Natural gas, not renewable energy, was most responsibe for Texas power failure in freezing conditions
Why is Texas suffering power blackouts during the winter freeze?
The oil- and gas-rich state is experiencing what officials call a ‘total failure’ of its electricity infrastructure Guardian, Lauren Aratani, Thu 18 Feb 2021 “…...Did renewable energy play a role in the grid’s malfunction?
While Republicans have been blaming frozen wind turbines for the state’s blackouts, officials and experts say that malfunctions in natural gas operations played the largest role in the power crisis.
Ercot said all of its sources of power, including those from renewable sources, were affected by the freezing temperatures. The state largely relies on natural gas for its power supply, though some comes from wind turbines and less from coal and nuclear sources.
Natural gas can handle the state’s high temperatures in the summer, but extreme cold weather makes it difficult for the gas to flow to power plants and heat homes. Michael Webber, an energy resources professor at the University of Texas Austin, told the Texas Tribune that “gas is failing in the most spectacular fashion right now”.
With the climate crisis likely to trigger more freak weather events like the one Texas is suffering it is noteworthy that there are places that experience frigidly cold weather that rely heavily on wind turbines and manage to have electricity in the winter. In Iowa, a state which sees freezing temperatures more often than Texas, nearly 40% of electricity is generated by wind turbines……. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/18/why-is-texas-suffering-power-blackouts-during-the-winter-freeze
In Texas freezing temperatures, the major power loss was from coal, gas, nuclear facilities, not renewables
major power failures across Texas as increased demand for heating has overwhelmed the energy grid. Supplies of both electricity and gas have been intermittent, with the authorities saying they need to “safely manage the balance of supply and demand on the grid” to avoid another major power cut.
USA to join in multilateral talks with EU and Iran, on return to nuclear deal
Guardian 19th Feb 2021, The US has agreed to take part in multilateral talks with Iran hosted by the EU, with the aim of negotiating a return by both countries to the 2015
nuclear deal that is close to falling apart in the wake of the Trump
administration.
USA’s ”doomsday ships”, during the cold War
‘Medical Scientific’ committee, stacked with nuclear executives, promotes nuclear power in space
“The nuclear industry views space as a new—and wide-open—market for their toxic product that has run its dirty course on Mother Earth.”
“Now it appears that the nuclear industry has also infiltrated the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that has been studying missions to Mars. ”
It’s going to take enormous grassroots action—and efforts by those in public office who understand the error of the space direction being taken—to stop it.
Nuclear Rockets to Mars?, BY KARL GROSSMAN– CounterPunch, 16 Feb 21,
A report advocating rocket propulsion by nuclear power for U.S. missions to Mars, written by a committee packed with individuals deeply involved in nuclear power, was issued last week by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
The 104-page report also lays out “synergies” in space nuclear activities between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. military, something not advanced explicitly since the founding of NASA as a civilian agency supposedly in 1958.
The report states: “Space nuclear propulsion and power systems have the potential to provide the United States with military advantages…NASA could benefit programmatically by working with a DoD [Department of Defense] program having national security objectives.”’
The report was produced “by contract” with NASA, it states.
The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) describes itself as having been “created to advise the nation” with “independent, objective advice to inform policy.”
The 11 members of the committee that put together the report for the National Academy includes: Jonathan W. Cirtain, president of Advanced Technologies, “a subsidiary of BWX Technologies which is the sole manufacturer of nuclear reactors for the U.S. Navy,” the report states; Roger M. Myers, owner of R. Myers Consulting and who previously at Aerojet Rocketdyne “oversaw programs and strategic planning for next-generation in-space missions [that] included nuclear thermal propulsion and nuclear electric power systems; Shannon M. Bragg-Sitton, the “lead for integrated energy systems in the Nuclear Science and Technology Directorate at the Idaho National Laboratory:” Tabitha Dodson, who at the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency is chief engineer of a program “that is developing a nuclear thermal propulsion system;” Joseph A. Sholtis, Jr., “owner and principal of Sholtis Engineering & Safety Consulting, providing expert nuclear, aerospace, and systems engineering services to government, national laboratories, industry, and academia since 1993.” And so on.
The NAS report is titled: “Space Nuclear Propulsion for Human Mars Exploration.” It is not classified and is available here.
Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, from its offices in Maine in the U.S., declared: “The nuclear industry views space as a new—and wide-open—market for their toxic product that has run its dirty course on Mother Earth.”
“During our campaigns in 1989, 1990, and 1997 to stop NASA’s Galileo, Ulysses and Cassini plutonium-fueled space probe launches, we learned that the nuclear industry positioned its agents inside NASA committees that made the decisions on what kinds of power sources would be placed on those deep space missions,” said Gagnon. “Now it appears that the nuclear industry has also infiltrated the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that has been studying missions to Mars. The recommendation, not any surprise, is that nuclear reactors are the best way to power a Mars mission.”
“It’s not the best for us Earthlings because the Department of Energy has a bad track record of human and environmental contamination as they fabricate nuclear devices. An accident at launch could have catastrophic consequences.”
Stated Gagnon: “We fought the DoE and NASA on those previous nuclear launches and are entering the battle again. The nuclear industry has its sights set on nuclear-powered mining colonies on an assortment of planetary bodies—all necessitating legions of nuclear devices being produced at DoE and then launched on rockets that blow up from time to time.”
“We urge the public to help us pressure NASA and DoE to say no to nukes in space. We’ve got to protect life here on this planet. We are in the middle of a pandemic and people have lost jobs, homes, health care and even food on their table.”
“Trips to Mars can wait,” said Gagnon.
There have been accidents in the history of the U.S.—and also the former Soviet Union and now Russia—using nuclear power in space……
(Article goes on to explain how solar power can be, and is being used for space travel and research)
The NAS committee, however, was mainly interested in a choice between a “nuclear thermal propulsion” (NTP) or “nuclear electric propulsion” (NEP) for rocket propulsion…….
“Advanced nuclear propulsion systems (along or in combination with chemical propulsion systems) have the potential to substantially reduce trip time” to Mars “compared to fully non-nuclear approaches,” says the report.
An issue: radioactivity from either of the systems affecting human beings on the rockets with nuclear reactors propelling them. Back after World War II with the Cold War beginning, the U.S. began working on bombers propelled by onboard nuclear reactors—even built one. The idea was that such bombers could stay aloft for days ready to drop nuclear weapons on the Soviet Union. No crews would need to be scrambled and bombers then sent aloft.
But, as The Atlantic magazine noted in a 2019 article titled, “Why There Are No Nuclear Airplanes”:
“The problem of shielding pilots from the reactor’s radiation proved even more difficult. What good would a plane be that killed its own pilots? To protect the crew from radioactivity, the reactor needed thick and heavy layers of shielding. But to take off, the plane needed to be as light as possible. Adequate shielding seemed incompatible with flight. Still, engineers theorized that the weight saved from needing no fuel might be enough to offset the reactor and its shielding. The United States spent 16 years tinkering with the idea, to no avail”
The Eisenhower administration concluded that the program was unnecessary, dangerous, and too expensive. On March 28, 1961, the newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy canceled the program. Proposals for nuclear-powered airplanes have popped up since then, but the fear of radiation and the lack of funding have kept all such ideas down.”……
The “synergies” in space nuclear activities between NASA and the U.S. military advanced in the NAS report mark a change in public acknowledgement. The agency was supposed to have a distinctly civilian orientation, encouraging peaceful applications in space science.
However, throughout the decades there have been numerous reports on its close relationship with the U.S. military—notably during the period of NASA Space Shuttle flights. As a 2018 piece in Smithsonian Magazine noted, “During the heyday of the space shuttle, NASA would routinely ferry classified payloads into orbit for the Department of Deense among other projects the agencies have collaborated on.”
With the formation of a U.S. Space Force by the Trump administration in 2019, the NASA-Pentagon link would appear to be coming out of the shadows, as indicated by the NAS report. The Biden administration is not intending to eliminate the Space Force, despite the landmark Outer Space Treaty of 1967 put together by the U.S., the then Soviet Union and the U.K, setting aside space for peaceful purposes. It is giving the new sixth branch of U.S. armed forces “full support,” according to his spokesperson Jen Psaki.
The NAS report says, “Areas of common interest include (1) fundamental questions about the development and testing of materials (such as reactor fuels and moderators) that can survive NTP conditions and (2) advancing modeling and simulation capabilities that are relevant to NTP.” And, “Additionally, a NASA NTP system could potentially use a scaled-up version of a DoD reactor, depending on the design.”
It declares: “Threats to U.S. space assets are increasing. They include anti-satellite weapons and counter-space activities. Crossing vast distances of space rapidly with a reasonably sized vehicle in response to these threats requires a propulsion system with high Isp [Specific Impulse] and thrust. This could be especially important in a high-tempo military conflict.”
Moreover, on December 19, just before he was to leave office, Trump signed Space Policy Directive-6, titled “National Strategy for Space Nuclear Propulsion.” Its provisions include: “DoD [Department of Defense] and NASA, in cooperation with DOE [Department of Energy}, and with other agencies and private-sector partners, as appropriate, should evaluate technology options and associated key technical challenges for an NTP [Nuclear Thermal Propulsion] system, including reactor designs, power conversion, and thermal management. DoD and NASA should work with their partners to evaluate and use opportunities for commonality with other SNPP [Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion] needs, terrestrial power needs, and reactor demonstration projects planned by agencies and the private sector.”
It continues: “DoD, in coordination with DOE and other agencies, and with private sector partners, as appropriate, should develop reactor and propulsion system technologies that will resolve the key technical challenges in areas such as reactor design and production, propulsion system and spacecraft design, and SNPP system integration.”
It’s going to take enormous grassroots action—and efforts by those in public office who understand the error of the space direction being taken—to stop it.
Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, and is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, and the Beyond Nuclear handbook, The U.S. Space Force and the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war in space. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion. more https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/16/nuclear-rockets-to-mars/
Green energy sources are not to blame for the winter storm power blackouts in Texas.
Green energy sources are not to blame for the winter storm Uri power
blackouts in Texas, experts say. More than 4.2 million people were left
without power after a rare cold front brought record-breaking freezing
conditions to the state. Fox News host Tucker Carlson, among others, has
tried to point the finger at renewable energy sources such as wind turbines
for the rolling blackouts seen in the state.
Independent 16th Feb 2021
The electricity outages suffered by millions of Texans amid frigid
temperatures sweeping across the United States have been seized upon by
conservative commentators presenting a false narrative that renewable power
was to blame.
Guardian 17th Feb 2021
Accidents in both USA’s and Russia’s use of nuclear power in space
Nuclear Rockets to Mars?, BY KARL GROSSMAN– CounterPunch, 16 Feb 21”…………There have been accidents in the history of the U.S.—and also the former Soviet Union and now Russia—using nuclear power in space.
And the NAS report, deep into it, does acknowledge how accidents can happen with its new scheme of using nuclear power on rockets for missions to Mars.
It says: “Safety assurance for nuclear systems is essential to protect operating personnel as well as the general public and Earth’s environment.” Thus under the report’s plan, the rockets with the nuclear reactors onboard would be launched “with fresh [uranium] fuel before they have operated at power to ensure that the amount of radioactivity on board remains as low as practicable.” The plans include “restricting reactor startup and operations in space until spacecraft are in nuclear safe orbits or trajectories that ensure safety of Earth’s population and environment” But, “Additional policies and practices need to be established to prevent unintended system reentry during return to Earth after reactors have been operated for extended periods of time.”
The worst U.S. accident involving the use of nuclear power in space came in 1964 when the U.S. satellite Transit 5BN-3, powered by a SNAP-9A plutonium-fueled radioisotope thermoelectric generator, failed to achieve orbit and fell from the sky, disintegrating as it burned up in the atmosphere, globally spreading plutonium—considering the deadliest of all radioactive substances. That accident was long linked to a spike in global lung cancer rates where the plutonium was spread, by Dr. John Gofman, an M.D. and Ph. D., a professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley. He also had been involved in developing some of the first methods for isolating plutonium for the Manhattan Project.
NASA, after the SNAP-9A (SNAP for Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power) accident became a pioneer in developing solar photovoltaic power. All U.S. satellites now are energized by solar power, as is the International Space Station.
The worst accident involving nuclear power in space in the Soviet/Russian space program occurred in 1978 when the Cosmos 954 satellite with a nuclear reactor aboard fell from orbit and spread radioactive debris over a 373-mile swath from Great Slave Lake to Baker Lake in Canada. There were 110 pounds of highly-enriched (nearly 90 percent) of uranium fuel on Cosmos 954.
Highly-enriched uranium—90 percent is atomic bomb-grade—would be used in one reactor design proposed in the NAS report. And thus there is a passage about it under “Proliferation and security.” It states that “HEU [highly enriched uranium] fuel, by virtue of the ease with which it could be diverted to the production of nuclear weapons, is a higher value target than HALEU [high assay low enriched uranium], especially during launch and reentry accidents away from the launch site. As a result, HEU is viewed by nonproliferation experts as requiring more security considerations. In addition, if the United States uses HEU for space reactors, it could become more difficult to convince other countries to reduce their use of HEU in civilian applications.”
As for rocket propulsion in the vacuum of space, it doesn’t take much conventional chemical propulsion to move a spacecraft—and fast……..more https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/02/16/nuclear-rockets-to-mars/
Keep the public vote on nuclear energy in Montana
Keep the public vote on nuclear energy in Montana https://missoulacurrent.com/opinion/2021/02/opinion-nuclear-energy/
BY BACKERS OF I-80 17 bFeb 21, Forty years ago, the Montana voters passed Initiative 80 (I-80). This initiative empowered Montanans with the right to vote for or against allowing any nuclear generating facility in Montana.
Last week, Rep. Derek Skees introduced House Bill (HB) 273, a bill to overturn this initiative and eliminate the public’s right to vote on new nuclear proposals. During the hearing, Rep. Skees said, “The majority of the folks who voted for the initiative did not know what they were voting for. That shouldn’t even really be a benchmark. We’re not even overturning the will of the people when the people did not know what they were voting for.”
Really? These are the same voters that elected him! I-80 was a hotly contested ballot measure with a great deal of press coverage and citizen involvement. Opponents spent a record amount of money attempting to defeat the initiative – and failed. The public had concerns about nuclear energy and many of us thought that the public should have the final yes or no vote on whether to allow nuclear energy facilities in Montana.
In 1978, the initiative passed with an overwhelming 65% of state voters supporting it. Now, the Montana Legislature wants to overturn I-80. Do legislators think that the very same voters that elected them aren’t smart enough to determine whether nuclear energy is safe?
A year after approving I-80, the most significant nuclear accident in U.S. history occurred: Three Mile Island. That incident justified the public’s concerns regarding nuclear energy, and it continued to be justified with subsequent disasters in Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011).
The costs are catastrophic when an accident occurs at a nuclear facility: Nuclear radiation released as a result of the Chernobyl disaster seeped into local vegetation and livestock. Thousands have been diagnosed with cancer as a result.
Nuclear waste also has to be stored somewhere, as Japanese scientists and citizens are discovering. They’re running out of room to store dangerous irradiated water at the Fukushima-Daiichi power plant, and releasing it into the ocean could cause genetic damage to all living creatures.
Nuclear–generating facilities are sited on large bodies of water for cooling purposes. Flathead Lake would be ideal, as would Ennis Lake and Fort Peck just to name a few. Plus, there is no guarantee that the storage location necessary to contain the waste for thousands of years will not have severe future environmental impacts… especially in seismically active Montana.
Montana voters gave themselves the exclusive power to approve or reject the siting of nuclear power facilities through passage of Initiative 80. Regardless of how much nuclear technology has progressed, science has still not found a cure for the dangers associated with nuclear radiation. We say, if it’s safe, let Montanans decide. Montana voters are smart.
John Wilson, Jim Barngrover, Matthew Jordan, Jan Strout, Deborah Hanson, Terry Hanson, Steve Doherty, Pat Sweeney, Nancy McLane, Tom Schneider, and Adele Pittendrigh, all of whom worked to write, qualify and pass I-80.
Biden Must Take Immediate Action to Reduce the Risk of Nuclear War
Biden Must Take Immediate Action to Reduce the Risk of Nuclear War
The continuing proliferation of atomic weapons threatens the safety of billions
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/biden-must-take-immediate-action-to-reduce-the-risk-of-nuclear-war/ By THE EDITORS | Scientific American March 2021 Issue
When Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th U.S. president on January 20, he inherited major crises, including a raging pandemic, a planet gripped by escalating climate change, a ravaged economy and a nation riven by hyperpartisanship, worsened by what amounted to an attempted coup inspired by his predecessor. But it is an older existential threat, the fearsome power of nuclear weapons, that should still be the most terrifying. Immediately after his inauguration, the new president gained official control over the “nuclear football,” a 20-kilogram satchel containing launch codes and strike options for unleashing the nation’s vast atomic arsenal on his sole authority, at a moment’s notice. But the intricate international web of agreements and strategies used to restrain this world-destroying power—held by other countries as well as the U.S.—has become dangerously frayed.
Some 9,500 warheads are currently in military service among the world’s nine nuclear-armed states, with over 90 percent held by the U.S. and Russia. Just a minuscule fraction of that alarming total could bring about millions of deaths, unfathomable suffering and a new Dark Age from which recovery would not be guaranteed. And unlike the most significant impacts of climate change, which manifest over decades and centuries, the devastation from nuclear warfare could unfold in mere minutes and hours.
This modern-day sword of Damocles has hung over humanity’s head for generations, held at bay by diplomacy, carefully orchestrated international agreements and the chilling zero-sum game of mutually assured destruction. Yet today, after years of neglect if not outright opposition by those who believe nuclear warfare can be “winnable,” those intertwined threads of safety are worn, loose and about to come apart.
Treaties to limit the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons have expired, more nations than ever before are poised to develop new arsenals, and potential destabilizing factors such as antiballistic missile defense systems and novel hypersonic weapons platforms continue to multiply.
The Biden administration can take several steps to tiptoe back from the brink of disaster while maintaining national security. The first should be Biden’s fulfillment of his campaign promise to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the sole remaining arms-control agreement with Russia, set to expire on February 5. It is a vital component in curtailing each nation’s existing nuclear forces and the possibility of a new nuclear-arms race. More broadly, extending the treaty should be part of a much needed attempt to improve the perilous state of U.S.-Russia relations—exemplified by Russia’s recent, massive cyberattack on U.S. institutions, including the federal agencies charged with maintaining the national nuclear stockpile. Such efforts could serve as a model for dialogues with other nuclear-armed nations, especially China, which could in turn yield a wider range of solutions to the vexing problem of how to denuclearize North Korea.
And Biden should make good on his promise to reenter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, an agreement from which then President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. in 2018. The 2015 deal sought to extend Iran’s “breakout time”—its capability to produce bombs from enriched fissile material—from a few months to at least a year. But after Trump reinstated severe sanctions, Iran resumed vigorous uranium enrichment. The assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist last November and substantial congressional opposition to the deal all set high barriers to the U.S. rejoining. Nevertheless, the consensus view among arms-control experts is that the agreement is the least-worst option for ensuring a nuclear-free Iran.
Yet if such efforts are met with intransigence from Congress—a not unlikely event—Biden should take unilateral actions designed to reduce risks and bolster international cooperation. Drawing down the nation’s number of deployed strategic weapons; reevaluating its byzantine “command and control” systems; and declaring a “no first use” policy for nuclear weapons—something U.S. presidents have so far been unwilling to do—all fall within his purview. Most consequentially, however, Biden should order sweeping changes to what is now the president’s sole authority for launching nuclear weapons. He should insist that it be made in consultation with executive branch officials and congressional leaders, a step that can be taken without weakening deterrent ability, arms-control experts say. If this move were eventually formalized through federal legislation, it could be the most meaningful act of Biden’s presidency toward ensuring a safer world.
EPA awards $220 million for uranium mine cleanup on Navajo Nation
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday it will award contracts worth up to $220 million to three companies for the cleanup of some of the hundreds of abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation.
Work could start later this year following the completion of assessments for mining sites coordinated between the EPA and the Navajo Nation’s environmental agency, the federal agency said.
This week’s announcement is just the latest in years of efforts to clean up the mines, the toxic legacy of Cold War mining in the region. More than 30 million tons of uranium ore were mined in the region, according to the EPA, which said more than 500 mines were ultimately abandoned.
“From World War II until the end of the Cold War, millions of tons of uranium were mined on Navajo lands, exposing mine workers and their families to deadly radiation,” said Rep. Tom O’Halleran, D-Sedona, whose district includes the Arizona portion of the Navajo Nation.
“As a result, high rates of cancer, birth defects, and contaminated water sources remain a reality for residents of the Navajo Nation even now,” O’Halleran said in a statement on the contracts.
The agency said it worked closely with Navajo Nation to develop contracts that would incentivize the creation of employment opportunities for Navajo residents in order to build local economic and institutional capacity.
The majority of funding for the contracts comes from a nearly $1 billion settlement made in 2015 with Kerr McGee Corp. for the cleanup of more than 50 mines in Nevada and on the Navajo Nation that the company and its successor, tronox, were responsible for.
From the late 1940s through the 1960s, Kerr-McGee mined more than 7 million tons of ore on or near the Navajo Nation, leaving behind uranium mine sites that included contaminated waste rock piles. Exposure to uranium in soil, dust, air, and groundwater, as well as through rock piles and structural materials used for building can pose risks to human health, according to the EPA
Mining stopped for the most part decades ago, and the Navajo Nation banned uranium mining on its lands in 2005. But the cleanup effort has lingered. The EPA launched five-year programs in 2007 and 2014 to study the issue and identify the biggest risks, and the agency last year added abandoned Navajo uranium mines to its list of Superfund sites “targeted for immediate, intense action.”……. https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/arizona/epa-awards-220-million-for-uranium-mine-cleanup-on-navajo-nation/75-154a0fae-53e3-477d-a5ce-0a678d97d
Community fights Canadian govt’s slick propaganda pushing for high-level radioactive waste dump
Radio — A community’s fight to stop a high-level radioactive waste storage facility
Since the dawn of the nuclear age in the 1940s, humanity has faced stark questions of risk and safety. Some of those questions have to do with the dangers of acute catastrophe, but others are about the less dramatic but no less serious risk posed by the waste that the nuclear industry generates. Among the most challenging of that waste to deal with – designated “high-level radioactive waste” by the industry – is spent fuel bundles from nuclear reactors. Comprised of a highly toxic and radioactive mix of isotopes, the material in these bundles will be dangerous to living things for at the very least hundreds of thousands of years.
Though it has been decades since the industry first started producing radioactive waste, there has yet to be a fully satisfactory answer to the question of what to do with it. The organization currently tasked with figuring that out for the millions of used nuclear fuel bundles in the Canadian context is the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). Currently, used fuel bundles are kept in interim storage facilities on reactor sites, but the long-term plan is to put them in a “deep geological repository” (DGR), a location that is deep underground and geologically stable. A number of countries are currently developing DGRs for high-level radioactive waste, but none are currently operational.
The NWMO is in the middle of an elaborate selection process to find a site for both the plant that will repackage the fuel bundles for long-term storage and the storage facility itself. They began with 22 possible host communities in 2010 – mostly, it should be noted, small financially distressed communities – and they have narrowed their possibilities down to two, Ignace in northwestern Ontario and South Bruce in southern Ontario, near Lake Huron. They hope to announce their decision in 2023.
The concerns that Stein, Noll, and other members of their group have with the facility are many. Despite assurances from the NWMO that it will all be safe, their own investigation of processes for transporting and storing nuclear waste around the world have convinced them that very real risks remain under the NWMO’s plans. They fear that the facility could endanger human and environmental health, local agriculture, local drinking water, and the larger Great Lakes basin. And they argue that it is not just about their community being the wrong choice, but that the whole approach is flawed.
Moreover, they are quite concerned about the process. They have identified a pattern of what they say is incomplete and one-sided information from the NWMO, and a process that takes advantage of communities by downplaying risk and promising economic benefits that they say seem unlikely. The NWMO insists that whatever community ends up hosting the DGR must be willing, but they have refused to clarify exactly what that means.
Much of the group’s work has focused on mounting a local grassroots response to the slick and well-funded PR efforts of the NWMO. Before COVID, that involved knocking on doors. They’ve brought in speakers and hosted events, lobbied politicians, done media work, and made presentations to other local organizations. Last summer, they presented a petition against the DGR with signatures from more than 1500 residents to the local municipal council – and to put that in perspective, the current mayor got fewer votes than that in the last local election. They commissioned Mainstreet Research to do an opinion survey that found 64% of local residents would vote against locating a DGR for high-level radioactive waste in the community. The group is demanding a binding referendum on the issue.
Stein said, “Since they won’t give us a definition of what ‘willing’ is, we are going to just continue to show them what ‘not willing’ looks like.”
Illegal and opposed — Beyond Nuclear International
Besides threatening public health, safety, and the environment, evading federal law to license the ISP facility would also impact the public financially. Transferring title and liability for irradiated fuel from the nuclear utilities that generated it to DOE would mean that federal taxpayers would have to pay many billions of dollars for so-called “interim” storage of the waste. That’s on top of the many tens of billions of dollars that ratepayers and taxpayers have already paid to fund a permanent geologic repository that hasn’t yet materialized.
Beyond Nuclear files suit to stop massive radioactive waste dump https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2021/02/15/illegal-and-opposed/
From Beyond Nuclear staff. Beyond Nuclear has filed suit in federal court to prevent the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from licensing a massive “consolidated interim storage facility” (CISF) for highly radioactive waste in Andrews County, West Texas.
In its Petition for Review filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Beyond Nuclear asked the Court to dismiss the NRC licensing proceeding for a permit to build and operate a CISF proposed by Interim Storage Partners (ISP), a business consortium. ISP plans to use the facility to store 40,000 metric tons of highly radioactive irradiated fuel generated by nuclear reactors across the U.S., (also euphemistically known as “used” or “spent” fuel), amounting to nearly half of the nation’s current inventory.
The irradiated fuel would be housed on the surface of the land, on the site of an existing facility for storage and disposal of so-called “low-level radioactive waste” (LLRW). The LLRW facility is owned and operated by Waste Control Specialists (WCS). WCS and Orano (formerly Areva) comprise ISP. ISP’s CISF is located about 0.37 miles from the New Mexico border, and very near the Ogallala Aquifer, an essential source of irrigation and drinking water across eight High Plains states.
The Beyond Nuclear petition charges that orders issued by the NRC in 2018 and 2020 violate federal law by contemplating that the U.S. government will become the owner of the irradiated fuel during transportation to and storage at the ISP facility. Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the government is precluded from taking title to irradiated fuel unless and until a repository is licensed and operating. No such repository has been licensed in the U.S. The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) most recent estimate for the opening of a geologic repository is the year 2048 at the earliest.
In its 2020 decision, in which the NRC rejected challenges to the license application, the NRC Commissioners admitted that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act would indeed be violated if title to irradiated fuel were transferred to the federal government so it could be stored at the ISP facility. But they refused to remove the proposed license provision which contemplates federal ownership of the irradiated fuel.
Instead, they ruled that approving ISP’s application would not directly involve NRC in a violation of federal law – according to the NRC, that violation would occur only if DOE acted on the approved license – and therefore they could approve it, despite the fact the provision is illegal. The NRC Commissioners also noted with approval that “ISP acknowledges that it hopes Congress will change the law to allow DOE to enter storage contracts prior to the availability of a repository” (December 17, 2020 order, page 5).
But the petition contends that the NRC may not approve license provisions that violate federal law in the hope the law will change. “This NRC decision flagrantly violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which prohibits an agency from acting contrary to the law as issued by Congress and signed by the President,” said Mindy Goldstein, an attorney for Beyond Nuclear.
“The Commission lacks a legal or logical basis for its rationale that it may issue a license with an illegal provision, in the hopes that ISP or the Department of Energy won’t complete the illegal activity it authorized. The buck must stop with the NRC,” Goldstein said. Co-counsel Diane Curran stated, “Our claim is simple. The NRC is not above the law, nor does it stand apart from it.” Continue reading
Dangerous nuclear waste casks should stay off roads and rails
Radioactive rail wreck, Dangerous nuclear waste casks should stay off roads and rails , rails https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2020/07/12/radioactive-rail-wreck/, Beyond Nuclear By Laura Watchempino 12 July 20,
If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) 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.
Irradiated nuclear fuel is safer (but not safe) stored at the reactor site rather than transported thousands of miles to New Mexico. (Image: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission)
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.
Ironically, just a few years ago, the US Environmental Protection Agency had expressed opposition to mass transportation of another kind of radioactive waste. In a classic example of environmental injustice, the EPA balked at removing uranium mine waste on the Navajo Nation, because, it said, “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”.
The agency told the affected communities, during discussion about digging up the uranium mine waste and transporting it to a licensed repository in different states outside the Navajo Nation, that this option, also the Nation’s preference, was the most expensive. But now New Mexico is the destination for precisely the reverse, with hundreds and thousands of transports from different states coming to deposit the country’s nuclear waste site radioactive debris on Native soil.
Laura Watchempino is with the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment/Pueblo of Acoma. A version of this article first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal and is republished with kind permission of the author
Canada’s nuclear waste storage ”“cannot and will not go forward without the informed and willing consent of potential host communities”
Consent will be key to nuclear waste storage, The Chronicle Journal, BY CARL CLUTCHEY, NORTH SHORE BUREAU, 15 Feb 21, The incoming executive in charge of overseeing site selection regarding a potential underground storage facility for spent nuclear-fuel rods says consultation with affected neighbouring communities will be paramount.The potential facility “cannot and will not go forward without the informed and willing consent of potential host communities,” Lise Morton said on Jan. 29, in a Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) news release………
One of two sites remaining in Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s search for a potential underground storage facility will permanently house three million spent nuclear-fuel rods.
One candidate site is in South Bruce in southwestern Ontario near an existing nuclear station; the other is located about 35 kilometres west of Ignace, south of Highway 17 and on the traditional lands of Wabigoon Lake First Nation.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization wants to announce a site for its so-called deep geological repository by 2023.
The facility, which would cost $23 billion to build, would be operational by 2035…..https://www.chroniclejournal.com/news/local/consent-will-be-key-to-nuclear-waste-storage/article_b238ff5e-62ad-11eb-a2e8-9f1762ad35bd.html
Biden administration presses for Julian Assange to be extradited to USA
Biden administration files appeal pressing for Assange extradition, Yahoo News, Sat, 13 February 2021 The administration of US President Joe Biden has appealed a British judge’s ruling against the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a Justice Department official said Friday.
A brief filed late Thursday declared Washington’s desire to have Assange stand trial on espionage and hacking-related charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of hundreds of thousands of US military and diplomatic documents beginning in 2009.
The Justice Department had until Friday to register its stance on Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s January 4 ruling that Assange suffered mental health problems that would raise the risk of suicide if he were sent to the United States for trial.
“Yes, we filed an appeal and we are continuing to pursue extradition,” Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi told AFP.
After Baraitser’s decision, which did not question the legal grounds for the US extradition request, Donald Trump’s administration moved to appeal.
But Biden’s stance was not clear, and he was pressured by rights groups to drop the case, which raises sensitive transparency and media freedom issues.
After WikiLeaks began publishing US secrets in 2009, then-president Barack Obama, whose vice president was Biden, declined to pursue the case.
Assange said WikiLeaks was no different than other media constitutionally protected to publish such materials.
Prosecuting him, too, could mean also prosecuting powerful US news organizations for publishing similar material — legal fights the government would likely lose.
But under Trump, whose 2016 election was helped by WikiLeaks publishing Russian-stolen materials damaging to his rival Hillary Clinton — the Justice Department built a national security case against Assange.
In 2019 the native Australian was charged under the US Espionage Act and computer crimes laws with multiple counts of conspiring with and directing others, from 2009 to 2019, to illegally obtain and release US secrets……….
Assange has remained under detention by British authorities pending the appeal.
Earlier this week 24 organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International USA and Reporters Without Borders, urged Biden to drop the case.
“Journalists at major news publications regularly speak with sources, ask for clarification or more documentation, and receive and publish documents the government considers secret,” they said in an open letter.
“In our view, such a precedent in this case could effectively criminalize these common journalistic practices.”
Assange’s fiancée Stella Moris said in a statement that Baraitser’s January decision that Assange was a high risk for suicide and that US prison facilities were not safe remained a strong reason to deny extradition.
Baraitser “was given clear advice by medical experts that ordering him to stand trial in the US would put his life at risk,” she said.
“Any assurances given by the Department of Justice about trial procedures or the prison regime that Julian might face in the US are not only irrelevant but meaningless because the US has a long history of breaking commitments to extraditing countries,” she said https://au.news.yahoo.com/biden-administration-files-appeal-assange-171637702.html
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