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Opening the lid on Russia’s super-secretive nuclear industry

“Our country will receive waste from foreign nuclear power plants built by Rosatom from time to time”  https://realnoevremya.com/articles/4406-vladimir-slivyak-on-import-of-radioactive-waste-to-russia  By Matvey Antropov, 14.04.2020

Environmentalist Vladimir Slivyak on the industry that “always kept its affairs secret”

On March 19 and April 6 of this year, German eco-activists protested against the export of new shipments of radioactive waste to Russia, “cynically undertaken in the midst of the pandemic to safely avoid protests.” Realnoe Vremya spoke with Vladimir Slivyak, co-chairman of the Russian environmental group Ecozaschita!, author of the book From Hiroshima to Fukushima, about how nuclear waste is imported to Russia, how open information is about Rosatom’s activities, and whether a nuclear power plant will be built in Tatarstan.

“We will know that certain wastes are imported to Russia after their transportation or arrival”

Vladimir, let’s first determine what is considered to be radioactive waste.

There are different points of view on this issue. There is a view of the nuclear industry, which is the position of the state, and there is a view of environmentalists, which, of course, is fundamentally different. The first is that if you plan to use radioactive waste (RW) further, then they are not considered waste. Environmentalists believe that any action with radioactive materials leaves waste (by-products). This can be work at nuclear power plants, in places where uranium is extracted and enriched — there are a lot of such places. In general, the discussion about what is considered waste in Russia has been going on for many years.

It should also be noted that when it comes to importing nuclear waste to Russia, it is most often waste from uranium enrichment — depleted uranium hexafluoride UF6 or spent fuel from nuclear power plants.

How many tonnes of radioactive waste are imported to Russia and who is their main exporter?

There is a contract, under which from 2019 to 2022, 12,000 tonnes of depleted uranium hexafluoride should be imported to our country from the plant in Gronau (North Rhine —Westphalia), owned by Urenco. Approximately 6,000 tonnes have already been imported. Of course, we don’t know about all the contracts. From 2016 to at least 2019, Russia received depleted uranium hexafluoride from the British plant in Capenhurst of the same company Urenco. It is unknown exactly how much it was imported.

The nuclear industry has always kept its business secret and still does. All the words that they want to be open and engage with the public are conversations in favour of the poor. Of course, all the information in Rosatom is classified. We will know that certain wastes are imported to Russia after their transportation or arrival to Russia. We have colleagues abroad who monitor the movement of nuclear waste. So we will only find out about this through our own channels of civil cooperation of activists. Reports from representatives of the nuclear industry are very rare in the media, so it is quite difficult for us to navigate. But the data on the movement of uranium hexafluoride from the plant in Gronau are accurate — they were obtained by a member of the Bundestag from the official response of the German government.

It should also be noted that Rosatom builds nuclear power plants in different countries of the world. Last year, we conducted the first independent study in Russia to find out where Rosatom operates, where nuclear power plants are actually being built, and where only the appearance of construction is being created. We have a corresponding report on our website. Usually, the priority option when signing an agreement on the construction of a nuclear power plant involves the return of spent nuclear fuel to Russia, of course, for a lot of money. In other words, our country will receive waste from foreign nuclear power plants built by Rosatom from time to time. Ecologists consider them to be one of the most dangerous among the nuclear waste.

“They say that this is not waste but valuable raw materials. At the same time, a million tonnes of ‘raw materials’ lie idle for decades”

As far as I know, the import of nuclear waste in Russia was not always allowed, right?

Yes, in the ’90s, spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants could not be transported. And then it was considered waste. There was also a complete ban on the import of other raw materials. The nuclear industry (then ministry of atomic energy) came out of the situation in the following way: referring to long-concluded agreements that need to be fulfilled, the ministry for atomic energy asked to make an exception for them. And the government agreed with these arguments.

And in 2001, a bill was passed allowing the import of spent fuel from foreign nuclear power plants and removing it from the category of waste (because it can be used further). Although the essence of the question on this topic is as follows: during the production of electricity at nuclear power plants, nuclear waste occurs. Whether you use them in the future or not -it’s still waste. Besides, not all spent fuel is used in any way in industry.

Our legislation has done everything for Rosatom’s comfortable operation. If the latter has indicated somewhere that it plans to use the waste in some way in the future, this means that it ceases to be radioactive waste. But this is absurd.

Rosatom is committed to disposing of all depleted uranium hexafluoride available in Russia by 2080. Here is a quote on this topic from Novaya Gazeta: “But against the background of the international outcry, Rosatom announced the launch of a programme for the management of DUHF, in which uranium “tails” are called raw materials for nuclear power of the future, a source of hydrogen fluoride and fluorine. One of the goals of the programme is the complete elimination of DUHF reserves at all Russian landfills by 2080. “Our activities can be designated with the Recycling sign,” said the acting CEO of Techsnabexport (Rosatom’s subsidiary) Yury Ulyanin.”

Does anyone believe that Rosatom will be able to recycle millions of tonnes of UF6 by 2080? In Russia, any documents that speak of such a distant time are perceived as absurd. At the moment, more than one million tonnes of depleted uranium hexafluoride are stored at enterprises and in places where radioactive waste is stored in Russia. A very small part has been converted to a different form that is more convenient for storage, but this is not even disposal or recycling. 

Now, when the issue of importing UF6 from Germany has been raised, Rosatom insists that it is not waste but insanely valuable and necessary raw materials. But at the same time, they have a million tonnes of this raw material without any use for decades

“We were brought and showed absolutely nothing”

Under what conditions are nuclear waste stored? How safe is it?

For example, waste from Germany is being transported to a landfill in the closed city of Novouralsk in Sverdlovsk Oblast. No one is allowed in this city to see what kind of radioactive waste is stored there. There are satellite photos that show that the containers are under the open sky. In some photos in Google Maps or Google Earth, one can see that some containers are subject to corrosion.

This information is also available from government agencies, but it is from the second half of the 2000s. Since then, publication of information on nuclear waste had been restricted. In the 2000s, Rostekhnadzor made reports on dangerous types of industry in Russia, in which the risks were described in detail. It said that a significant number of containers are subject to corrosion and there is a threat of their depressurization.

Now Rosatom says that everything is fine, take our word for it. Word — because an ordinary person can not get to the places where any radioactive waste is transported. For the most part, these are closed cities with access control. Even if someone is allowed on them as an exception, they only show a small piece of territory. You can’t freely study containers, you don’t decide what they show you.

I had a single experience of visiting a closed city in the 2000s. Then there was a fire at one of the enterprises of the uranium industry in the city of Lesnoy, Sverdlovsk Oblast. We distributed information about the fire through our channels, and a representative of Rosatom told us something like this: “Let’s take you to that company, and you will see for yourself that the information about the fire is not true.” My colleague and I were brought and showed absolutely nothing. We were taken to the house of culture, where the employees of this enterprise were sitting, and they began to express something to us. We asked: “Will you show us anything?” They told us they wouldn’t show us anything, and sent us back.

Apart from satellite images, there is no other open information on radioactive waste in closed cities.

Where and how are other types of radioactive waste stored in Russia? Are there any radiation leak?

If we take spent nuclear fuel from a nuclear power plant, then after removing it from the reactor, it is stored in pools, where it lies in the water for several years and cools down. Spent fuel can be stored dry for a long time in containers on special sites.

By default, we should assume that in theory, radiation leakage is always possible, and therefore we need to achieve the most reliable barrier between RW and the environment. Once radiation enters the environment, you can no longer control it. The rain or wind blows, and the radioactive trace spreads further and further. The only chance to contain radiation is to organize very well the places where radioactive substances are stored.

A person cannot imagine all the combinations of extreme circumstances that can lead to the depressurization of a container with radioactive substances or to the destruction of a storage facility. Accidents happen because people can’t calculate everything. Each accident is an example of some new combination of circumstances that we could not have predicted.

The nuclear industry remains the most classified in Russia. They try never to talk about any problems or accidents, and this is contrary to the interests of public safety. From the latest news, we can recall how last year the media reported about a suspected radiation leak in Novouralsk. We haven’t really found out what happened there.

April 16, 2020 Posted by | Reference, Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties, wastes | Leave a comment

America’s eternal nuclear waste problem

Nuclear waste: the problem that will never, ever go away   https://www.oswegocountynewsnow.com/columnists/nuclear-waste-the-problem-that-will-never-ever-go-away/article_39f2211c-7f58-11ea-9421-93cbd1c100fb.htmlBy SETH WALLACE editor@palltimes.com , 15 Apr 20, OSWEGO — The future of nuclear energy in the United States is murky, as is the debate over how the nation — including Oswego County’s three reactors — should deal with the radioactive waste of its electricity production.

After burning at 550 degrees Fahrenheit for several years, the fuel in the cores of nuclear reactors (uranium, in most cases) will experience diminishing returns of energy output. The 700-pound, 14.5’-tall uranium fuel assemblies must be replaced, but what to do with the street lamp-sized chunk of (very) heavy metal that will leak radiation for the next 100,000 years?

For nearly 40 years, federal officials have grappled with the question of nuclear waste disposal. There’s no easy answer.

All the uranium ever burned and extracted from reactors at Exelon’s Nine Mile Point and James A. FitzPatrick nuclear facilities remains at the sites, within sight of the Lake Ontario shoreline in Scriba. After several years in a cooling pool adjacent to the reactor itself, the depleted uranium is entombed in steel and concrete silos (known as dry cask storage) at a separate part of the plants’ campuses.

Dry cask storage is “designed to contain radiation, manage heat and prevent nuclear fission. They must resist earthquakes, projectiles, tornadoes, floods, temperature extremes and other scenarios,” according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which oversees all nuclear plants in the United States. While licensed on a 20-year basis and in most cases built to be effective for more than 100 years, dry cask installations are nevertheless not designed to last forever — unlike the radiation emanating from the uranium.

There’s a lot of science involved in using uranium to power our homes and businesses, but the solution to its waste problem is undeniably a political one.

The federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 mandated the Department of Energy to find a solution to the problem of how to collect, transport and store American nuclear waste in a central location. Four decades later, the spent uranium from FitzPatrick and Nine Mile Point’s reactors still sits in Scriba, enjoying its lakeside view.

In 1987, Yucca Mountain, Nevada, was selected from a pool of eight potential sites to host the nation’s geological repository for high-level nuclear waste.

According to the NRC, the Yucca Mountain facility would look basically as follows:

1. Canisters of waste, sealed in special casks, are shipped to the site by truck or train.

2. Shipping casks are removed, and the inner tubes with the waste are placed in steel, multilayered storage containers.

3. An automated system sends storage containers underground to the tunnels.

4. Containers are stored along the tunnels, on their sides.

Unsurprisingly, this was not a universally popular decision with the people of Nye County, Nevada, where Yucca Mountain is located.

NRC documents describe the scenes at the first public hearings in Nye County about the project in 1999 and 2000, after more than a decade of geological studies and environmental impact research.

“The citizens expressed concern about why they felt they couldn’t trust the government and were afraid of being lied to,” read one section of a report prepared by the Center for Nuclear Waste Regulatory Analyses.

In addition to the scientific challenges of building a facility capable of withstanding one million years of natural disasters (an actual court-ordered requirement), the NRC found they had to deal with unexpected human hurdles

“At one of the meetings a local politician attended the meeting with his own television reporter and used the meeting as a venue for grandstanding,” the report said. “His comments off camera to the NRC staff were very complimentary, but on camera he took a much harsher stance.”

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, has indicated that while she believes a federal repository is the best solution to spent uranium storage, she would not demand the construction of one without the consent of its local communities.

“Senator Gillibrand believes we must find a permanent solution for spent fuel storage and the Department of Energy should work with the states and with Congress to find an acceptable site,” said Gillibrand spokesperson Miriam Cash. “There should be a federal repository for permanently storing civilian nuclear waste and communities in New York should not have to be required to store it on-site for decades.”

Funds for the Yucca Mountain licensing review process finally ran out in 2011 and no meaningful progress has been made since that point, according to federal nuclear officials.

Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu, a member of President Barack Obama’s administration, dubbed Yucca Mountain “off the table” in 2009, but clearly, the table still has room to accommodate its return.

Yucca Mountain sits in the middle of the Nevada desert roughly 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Since the site’s selection in 1987 as the national spent fuel repository from a pool of eight other locations, the Department of Energy has run into roadblocks from local and environmental interests and, perhaps most importantly, opposition from Nevada Democrat Harry Reid. Reid represented Nevada in the U.S. Senate for 30 years beginning in 1987 and deftly wielded his influence, including as Senate majority leader, to stifle Yucca Mountain progress until his 2017 retirement. That was the same year President Donald Trump’s first executive budget contained funds to restart the research into a feasible transition from individual reactor site dry cask storage to a national repository system.

Executive budgets are not law, however, and while Trump’s public support for more than $100 million in funding symbolized yet another component in his industry-friendly administration’s larger platform, Congress has yet to approve any of the dollars.

“The political debate rages on,” Rod McCullum of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.,  told The Palladium-Times in a recent interview. “The scientific and technical basis is as strong as ever, but the political will to move forward is as weak as ever.”

Any meaningful change in funding for the Yucca Mountain licensing review would would need to come from Congress, but in a legislative body where in the best of times progress is measured in subatomic increments, the current health crisis has brought all non-COVID-19 discussion to an indefinate halt.

In a statement on the topic of dry cask storage versus a federal repository, U.S. Rep. Anthony Brindisi, D-Utica, expressed support for a “bipartisan solution that identifies and funds a permanent storage solution” and removing the spent uranium from its sites. Brindisi is also a co-sponsor on H.R. 2314, the Nuclear Powers America Act, which provides investment tax credits for nuclear power plants.

The course reversal (and back again) by the federal government isn’t helping matters. As recently as 2018, legislation was proposed funding Yucca Mountain’s review process. For many, the term “nuclear waste” evokes images of leaking barrels of glowing, toxic goo; the boring truth is that spent fuel’s true danger lies more in the quantity than its lack-of-quality. As long as nuclear plants continue to operate in the United States, they will continue to produce waste uranium that must be carefully stored on site in dry cask facilities.

Yucca Mountain’s license application is for a term of 10,000 years. It is unclear if that is a long enough span of time for officials to come to a final decision.

Seth Wallace is the managing editor of The Palladium-Times and a nuclear energy policy enthusiast.

April 16, 2020 Posted by | Reference, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Microbes in nuclear fuel ponds slow down the decommissioning process

April 11, 2020 Posted by | decommission reactor, Reference, UK | Leave a comment

Idaho lawmakers want nuclear waste ready to get trucked away

Idaho lawmakers want nuclear waste ready to get trucked away

by KEITH RIDLER Associated Press, Saturday, April 11th 2020  BOISE, Idaho (AP)

– Idaho’s congressional delegation wants the U.S. Department of Energy to prepare spent nuclear fuel for trucking out of eastern Idaho ahead of a 2035 deadline.

The two Republican senators and two Republican representatives in the letter sent Wednesday said the department could be readying the spent fuel for placement in protective trucking containers.

A 1995 agreement following a series of federal lawsuits requires the Energy Department to remove most of the spent fuel and other nuclear waste from the site that includes the Idaho National Laboratory……..

The Idaho lawmakers acknowledge the lack of a permanent repository in their letter, but they say preparing the waste for removal from Idaho should start anyway. …….

The U.S. Government Accountability Office reports that the U.S. has more than 99,000 tons (90,000 metric tons) of spent nuclear fuel stored at 80 sites in 35 states. Most of the spent fuel is from nuclear power generation at commercial plants, with about 15% coming from the U.S. government’s nuclear weapons program.

Some of that nuclear waste was being sent to Idaho for years until former Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus and former Republican Gov. Phil Batt engaged in a series of federal court battles with the Energy Department resulting in the 1995 Settlement Agreement during Batt’s term that is generally seen as preventing Idaho from becoming a high-level nuclear waste dump.

That agreement, with some exceptions, requires the Energy Department by 2035 to remove spent fuel and nuclear waste from its 890-square-mile (2,300-square-kilometer) eastern Idaho site in sagebrush steppe. The area is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Idaho Falls and sits atop a giant aquifer supplying farms and cities in the region with water.

The 1995 agreement has been altered several times over the years, including twice recently…….

The U.S. Navy also stores spent fuel from its fleet of nuclear-powered warships at the site. That spent fuel is also covered in the 1995 agreement. https://idahonews.com/news/local/idaho-lawmakers-want-nuclear-waste-ready-to-get-trucked-away

April 11, 2020 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Trump uses the pandemic, to decimate environmental restrictions. Nuclear waste to landfill decision is just one example.

April 9, 2020 Posted by | environment, politics, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Bosnia might need international arbitration over Croatia’s nuclear waste dump plan near the border

April 9, 2020 Posted by | EUROPE, politics international, wastes | Leave a comment

Idaho lawmakers want DOE to remove spent nuclear fuel from the Idaho National Laboratory.

April 9, 2020 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

University boffins discuss the eternal problem of nuclear wastes

Amazing – still none of these scientists suggests stopping making this radioactive trash!

The problem of nuclear waste, The Naked Scientists, 07 April 2020    Interview with Claire Corkhill, University of Sheffield

Part of the show The Rise of Radioactivity

  Our issues with radioactivity though are obviously not behind us. A major headache today is how to handle and safely store nuclear waste. Here in the UK, we’ve got 650,000 cubic metres of the stuff – enough to fill Wembley Stadium – and it’ll be radioactive and dangerous for 100,000 years. ……..
Chris – So what do we do with all this stuff? We end up with these barrels of what looks like glass or concrete; that sounds fine. What do we do, just bury them?
Claire – Well, they’re currently packaged in specially-engineered containers and stored in over 20 different secure nuclear sites around the country, and most of it is at Sellafield in Cumbria. And these stores are designed to withstand extreme weather and earthquakes. But the problem that we have is that the waste is so radioactive, we can’t actually go anywhere near it. If you were to touch the outside of one of the glass waste containers, the radiation dose that you’d receive is 200,000 times more than a fatal dose of radiation. So whilst it’s okay to store the waste securely for the time being, it’s clear that we need a more permanent solution that requires less security. So remember, these wastes will be radioactive for over a hundred thousand years and they’ll be highly radioactive for several thousands of years, so we can’t just leave them in their warehouses and hope that future civilizations will know what to do with them.
 ……………………These nuclear waste materials will change over the hundred thousand years that they’ll be radioactive. And there are some different ways that this might occur. One would be corrosion, so the natural corrosion of the materials once they’re buried deep under the ground, which is their final disposal route; if they slowly corrode in groundwater they may release their radioactivity. But the other issue is, as you rightly noted, that the radioactivity inside the waste might actually cause the waste itself to break down. And you can think of this as a highly energetic particle, a bit like was described before with breaking DNA; instead of breaking DNA we’re actually breaking the intrinsic chemical bonds inside our nuclear waste material, and this will essentially cause the waste to disintegrate. And this is something that we have to understand.

Chris – So what you’re saying is, if we’ve got say something that looks like glass, because it’s spitting out all these energetic particles of radiation all the time, it’s slowly going to shatter the glass. It’s almost like shaking the glass very, very hard for hundreds of thousands of years; it’s eventually going to fall to pieces and it will no longer be any good at retaining and constraining the radioactive products inside.

Claire – Essentially yes…….

Adam – How do we design something in the future so that this stuff stays where it is, and isn’t archeologist bait, and they suddenly dig up a radioactive cube of glass?

Claire – At the present time we are thinking that we will not mark when nuclear waste is kept. It’s going to be buried deep below the ground and nobody will know it’s there. The worry about putting a marker on the surface is that it will automatically draw, humans particularly because we’re very inquisitive, to that site to find out what’s going on. …… the plan at the moment is to not mark the waste and hope that people forget about it; and that if in the future they decide to dig there, they have the technology to dig that deep – so we’re talking between 500 metres and a kilometre below the ground – and if they have that technology, then they will also have some technology to be able to detect the radiation and know that they shouldn’t go there. https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/problem-nuclear-waste

April 9, 2020 Posted by | Reference, wastes, Women | Leave a comment

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposing dumping some nuclear wastes in landfills – a huge public health danger

April 7, 2020 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Bosnia and Herzegovina oppose Croatia’s nuclear waste plan

April 4, 2020 Posted by | EUROPE, politics international, wastes | Leave a comment

Action on pandemic means that Hanford nuclear waste clean-up is stalled

US nuclear waste cleanup takes back seat to coronavirus, New York Post, By Associated Press, April 3, 2020 ALBUQUERQUE, NM —The US government’s efforts to clean up Cold War-era waste from nuclear research and bomb making at federal sites around the country has lumbered along for decades, often at a pace that watchdogs and other critics say threatens public health and the environment.Now, fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic is resulting in more challenges as the nation’s only underground repository for nuclear waste finished ramping down operations Wednesday to keep workers safe.Over more than 20 years, tons of waste have been stashed deep in the salt caverns that make up the southern New Mexico site. Until recently, several shipments a week of special boxes and barrels packed with lab coats, rubber gloves, tools and debris contaminated with plutonium and other radioactive elements were being trucked to the remote facility from South Carolina, Idaho and other spots.

That’s all but grinding to a halt.

Shipments to the desert outpost will be limited for the foreseeable future while work at the country’s national laboratories and defense sites shift to only those operations considered “mission critical.”

Officials at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant warned state regulators in a letter Tuesday that more time would be needed for inspections and audits and that work would be curtailed or shifts would be staggered to ensure workers keep their distance from one another.

“This action is being taken out of an abundance of caution for the safety of employees and the community,” said Donavan Mager, a spokesman for Nuclear Waste Partnership, the contractor that runs the repository.

Some critical duties still must be done — like placing bolts in the repository’s ceilings to ensure the shifting salt doesn’t collapse.

It’s the same at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the once-secret city in northern New Mexico that gained famed for being the birthplace of the atomic bomb. Most employees there are working remotely and the summer intern program is on pause.

Some work related to cleanup is ongoing, such as radiological surveys, inspections of hazardous waste storage facilities and maintenance of an early notification system designed to protect drinking water supplies.

In Washington state, tours of one of the most significant nuclear reactors in atomic history are on hold. Public meetings at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation have been canceled and those who want to review documents in person are out of luck as officials there downsized to mission critical operations nearly two weeks ago.

The number of employees on site has dwindled to the “absolute minimum” needed to run safety and security programs and keep IT systems humming for those working at home.

The circumstances are unlike anything ever faced by managers at Hanford, Los Alamos and elsewhere……

Democratic senators had voiced concerns just weeks ago that the Trump administration’s proposed budget for the US Energy Department calls for less money to clean up the Cold War-era waste while funneling significantly more to fund modernization of the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

The proposal provides nearly $27 billion, most of which would go toward nuclear security work that includes restarting production of the plutonium cores that are used as triggers inside nuclear weapons. Less than one-quarter of that would be used for cleanup of 16 sites in 11 states.

“The coronavirus pandemic demonstrates why we should get cleanup done once and for all,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “What we do as humans ebbs and flows with history, but the radioactive and toxic wastes that we leave behind last longer than our recorded history. We should be acting now.”

Watchdogs also pointed to permit renewals and other regulatory actions related to cleanup that could get pushed back.

The federal government has agreements with several states to reach certain cleanup milestones. Officials were reticent to say what deadlines might be missed, noting only that the Energy Department’s environmental managers are evaluating the potential effects on projects across the complex as the virus spreads.

US Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich said worker health should remain the priority but noted that as lawmakers consider more economic stimulus legislation, increased funding for environmental management could help support jobs and accelerate cleanup in the future. https://nypost.com/2020/04/03/cleanup-of-us-nuclear-waste-takes-back-seat-as-virus-spreads/

 

April 4, 2020 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Anxieties over proposal to allow some nuclear waste to be disposed in landfills

Advocates raise questions about proposal to allow some nuclear waste to be disposed in landfills The Hill, BY RACHEL FRAZIN – 04/03/20  Scientists and advocates are raising concerns about a proposed relaxation on regulations for disposing of nuclear waste, saying that the government should halt the proposal as the scientific community focuses on the coronavirus. 

A March 6 Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) proposal would allow for the disposal of some nuclear waste in municipal landfills, rather than a licensed facility.

Advocates say the proposal could put public health at risk, pushing the NRC to give the public more time to weigh in.

“What they’re trying to do is prop up a failing industry so that the cost of decommissioning these [nuclear] reactors is reduced so you don’t have to send it to a place that is expensive because it’s designed to safely handle it,” said Dan Hirsch, the former director of the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy. 

“I find it just astonishing that they would do that in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic,” he added. “How the NRC can look themselves in the mirror to propose massive deregulation and do it in the midst of the pandemic, I find it just ethically shocking.”……..

“If they’re going to consider it at all, it should only be considered once the pandemic is behind us,” he said. 

Currently, the nuclear waste in question is typically disposed of at licensed waste disposal facilities, which have adequate training and equipment to protect public health. 

The proposal would grant some exceptions to this regulation for waste with a cumulative radiation dose level of up to 25 millirem…….

n a statement on Thursday, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility Pacific Director Jeff Ruch also criticized the proposal. 

“NRC’s action could transform most municipal dumps into radioactive repositories, with essentially no safeguards for workers, nearby residents, or adjoining water tables,” he said.  https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/490988-advocates-raise-questions-about-proposal-to-allow-some-nuclear

April 4, 2020 Posted by | environment, USA, wastes | 2 Comments

Danger in transporting spent nuclear fuel to New Mexico

Why should NM store nation’s nuclear waste?   https://www.abqjournal.com/1439716/why-should-nm-store-nations-nuclear-waste.html  BY LAURA WATCHEMPINO / MULTICULTURAL ALLIANCE FOR A SAFE ENVIRONMENT, PUEBLO OF ACOMA

Friday, April 3rd, 2020 If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s conclusion that it’s safe to move spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power plants across the country to a proposed storage facility in Lea County sounds vanilla-coated, it’s because the draft environmental impact statement for a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility submitted by Holtec International did not address how the casks containing the spent fuel would be transported to New Mexico.

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

Nor was the potential for cracked or corroded canisters to leak radiation studied because an earlier NRC Generic EIS for the Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel assumed damaged fuel storage canisters would be detected during an intermediary dry transfer system or a pool. But Holtec’s proposal only addresses a new destination for the high-level nuclear waste – not the removal and transport of the fuel storage canisters from nuclear power plants to New Mexico.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Attempting to remove this stabilized nuclear waste from where it is securely stored across hundreds or thousands of miles through our homelands and backyards to a private storage facility also raises some thorny liability issues, since the United States will then be relieved of overseeing the spent nuclear fuel in perpetuity. The states and nuclear plants that want to send us their long-lived radioactive waste will also be off the hook, leaving New Mexico holding a dangerously toxic bag without any resources to address the gradual deterioration of man-made materials or worse, a catastrophic event. It’s a win/win, however, for Holtec International and the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance.

Environmental justice footnote: When removal of uranium mine waste on the Navajo Nation was being discussed a few years ago, communities got this response from EPA: Digging up the waste and tr+ansporting it to a licensed repository in different states outside the Navajo Nation – which has always been the Nation’s preferred alternative – is the most expensive option. “Off-site disposal, because of the amount of waste in and around these areas, means possibly multiple years of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of trucks going in and out of the community and driving for miles.”

April 4, 2020 Posted by | safety, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Scientists struggle with problems like corrosion in nuclear waste containers (but nobody suggests stopping making radioactive trash)

As nuclear waste piles up, scientists seek the best long-term storage solutions.  Researchers study and model corrosion in the materials proposed for locking away the hazardous waste C and EN, by Mitch Jacoby, MARCH 30, 2020 | APPEARED IN VOLUME 98, ISSUE 12

Regardless of whether you are for or against nuclear power, and no matter what you think of nuclear weapons, the radioactive waste is already here, and we have to deal with it.”

IN BRIEF

More than a quarter million metric tons of highly radioactive waste sits in storage near nuclear power plants and weapons production facilities worldwide, with over 90,000 metric tons in the US alone. Emitting radiation that can pose serious risks to human health and the environment, the waste, much of it decades old, awaits permanent disposal in geological repositories, but none are operational. With nowhere to go for now, the hazardous materials and their containers continue to age. That unsustainable situation is driving corrosion experts to better understand how steel, glass, and other materials proposed for long-term nuclear waste storage containers might degrade. Read on to learn how these researchers’ findings might help protect people and the environment from waste leakages.

That’s Gerald S. Frankel’s matter-of-fact take on the thousands of metric tons of used solid fuel from nuclear power plants worldwide and the millions of liters of radioactive liquid waste from weapons production that sit in temporary storage containers in the US. While these waste materials, which can be harmful to human health and the environment, wait for a more permanent home, their containers age. In some cases, the aging containers have already begun leaking their toxic contents.

“It’s a societal problem that has been handed down to us from our parents’ generation,” says Frankel, who is a materials scientist at the Ohio State University. “And we are—more or less—handing it to our children.”……..

Vitrification of nuclear waste seems to be well established by now, but actually it still faces complex problems,” says Ashutosh Goel, a materials scientist at Rutgers University. The plan at Hanford, for example, calls for entombing nuclear waste in borosilicate glass and encasing the glass in stainless-steel canisters. Yet the exact formulation of the glass, or glasses, is still under investigation.

Open questions include the following: What glass compositions will lead to the highest uptake of nuclear waste? How suited are those glasses to vitrification? And how well will they resist corrosion after being interned for eons in a repository environment?
After 1,000 years or so, Goel says, the steel canister surrounding the glass will likely corrode, and groundwater may seep in and interact directly with the glass, degrading it. “The stability of the glass in the presence of groundwater represents the last line of defense against release of radionuclides” into our environment, he adds…….
stress corrosion cracking, which can occur in metals at stress points such as weld joints—like the ones used to seal the stainless-steel canisters of spent fuel……during manufacturing, stress develops at weld seams as they cool and contract. If corrosion sets in at those spots, then some materials can start to crack and fail. The iron-chrome-nickel-based stainless steel used in dry casks is a material prone to fail when corrosion kicks in……..https://cen.acs.org/articles/98/i12/nuclear-waste-pilesscientists-seek-best.htmlby 

March 31, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, wastes | 1 Comment

Plutonium clean-up workers at Hanford had inadequate protection from contamination

Hanford workers were given leaky respirators at contaminated job site, contractor’s documents reveal https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/hanford-workers-were-given-leaky-respirators-at-contaminated-job-site-contractors-documents-reveal/?fbclid=IwAR18g7iwSGZJNg63q1UKl8nmUbzP4WF0JD7pqTMte9_IVRDXwM5JoCZcESA

March 25, 2020 By Patrick Malone and Hal Bernton Seattle Times staff reporters

RICHLAND, Benton County — Bill Evans Jr. worked on the front lines of the Hanford cleanup. He supervised crews tasked with dismantling tanks, uncoupling pipes and painting over surfaces to stanch the spread of radioactive particles inside some of the most hazardous buildings at the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site.

To keep themselves safe, they donned full-body protective suits, sometimes two. Battery-charged respirators hung by their sides, circulating filtered air through breathing tubes and into hoods.

In May 2016, seven years into his Hanford career, Evans had a seizure on his lunch break that left him dazed. It was the first of many that forced him to stop working. Since then, repeated seizures have overtaken his life, resulting in falls that dislocated his jaw, fractured his spine and sent him crashing through a glass pane that gashed his head and required 30 stitches.

Evans, 45, is convinced that the sudden onset of his illness was linked to his job. Last year, he got a surprising clue about what might have gone wrong. A document from his old employer, slipped to him by a colleague, stated that a respirator cartridge Evans frequently used had a bad seal caused by changes made to the gear at Hanford, and possibly exposed him to radioactive and chemical contamination.

“I was floored, surprised and angry,” Evans said. “Because I trusted that equipment. That equipment was my lifeline.”

Evans was one of an estimated 560 workers at the Plutonium Finishing Plant between 2012 and October 2016 who wore respirator gear that may have leaked, according to documents obtained by The Seattle Times. The project contractor, CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company, told workers on the job site about the safety lapse, which was also detailed in a November 2016 letter to be placed in affected workers’ medical files.

But the contractor did not directly reach out to workers, like Evans, who had already left the job, according to a spokesman for CH2M Hill. The letter ended up in the files of only 150.

UPDATE

In response to a Seattle Times investigation, advocates seek benefits for workers who wore leaky respirators at Hanford

March 26, 2020 Posted by | - plutonium, health, USA | Leave a comment

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