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
|
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/ |
|
Britain’s National Audit Office warns on costs of cleaning up old nuclear plants
|
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
|
|
|
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
Hinkley Point B nuclear station could close down early – EDF
EDF Energy says UK’s Hinkley Point B nuclear plant could close earlier than planned
The 1 gigawatt (GW) plant in Somerset was due to be shut down permanently in early 2023. It began operation in 1976.
“It is possible we may need to move into defuelling within the next two years. We will review this decision in the same detailed way as we have with Hunterston B and expect to be able to confirm the outcome by the end of this year,” said a spokesman for EDF Energy, part of France’s EDF.
Last month, EDF Energy said it would start decommissioning its Hunterston B nuclear power plant in Scotland by January 2022 at the latest.
Both Hunterston B and Hinkley Point B have had issues with ageing, as cracks were found in graphite bricks which form reactor cores, prompting some industry experts to foresee their permanent closure soon.
Nearly all of Britain’s 9 GW nuclear fleet is composed of advanced gas-cooled reactors. A factor of ageing in that type of reactor is cracks in the graphite bricks.
Half of Britain’s eight operating nuclear power stations are due to move into decommissioning by March 2024, removing around 4 GW of power capacity…….. www.reuters.com/article/britain-nuclearpower/update-1-edf-energy-says-uks-hinkley-point-b-nuclear-plant-could-close-earlier-than-planned-idUSL8N2G65F8
Huge challenge to decontaminate Dounreay: ‘World’s deepest nuclear clean-up’.
|
Dounreay: ‘World’s deepest nuclear clean-up’ to begin, The first work in a clean-up of a 1950s-built shaft at a nuclear power research complex is to begin this year. BBC News, 9 Sep 20,
The shaft plunges 65.4m (214.5ft) below ground and poses one of the biggest challenges in the demolition of Dounreay in Caithness.
Radioactive waste was disposed there from 1959 until 1977 when an explosion ended the practice.
Tackling the shaft has been described as the “world’s deepest nuclear clean-up”…….
A £7.5m contract has been awarded for the first steps in this work, due to begin in late autumn, and also to carry out similar engineering work at another site at Dounreay called the silo.
It is described as being like a swimming pool with a concrete roof and was also used for the disposing of radioactive waste.
Engineering firms Nuvia and Graham Construction have been awarded the contract for work that would eventually lead to the waste being removed.
David Hubbard, of Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd, said: “The shaft and silo contain solid waste and sludge which must be retrieved and repackaged for safe above-ground storage…..
Dounreay, near Thurso, was the UK site for the development of fast reactor research from 1955 to 1994.
The facility on the north Caithness coast is in the process of being closed down, demolished and cleaned up. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-54085592
|
|
Bob Halstead has done a great job defending Nevada from nuclear waste dumping at Yucca Mountain
|
Nevada grateful for Halstead’s many years fighting nuclear waste, Las Vegas Sun , Monday, Sept. 7, 2020 On this Labor Day, t
 he Sun salutes a recently retired Nevada leader whose three decades of tireless public service unquestionably made a difference in our state.
Bob Halstead, who stepped down last month as the executive director for the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, will be long remembered for his staunch defense of the state against the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project. It’s scary to think where Nevada might be today if not for Halstead and his guard-dogging against the federal government’s attempts to shove the nation’s high-level nuclear waste down our throats.
Halstead was the state’s foremost expert on the project, a walking encyclopedia of its many flaws. His credibility, geniality and commitment allowed him to work with Republican and Democratic governors, Nevada congressional delegates, state legislators and local officials alike. That helped forge a unified front on the project that continues to this day. Outside of a few misguided officials, it’s difficult to find a Nevada leader who wants anything to do with Yucca Mountain. Halstead also spearheaded the state’s response to the feds’ 2018 secret shipments of weapons-grade plutonium to the Nevada National Security Site, among other efforts. Along the way, he became a nemesis of the Department of Energy, beating them back with legal and scientific challenges and poking their arguments full of holes…………. It’s certainly been an impressive fight, and a long one. It dates to 1987, when Congress passed the so-called “Screw Nevada” bill that designated our state as the national waste repository site — without our consent. Since then, the project has been killed and resurrected repeatedly, most recently when the Trump administration pushed for funding to restart the licensing process. When President Donald Trump finally capitulated, it was a high point for Halstead after a career of bedeviling pro-Yucca presidents, bureaucrats and Congress members who were intent on shipping waste out of their own districts and dumping it on Nevada. But as Halstead has noted, the fight isn’t over. It won’t be until there’s legislation that permanently shuts down the site. With Halstead’s departure, that means the current and next generations of Nevada leaders will have to take up the cause just as fervently as he did. We simply can’t let down our guard on this monstrosity, which would result in more than 110,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste being shipped into the backyard of Las Vegas and stored there. Transporting the material is dangerous, especially for Las Vegas, given that one of the main routes takes shipments directly through the heart of the city. Think about the effects of an accident or a terrorist attack on a shipment going through the middle of Las Vegas. As for storage, seismic activity in the region makes Yucca Mountain a terrible place to put this waste. A leak could contaminate groundwater for thousands of years — and keep in mind that we’re talking about enough material to cover a football field about seven yards deep. There’s nothing close to scientific proof that the waste could be safely stored in the repository for the tens of thousands of years it will remain radioactive. Halstead knew this, and for 30 years he refused to yield on it……..https://lasvegassun.com/news/2020/sep/07/nevada-grateful-for-halsteads-many-years-fighting/ |
|
Renewed concerns about safety as dig starts for new shaft at New Mexico’s nuclear Waste Isolatio Pilot Plant
Groups Raise Concerns About New Shaft at US NuclearDump, By Associated Press, Wire Service Content Sept. 4, 2020
Crews at the U.S. government’s underground nuclear waste repository in New Mexico are starting a new phase of a contentious project to dig a utility shaft. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/new-mexico/articles/2020-09-04/groups-raise-concerns-about-new-shaft-at-us-nuclear-dump
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Crews working at the U.S. government’s underground nuclear waste repository in New Mexico are starting a new phase of a contentious project to dig a utility shaft that officials say will increase ventilation at the site where workers entomb the radioactive remnants of decades of bomb-making.
Officials at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant said this week that the $75 million project is a top priority and that work will be done round the clock five days a week, with an additional shift on Saturdays. The shaft will eventually span more than four-tenths of a mile and connect to an underground system of passageways.
After reaching a depth of about 60 feet (18 meters), workers now will be drilling small holes and using explosive charges to clear more rock.
Adequate ventilation at the repository has been a big issue since 2014, when a radiation release forced a temporary closure and contamination limited air flow underground where workers dispose of nuclear waste. That prompted the need for a new ventilation system so full-scale operations could someday resume.
The repository is at the center of a multibillion-dollar effort to clean up waste from decades of U.S. nuclear research and bomb-making. Over more than 20 years, tons of waste have been stashed deep in the salt caverns at the southern New Mexico site.
Watchdog groups are raising red flags, saying the work is being done before state environmental officials finish a process allowing the public weigh in and before they have issued a final permit. The New Mexico Environment Department in April granted federal officials temporary approval to start the work as part of a larger request to dig the shaft and passageways.
The Southwest Research and Information Center is among those opposing the project. The group filed legal challenges, saying environmental officials ignored existing regulations, past agency practices and case law when giving temporary approval for contractors to begin working.
The Environment Department has defended its decision, saying the temporary approval was limited to digging the shaft, not using it.
Don Hancock with the Southwest Research and Information Center said state officials essentially foreordained the permit request by allowing work to begin. He also said the state has not provided any technical basis for its decisions and that it reduced the amount of time the public had to comment on the project by delaying the release of a draft permit.
The group has suggested that the shaft, given its size and location, could be used to expand the repository. It says that creates potential for the government to send high-level and commercial waste to the site, along with new radioactive waste that will be generated by manufacturing plutonium cores for the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Despite congressional limits on the amount and type of waste that can be shipped to the repository, Hancock and other critics said the state’s actions have favored the federal government while limiting the public’s ability to give their input.
The repository’s hazardous waste permit also is up for renewal this year, and more legal wrangling is expected.
The threatening presence of highly radioactive material in Russia’s sunken nuclear submarines
Do Russia’s Sunken Nuclear Submarines Pose Environmental Danger? There’s radioactive fuel hanging at the bottom of the sea. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a33902569/russia-sunken-nuclear-submarines/ BY KYLE MIZOKAMI, SEP 4, 2020
- Two ex-Soviet nuclear submarines, K-27 and K-159, lie at the bottom of the Barents Sea.
- The wrecked ships still have their radioactive fuel sources aboard, which experts worry could leak into the environment.
- The Russian government has vowed to clean up the wrecks, but the work is not a priority.
Governments and environmental groups are worried a rupture of nuclear fuel supplies could cause a nuclear catastrophe, impacting local fishing areas. The Russian government is working to solve the problem, which some experts are calling a potential “Chernobyl in slow motion on the seabed.
A legacy of the Cold War threatens Russia’s people and environment, potentially irradiating a large portion of the Barents Sea and closing it to commercial fishing. Two Soviet nuclear-powered submarines are sitting on the bottom of the ocean and could unleash their radioactive fuels into the surrounding waters.
The Soviet Union built four hundred nuclear-powered submarines during the Cold War. The vast majority were either scrapped, or still serve with the Russian Navy today. A few subs, however, are trapped in precarious circumstances, lying on the seabed floor with their uranium fuel supplies still intact. The BBC reports on efforts to render two such ships, K-27 and K-159, safe.
The first ship, K-27, was a Soviet Navy submarine prototype equipped with a new liquid metal reactor. In 1968, the six-year-old sub suffered a reactor accident so serious, nine Soviet sailors received fatal doses of radiation. The submarine was scuttled off the Russian island of Novaya Zemlya in 1982 with its reactor still on board.
The second ship, K-159 (shown above before sinking, on original), was a November-class
submarine that served a fairly typical career with the Soviet Northern Fleet before retirement in 1989. In 2003, however, the K-159 sank while in the process of being dismantled, killing nine sailors. The ship still resides where it was lost, again with its reactor on board.
Environmentalists in Norway and Russia are concerned that eventually the reactors on both submarines will break down, releasing huge amounts of radiation.
The effects of these leaks could range from increasing local background radiation to declaring local fish and animals off limits, particularly Barents Sea fishing stocks of cod and haddock, costing local fishermen an estimated $1.5 billion a year.
While Russia’s state nuclear agency, Rosatom, has been tasked with cleaning up the ships, the effort is underfunded, resulting in a race against time (and saltwater corrosion).
Despite the undoubted danger of USA’s gigantic new plutoniu pit production, USA safety officials won’t bother with a new environment study
Officials Dismiss New Environmental Study for Nuclear Lab https://www.mbtmag.com/home/news/21173922/officials-dismiss-new-environmental-study-for-nuclear-lab
Watchdog groups say the plutonium pit production work will amount to a vast expansion of the lab’s mission. Manufacturing Business Technology , Sep 3rd, 2020 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The National Nuclear Security Administration says it doesn’t need to do an additional environmental review for Los Alamos National Laboratory before it begins producing key components for the nation’s nuclear arsenal because it has enough information.
Watchdog groups are concerned about Tuesday’s announcement, saying the plutonium pit production work will amount to a vast expansion of the lab’s nuclear mission and that more analysis should be done.
Los Alamos is preparing to resume and ramp up production of the plutonium cores used to trigger nuclear weapons. It’s facing a 2026 deadline to begin producing at least 30 cores a year — a mission that has support from the most senior Democratic members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation. The work is expected to bring jobs and billions of federal dollars to update buildings or construct new factories.
The work will be shared by the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which has been tasked with producing at least 50 plutonium cores a year.
The National Nuclear Security Administration on Tuesday released its final supplemental analysis of a site-wide environmental impact statement done for the lab more than a decade ago. The agency concluded that no further analysis is required.
Critics have pushed for a new environmental impact statement, saying the previous 2008 analysis didn’t consider a number of effects related to increased production, such as the pressure it puts on infrastructure, roads and the housing market.
“The notion that comprehensive environmental analysis is not needed for this gigantic program is a staggering insult to New Mexicans and an affront to any notion of environmental law and science,” Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group said in a statement.
Lab officials last year detailed plans for $13 billion worth of construction projects over the next decade at the northern New Mexico complex as it prepares for plutonium pit production. About $3 billion of that would be spent on improvements to existing plutonium facilities for the pit work, the Albuquerque Journal reported. AT TOP Lab officials last year detailed plans for $13 billion worth of construction projects over the next decade at the northern New Mexico complex as it prepares for plutonium pit production. About $3 billion of that would be spent on improvements to existing plutonium facilities for the pit work, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
THe Arctic’s slow-moving underwater nuclear disaster – Russia’s radioactive trash
 Russia’s ‘slow-motion Chernobyl’ at sea, BBC By Alec Luhn2nd September 2020, ”…………………………. Beneath some of the world’s busiest fisheries, radioactive submarines from the Soviet era lie disintegrating on the seafloor. Decades later, Russia is preparing to retrieve them……….With a draft decree published in March, President Vladimir Putin set in motion an initiative to lift two Soviet nuclear submarines and four reactor compartments from the silty bottom, reducing the amount of radioactive material in the Arctic Ocean by 90%. First on the list is Lappa’s K-159.
|
|
Russia facing huge problem to recover radioactive sunken nuclear reactors, but Putin still plans new ones in the Arctic
Russia’s ‘slow-motion Chernobyl’ at sea, FUTURE PLANET | OCEANS By Alec Luhn, 2nd September 2020 ……….
Minimising risk
Russia, Norway and other countries whose fishing boats ply the bountiful waters of the Barents Sea have now found themselves with a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Although a 2014 Russian-Norwegian expedition to the K-159 wreck that tested the water, seafloor and animals like a sea centipede did not find radiation above background levels, an expert from Moscow’s Kurchatov Institute said at the time that a reactor containment failure “could happen within 30 years of sinking in the best case and within 10 years at the worst”. That would release radioactive caesium-137 and strontium-90, among other isotopes.
While the vast size of the oceans quickly dilutes radiation, even very small levels can become concentrated in animals at the top of the food chain through “bioaccumulation” – and then be ingested by humans. But economic consequences for the Barents Sea fishing industry, which provides the vast majority of cod and haddock at British fish and chip shops, “may perhaps be worse than the environmental consequences”, says Hilde Elise Heldal, a scientist at Norway’s Institute of Marine Research.
According to her studies, if all the radioactive material from the K-159’s reactors were to be released in a single “pulse discharge”, it would increase Cesium-137 levels in the muscles of cod in the eastern Barents Sea at least 100 times. (As would a leak from the Komsomolets, another sunken Soviet submarine near Norway that is not slated for lifting.) That would still be below limits set by the Norwegian government after the Chernobyl accident, but it could be enough to scare off consumers. More than 20 countries continue to ban Japanese seafood, for instance, even though studies have failed to find dangerous concentrations of radioactive isotopes in Pacific predatory fishes following the Fukushima nuclear power plant release in 2011. Any ban on fishing in the Barents and Kara seas could cost the Russian and Norwegian economies €120m ($140m; £110m) a month, according to a European Commission feasibility study about the lifting project.
There is no ship in the world capable of lifting the K-159, so a special salvage vessel would have to be built
But an accident while raising the submarine, on the other hand, could suddenly jar the reactor, potentially mixing fuel elements and starting an uncontrolled chain reaction and explosion. That could boost radiation levels in fish 1,000 times normal or, if it occurred on the surface, irradiate terrestrial animals and humans, another Norwegian study found. Norway would be forced to stop sales of products from the Arctic such as fish and reindeer meat for a year or more. The study estimated that more radiation could be released than in the 1985 Chazhma Bay incident, when an uncontrolled chain reaction during refuelling of a Soviet submarine near Vladivostok killed 10 sailors.
Amundsen argued that the risk of such a criticality excursion with the K-159 or K-27 was low and could be minimised with proper planning, as it was during the removal of high-risk spent fuel from Andreyev Bay.
“In that case we do not leave the problem for future generations to solve, generations where the knowledge of handling such legacy waste may be very limited,” he says.
The safety and transparency of Russia’s nuclear industry has often been questioned, though, most recently when Dutch authorities concluded that radioactive iodine-131 detected over northern Europe in June originated in western Russia. The Mayak reprocessing facility that received the spent fuel from Andreyev Bay by train has a troubled history going back to the world’s then-worst nuclear disaster in 1957. Rosatom continues to deny the findings of international experts that the facility was the source of a radioactive cloud of ruthenium-106 registered over Europe in 2017.
While the K-159 and K-27 need to be raised, Rashid Alimov of Greenpeace Russia has reservations. “We are worried about the monitoring of this work, public participation and the transport [of spent fuel] to Mayak,” he says.
Custom mission
Raising a submarine is a rare feat of engineering. The United States spent $800m (£610m) in an attempt to lift another Soviet submarine, the diesel-powered K-129 that carried several nuclear missiles, from 16,400ft (5,000m) in the Pacific Ocean, under the guise of a seabed mining operation. In the end, they only managed to bring a third of the submarine to the surface, leaving the CIA with little usable intelligence.
That was the deepest raise in history. The heaviest was the Kursk. To bring the latter 17,000-tonne missile submarine up from 350ft (108m) below the Barents Sea, the Dutch companies Mammoet and Smit International installed 26 hydraulically cushioned lifting jacks on a giant barge and cut 26 holes in the submarine’s rubber-coated steel hull with a water jet operated by scuba divers. On 8 October 2001, rushing to beat the winter storm season after four months of nerve-wracking work and delays, steel grippers fitted in the 26 holes lifted the Kursk from the seabed in 14 hours, after which the barge was towed to a dry dock in Murmansk.
At less than 5,000 tonnes, the K-159 is smaller than the Kursk, but even before it sank its outer hull was “as weak as foil”, according to Bellona. It has since been embedded in 17 years’ worth of silt. A hole in the bow would seem to rule out pumping it full of air and raising it with balloons, as has been previously suggested. At a conference of European Bank of Reconstruction and Development donors in December, a Rosatom representative said there was no ship in the world capable of lifting it, so a special salvage vessel would have to be built.
That will increase the estimated cost of €278m ($330m; £250m) to raise the six most radioactive objects. Donors are discussing Russia’s request to help finance the project, said Balthasar Lindauer, director of nuclear safety at EBRD.
“There’s consensus something needs to be done there,” he says. Any such custom-built vessel would likely need a bevy of specialised technologies such as bow and aft thrusters to keep it positioned precisely over the wreck.
But in August, Grigoriev told a Rosatom-funded website that one plan the company was considering would involve a pair of barges fitted with hydraulic cable jacks and secured to deep-sea moorings. Instead of steel grippers like the ones inserted into the holes in the Kursk, giant curved pincers would grab the entire hull and lift it up between the barges. A partially submersible scow would be positioned underneath, then brought to the surface along with the submarine and finally towed to port. The K-27 and K-159 could both be recovered this way, he said.
One of three engineering firms working on proposals for Rosatom is the military design bureau Malachite, which drafted a project to raise the K-159 in 2007 that “was never realised due to a lack of money”, according to its lead designer. This year the bureau has begun updating this plan, an employee tells Future Planet in the lobby of Malachite’s headquarters in St Petersburg. Many questions remain, however.
“What condition is the hull in? How much of force can it handle? How much silt has built up? We need to survey the conditions there,” the employee says, before the head of security arrives to break up our conversation.
Nuclear paradox
Removing the six radioactive objects fits in with an image Putin as crafted as a defender of the fragile Arctic environment. In 2017, he inspected the results of an operation to remove 42,000 tonnes of scrap metal from the Franz Josef Land archipelago as part of a “general clean-up of the Arctic”. He has spoken about environmental preservation at an annual conference for Arctic nations. And on the same day in March 2020 that he issued his draft decree about the sunken objects, he signed an Arctic policy that lists “protecting the Arctic environment and the native lands and traditional livelihood of indigenous peoples” as one of six national interests in the region.
“For Putin, the Arctic is part of his historic legacy. It should be well-protected, bring real benefits and be clean,” said Dmitry Trenin, head of the think tank Carnegie Centre Moscow.
Yet while pursuing a “clean” Arctic, the Kremlin has also been backing Arctic oil and gas development, which accounts for the majority of shipping on the Northern Sea Route. State-owned Gazprom built one of two growing oil and gas clusters on the Yamal peninsula, and this year the government cut taxes on new Arctic liquified natural gas projects to 0% to tap into some of the trillions of dollars of fossil fuel and mineral wealth in the region.
And even as Putin cleans up the Soviet nuclear legacy in the far north, he is building a nuclear legacy of his own. A steady march of new nuclear icebreakers and, in 2019, the world’s only floating nuclear power plant has again made the Arctic the most nuclear waters on the planet.
Meanwhile, the Northern Fleet is building at least eight submarines and has plans to construct several more, as well as eight missile destroyers and an aircraft carrier, all of them nuclear-powered. It has also been testing a nuclear-powered underwater drone and cruise missile. In total, there could be as many as 114 nuclear reactors in operation in the Arctic by 2035, almost twice as many as today, a 2019 Barents Observer study found.
This growth has not gone without incident. In July 2019, a fire on a nuclear deep-sea submersible near Murmansk almost caused a “catastrophe of a global scale,” an officer reportedly said at the funeral of the 14 sailors killed. The next month, a “liquid-fuel reactive propulsion system” exploded during a test on a floating platform in the White Sea, killing two of those involved and briefly spiking radiation levels in the nearby city of Severodvinsk.
“The joint efforts of the international community including Norway and Russia after breakup of the Soviet Union, using taxpayer money to clean up nuclear waste, was a good investment in our fisheries,” says The Barents Observer’s Nilsen. “But today there are more and more politicians in Norway and Europe who think it’s a really big paradox that the international community is giving aid to secure the Cold War legacy while it seems Russia is giving priority to building a new Cold War.”
As long as the civilian agency Rosatom is tasked with clean-up, the Russian military has little incentive to slow down this nuclear spree, Nilsen notes.
“Who is going to pay for the clean-up of those reactors when they are not in use anymore?” he asks. “That is the challenge with today’s Russia, that the military don’t have to think what to do with the very, very expensive decommissioning of all this.”
So while the coming nuclear clean-up is set to be the largest of its kind in history, it may turn out to be just a prelude to what’s needed to deal with the next wave of nuclear power in the Arctic…………….https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200901-the-radioactive-risk-of-sunken-nuclear-soviet-submarines
Nuclear waste project proposed near Carlsbad sees mixed response in final public hearing
|
Nuclear waste project proposed near Carlsbad sees mixed response in final public hearing, Adrian Hedden– Carlsbad Current-Argus, 3 Sept 20, In its final public comment hearing on an environmental analysis for a nuclear waste facility near Carlsbad and Hobbs, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) heard arguments both for and against the project that would see high-level spent nuclear fuel rods stored temporarily in southeast New Mexico.Holtec International sought a permit to build and operate the site known as a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) to remove nuclear waste from generator sites around the U.S., and temporarily store the refuse until a permanent repository was ready. The NRC’s recently released draft environmental impact statement (EIS) found the project, during construction and operation, would have minimal environmental impact. A safety analysis was forthcoming, which would study the project’s impact on human safety and require another period of public comments………… Opponents of the project, including New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and members of her cabinet panned the proposal for environmental concerns and impacts on other industries in the state such as extraction and agriculture. Protesters during Wednesday’s meeting also questioned the NRC’s decision to hold public hearings online and via phone instead of in person amid the COVID-19 pandemic as “rushing” the project and reducing public participation. ……. Rose Gardner, a resident of Eunice near the proposed site and member of the Alliance for Environmental Strategies argued that the project was illegal under federal law and unfairly impacted Hispanic communities in rural New Mexico. “The National Waste Policy Act does not allow for this license to be issued and a privately-owned corporation to take the high-level waste from commercial reactors,” Gardner said. “The failure of the NRC to satisfy the public with these poorly run and moderated webinars is an example of government waste as usual.” New Mexico State Sen. Jeff Steinborn (D-36) argued the EIS was “deficient” in that it did not address the transportation plan that would bring the waste to the facility from “all sides of New Mexico,” he said. “Transportation should not be an afterthought,” Steinborn said. “This is a fatal flaw in this plan. New Mexicans continue time and again to pay the high cost of America’s nuclear legacy.” Steinborn also called on the NRC to postpone the licensing process until after the pandemic subsided and in-person public meetings could be held safely. “New Mexicans have not been proactively reached out to and engaged on this proposal,” he said. “This pandemic has created a digital divide in New Mexico.” New Mexico U.S. Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall agreed with the call on the NRC to postpone the licensing process amid the public health crisis in a letter sent last month to NRC leadership. “Ultimately, there is no compelling public interest reason to justify this rush to replace meetings with virtual webinars, and this decision gives the Commission the appearance of valuing the preferences of a for-profit company looking to store highly dangerous nuclear waste that of the public and their elected representatives,” the letter said.https://www.currentargus.com/story/news/local/2020/09/02/holtec-nuclear-waste-project-near-carlsbad-sees-mixed-public-response/5681636002/ |
|
1 This Month
9 September – online public forum THREE MILE ISLAND:
7-8:30 PM ET,
Legacy, resistance to reopening – https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-LGJU4j6TD2Hgf0rpgAr1A#/registration
The nuclear industry and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission are threatening to restart Pennsylvania’s permanently closed and decommissioning Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power station. Three expert speakers will present the resistance to this dangerous misadventure in a webinar hosted by the Clamshell Alliance, Beyond Nuclear and Massachusetts Peace Action.
No Nuclear in Cwm Llynfi! Stop the nuclear power station near Maesteg.
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- September 2026 (62)
- August 2026 (330)
- July 2026 (355)
- June 2026 (287)
- May 2026 (306)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (267)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (375)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 