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With international finance help, Russia is dismantling its most radioactive ship

April 30, 2020 Posted by | Russia, wastes | Leave a comment

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

April 30, 2020 Posted by | decommission reactor, USA | Leave a comment

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 …

One of the newly proposed NB SMNR prototypes, the ARC-100 reactor (100 megawatts of electricity) is a liquid sodium-cooled SMNR that is based on the 1964 EBR-2 reactor – Experimental Breeder Reactor #2. (Its predecessor, the EBR-1 breeder reactor, had a partial meltdown in 1955, and the Fermi-1 breeder reactor near Detroit, also modelled on the EBR-2, had a partial meltdown in 1966.) The ACR-100 is designed with the capability and explicit intention of reusing or recycling irradiated CANDU fuel.
The other newly proposed NB SMNR prototype is the Moltex “Stable Salt Reactor” (SSR) — also a “fast reactor”, cooled by molten salt, that is likewise intended to re-use or recycle irradiated CANDU fuel.
The “re-use” (or “recycling”) of “spent nuclear fuel”, also called “used nuclear fuel” or “irradiated nuclear fuel”, is industry code for plutonium extraction. The idea is to transition from uranium to plutonium as a nuclear fuel, because uranium supplies will not outlast dwindling oil supplies. Breeder reactors are designed to use plutonium as a fuel and create (“breed”) even more plutonium while doing so.
The only way you can re-use or recycle existing used nuclear fuel is to somehow access the unused “fissile material” in the used fuel, which means mainly plutonium.  This involves a chemical procedure called “reprocessing” which was banned in the late 1970s by the Carter administration in the USA and the first PE Trudeau administration in Canada. South Korea and Taiwan were likewise forbidden (with pressure from the US) to pursue this avenue.
Argonne Laboratories in US, and the South Korean government, have been developing (for over ten years now) a new wrinkle on the reprocessing operation which they call “pyroprocessing” in an effort to overcome the existing prohibitions on reprocessing and restart the “plutonium economy”. That phrase refers to a world whereby plutonium is the primary nuclear fuel in the future rather than natural or slightly enriched uranium. Plutonium, a derivative of uranium that does not exist in nature but is created inside every nuclear reactor fuelled with uranium, would thereby become an article of commerce.
Another wrinkle on this general ambition is the so-called “thorium cycle”. Thorium is a naturally-occurring element that can be converted (inside a nuclear reactor) into a human-made fissile material called uranium-233. This type of uranium is not found in nature. Like plutonium, uranium-233 can be used for nuclear weapons or as nuclear fuel. Although the materials are different, the ambition is the same — instead of the plutonium economy one could imagine an economy based on uranium-233.
The problems associated with both recycling schemes (the plutonium cycle and the thorium cycle) are
(1) the dangerous and polluting necessity of “opening up” the used nuclear fuel in order to extract the desired plutonium or U-233, and (2) the creation of a civilian traffic in highly dangerous materials (plutonium and U-233) that can be used by governments or criminals or terrorists to make powerful nuclear weapons without the need for terribly sophisticated or readily detectable infrastructure.
By the way, in terms of nuclear reactors (whether small or large), whenever you see the phrase “fast reactor” or “advanced reactor” or “breeder reactor” or “thorium reactor”, please be advised that such terminology is industry code for recycling — either plutonium or uranium-233.  Also, any “sodium-cooled” reactors are in this same category.
By the way, in terms of nuclear reactors (whether small or large), whenever you see the phrase “fast reactor” or “advanced reactor” or “breeder reactor” or “thorium reactor”, please be advised that such terminology is industry code for recycling — either plutonium or uranium-233.  Also, any “sodium-cooled” reactors are in this same category.

April 26, 2020 Posted by | - plutonium, Canada, Reference, reprocessing, thorium | 1 Comment

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/

April 26, 2020 Posted by | - plutonium, Reference, reprocessing, UK | Leave a comment

US. Dept of Energy wants to keep nuclear Waste Isolation Pilot Plant going till 2080

Federal agencies want to extend nuclear waste site to 2080    https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/federal-agencies-want-to-extend-nuclear-waste-site-to-2080/article_acff4dbc-8573-11ea-93ac-2bea172dcd37.html  By Scott Wyland swyland@sfnewmexican.com 

    Apr 25, 2020  The more than 20-year-old nuclear waste disposal site in Southern New Mexico would remain active for at least 60 more years under a proposed permit renewal, reflecting the role of nuclear weapons in the country’s Cold War past and what many federal leaders envision for the future.

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant’s permit is set to expire in 2024, but federal officials who oversee the nation’s nuclear programs believe the underground repository near Carlsbad can keep taking radioactive waste for decades to come.

Critics contend WIPP, where the waste is buried in salt beds 2,150 feet underground, should not operate beyond the 25-year life that was planned when it opened in 1999.

They also argue WIPP is fast approaching its limit, and alternative disposal sites should be created outside New Mexico.  It’s been clear to everybody that WIPP had a limited amount of waste it could handle,” said Don Hancock, director of nuclear waste safety for the nonprofit Southwest Research and Information Center.

Yet federal agencies submitted a proposal calling for a permit renewal until 2080, Hancock said. And the latest proposal gives no date for when the permit extension would end, he said.

“So it’s WIPP forever,” he said.

WIPP has the word “pilot” in its name, which means it was supposed to be the first nuclear waste disposal site, not the only one, Hancock said.

Officials at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees WIPP, did not provide answers Friday to questions about the site’s permitting, storage capacity and long-term future.

WIPP receives radioactive material from sources as varied as the decommissioned Hanford Site in Washington state and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The Los Alamos lab’s legacy waste generated during the Cold War and Manhattan Project is sent to WIPP. If the lab and Savannah River Site in South Carolina ramp up nuclear-core production as planned by 2030, the new waste will go to WIPP.

The Department of Energy also wants to use WIPP as one of the sites to store 34 megatons of diluted plutonium waste. It’s unclear how much of the waste would go to WIPP.

The plan poses challenges, such as how to efficiently dilute the plutonium and how much storage space WIPP would have for the material, the National Academy of Sciences said in a 2018 report.

The 1992 Land Withdrawal Act limits WIPP to 6.2 million cubic feet of waste, or about 175,000 cubic meters.

It also restricts the storage to transuranic waste — from elements that have atomic numbers higher than uranium in the periodic table, primarily produced from recycling spent fuel or using plutonium to fabricate nuclear weapons. Taking in discarded plutonium would require Congress to amend the law, Hancock said.

Under the state’s hazardous waste permit for WIPP, the volume of material stored there is calculated according to the outer waste containers. Using that measure, the site is close to 60 percent full.

But the Energy Department persuaded the state Environment Department in 2018 to change the calculation so the empty headspace in the containers isn’t counted.

Then, three weeks before Republican Gov. Susana Martinez left office at the end of 2018, the agency revised the permit to allow the Energy Department greater leeway in estimating WIPP’s remaining capacity. That included letting federal officials deduct a container’s headspace.

The Energy Department, in turn, estimated WIPP had only used about 40 percent of its capacity.

Hancock’s group and two other watchdogs filed a legal challenge, contending the methodology was invalid. They argued the original calculations based on container size should be used.

They also hoped Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration would reverse the permit revision. But the administration has taken no action. When the federal government got plans for WIPP rolling in the 1980s, New Mexicans agreed to create a disposal site for nuclear waste for a limited time as a patriotic duty, said Joni Arends, executive director of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, one of the groups suing the Energy Department.

The effort to push WIPP’s operation beyond the original 25-year timeline and expand its limited capacity is “an affront to the promises made to New Mexicans,” Arends said. “It’s irresponsible on their part to say WIPP is going to stay open in perpetuity,” she added.

She questioned how WIPP could keep going for 60 more years when it’s already half-full after 17 years of operation.

WIPP lost almost three years of operations after the so-called kitty litter incident in 2014. That was when a Los Alamos lab container packed with a volatile blend of organic cat litter and nitrate salts burst, causing radiation to leak through the underground site.

The contamination, which cost about $2 billion to clean up, led to part of WIPP being sealed off. Crews are having to dig out more space in the salt beds to put waste containers, Arends said, so its footprint is growing.

There are also environmental concerns about disposing of massive nuclear waste at WIPP, she said. For instance, the waste, while embedded in the salt beds, could leach into subterranean clay seams linked to the Pecos River.

The Pecos connects to the Rio Grande, a source of drinking water in the region, she said.

“WIPP — it’s a complicated issue,” Arends said.

April 26, 2020 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

The end of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel has left an expensive UK plutonium stockpile with no peaceful use

April 25, 2020 Posted by | - plutonium, Reference, UK | Leave a comment

A warning to Idaho residents on the danger of Hanford’s nuclear wastes

A study released by the National Cancer Institute in 1997 showed that 25 states had citizens exposed to high levels of radiation due to nuclear testing.

“When there is an earthquake in that area, the radiation fallout will be equal to Chernobyl,” Brodesser said in her lecture. “When, not if.”

They know what they’ve done’: America’s nuclear past threatens Idaho’s future https://www.idahopress.com/news/local/they-know-what-theyve-done-americas-nuclear-past-threatens-idahos-future/article_a02826ba-b62f-5964-9b08-09dbe300d596.html, By ASHLEY MILLER amiller@idahopress.com  MERIDIAN — In a time before social distancing, the lecture hall of the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine was packed. Students, staff, politicians and community members sat intermixed in the seats, elbow to elbow.

But Kaaren Brodesser stood alone.

Before she started her lecture on March 10, she was introduced simply as an advocate. More than that, she is a witness, part of a small group of people fighting for the rights of Idahoans whose lives changed on July 16, 1945, when the U.S. conducted the first-ever nuclear test, setting off a series of events the world is still struggling to fully understand.

These are downwinders, and they are dying.

‘THEY KNOW WHAT THEY’VE DONE’

In the 1950s and ’60s, the bulk of America’s nuclear testing was done in a 680-square-mile piece of desert about 65 miles outside of Las Vegas. The Nevada Test Site was ground zero for America’s Cold War preparations, testing the effects and power of the nuclear bombs designed by the military. From 1951 to 1958, around 100 aboveground nuclear tests were conducted on the site. The site was chosen for its relative isolation from any densely populated cities; however, in the end, distance was not the solution it first seemed.

The term “downwinders” refers to anyone who lived in communities exposed to nuclear radiation during the end of World War II and the peak of the Cold War (roughly the late 1940s to 1980). During the construction and testing of nuclear weapons, wind patterns directed the fallout far beyond the safety perimeters of the sites, spreading radiation hundreds and even thousands of miles away.

In the book “Atomic Farmgirl,” author Teri Hein details her life growing up downwind of Hanford, Washington, where the bulk of America’s plutonium was produced for many decades. She explains the fallout like this: When Mount Saint Helens erupted in 1980, ash drifted far past the state lines of Washington. The wind carried and then settled the debris into neighboring states. Nuclear radiation fallout can be thought of in the same way. The testing locations in Nevada and the production plants in Hanford are the eruption. The radiation then drifted into Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and beyond.

The radiation was in the air and, more importantly, in the crops and livestock of these communities. According to the National Cancer Institute, a significant portion of the Intermountain West was exposed to high doses of radiation from the tests, specifically the radioisotope Iodine-131. Iodine-131 is processed in the thyroid, the gland in your neck that regulates hormones. This is why children seemed to be the hardest hit from the fallout: their thyroid is still developing and isn’t strong enough to process the high dosage of Iodine.

NCI’s list of medical issues tied to downwinders is long, ranging from multiple sclerosis to various forms of cancer that slowly eat away at your life. That’s something that Emmett resident Tona Henderson knows only too much about. Continue reading →

April 20, 2020 Posted by | environment, health, PERSONAL STORIES, Reference, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

UK’s plutonium problem as it shuts down its last nuclear reprocessing facility

Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 17th April 2020, The United Kingdom’s last plutonium reprocessing plant, B205, located in Sellafield in northern England, will shut down by the end of 2020. It will bring an end to the era of plutonium separation in the country, which began 68 years ago.
Because the United Kingdom never used any of the material it recouped from reprocessing except in nuclear weapons, today it has amassed a stockpile of almost 139 metric tons of separated plutonium. This creates lasting problems: Plutonium stored in Sellafield is highly toxic and poses a permanent risk of proliferation. It is enough material to build tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.
According to parliamentary estimates, storage will cost the British government about 73 million pounds a year for the next century.
But after decades of public and private consultation, there is still no accepted plan for its disposition. In the meantime, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is working on the consolidation of the stockpiles in Sellafield and developing the capability to retreat the packages to allow for long-term storage once the government makes a final decision on permanent disposal.
The United Kingdom views the material as a resource and is pursuing options that involve burning the plutonium in reactors, even though multiple assessments have shown risks associated with such a choice, namely immature concepts and technology.
A better alternative would be to treat it as waste and begin planning for its permanent immobilization and
burial.   https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/britain-has-139-tons-of-plutonium-thats-a-real-problem/

April 20, 2020 Posted by | - plutonium, UK | Leave a comment

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

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