits on its own. In that 80-pit solo configuration, Los Alamos would annually generate a mixture of roughly 400 cubic yards (about 305 cubic meters) of transuranic and mixed transuranic waste. The NNSA projects Savannah River to generate more waste than that to produce just its nominal 50 pits a year: 1,365 cubic yards (or almost 1,045 cubic meters) of transuranic waste annually. Casting 80 pits a year by using both factories would produce about 19,200 cubic yards, or some 14,680 cubic meters, of transuranic waste from 2030 to 2050, according to slides McConnell briefed at the conference. He said the NNSA, together with DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, will begin a collaborative review “in the very short coming weeks” about the future NNSA TRU waste generator sites. |
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Campaign against nuclear fuel waste storage in South Bruce, Canada
People in communities near the Municipality of South Bruce may receive a leaflet from the group Protect Our Waterways-No Nuclear Waste with information on the proposal to store used nuclear fuel deep underground near Teeswater.
Spokesman Michelle Stein said 50,000 leaflets were sent out this week to let people know some of the group’s concerns about the plan to store Canada’s nuclear waste in a Deep Geologic Repository or DGR.
Stein said the Nuclear Waste Management Organization is assembling land in the municipality of South Bruce to store irradiated nuclear fuel from 4.6 million spent fuel bundles.
“The proposed site includes the Teeswater River flowing through it, and that leads to Lake Huron. And 40 million people get their drinking water from Lake Huron,” she said.
“It’s a decision that is going to affect so many people, and change our community in such a large way, I think each individual deserves to have a vote,” she added.
Stein says 1,600 residents of South Bruce signed a petition opposing the proposed DGR. Stein wants to see a referendum on the issue, as both the Nuclear Waste Management Organization and the municipality have stated that the project needs broad community support to go ahead.
If the proposed nuclear waste dump is approved there will be two loads of spent nuclear fuel travelling by truck every day for forty years from Canada’s nuclear reactors. And if there is a radioactive leak underground it could affect 40 million people in Canada and the US,” said Stein.“People need to know the risks. Nowhere in the world is there an operating DGR for high-level nuclear waste as is being proposed here. Underground storage sites for low-medium level nuclear waste in the US and Germany have leaked radioactive material and required multi-billion-dollar clean-ups”, says Stein. “I encourage everyone who lives in a community near South Bruce to contact their own Mayor and tell them you oppose NWMO’s proposal for a nuclear waste dump.”
POW-NNW believes that the “rolling stewardship” method of managing nuclear waste is better because it maintains it in a monitored and retrievable state at all times, with continual improvements to packaging and environmental protection.
Stein added that ongoing scientific studies examine how spent nuclear fuel can be reused, reduced, and even neutralized. In its initial report to Parliament, the NWMO did not say that on-site storage at the reactor sites was unsafe or not feasible.
Bruce County divided over becoming permanent site to store Canada’s nuclear waste,
Bruce County divided over becoming permanent site to store Canada’s nuclear waste,
Canada has 57K tonnes of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel and nowhere to put it, Colin Butler · CBC News · Feb 21 2020, Bruce County calls itself a place “where the smiles are bigger and a little more frequent,” but those smiles belie a deepening divide among neighbours over what to do with Canada’s growing stockpile of nuclear waste.
The town of South Bruce, on the rim of the sparkling waters of Lake Huron, is one of two sites selected by a federal agency tasked with finding permanent locations to store Canada’s nearly three million bundles of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel.
On Thursday, politicians in Bruce County debated whether their community should be home to a place to put that waste, what’s called a deep geologic repository, or DGR; a multi-billion dollar high tech nuclear waste dump that would see the material stored in perpetuity hundreds of metres below the Earth.
At issue in the debate are the ethics of leaving the burden of some of Canada’s most dangerous nuclear material to future generations, the possible development and devaluation of prime Ontario farmland and concerns over the potential safety of the drinking water for 40 million people in two countries.
‘I am strongly opposed’
On Thursday, that politically-fraught debate took centre stage in Walkerton, Ont. before a packed council chamber where politicians debated whether DGRs were “settled science” in an argument that has already played out at dinner tables, arenas and coffee shops in the area for years, dividing neighbours and leaving communities deeply polarized.
“I am strongly opposed,” said Brockton Mayor Chris Peabody, whose township includes Walkerton, a place that two decades ago grappled with a tainted water crisis where e. coli killed six people and sickened thousands.
“The proposal is to bury the waste under the Teeswater River,” he told council. “I can’t support that. I’ve got several communities down river that get their drinking water from aquifers along that river.”
Peabody said if a deep geologic repository were to be located west of Teeswater, it would potentially devalue prime farmland and the resulting stigma of burying nuclear waste near his community might affect the ability of local farmers to sell their wares.
“It would make it very difficult for them to market their produce and survive,” he said. “I don’t think the scientific consensus supports burying nuclear waste in class one farmland in Southern Ontario.”
Utilizing a deep geologic repository isn’t simply a matter of “burying nuclear waste in class one farmland” as Peabody suggests. The proposed underground project is a highly sophisticated $23 billion nuclear waste disposal site designed to contain and isolate some of the most dangerous materials on Earth for thousands of years.
The sprawling complex of tunnels and chambers would occupy a footprint of about 600 hectares underground, where nuclear waste would be stored at a depth as low as the CN Tower is tall (500 to 600 metres). The idea is the material would be encased in containers below natural bedrock to keep the harmful effects of radiation at bay for millennia.
While proponents of the system claim a DGR is a safe way to store nuclear waste, those opposed argue it has a spotty record at best, pointing out that similar facilities in New Mexico and Germany have leaked – and by that token, opponents say a DGR near Lake Huron would potentially put the drinking water of 40 million people at risk.
It’s not the first time the debate has come to the area. Ontario Power Generation recently abandoned a 15-year campaign for a similar proposed facility to store low to intermediary waste at a site not far from the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station.
The failure to move ahead with the project is part of a larger problem of Canada’s struggle to find a permanent home for its growing stockpile of nuclear waste.
As of 2018, it’s estimated Canada had some 57,000 tonnes of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel and nowhere to put it.
So far, the federal agency tasked with disposing it, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization, or NWMO, has identified two potential communities with the right geological makeup; Ignace in Ontario’s north and South Bruce, in Ontario’s Great Lakes Basin. ……. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/canada-nuclear-waste-1.5469727
Opposition in Kamoenai to hosting nuclear waste dump
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Second site in Hokkaido considers hosting nuclear waste dump, Japan Times, SAPPORO/SUTTSU, HOKKAIDO – The village of Kamoenai in Hokkaido is considering hosting a final disposal facility for high-level radioactive waste, it was learned Friday.The village is looking at applying for a literature survey, the first of three stages in the research process to select the location of a final disposal facility for high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants.
Kamoenai is the second municipality in the nation to be contemplating the process since the government published details of areas it considered suitable for nuclear waste disposal in its Nationwide Map of Scientific Features for Geological Disposal in 2017. The town of Suttsu, also in Hokkaido, was the first municipality to do so……. The village, which is located in western Hokkaido and had a population of 823 as of the end of August, faces the Sea of Japan and neighbors the village of Tomari, which hosts a nuclear power plant run by Hokkaido Electric Power Co. The plant is currently offline. According to the government map, almost all of Kamoenai except for some southern areas is unsuitable for waste disposal. Procedures to select a host for a final disposal site are conducted in three stages, comprising the “literary” survey, a “preliminary” investigation and a “detailed” investigation. A municipality undergoing a literature survey can receive subsidies of up to ¥2 billion from the central government. Meanwhile, many residents of Suttsu, Hokkaido, another municipality that is considering applying for a literature survey, voiced opposition to the plan Thursday at a briefing session organized by the municipal government. The meeting was the fourth of its kind for Suttsu residents. The first such session was held on Monday. At Thursday’s meeting, which was opened to the press, Suttsu Mayor Haruo Kataoka explained the reasons for considering applying for a literature survey. Some 260 residents attended the session, which lasted for over three hours from 6:30 p.m. Participating residents voiced concerns that the move would lead to harmful rumors about the town, and that if the town received subsidies from the government as a result of applying for the literature survey, it would have no choice but to become a final disposal site. Some said that detailed discussions should be held after the mayoral election in the town next year……. In talks with reporters after the meeting, Kataoka rejected the idea of holding a local referendum on the matter, saying, “It will divide the town residents.” According to the town, the first briefing session on Monday was cut short due to technical issues, such as not having reserved enough time for questions from residents. Therefore, the town government plans to hold an additional session within this month for participants that attended the Monday meeting. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/09/11/national/hokkaido-village-nuclear-waste/ |
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Britain’s National Audit Office warns on costs of cleaning up old nuclear plants
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Estimates of the cost to clear up 12 of the UK’s earliest nuclear power sites have increased by nearly £3bn since 2017 and there remains “inherent uncertainty” over the final bill, the country’s public spending watchdog has warned. The National Audit Office on Friday published its latest report into the long-running saga around the decommissioning of two research sites and 10 early nuclear power stations in Britain, which came to be known as the “Magnox” plants due to the magnesium alloy that was used to cover the fuel rods inside their reactors. The spending watchdog also found that the costs to the taxpayer of a botched 2014 tender process to outsource the decommissioning to the private sector was £20m higher than when it last investigated three years ago.
Cleaning up the Magnox sites, which were built before privatisation and include Hunterston A in Scotland and Hinkley Point A in Somerset, has turned into a costly and torturous affair. In 2016 the High Court ruled the 2014 competition for a 14-year contract to decommission the sites — which had been awarded to Cavendish Fluor Partnership, or CFP, a joint venture between UK-based Babcock International and Fluor of the US — had been “fudged” by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a body attached to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
A year later ministers, acting on legal advice, terminated the arrangement with CFP nine years early and renegotiated a shorter contract that ran until the end of August 2019. Decommissioning of the sites was then brought in-house by the NDA. ………. https://www.ft.com/content/6f313c84-d314-4160-b124-a68c4e85be09
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Chernobyl nuclear power plant gets special permission to run ‘hot’ tests with nuclear waste
Chornobyl nuclear power plant gets special permission to run ‘hot’ tests with nuclear waste https://112.international/society/chornobyl-nuclear-power-plant-gets-special-permission-to-run-hot-tests-with-nuclear-waste-54539.html Source : 112 Ukraine, 9 Sept 20, The spent fuel will be soon transferred to new storage, as the old one’s operational life is expiring Chornobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) received special permission to run hot tests with the spent nuclear fuel. Press office of the NPP reported that on September 8.
According to the message, over 23 years of service, the storage amounted up to 21,000 elements of nuclear waste. Due to the fact that the operational life of the current storage is expiring, the staff is now making arrangements to transport the waste to a new repository site. At first, only part of the waste will be transferred, and the rest is to be moved after successful “hot” tests.
“The new storage boasts of special technology, allowing to keep the building in the inert atmosphere. It’ll have helium pumped up in there, and the bilateral leak-tight bottles, which are supposed to keep the spent fuel for 100 years,” said Volodymyr Peskov, the Acting Director of Chornobyl NPP enterprise.
The NPP staff managed to get permission for hot tests after cold tests with nuclear waste were performed successfully.
UK. For thehighly radioactive Dounreay nuclear site, a mobile robot will be used to identify the toxic structures
Press & Journal 8th Sept 2020 A mobile robot will be used for the first time in one of the most contaminated and inaccessible parts of the Dounreay nuclear plant to provide vital information on the next steps in its decommissioning. The technology will provide the first images in decades from inside the Caithness site’s Fuel Cycle Area (FCA).
The FCA consists of two reprocessing plants, waste stores and laboratory facilities where spent nuclear fuel was examined and reprocessed. As part of the site clean up, Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd (DSRL) is working with the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in Nuclear (Rain) Hub, a consortium of universities led by the University of Manchester, to explore ways to overcome some of
the challenges.
In South Australia, Farmers, Traditional Owners fight radioactive waste dump
As Woolford pointed out, of 2789 submissions received in a public consultation 94.5% oppose the facility.
Farmers, Traditional Owners fight radioactive waste dump https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/farmers-traditional-owners-fight-radioactive-waste-dump, Renfrey Clarke, Adelaide, September 8, 2020
A 160-hectare tract of farmland has been purchased near the small town of Kimba and, as inducement to deliver support for the plan, local residents have been promised a $31 million “community development package.” A non-binding ballot conducted last November among residents of the Kimba District Council area recorded 62% in favour of the scheme.
But opponents of the dump remain active and vocal. As well as farmers and townsfolk concerned for their safety and for the “clean and green” reputation of the district’s produce, those against the plan include the Barngarla First Nations people, who hold native title over the area. Continue reading
1 This Month
26 September – International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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