$41 billion for Hanford high level nuclear waste clean-up. Fiasco of Pretreatment Facility
Hanford strategy for worst nuclear waste criticized. Plant estimates skyrocket to $41 billion, Tri City Herald BY ANNETTE CARY, MAY 13, 2020 The Department of Energy’s strategy for pretreating high-level waste at Hanford is “unclear” 20 years after construction of a massive glassification plant began, while costs continue to soar, says a new federal report.
The Government Accountability Office released a report to Congress this week focusing on the plant’s Pretreatment Facility, where construction stopped seven years ago because of technical issues.
The issues involved safety concerns to prevent a possible explosion or radioactive waste leak.
U.S. taxpayers have spent $11 billion on the Hanford glassification plant, but the Pretreatment Facility is unlikely to be finished on schedule or as designed, the report said.
Under one scenario being studied, some of the worst waste at Hanford could be shipped across the nation to South Carolina to be stabilized for disposal.
Since construction stopped in late 2012 on the pretreatment plant, $752 million has been spent, with construction not ready to restart anytime soon, the GAO report indicated.
DOE also has spent $428 million developing alternatives for some of the work expected to be done at the pretreatment plant.
There is no cost estimate for completing the Pretreatment Facility, the largest facility at the plant, the GAO report said.
Completing the entire vitrification plant could cost $19 billion to $30 billion more than the $11 billion already spent, the GAO said.
That would put the total cost at $30 billion to $41 billion.
The plant, named the Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, is being built to to glassify much of the 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in underground tanks, turning it into a stable form for disposal.
The waste is left from the past production of plutonium at Hanford in Eastern Washington for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.
2023 WASTE TREATMENT FOCUS
When Bechtel National was awarded a contract to build and start the plant in 2000, plans called for waste from the tanks to be sent first to the largest facility at the plant, the Pretreatment Facility
It stands about 12 stories high and covers an area larger than a football field.
There waste retrieved from underground tanks was to be separated into low activity radioactive waste and high level radioactive waste for glassification at separate facilities at the vitrification plant.
But after technical issues were raised in 2012 related to how well the pretreatment plant could handle the high level portion of the tank waste, DOE proposed a new plan.
It would first start vitrifying the low activity radioactive waste by developing other methods to separate that waste from tank waste.
A federal court judge agreed to the plan in 2016 but set a deadline for DOE to start vitrifying that waste by the end of 2023. The plant must be fully operational in 2036, the judge ordered.
DOE has since been focused on meeting the 2023 court-enforced deadline, including spending about $428 million developing those alternative pretreatment approaches, rather than on facilities that will handle high level waste, the GAO report said.
When construction stopped on the pretreatment plant it was about 40 percent complete.
WASTE ISSUES RESOLVED?
DOE has spent about $323 million to resolve technical issues at the facility since late 2012, with the rest of the $752 million spent on the plant during those years paying for overhead, project management, facility maintenance and DOE oversight………
Local DOE officials said they will not develop a cost for completing the Pretreatment Facility until there is a decision about the future of the facility and any updated design changes for it, according to the GAO report……
ECOLOGY’S PRETREATMENT CONCERNS
The issue is further complicated by concerns of the Washington state Department of Ecology, a Hanford regulator………. https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article242680951.html
Nuclear waste plan divides South Bruce community
residents still have concerns about a high-level nuclear waste DGR in their community.
“The folks in South Bruce, who I would consider the key and primary stakeholders in all of this, are concerned about … health and safety, and the stigma that will be attached to” nuclear waste, Grant explawelined. These stakeholders are also worried about “the value of land and businesses in the immediate vicinity as l as along the transportations route from where the high-level nuclear waste is currently stored into the community.”
The siting process has disrupted families’ property values and farm planning and decision making.
We’ve invested 25 years into this property,” Stein said. And “people aren’t interested in moving into an area that might have all of Canada’s high-level nuclear waste.”
A Change.org petition against the DGR has accumulated over 1,300 signatures as of early May, and community members have formed a group called Nuclear Tanks No Thanks to counter the NWMO’s plans
South Bruce divided over nuclear waste, Farms.com Community members clash over the site selection for a high-level nuclear waste deep geologic repository By Jackie Clark, Staff Writer Farms.com Bryon Mckee |May 12 2020
South Bruce is an Ontario municipality that boasts “rolling hills, scenic highways and warm-hearted people,” on its website. However, over the last several months, a debate over a plan to build an underground nuclear waste facility has divided the community.
Proposals in Bruce County…….
……….The DGR would require about 250 acres or the surface facilities and 1,500 acres for the underground repository. ……..some residents have not found the community engagement to be satisfactory. Continue reading
Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans a dangerous deregulation of radioactive waste
Critics alarmed by US nuclear agency’s bid to relax rules on radioactive waste https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/07/nuclear-regulatory-commission-radioactive-waste
Nuclear Regulatory Commission keen to allow material to be disposed of by ‘land burial’ – with potentially damaging effects Daniel Ross 8 May 2020 The federal agency providing oversight of the commercial nuclear sector is attempting to push through a rule change critics say could allow dangerous amounts of radioactive material to be disposed of in places like municipal landfills, with potentially serious consequences to human health and the environment.
Currently, low-level radioactive waste is primarily disposed of in highly regulated sites in Texas, Washington, South Carolina and Utah. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) also provides exemptions allowing “low-level waste” to be dumped in unlicensed disposal sites, but these exemptions are given only rarely, and are conducted with strict case-by-case protocols in place.
The proposed “interpretive” rule change relaxes the rules surrounding how radioactive materials would be disposed of in unlicensed disposal sites “significantly”, said Hirsch.
“If you dump radioactive waste in places that aren’t designed to deal with it, it comes back to haunt you. It’s in the air you breathe, the food that you eat, the water you drink,” he added.
In an email, David McIntyre, an NRC spokesperson, explained that the rule would apply only to a “small subset” of very low-level waste, and that the agency would not allow such disposals “if we felt public health and safety and the environment would not be protected”.
But major sticking point, say experts, concerns how the term “very low-level waste” is not defined by statute or in the NRC’s own regulations.
The NRC describes low-level wastes as contaminated materials like clothing, tools, and medical equipment. According to McIntyre, the radioactivity of “very low-level waste” is just above background. “The radioactivity level of very low-level waste is so low that it may be safely disposed of in hazardous or municipal solid waste landfills,” he wrote.
Nevertheless, “background doesn’t mean it’s safe,” said Diane D’Arrigo, radioactive waste project director for the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, who added that the interpretive rule’s loose language “opens the floodgates” for nuclear waste to be disposed of “as if not radioactive”.
The proposal caps the maximum annual “cumulative dose” to a person from the radioactive wastes dumped into unlicensed sites to 25 millirems – the same limit the NRC uses for highly regulated waste disposal sites. That measurement, said D’Arrigo, is a “projected” amount that can be manipulated through modeling.
Experts point out that the nuclear industry has long sought cheaper ways to dispose of its wastes. As the nation’s fleet of nuclear power plants continues to age, and as more of them approach retirement, some of the decommissioning funds set up to safely dismantle the reactors are proving inadequate.
“The NRC regulations are in effect a cost-benefit analysis,” explained Rodney Ewing, a professor of nuclear security at Stanford University. “It’s been a common trend to look for waste streams that, if separated out, they could be disposed of in less expensive ways.”
Some environmentalists fear the rule change will also disproportionately impact low-income, marginalized communities who are more likely than their wealthier neighbors to be situated near solid waste landfills.
According to Caroline Reiser, nuclear energy legal fellow with the Natural Resources Defense Council, if the proposal is successfully passed, then the issue could end up in court.
“Once it starts getting implemented, that’s when the real fights end up happening,” she said.
Bosnia aims to stop Croatia’splan for radioactive waste dump close to the border
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Croatia and Bosnia at loggerheads over nuclear waste plan, Emerging Europe, May 7, 2020, Nikola Đorđević
Tensions are flaring between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia over the latter’s controversial plan to store nuclear waste at Čerkezovac, a former military installation on the border between the two countries.
The location has been selected by the Croatian government as its designated site for the storage of its share of waste produced by the Krško nuclear power plant in Slovenia. Environmentalists have warned that the site could have serious consequences for the health of both the people in the area and the ecosystem. Last summer a number of protests against the plans to dump waste at Čerkezovac were held just over the border, in the town of Novi Grad, in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Republika Srpska. Since then, the Croatian parliament has reconfirmed that the military installation in the Trgovska Gora mountains remains its preferred choice as the site of the nuclear waste disposal programme. Čerkezovac will be given over to Fond NEK, the entity responsible for decommissioning the Krško plant and the disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel. Krško, opened in 1983, was set to be decommissioned in 2023, although Slovenia and Croatia have agreed to extend operation at the plant to 2043. Before the waste site can be built, an environmental study must be carried out: this has yet to happen. “We are talking about storing nuclear waste in a complex that is located 800 metres from the river Una,” says Mario Crnković, a member of the Green Team NGO which was involved in last year’s protests. “In Novi Grad alone, 15,000 people consume water from the river. It is also a national park, home to 325 species of animal, of which 92 are protected.” Green Team is not the only organisation that has raised concerns. Others have claimed that if the waste disposal plan proceeds, some 250,000 people could be in danger. Bosnian officials have also raised concerns publicly. Some have pointed out that Croatia intends to build the site in an area with a predominately ethnic Serb population. “The eventual building of the nuclear waste disposal site on Trgovska Gora is completely unacceptable because it would endanger the health of 250,000 people in 13 municipalities near the river Una, and have a negative effect on the environment,” says Staša Košarac, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s minister of foreign trade and economic relations……. Despite all the opposition, Croatia remains steadfast in its determination to go ahead with the plan. NGOs like Green Team have called on the Bosnian government to raise the issue at international level. “We expect Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state to act responsibly to stop this. We also expect experts from the non-governmental sector to be included in the process,” Mr Crnković concludes. https://emerging-europe.com/news/croatia-and-bosnia-at-loggerheads-over-nuclear-waste-plan/ |
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Concern growing over plan for high level nuclear waste storage in West Texas
High Level Nuclear Waste Storage Facility in West Texas One Step Closer, Live, By Sonia Ramirez-Muñoz | May. 8, 2020 ANDREWS, TX – West Texas is becoming a hotbed for nuclear waste storage after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a report that recommended the approval of radioactive waste to be stored in Andrews County.
According to CBS7, Waste Control Specialists, which currently has a facility near the Texas-New Mexico border, and a joint venture called Storage Partners want to bring the country’s high-level nuclear waste to the Permian Basin…….
ANDREWS, TX – West Texas is becoming a hotbed for nuclear waste storage after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission released a report that recommended the approval of radioactive waste to be stored in Andrews County.
According to CBS7, Waste Control Specialists, which currently has a facility near the Texas-New Mexico border, and a joint venture called Storage Partners want to bring the country’s high-level nuclear waste to the Permian Basin.
Andrews County residents are concerned about becoming the new home for nuclear waste.
“Very dangerous,” said Elizabeth Padilla with the group ‘Save Andrews County’. “We’re talking about the nation’s spent fuel from nuclear reactors across the country. The waste that nobody wants. The high radioactive waste.”
Cities like Midland could also be impacted as the transport of the waste could go through the downtown area as well as Texas cities through which the nuclear waste will be transported through.
“Midland, in particular, it would definitely come right through the downtown area,” said Karen Hadden with SEED Coalition. “This material has to be isolated from living things for a million years, and there is no way that a facility in Texas, the one that’s being looked at, could do that.”
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now hosting public meetings where community members can provide public comment on the draft. The final environmental impact statement is scheduled to be released in May of next year. https://sanangelolive.com/news/texas/2020-05-08/high-level-nuclear-waste-storage-facility-west-texas-one-step-closer
Time extended by 60 days for comment on planned New Mexico nuclear waste dump
US Regulators Grant More Time to Consider Nuclear Fuel Plan https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/new-mexico/articles/2020-05-05/us-regulators-grant-more-time-to-consider-nuclear-fuel-plan
The public will have more time to comment on an environmental review related to a proposed multibillion-dollar complex in New Mexico that would store spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants around the U.S. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted a request by members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation, providing another 60 days for the process. By Associated Press, Wire Service Content May 5, 2020,
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The public will have more time to comment on an environmental review related to a proposed multibillion-dollar complex in New Mexico that would store spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants around the U.S
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently granted a request by members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation, providing another 60 days for the process. The delegation had argued for more time and a delay of any public meetings given the health emergency that has resulted from the coronavirus outbreak.
The delegation said in a statement that full public participation is particularly important for projects involving nuclear waste.
Any proposal to store commercial spent nuclear fuel raises a number of health, safety and environmental issues, including potential impacts on local agriculture and industry, issues related to the transportation of nuclear waste, and disproportionate impacts on Native American communities,” they said.
The commission plans to hold a nationwide webinar and five public meetings in New Mexico during the revised public comment period.
Commission Chairwoman Kristine Svinicki said in a recent letter to the delegation that as the health emergency evolves, staff will continue to re-evaluate plans for public participation and will consider whether additional extensions are warranted.
In a preliminary recommendation, the commission favors approval of a license for Holtec International to build the facility in southeastern New Mexico.
The New Jersey-based company is seeking a 40-year license to build what it has described as a state-of-the-art complex near Carlsbad. The first phase calls for storing up to 8,680 metric tons of uranium, which would be packed into 500 canisters. Future expansion could make room for as many as 10,000 canisters of spent nuclear fuel.
Holtec has said the U.S. currently has more than 80,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel in storage at dozens of sites around the country and the inventory is growing at a rate of about 2,000 metric tons a year.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and other elected officials are among those with concerns about the potential environmental effects and the prospects of New Mexico becoming a permanent dumping ground for spent nuclear fuel. They point to the lack of a permanent plan by the federal government phase calls for storing up to 8,680 metric tons of uranium, which would be packed into 500 canisters. Future expansion could make room for as many as 10,000 canisters of spent nuclear fuel.
Holtec has said the U.S. currently has more than 80,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel in storage at dozens of sites around the country and the inventory is growing at a rate of about 2,000 metric tons a year.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and other elected officials are among those with concerns about the potential environmental effects and the prospects of New Mexico becoming a permanent dumping ground for spent nuclear fuel. They point to the lack of a permanent plan by the federal government for dealing with the waste piling up at power plants around the country.
The governor and others also have questions about whether the facility would compromise oil and gas development in the Permian Basin, one of the world’s most prolific energy production regions.
The NRC staff’s preliminary recommendation states there are no environmental impacts that would preclude the commission from issuing a license for environmental reasons.
Indian Point nuclear power station – Unit 2 permanently closed
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Indian Point 2 permanently closes, Nuclear Engineering International 4 May 2020 Unit 2 at the US Indian Point nuclear power plant closed on 30 April as part of a deal reached in January 2017 between Entergy, the state of New York and the environmental group Riverkeeper. The plant’s two pressurised water reactor (PWRs) generated a quarter of the electricity used in New York City and Westchester County in 2017.Indian Point 2, with a net generating capacity of 998MWe, began commercial operation in 1974. Indian Point 3, a 1030MWe unit began operating in 1976 and is due to retire in April 2021. New natural gas power plants and efficiency measures are expected to up the slack.
Entergy has agreed to sell the plant to Holtec International, a New Jersey-based decommissioning firm. But the licence transfer, which is pending Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval, will take place only after the plant closes in 2021…… Entergy said in a statement that it is committed to continued operation of the nuclear fleet in Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi. It shut down Pilgrim in Massachusetts last year and plans to close the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan in 2022. Both these facilities will be decommissioned by Holtec, through its affiliate Comprehensive Decommissioning International…..https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsindian-point-2-permanently-closes-7904262
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Bahrain’s new environmental bill – strict laws against nuclear waste dumping
New environmental bill referred to Parliament
Beyond Nuclear and other groups challenge Holtec’s nuclear waste plan for New Mexico
Carlsbad Current Argus 2nd May 2020, A proposed nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad and Hobbs proceeded through the federal licensing process despite protests from environmental
groups who questioned the legality of the project. Holtec International applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a license to build and operate a facility that would temporarily store spent nuclear fuel rods in a remote location of southeast New Mexico while a permanent repository is developed.
The consolidated interim storage facility was challenged by Beyond Nuclear and other organizations who questioned Holtec’s application for suggesting the U.S. Department of Energy could take ownership of the waste.
To store surplus plutonium, USA’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant will have to be enlarged
 WIPP expansion needed for proposed disposal of surplus plutonium at nuclear waste repository Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus May 1, 2020 Numerous concerns would have to be addressed in the U.S. Department of Energy’s proposed plan to dispose of surplus plutonium at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for the program to be successful, per a DOE-commissioned report from the National Academies of Sciences (NAS).The organization was commissioned by the DOE to study its plan to dilute and dispose of the plutonium at WIPP over 30 years at a cost of about $18.2 billion an alternative to the stalled mixed-oxide program that would have seen the nuclear waste converted into fuel.
The Academies convened a committee to study the dilute-and-dispose method in November 2017, releasing an interim report a year later that noted WIPP did not have the storage space to hold about 48 metric tons (MT) the DOE hoped to dispose of. The final report was released on Thursday, and renewed concerns for storage space, along with the method of disposal’s lack of approval under the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA) – a deal struck in 2000 between the U.S. and Russia to each dispose of 34 MT of plutonium through jointly-approve methods. The PMDA does allow for each country to present alternatives, with such approval for the dilute-and-dispose method pending. Robert Dynes, a physics professor and former president of the University of California who chaired the NAS’ committee also pointed to challenges in scaling up the program, as it was proven viable only on a prototype scale. “Gaps do exist in implementation challenges. This is not trivial,” Dynes said. “The implementation challenges that are not addressed would result in even longer implementation times and costs.” He also pointed to the project’s reliance on WIPP as the nation’s only deep geological repository in operation or production that could hold the waste.
“It’s the nation’s only repository,” Dynes said. “Without access to WIPP, the plan cannot be completed. There’s a lot of pressure on WIPP.” Andrew Orrell, a committee member from Idaho National Laboratory said disposing of the plutonium would change the nature of WIPP, although it would be diluted so as to confirm with WIPP’s waste criteria, and the DOE must maintain public transparency and work closely with the State of New Mexico to honor the facility’s “social contract” if the project moved forward. “The committee felt there was a vulnerability in the social contract between the DOE and State of New Mexico,” Orrell said. “The committee made several recommendations encouraging greater transparency on the entire plan to dispose of this plutonium at WIPP.” Orrell also said there was likely to be competition for space at WIPP, as plutonium pit production was recently increased at Los Alamos National Laboratory. This could be a challenge for WIPP’s capacity, Orrell said, as specified in the federal Land Withdrawal Act (LWA). “Meeting or exceeding the Land Withdrawal Act is pretty easy to foresee,” he said. “The remaining space in WIPP is limited and could be oversubscribed.” This could be a challenge for WIPP’s capacity, Orrell said, as specified in the federal Land Withdrawal Act (LWA). “Meeting or exceeding the Land Withdrawal Act is pretty easy to foresee,” he said. “The remaining space in WIPP is limited and could be oversubscribed.”….. https://www.currentargus.com/story/news/local/2020/05/01/wipp-expansion-needed-proposed-nuclear-waste-disposal/3035582001/ |
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Nuclear reactor pressure vessel to be shipped by rail to Utah, from Sanonofre
The reactor pressure vessel for Unit 1, the first of three reactors on site, will get a permanent home in Utah, By TERI SFORZA | tsforza@scng.com | Orange County Register, May 1, 2020 The original plan, nearly 20 years ago, was to plop the retired nuclear reactor pressure vessel on a barge and ship it off — via the Panama Canal or all the way around the tip of South America — to a final resting place in South Carolina.But there were strong objections to transporting the huge metal shell that way. After all, atoms had actually been split inside it. And so the giant, but empty, heart of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 1 was packed away in a huge steel cylinder in 2002. The cylinder was filled with grout for shielding against radiation. It was sealed, and has been stored at the plant ever since.
Now — as serious tear-down work gets under way on Units 2 and 3 — the heart of long-ago-dismantled Unit 1 is finally slated to leave San Onofre forever.
Operator Southern California Edison is preparing to ship Unit 1’s reactor pressure vessel to a licensed disposal facility in Clive, Utah, which is owned by Energy Solutions, one of San Onofre’s decommissioning contractors. It will have company: San Onofre’s retired steam generators were shipped to Clive in 2012.
Though officials can’t get too specific on precisely when or how the vessel will go — for safety reasons — they’ve been preparing a rail spur to haul heavy components off site.
The reactor vessel is considered low-level waste, the least hazardous of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s radioactive waste classifications. Contaminated cleaning supplies, used disposable protective clothing and reactor parts are other examples of low-level waste.
How can the crucible for nuclear reactions be low-level waste? The most radioactive parts within it were removed, cut up, and stored with higher-level waste on site, said John Dobken, a spokesman for Edison. What’s left is Cobalt-60, which has a half-life of about five years.
Unit 1 was retired in 1992, and the reactor vessel has been packaged for 18 years, so it has gone through about five half-lives, reducing its radioactivity, Dobken said.The contact dose rate for the vessel package is less than 0.1 millirem an hour, which is 500 times below the Department of Transportation limit for these types of shipments, Edison said in a primer on the move. For comparison, a chest X-ray provides a dose of 10 millirem.
Since this is low-level waste, it was never part of Edison’s contract with the federal government requiring the U.S. Department of Energy to haul away high-level waste by 1998 in exchange for payments into the Nuclear Waste Fund.
The federal government’s paralysis on finding a permanent home for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste is why 40 years’ worth of it remains stuck on site, generating sharp controversy.
While critics have called on Edison to cease decommissioning work at San Onofre during the lock-down, it proceeds with “pandemic protocols” in place, Dobken said. Everyone on site must wear a mask and practice social distancing.
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By the numbers: The package weighs 770 tons, or more than 1.5 million pounds. Inside is the Unit 1 reactor pressure vessel, pieces of radioactive metal and grout for radiation shielding. It’s a 2-inch-thick carbon steel cylindrical canister with a 3-inch-thick carbon steel liner; top and bottom plates are 3 inches thick. The canister is 38.5 feet long and 15.5 feet in diameter.
With international finance help, Russia is dismantling its most radioactive ship
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Russia’s most radioactive ship reaches dismantlement milestone The Lepse service ship, once the most glaring nuclear hazard in the Murmansk harbor, will now be emptied of nearly all of its radioactive cargo by the end of this year, Russian nuclear authorities have said. Bellona April 29, 2020 by Anna Kireeva, Charles DiggesThe Lepse service ship, once the most glaring nuclear hazard in the Murmansk harbor, will now be emptied of nearly all of its radioactive cargo by the end of this year, Russian nuclear authorities have said.
During its career as a refueling vessel for Soviet era nuclear icebreakers, the Lepse amassed 639 spent nuclear fuel assemblies, some of them damaged, creating an environmental danger that bobbed neglected at a Murmansk dock for decades. After it was taken out of service in 1988, the Lepse was left to languish at Atomflot, the headquarters of Russia’s nuclear icebreaker fleet, where it posed a severe radioactive hazard to Murmansk and its 300,000 residents. Over the course of more than two decades, Bellona worked with Russian officials ensure the vessel’s safe disposal. Now those plans are coming to fruition as officials say 97 percent of the nuclear fuel loaded into the Lepse’s holds will be emptied at the Nerpa Shipyard, to where the vessels was finally moved in 2012 for its painstaking dismantling…… All told, the Lepse participated in 14 refueling operations aboard the Lenin as well as the nuclear icebreakers the Sibir and the Arktika. In 1981, the vessel was again retrofitted, this time to so it could accommodate irradiated machine parts and other radioactive waste the nuclear icebreakers needed to offload. The Lepse’s history took a darker when it was used to help dump radioactive waste in the Kara and Barents Seas, contributing to Russia’s Cold War heritage of f nuclear and radiological hazards strewn across the Arctic sea floor, the extent of which is only beginning to be understood. It was in the early 1990s that the Lepse and the dangers it posed caught Bellona’s eye, and the organization mobilized the European Union to allocate funding toward removing it from Murmansk harbor and safely dismantling it. The boat was finally towed from Atomflot to the Nerpa naval shipyard in September 2012, after more than a decade of strenuous and often tedious negotiations among Bellona, the Russian government and European financial institutions – most notably the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development – to ensure the Lepse’s safe disposal. The EBRD-managed program is financed by the NDEP Nuclear Window, an international fund with contributions from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, the European Union, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and the UK. The bank is also helping finance the safe removal of some 22,000 spent nuclear fuel assemblies from Andreyeva Bay, a former technical base used to service Soviet Northern Fleet Submarines. https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2020-04-russias-most-radioactive-ship-reaches-dismantlement-milestone |
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Indian Point nuclear power station’s first step to closure, as one reactor shuts down
Nuclear power plant north of New York City to start shutdown, Daily Journal ,By MARY ESCH Associated Press, Apr 29, 2020
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — With the push of a red button, one of the two operating nuclear reactors at the Indian Point Energy Center along the Hudson River north of New York City will shut down Thursday night as federal regulators consider the plant owner’s proposal to sell it to a company that plans to demolish it by the end of 2033 at a projected cost of $2.3 billion.
The 1,020-megawatt Unit 2 reactor will close for good Thursday and 1,040-megawatt Unit 3 will close in April 2021 as part of a deal reached in January 2017 between Entergy Corp., the state of New York and the environmental group Riverkeeper. The Unit 1 reactor shut down in 1974, 12 years after the plant began operation in the Westchester County town of Buchanan……
Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo had long sought the shutdown, saying the plant 24 miles north of Manhattan posed too great a risk to millions of people who live and work nearby. Riverkeeper noted Hudson River fish kills, soil and water contamination, recurrent emergency shutdowns and vulnerability to terrorist attacks. Entergy cited low natural gas prices and increased operating costs as key factors in its decision to close Indian Point and exit the merchant power business.
A year ago, Entergy announced a deal to sell the 240-acre facility to the New Jersey-based decommissioning firm Holtec International, which has submitted a dismantling plan to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. At a public information session held online last week, NRC representatives said the commission is reviewing Holtec’s financial and technical qualifications, as well as public comments, before approving the license transfer.
According to the NRC, Indian Point will join 13 other nuclear power plants across the United States that have begun the decades-long process of decommissioning, which dismantles a facility to the point that it no longer presents a radioactive danger.
Under the decommissioning process, spent fuel rod assemblies are initially placed in large pools of water where the hot fuel is cooled for at least two years. Then the spent fuel is transferred into giant steel and concrete cylinders that stay at the site unless or until a national nuclear waste storage facility is created……..
A 2017 analysis by the New York Independent System Operator, which runs the state’s electrical grid, concluded that Indian Point’s closure won’t impair the grid’s ability to keep New York City’s lights on. ……https://www.smdailyjournal.com/news/state/nuclear-power-plant-north-of-new-york-city-to-start-shutdown/article_62453a0b-19d7-5baf-9dfc-a7db2d15710f.html
Canada on verge of investing in plutonium
Gordon Edwards <ccnr@web.ca>\, 26 Apr 2020, It seems that the two SMNR (Small Modular 
Nuclear Reactor) entrepreneurs in New Brunswick (Canada), along with other nuclear “players” worldwide, are trying to revitalize the “plutonium economy” — a nuclear industry dream from the distant past that many believed had been laid to rest because of the failure of plutonium-based breeder reactors almost everywhere – e.g. USA, France, Britain, Japan …
UK govt again to try “astronomically expensive” plutonium reprocessing nuclear reactors
Westminster relaunches plutonium reactors despite ‘disastrous’ experience, The National, 26 April, 20 By Rob Edwards This article was brought to you by The Ferret.
THE UK Government is trying to resurrect plutonium-powered reactors despite abandoning a multi-billion bid to make them work in Scotland.
Documents released by the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) under freedom of information law reveal that fast reactors, which can burn and breed plutonium, are among “advanced nuclear technologies” being backed by UK ministers.
Two experimental fast reactors were built and tested at a cost of £4 billion over four decades at Dounreay in Caithness. But the programme was closed in 1994 as uneconomic after a series of accidents and leaks.
Now ONR has been funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in London to boost its capacity to regulate new designs of fast reactors, along with other advanced nuclear technologies.
Campaigners have condemned the moves to rehabilitate plutonium as a nuclear fuel as “astronomically expensive”, “disastrous” and “mind-boggling”. They point out that it can be made into nuclear bombs and is highly toxic – and the UK has 140 tonnes of it…….
ONR released 23 documents about advanced nuclear technologies in response to a freedom of information request by Dr David Lowry, a London-based research fellow at the US Institute for Resource and Security Studies. They include redacted minutes and notes of meetings from 2019 discussing fast reactors, and are being published by The Ferret.
One note of a meeting in November 2019 shows that ONR attempted to access a huge database on fast reactors maintained by the UK Government’s National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) in Warrington, Cheshire…..
Two companies have so far won funding under this heading to help develop fast reactors that can burn plutonium. The US power company, Westinghouse, is proposing lead-cooled fast reactors, while another US company called Advanced Reactor Concepts wants to build sodium-cooled fast reactors.
In November 2019 BEIS also announced an £18 million grant to a consortium led by reactor manufacturer, Rolls Royce, to develop a “small modular reactor designed and manufactured in the UK capable of producing cost effective electricity”.
According to Dr Lowry, fast reactors would require building a plutonium fuel fabrication plant. Such plants are “astronomically expensive” and have proved “technical and financial disasters” in the past, he said.
“Any such fabrication plant would be an inevitable target for terrorists wanting to create spectacular iconic disruption of such a high profile plutonium plant, with devastating human health and environmental hazards.”
Lowry was originally told by ONR that it held no documents on advanced nuclear technologies. As well as redacting the 23 documents that have now been released, the nuclear safety regulator is withholding a further 13 documents as commercially confidential – a claim that Lowry dismissed as “fatuous nonsense”.
THE veteran nuclear critic and respected author, Walt Patterson, argued that no fast reactor programme in the world had worked since the 1950s. Even if it did, it would take “centuries” to burn the UK’s 140 tonne plutonium stockpile, and create more radioactive waste with nowhere to go, he said.
“Extraordinary – they never learn do they? I remain perpetually gobsmacked at the lobbying power of the nuclear obsessives,” he told The Ferret. “The mind continue to boggle.”
The Edinburgh-based nuclear consultant, Pete Roche, suggested that renewable energy was the cheapest and most sustainable solution to climate change. “The UK Government seems to be planning some kind of low carbon dystopia with nuclear reactors getting smaller, some of which at least will be fuelled by plutonium,” he said.
“The idea of weapons-useable plutonium fuel being transported on our roads should send shivers down the spine of security experts and emergency planners.”
Another nuclear expert and critic, Dr Ian Fairlie, described BEIS’s renewed interest in fast reactors as problematic. “Experience with them over many years in the US, Russia, France and the UK has shown them to be disastrous and a waste of taxpayers’ money,” he said.
This is not the view taken by the UK Nuclear Industry Association, which brings together nuclear companies. It wants to see the UK’s plutonium being used in reactors rather than disposed of as waste……
“The Scottish Government remains opposed to new nuclear power plants in Scotland,” a spokesperson told The Ferret. “The Scottish Government believes our long term energy needs can be met without the need for new nuclear capacity.”
The UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy did not respond to repeated requests to comment. https://www.thenational.scot/news/18405852.westminster-relaunches-plutonium-reactors-despite-disastrous-experience/
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