U.S. Department of Energy seeks new certification for its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

Exchange Monitor 18th April 2019 , The Department of Energy is seeking another five-year certification from
the Environmental Protection Agency for its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
near Carlsbad, N.M. The WIPP Land Withdrawal Act requires DOE to seek
recertification every five years to ensure the site’s compliance with
federal radioactive waste disposal requirements, according to an executive
summary of the application.

The package provides new data on the
underground repository, its waste inventory, and key changes since the last
update. The site was first certified for permanent disposal of transuranic
waste in 1998. The Environmental Protection Agency can “modify, revise,
or suspend” the certification, EPA supervisory environmental scientist
Thomas Peake said Tuesday during a two-day meeting in Washington, D.C., of
the National Academies’ Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board.

https://www.exchangemonitor.com/epa-recertification-sought-wipp-2024/?printmode=1

April 22, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Canada’s Came co Corp slow to clean up groundwater contaminated with uranium at Saskatchewan mill

Saskatoon Star Phoenix 20th April 2019 , Canada’s largest uranium producer says it’s developing a plan to clean
up groundwater contaminated with uranium and radiation four months after it was first discovered at a shuttered mill in northern Saskatchewan.

Cameco Corp. reported in December that a sampling well adjacent to its Key Lake mill “was showing an increasing trend in uranium concentration” after 50,000 litres of water were “released” over the previous year. Carey Hyndman, aspokeswoman for the Saskatoon-based company, said this week that the incident was immediately reported to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

https://thestarphoenix.com/news/local-news/cameco-developing-plan-to-clean-up-contaminated-groundwater-at-key-lake

April 22, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, Uranium, water | Leave a comment

Pentagon’s strange and dangerous plan for small nuclear reactors at the battle scene

A New Kind of Nuclear War; The Pentagon pushes for fission for fighting, POGO,BY MARK THOMPSON 19 Apr19 “…… the Pentagon wants to build flyable and truckable nuclear-power plants to generate the power U.S. troops need to wage war deep in hostile territory.The concept of micro-nuclear power plants on the battlefield is both inspired and insane. The idea of landing portable nuclear reactors inside a war zone is as outlandish—economically and environmentally—as it sounds.

Yet the Pentagon’s nuclear push didn’t “go critical”—achieve a self-sustaining atomic reaction—on its own. “It is the culmination of a patient, decade-long effort by nuclear lobbyists to interest Defense and its congressional overseers in a costly product—small nuclear reactors—that few in the private sector seem to want,” Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in February. “The Pentagon is precisely the savior small nuclear reactor vendors need: deep-pocketed and unbeholden to return-seeking investors.”

Beyond that, the Pentagon’s nuclear advocates argue that battlefield nuclear reactors would improve the environment and help jump-start the nuclear-reactor business, creating thousands of well-paying jobs in the process. That meshes with the U.S. nuclear industry’s push to peddle more civilian reactors abroad, including a meeting with President Trump in February. “He really wanted to hear from us on what our views are on how we win the global nuclear energy technology race,” said J. Clay Sell, head of Maryland-based X-energy, an advanced nuclear-reactor company seeking business in Jordan. ….

it should come as no surprise that the nuclear industry is pulling out all the stops as it sees climate-change concerns giving it a second lease on life, even as renewable energy (wind, solar, hydroelectric) is now producing more power in the United States. The NEI spends about $2 million annually seeking favors from the federal government. Conveniently, the Trump Administration is seeking to bail out the nuclear industry.

The nuclear industry’s push isn’t only in Washington, DC. It’s gaining traction with state legislatures as well, most notably in Pennsylvania, home to Three Mile Island, the site of the most serious nuclear-power plant accident in U.S. history. In the last three years, Exelon, which operates Three Mile Island, has ramped up its lobbying efforts in Pennsylvania, in hopes of boosting taxpayer subsidies.

The Pentagon has had a long-standing romance with nuclear power, dating back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki…….

the Pentagon is trying to build support for the plan by noting that mini-nukes have heart-warming peaceful uses, too. “A small mobile nuclear reactor would enable a more rapid response during Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operations,” it said earlier this year in a “request for information” seeking outside help to develop portable atomic reactors for war zones…….

The Pentagon wants a reactor capable of generating between 1 and 10 megawatts (enough for a base housing at least 1,000 troops for three years without refueling. Weighing no more than 40 tons, it must be “sized for transportability by truck, ship, and C-17 aircraft.” And to avoid the problems posed by water-cooled reactors, it needs to be cooled by “ambient air,” just like the original VW Beetle and its distinctive putt-putt engine……..

The unit will be “semiautonomous—Not requiring manned control by operators to ensure safe operation,” the Pentagon says. Starting it up should take less than three days, and shutting it down should take no more than a week. Their basic design is as simple as nuclear power gets: as the reactor fuel decays, it generates heat that is then turned into electricity. The Pentagon plans on funding up to three designs before tapping a winner from among them. Other nations—Canada, China, and the United Kingdom—are also exploring such small reactors…….

Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists says the “lobbying push” to build micro-nukes for the U.S. military comes from the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council. The Washington-based trade group says it is “composed of over 80 companies” and “represents the ‘Who’s Who’ of the nuclear energy supply chain community, including key utility movers, technology developers, fuel cycle companies, construction engineers, manufacturers and service providers.”

But nuclear insiders also are playing a critical role. Among the authors of that key Defense Science Board report were some atomic heavyweights, including co-chairman Michael Anastasio, the only person to ever run two of the nation’s nuclear labs (he is the former head of Los Alamos in New Mexico, and Lawrence Livermore in California), and William Madia, who served as director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state. ……

There are proliferation risks associated with deploying nuclear reactors amid wars. The 2016 Defense Science Board report suggested that portable nuclear reactors be fueled only with low-enriched uranium that couldn’t be turned into nuclear weapons, although it conceded they would represent “a lucrative target to become a dirty bomb if breached.” The Pentagon’s January 2019 solicitation said that “technology, engineering, and operations must demonstrate minimization of added proliferation risk.” Of course, the U.S. government has been through this before, dating back to President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” initiative. That led to the first nuclear reactors in Iran and Pakistan.

Harnessing nuclear power on the battlefield would require changes in U.S. military training, nuclear regulation and licensing, as well as convincing foreign governments to let them on their soil. ……..

Training soldiers to deploy and operate portable nuclear power plants would be challenging, although the Army said in the report, “this requirement is not anticipated to be as demanding as that of a nuclear weapon.” Any Army port-a-nuke “must prevent the reactor from going critical when it should not, such as during movement/transport.” While such a reactor “is not expected to survive a direct kinetic attack,” the Army said it would be designed “for the protection of personnel who may be adversely affected by the system or threats to the system.”

Outsiders are dubious. “Even a reactor as small as 1 megawatt-electric would contain a large quantity of highly radioactive, long-lived isotopes such as cesium-137—a potential dirty bomb far bigger than the medical radiation sources that have caused much concern among security experts,” the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Lyman warned in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “At best a release of radioactivity would be a costly disruption, and at worst it would cause immediate harm to personnel, render the base unusable for years, and alienate the host country.”

Any radiation leakage would be far more vexing than the cleanup after dumping about 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides on Vietnam from 1961 to 1971. “While design simplification and damage-resistant fuel choices help, detailed planning for cleanup and removal of battle-damaged reactors or reactor components will be expensive and pose some technical challenges to resolve,” the Army report said, likely requiring changes to “existing treaties, international agreements, and policies.”

At the end of the day, of course, the big bugaboo is what to do with all that spent, but still dangerous, nuclear fuel. But not to worry: the Army has figured that out, too. “Nuclear fuel is a DOE [Department of Energy] responsibility,” the Army notes. “Issues such as recycling of nuclear fuel or long-term disposal are not DOD’s business.”

Perfect.

Of course, the Energy Department hasn’t figured out what to do with the 80,000 metric tonsof spent nuclear-reactor fuel created by U.S. commercial reactors over the past half-century. Bottom line: thinking about sending portable nuclear reactors off to war is kind of like invading a country with no plan for how to get out. https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/04/a-new-kind-of-nuclear-war/

April 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

On climate change impacts, nuclear lobby has captured the regulators

Watchdog Sounds Alarm Over Regulatory Capture as New Reporting Shows Nuclear Plants Unprepared for Climate Crisis https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/04/19/watchdog-sounds-alarm-over-regulatory-capture-new-reporting-shows-nuclear-plants

“We do not have an independent regulator that is heeding its mandate to protect public health and safety first.”

by Andrea Germanos, staff writer

New reporting highlights how the nation’s nuclear power plants are woefully unprepared to handle the growing impacts of the climate crisis.

Despite that threat, says a watchdog, the industry’s regulatory capture means its interests are set to continue to take precedence over public health and safety.

As Bloomberg‘s Christopher Flavelle and Jeremy C.F. Lin laid out Thursday, in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster the five-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) tasked the roughly 60 operating plants in the U.S. with assessing what their flood risks were compared to what flood risks the plants were actually built to withstand.

That was a logical step, given many of the American plants’ proximity to waterways, and the heightened risk of flooding in the face of the climate crisis.

Shortfalls in the assessments were evident.

According to a Bloomberg review of correspondence between the commission and plant owners, 54 of the nuclear plants operating in the U.S. weren’t designed to handle the flood risk they face. Fifty-three weren’t built to withstand their current risk from intense precipitation; 25 didn’t account for current flood projections from streams and rivers; 19 weren’t designed for their expected maximum storm surge. Nineteen face three or more threats that they weren’t designed to handle.

What’s more, those shortfalls may represent a better case scenario, as the NRC allowed the plant operators—not an outside authority—to perform the flood estimates and were not required to assess projected flood risks.

“It’s difficult to come across as an independent regulator and rely on self-assessment” from plants, as Tony Vegel, a Texas-based reactor safety official for the NRC, said previously.

The nuclear industry, as Bloomberg reported, wasn’t interested in facility redesigns to better withstand flood risks. Rather, it wanted

to focus mainly on storing emergency generators, pumps, and other equipment in on-site concrete bunkers, a system they call Flex, for Flexible Mitigation Capability. Not only did the NRC agree with that view, it ruled on Jan. 24 that nuclear plants wouldn’t have to update that equipment to deal with new, higher levels of expected flooding. It also eliminated a requirement that plants run Flex drills.

The three Trump-appointed commissioners did the industry’s bidding and said the existing regulations afforded enough protection. The NRC’s two Democratic commissioners disagreed.

Bloomberg quoted Edwin Lyman, head of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, as saying, “The NRC basically did everything the industry wanted.”

Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Oversight Project at Beyond Nuclear, concurred with that assessment.

Another issue, he told Common Dreams, is that “the commission’s January 2019 voteappears to have violated the federal Administrative Procedures Act by erasing what had been established as mandatory requirements through the agency’s rulemaking process for post-Fukushima flooding preparations at U.S. reactors.”

“The Commission vote,” he said, “inexplicably switched out ‘mandatory’ requirements with ‘voluntary’ initiatives after the public comment period on the final rule was closed. The NRC did not receive a single comment from either the public or the industry to make such a change.”

Gunter also noted that the NRC’s failings didn’t just begin once Trump entered the White House.

For example, he said, “following the Fukushima catastrophe, in 2012 the NRC technical staff unanimously agreed that the agency issue an order to 31 U.S. Fukushima-style GE Mark I and II boiling water reactors requiring operators to install severe accident-capable radiation filters on hardened containment vents.” These vents, he explained, “would allow operators to vent the containment of a severe accident’s extreme heat, pressure, and explosive gases to save the structure while filtering out the release of harmful radiation.”

But in a June 2013 vote, “the commission voted to order the installation of hardened containment vents but without the engineered external radiation filters which industry opposed on cost.” While the NRC “suggested that the filters could be taken up later in a rulemaking process for public comment,” it “abandoned the measure,” said Gunter.

In another sign of the NRC’s capture by the nuclear industry The Associated Pressreported last month:

Annie Caputo, a former nuclear-energy lobbyist now serving as one of four board members appointed or reappointed by President Donald Trump, told an industry meeting this week that she was “open to self-assessments” by nuclear plant operators, who are proposing that self-reporting by operators take the place of some NRC inspections.

The battle lines, said Gunter, are clear.

“The essential step forward must address the regulatory agency’s deepening capture by an aging and financially failing nuclear industry,” he said. “We do not have an independent regulator that is heeding its mandate to protect public health and safety first.”

April 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

USA is preparing more charges against Julian Assange

US preparing more charges against Julian Assange https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/04/19/more-a19.html By Kristina Betinis 19 April 2019On Wednesday, CNN reported US federal prosecutors confirmed there is an “ongoing criminal investigation” of Julian Assange, the 47-year-old founder of WikiLeaks. Prosecutors also indicated “affiliates” of Assange are under investigation, this according to another newly unsealed document. According to the CNN report, at least one document related to this investigation has been withheld from the public due to “ongoing activity.”

The revelation, CNN reported, “confirms CNN and other news outlets’ reporting in recent days that WikiLeaks is connected to at least one probe that could result in more criminal charges.”

The report confirms the warnings made by the WSWS and others that the charges related to computer hacking leveled against Assange are merely a pretext for his extradition to the United States, after which additional charges would be brought against him.

On April 11, Assange was expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and arrested by British officials on the public charge of conspiracy to bypass a password. That charge dated back to events in the 2011 WikiLeaks’ publication of the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs. Chelsea Manning turned over more than half a million documents exposing US war crimes and corruption to WikiLeaks for publication.

The expulsion and arrest of Assange has been accompanied by an unrestrained campaign of media vilification aimed at transforming Assange into a non-person, undeserving of democratic rights.

But since Assange has been imprisoned in the maximum-security Belmarsh prison, public comments made by leading Democrats and US media officials indicate that charge was not the primary aim of the US investigation.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer tweeted, “Now that Julian Assange has been arrested, I hope he will soon be held to account for his meddling in our elections on behalf of Putin and the Russian government.” Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Eliot Engel tweeted that Assange “time after time compromised the national security of the United States and our allies by publicly releasing classified government documents and confidential materials related to our 2016 presidential election.”

US, British and Ecuadorian governments have claimed Assange’s extradition is proper because the US is indicting on a single charge: attempting to help Chelsea Manning bypass a password. But this has now been revealed to be only the pretext. The real reason the US wants custody of the whistleblower was stated by Schumer and Engel.

On April 15, the WSWS wrote that these statements demonstrate the extradition proceedings are being conducted under false pretenses: “The single public charge is a cover. The government is planning to interrogate Assange, compel him to provide testimony and further prosecute him for exposing US war crimes.” (“Stop the extraordinary rendition of Julian Assange!”)

In December 2017, US prosecutors told a federal judge they wanted to keep secret the charges Assange might face because learning of them might have caused him to flee the Ecuadorian embassy. According to CNN, the recently unsealed documents indicate that a grand jury in Virginia indicted Assange in 2018 and prosecutors again demanded the charges be kept secret for the same reason, and added their worries about evidence tampering and witness intimidation.

Cassandra Fairbanks, of the right-wing outlet the Gateway Pundit, visited Assange more than once during his imprisonment in the London embassy offices. She confirmed her visits with Assange have been the subject of the recent investigation.

She told the World Socialist Web Site, “I was informed on Monday that there is a secret grand jury against Julian and two witnesses were questioned about me meeting with him, though they have not subpoenaed or questioned me directly.

“The witnesses told me that they were both asked, separately, if they knew any US persons who had met with Assange. When they didn’t really answer the question, they were asked specifically about me and also a list of other people who have visited Assange.”

Since Assange’s arrest, CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, who was prosecuted by the Obama administration in 2012 for exposing the torture of detainees, has taken to social media to emphasize that Assange has no chance of a fair trial in the US. “A fair trial in the Eastern District of Virginia, under Judge Leonie Brinkema, is utterly impossible. They don’t call EDVA the ‘Espionage Court’ for nothing,” he wrote.

April 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

State subsidies for nuclear power in USA are simply not necessary

State Nuclear Subsidies Not Needed, Forbes, Adam Millsap-19 Apr 19
Natural gas has become the dominant source of electricity generation in the United States and this is creating some financial issues for the nuclear industry. Since 2010, several nuclear plants around the country have closed and economic conditions, particularly low natural gas prices, are often citedas a factor. Officials from companies that own and operate struggling plants are seeking government assistance to stay afloat, but state lawmakers should be skeptical.

The decline in the price of natural gas since 2008, shown in the figure below, [on original] has made it difficult for some nuclear plants to compete. Prior to 2008, some thought a nuclear renaissance was on the horizon. Now this seems unlikely.

Nuclear power is characterized by the initial high costs of plant construction followed by relatively low operating costs. When alternative energy sources—such as coal, oil, solar, etc.—are expensive, it can make economic sense to bear the high costs of nuclear plant construction. But when other prices are low, as with today’s abundant natural gas and increasingly competitive wind and solar power, it’s harder to justify new plant construction.

Not only are economic conditions working against new nuclear plants, but they are also unfavorable to many existing plants. Unsurprisingly, officials from the companies that own and operate the struggling plants want some government help. A recent report in Pennsylvania’s York Dispatch shows that Exelon Corp.—the owner of some of the struggling plants—significantly increased its lobbying spending in Pennsylvania in 2018 compared to the previous five election cycles. Spending increased from an average of just over $646,000 from 2008 to 2016 to nearly $1.8 million in 2018.

There is some evidence that the lobbying is working. …..

Subsidies work by taxing one group and giving the revenue to another. In the Pennsylvania and Ohio bills, the funding for the subsidy is raised via higher electricity rates on consumers.

Supporters of both bills argue that nuclear is a vital source of clean energy and that without legislation nuclear plants will continue to shut down. But despite competition from natural gas and renewables, it’s not clear that the nuclear industry as a whole is in deep financial trouble. According to a recent analysis, all but one of Pennsylvania’s five nuclear plants are covering their costs. Since there is no financial stress requirement in the Pennsylvania bill, profitable plants in the state will benefit just as much as the current unprofitable one—Three Mile Island Unit 1.

More broadly, a recent State of the Market Report for PJM, which is the regional transmission organization that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other nearby states, also casts doubt on the general unprofitability of nuclear power. The report projects that only three of 18 nuclear plants in the region—Three Mile Island along with Davis-Besse and Perry in Ohio—won’t be able to cover their costs for at least one year between 2019 to 2021. ……

it’s not clear that subsidizing inefficient nuclear plants is the most economical way to address climate change , since subsides have problems of their own……

subsidies to nuclear plants are also likely to crowd out new, more efficient electricity plants. Total electricity generation in the United States has declined slightly since 2010 despite economic growth in the form of real GDP per capita, as shown below. [on original]

In a world of declining or even stable electricity use, the profit motive for investing in new capacity is weakened if new plants are not allowed to out-compete less efficient plants for market share. So as long as less efficient nuclear plants are meeting consumer demand, newer plants powered by natural gas, wind, solar, or some other source will have a difficult time finding a market.

Stu Bressler, senior vice president of operations and markets for PJM Interconnection, recently said essentially this when he told Ohio lawmakersthat subsidizing less competitive plants “…could prevent the building of more efficient and cost effective plants, including cleaner technologies like solar and wind.”

Finally, just because a subsidy has the potential to improve economic efficiency doesn’t mean it will. A subsidy that is too small will not generate enough of the good or service. A subsidy that is too large can generate too much, leading to more inefficiency than no subsidy at all. The bureaucratic costs of estimating the correct subsidy, implementing it, and administering it must also be considered. If these costs outweigh the potential gains in efficiency from the subsidy, then the economy would be better off without it.

It doesn’t appear that Ohio or Pennsylvania lawmakers have rigorously estimated the appropriate subsidy or accounted for the costs of implementing and administering one in their proposals. Without such analysis, it’s unlikely that the proposed nuclear subsidies will lead to an improvement in consumer welfare. Instead, these subsidies will likely do more harm than good, as they seem to be primarily designed to help a few unprofitable nuclear plants rather than carefully thought out pieces of a broader, market-based energy plan.

Adam A. Millsap is the Assistant Director of the L. Charles Hilton Jr. Center at Florida State University and an Affiliated Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2019/04/19/state-nuclear-subsidies-not-needed/#e532f23111dc

April 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Harvey Wasserman: America’s “Hole-in-the-Head” Nuke Suicide Pact Gets Court Approval

https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/56097-rsn-americas-qhole-in-the-headq-nuke-suicide-pact-gets-court-approval By Harvey Wasserman, 18 April 19

he Supreme Court has just now certified the deadliest and most economically destructive scam of the entire Trump catastrophe.

Every downwind American is now threatened with deadly radiation while state after state bankrupts itself with soaring electric bills and ecological disaster, crippling the Solartopian green energy revolution.

It is, in short, the “hole in the head” wave of massive state-based nuke bailouts

All across the US, brain-dead Trumpist legislatures are scamming public billions into dying nuke reactors that pose the #1 threat to human survival on this planet.

All the world’s 440 reactors (98 in the US) are decrepit, crumbling, ready to blow. They’re uninspected, under-maintained, filthy, falling apart. They emit massive quantities of heat and radiation that cause climate chaos. Most are huge money-losers that can’t compete with green Solartopian technologies.

They are epitomized by Ohio’s infamous “hole in the head” Davis-Besse nuke, currently crumbling outside Toledo. In keeping with the Luddite wave now sweeping Trumpnation, the Ohio legislature may soon fork over billions to keep it running toward the ultimate failure.

The state-based nuke bailout craze actually started with New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

In 2016-2017, he began gouging the Empire State for some $7.6 billion to underwrite four dying upstate nukes. All lose mega-cash while killing countless jobs by raising electric rates and blocking renewables.

Wind, solar, batteries and LED/efficiency were set to make the Empire state both energy independent and fully employed. But Cuomo is blocking that by scamming ratepayers as far away as Long Island who get zero juice from the nukes they’re being forced to subsidize.

Cuomo originally promised the payouts would soon decline. Instead, they rose $50 million this year, even beyond the original bailout scam.

The Illinois legislature is doing the same for three downstate reactors. New Jersey and Pennsylvania are contemplating a similar suicide.

But Ohio may top them all.

Center stage is FirstEnergy’s infamous money-losing Davis-Besse “hole-in-the-head” nuke near Toledo. Its bankrupt owner’s precursor blacked out the entire Northeast in 2003. FE says without a gargantuan bailout, DB will shut by 2021.

So the gerrymandered GOP legislature may soon gouge tax/ratepayers some $300 million/year to keep DB and the nearby Perry reactor open, dooming the state’s remnant rust belt economy.

DB dumps its waste heat into Lake Erie, between Toledo and Cleveland. A 1977 accident portended what destroyed its clone, Three Mile Island Unit Two, on March 28, 1979. TMI2’s owners later sued because lessons learned at DB that might’ve helped them avoid their own disaster were not passed on.

In 2002, news of a hole in DB’s head astonished the industry. Dripping boric acid had eaten nearly through the reactor vessel head. Cleveland and the Great Lakes were 3/5ths of an inch from permanent irradiation.

Rather than shut permanently, FE spent millions on a “fix” that failed. Then they cut through the containment and glued on a badly-fitted head from an unfinished Michigan reactor canceled by citizen action.

Shoddy construction and faulty maintenance have perforated the building meant to shield the public from DB’s radiation. Its operating/maintenance costs soar while it can’t compete with methane.

But it’s wind that Ohio’s nuke-loving lawmakers most hate. “North coast” breezes blow steadily over flat agricultural land filled with transmission lines. Farmers are desperate for the steady income turbines can bring, especially when sited so close to urban consumers. More than $4 billion in private funding is pending for Ohio wind farms, guaranteeing billions in longterm revenue and thousands of secure jobs.

But in 2015, FE’s bought lawmakers concocted a setback provision meant to kill those projects. Other midwestern/Great Plains states are now filling with cheap nature-based electricity. But anti-wind Ohio may now bury its fiscal future with unsustainable electric rates.

All reactors spew carbon 14 along with huge quantities of hot water and steam that warm the planet and kill trillions of marine creatures. Their cooling towers kill countless birds. All American reactors (except Watts Bar) are more than twenty years old; some are more than forty.

Now the Trump-run Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it may simply stop inspecting these older reactors just as they most need it. They want owners to stop informing the public of mishaps just as they become more frequent and dangerous.

The terrifying escalation of reactor disasters has risen from the near-miss at Michigan’s Fermi One (1966) to the melt-down at TMI (1979) to the mega-explosion at Chernobyl (1986) to the three melt-downs/four explosions at Fukushima.

After that 2011 disaster, NRC staff compiled upgrades to guard against another one. But the Trump Commission killed them all, leaving the fleet even more dangerous than before Fukushima.

When the next big reactor blows, industry hacks like Ann Coulter will be all over Fox explaining that radiation is good and that plutonium is pixie dust that really won’t harm our kids.

But the ghastly death tolls at TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukushima say otherwise.

Based on the insane claim that nukes deserve “zero emission credits,” the Supreme Court has cleared the way for still more of these insane bailouts.

Grassroots Solartopians are fighting back. Ohio’s bailout has been held off for years, and may yet fail. They’ve petitioned California Governor Gavin Newsom to independently inspect Diablo Canyon.

They’ve also poured into the bankruptcy court, where FirstEnergy’s inabilities are on global display alongside those of California’s Pacific Gas & Electric, the money-losing behemoth that in 2010 killed eight people with badly maintained pipelines, then killed eighty more with badly maintained power lines that incinerated an entire ecosystem, including 12,000 structures.

The uncaring incompetence of this dying industry and its technology of death guarantee that unless these bailouts stop, far worse is yet to come.

Harvey Wasserman’s Green Power & Wellness Show is podcast at prn.fm; California Solartopia is broadcast at KPFK-Pacifica, 90.7 fm, Los Angeles. His Life & Death Spiral of US History: From Deganawidah to Solartopia will soon be at www.solartopia.org.

April 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Three Mile Island, and the nuclear industry’s legacy of cancer

The legacy of nuclear power is checkered at best, Delware State News, Apr 18th, 2019 · by Alan Muller

Forty years ago, on March 28, 1979, the Three Mile Island (TMI) Unit 2 nuclear power reactor in central Pennsylvania — about 95 miles northwest of Dover — partially melted down and experienced at least one explosion.

Many of us living in Delaware at the time were very concerned about being downwind and somewhat downstream of a nuclear accident of unknown magnitude.

The causes were a combination of equipment failures, design defects and operator errors. The operators did not have accurate indications of what was going on in the reactor, so they couldn’t make the right decisions. Reportedly, more than half of the radiation monitors in the area were broken, so there was not adequate indication of how much radioactivity was released and where it went.

Days afterwards: “[Pa.] Governor Thornburgh advised pregnant women and pre-school age children to leave the area within a five-mile radius of the Three Mile Island facility until further notice. This led to the panic the governor had hoped to avoid; within days, more than 100,000 people had fled surrounding towns.”

Ever since the TMI meltdown, nuke industry sources and public health authorities have claimed that too little radioactivity was released to harm people’s health…….

Failure to investigate TMI health effects was published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 2004. This included failure to investigate, media blackouts and the firing of Pennsylvania Health Commissioner Gordon MacLeod by Gov. Thornburgh after he pointed out increases in infant mortality and other health problems near TMI.

Jane Lee, a local farmer, with others, went door-to-door and said they had found and documented many acute health problems. I knew Jane towards the end of her life. She’d been unable to arrange publication of her work, and wasn’t online A deposit of Jane Lee Papers at Dickenson College (Carlisle, Pa.) may hold some of this information.

More recently in 2017:

“A new Penn State College of Medicine study has found a link between the 1979 Three Mile Island accident and thyroid cancer cases in south central Pennsylvania. The study marks the first time the partial meltdown can be connected to specific cancer cases, the researchers have said. The findings may pose a dramatic challenge to the nuclear energy industry’s position that radiation released had no impact on human health.” …….

All nuclear plants release radiation to air and water during normal operation, as do other parts of the nuclear fuel cycle such as uranium mining. Many nuclear plants have tall stacks intended to disperse “noncondensible” radioactive emissions. See one in pictures of the Peach Bottom nuclear plant — three of this same General Electric design melted down in Japan in 2011. Evidence is accumulating that these releases from normal operations may have health impacts.

Some reports claim the only health effects from TMI were mental health impacts from stress, as if “mental health impacts” were unimportant.

The TMI meltdown ended expansion of the U.S. nuclear power industry — after TMI, no new reactors were ordered in the U.S. and many projects were stopped.

Now, 40 years later, the remaining industry is collapsing, largely because wind and solar have become cheaper. The remaining TMI unit is to shut down this year. But the nuke industry isn’t going down without a fight, trying to rebrand itself as a climate change solution. In fact, the nuclear fuel cycle releases less climate-changing carbon dioxide than fossil-fuel burning but much more than wind or solar (per unit of electricity generated).

It is timely to think about TMI as Delaware is surrounded by nuclear power reactors. About 10 percent of all those in the U.S. are within 50 miles of Delaware. The Salem/Hope Creek reactors, the nearest, have recently received an enormous subsidy from the state of New Jersey to stay open. On the other hand, the Oyster Creek, N.J., reactor has closed.

This contraction of the nuclear power industry won’t be easy for people working in it, or for some of the nuclear host communities. But it will happen regardless and ultimately we will be safer and healthier for it.

To ignore the human impacts of the nuclear industry is a moral failure.

Alan Muller is executive director of Green Delaware. https://delawarestatenews.net/opinion/commentary-the-legacy-of-nuclear-power-is-checkered-at-best/

April 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, USA | Leave a comment

USA’s new proposal “Creating an Environment for Nuclear Disarmament”

Sidetrack or kickstart? How to respond to the US proposal on nuclear disarmament. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , By Lyndon Burford, Oliver Meier, Nick Ritchie, April 19, 2019 Speaking to the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament on March 26, US Assistant Secretary of State Chris Ford presented the “Creating an Environment for Nuclear Disarmament” (CEND) initiative. According to Ford, the scheme “aims to help the international community find a path forward by setting in motion a ‘Creating an Environment Working Group’ process.” He described CEND as a “pathbreaking new initiative” to bring countries together in a constructive dialogue to explore how “it might be possible to ameliorate conditions in the global security environment so as to make that environment more conducive to further progress toward—and indeed, ultimately to achieve—nuclear disarmament.”………

The name change is important because it points to the initiative’s key problem: the risk that the United States and other nuclear weapon states will use the process of Creating an Environment for Nuclear Disarmament to deflect pressures to take concrete action on disarmament. ……

What’s in a name? Shifting from conditions to progress. While the shift from “creating the conditions” to “creating the environment” suggests a willingness to listen (at least, to allies and P5 states), a closer comparison between Ford’s Geneva remarks and his earlier statements on the subject leads one to be sceptical. The Geneva speech does not substantively move beyond the conditions narrative. Ford consistently and repeatedly argues that disarmament can only move forward when and if the prevailing security conditions are improving. This focus is problematic for a number of reasons.

First, it is conservative and unimaginative; it highlights the barriers to disarmament, rather than exploring ways to make progress…..

nuclear weapon states often highlight the “conditions” for nuclear disarmament, mainly to argue that others are responsible for the fact that these conditions are “not ripe” yet….

the “conditions” narrative is perceived by many as a stepping away from Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) disarmament commitments, including specifically the disarmament Action Plan agreed by NPT states parties at the 2010 Review Conference. The United States and other nuclear weapon states have been trying to diminish the importance of such commitments by arguing that they were concluded under different, arguably “better” circumstances. …….

The core challenge remains mobilizing the collective political will to take practical steps forward and working out effective measures that could precipitate a deeper transformation of global nuclear politics. In this regard, the issue of how the CEND working group relates to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (often called the ban treaty) will be important.

The United States and other nuclear-armed states have not engaged with the ban treaty. …… the CEND working group will itself lack legitimacy if it sets itself up in opposition to the ban treaty. .. the group of ban treaty supporters is now so large that its voice will have to be heard in the CEND process. …..

for the time being, the Creating the Environment for Nuclear Disarmament working group is only an idea, but it could offer a new opportunity for states to engage on progress towards nuclear disarmament. It could be a serious, honest, and open forum to discuss the responsibilities of all states, including the nuclear weapon states, in helping create the conditions for nuclear disarmament and taking specific steps in that direction. For that to happen, however, participating states must have shared ownership, including financial buy-in as appropriate, to make sure that they have an equal say in the make-up and functioning of the group and the conclusions it reaches over time. https://thebulletin.org/2019/04/sidetrack-or-kickstart-how-to-respond-to-the-us-proposal-on-nuclear-disarmament/

April 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Artificial Intelligence Could Solve Nuclear Fusion’s Biggest Problem

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Artificial-Intelligence-Could-Solve-Nuclear-Fusions-Biggest-Problem.html

By Irina Slav – Apr 18, 2019, The predictive powers of artificial intelligence could help scientists bring nuclear fusion closer to actually working, researchers from Princeton and Harvard working with the Department of Energy hope.The team, working at the DoE’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, says they have applied deep learning techniques to computers in order to be able to forecast sudden outages in the reactors used for nuclear fusion that can halt the energy-generating reaction.

Nuclear fusion, unlike fission, which is what takes place in traditional reactors, involves smashing particles together and turning them into plasma to generate energy. This takes place in what is called a magnetic fusion machine, or a tokamak. The tokamak produces magnetic fields that keep the superhot plasma inside and keep it moving—and hot—but controlling it for ever-longer periods of time and making it move faster to produce more energy has been a challenge.

Many believe we will never be able to make nuclear fusion happen, but researchers are not giving up. Computer technology is a natural ally to scientists in this quest for infinite clean power, but the presence of data to feed into the computers has proved crucial.

The Princeton and Harvard scientists used data from two fusion reactors: the Department of Energy’s DIII-D National Fusion Facility in California, operated by General Atomics, and the Joint European Torus tokamak in the UK. What the team learns about predicting outages will be applied to the largest tokamak that is currently in construction in the ITER project in Europe. It may just help solve fusion’s biggest problem: why the particle smashing sometimes stops. If this problem is solved, the world could see a working nuclear reactor in less than 20 years, although many scientists and observers rem

April 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | technology, USA | 2 Comments

U.S. Ignored Russia’s Nuclear War Prevention Pact – Reports

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/19/us-ignored-russias-nuclear-war-prevention-pact-reports-a65313 Russia sent the United States a draft joint declaration on how to prevent nuclear war, only to never hear back from Washington, the Kommersant business daily reported on Friday.The U.S. and Russia are suspending the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty this summer. The only U.S.-Russia arms control pact limiting deployed nuclear weapons — the New START — expires in February 2021.

“Nuclear war cannot be won and it must never be unleashed,” Kommersant quotedRussia’s draft joint declaration, which was sent to the U.S. in October 2018, as stating.

Similar declarations have been adopted between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reportedly suggested a revival of the nuclear war avoidance pact ahead of U.S. national security adviser John Bolton’s visit to Russia in October 2018.

Andrea Kalan, spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, told the publication that Washington adheres to arms control systems with partners “that honor their commitments responsibly.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused the U.S. of routinely ignoring Russia’s inroads on Friday.

Russia’s proposals to the U.S. included “strategic security and stability, cooperation in the fight against cybercrime, and so on,” Peskov said.

“All these Russian initiatives and proposals were in effect left unanswered,” he was quoted as saying to reporters by Kommersant.

April 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The long-lasting unsolved problem of Three Mile Island’s radioactive trash

Where will the nuclear waste go after Three Mile Island shuts down? The Inquirer, by Andrew Maykuth, April 14, 2019 After the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear accident 40 years ago, most of the reactor’s partially melted uranium fuel was hauled away to the Idaho National Lab, where the radioactive waste now slowly decays in steel and concrete containers, awaiting long-term disposal.

But the formal decommissioning of the damaged Unit 2 reactor near Harrisburg, site of America’s worst commercial nuclear disaster, has not yet really begun. Its owner, FirstEnergy Corp., has said that the plant would remain dormant until the surviving reactor, owned by a different company, shuts down.

FirstEnergy, in a 2013 filing with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that both reactors would be decommissioned simultaneously “to achieve economies of scale, by sharing costs between the units, and coordinating the sequence of work activities.”

The timing of the final dismantlement and interment of Three Mile Island plant was thrown into uncertainty last week when the owner of the operating reactor, Exelon Generation, announced that it would take nearly 60 years to decommission its unit if it prematurely shut down operations in September. Exelon says it is losing money on the plant and has no option but to shut it down without a state rescue.

The prolonged decommissioning of the operational reactor — and by implication, the damaged reactor — could push back the final cleanup and remediation of Three Mile Island to 2079, a century after the meltdown.

“We’ve been living with this for 40 years,” said Eric Epstein, chairman of Three Mile Island Alert, a Harrisburg nuclear watchdog group. “Out of a sense of fairness, we need to have this cleaned up.”

The fate of the damaged reactor is further complicated because FirstEnergy Solutions, an Akron company that operates FirstEnergy Corp.’s power generation plants, including the Beaver Valley Power Station in Pennsylvania, last year filed for bankruptcy.

The Unit 2 decommissioning costs, which FirstEnergy last year estimated at $1.26 billion, would be paid out of a trust fund. (Exelon estimates its reactor, TMI Unit 1, would need an additional $1.2 billion to decommission, paid from a separate trust fund.)………

FirstEnergy has until 2053 to decommission the site, 60 years after operations ceased. It contracts Exelon to maintain the dormant reactor, and provide security.

FirstEnergy can request an exemption to push back its decommissioning date if it appeared the task could not be completed within 60 years, said Neil Sheehan, an NRC spokesman.

FirstEnergy, in its 2013 filing, anticipated that Exelon would run its reactor through to the expiration of its license in 2034, and then the companies would jointly complete decontamination and dismantlement of both reactors in less than 20 years.

By decommissioning both reactors simultaneously, FirstEnergy said, it can use Exelon’s fuel storage equipment to contain the “small quantities of core debris and fission products” that still remain from Unit 2′s partial meltdown, which occurred after a series of mechanical and human errors led to a loss of coolant, allowing the uranium fuel to overheat.

Any spent fuel from the operating reactor, or any remaining radioactive debris collected during decontamination of the damaged unit, could be stored in dry casks on the reactor site, at federal expense, until the federal government builds a long-term underground disposal facility. ……..

Until the issue is sorted out, most decommissioned U.S. reactors will be forced to keep their spent fuel in canisters on the former reactor sites.

But 99 percent of the fuel from Three Mile Island’s damaged reactor was already packed up and shipped to the Idaho National Laboratory after the TMI accident.

The U.S. Department of Energy stores 2,750 tons of nuclear waste at four sites in South Carolina, Washington, Colorado and Idaho from an assortment of commercial, naval, and weapons-related reactors.

The site in eastern Idaho, which holds 358 tons of spent fuel, is kind of a mausoleum of nuclear detritus. It contains 46.9 tons of waste from the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Beaver County, Pa., the nation’s first commercial reactor. It’s also home to 1.8 tons of thorium‐uranium carbide fuel from Philadelphia Electric Co.’s Peach Bottom Unit 1, an experimental reactor in Delta, Pa., that shut down in 1974.

The 90.8 tons of ruined nuclear fuel from Three Mile Island’s damaged reactor is the biggest contributor of waste to the Idaho site. It is contained in 29 steel canisters encased in concrete containers.

But it is an unwelcome long-term resident in Idaho.

Under a 1995 agreement between the state of Idaho and the federal government, the energy department agreed to remove all spent fuel from the state by Jan. 1, 2035.

The agreement specifically includes Three Mile Island’s waste. https://www.philly.com/business/what-happened-to-three-mile-island-nuclear-waste-after-the-accident-20190414.html

April 18, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes | 1 Comment

USA Congressmen concerned at slow clean-up of dangerous San Onofre nuclear site

The Nuclear Cleanup At San Onofre Isn’t Moving Fast Enough, Congressmen Say, laist.com, BY SHARON MCNARY APRIL 17, 2019 About 8 million people live within 50 miles of San Onofre, the now-defunct, beach-adjacent nuclear plant located between Oceanside and San Clemente. Inside the plant is 1,600 tons of radioactive waste. Much of the spent nuclear fuel is currently sitting in cooling pools waiting to be moved to a safer location — specifically, one that’s less vulnerable to earthquake faults and rising sea levels.On Tuesday, Rep. Mike Levin and Orange County Rep. Harley Rouda spoke to reporters at Southern California Edison’s decommissioned facility about a proposal to speed up the removal of that waste.

There are two moves needed. One is to get it out of the cooling ponds at San Onofre and into the dry concrete bunkers. That will enable the defunct plant to be dismantled.

But the members of Congress want to accelerate another move of the spent fuel out of state to “interim” storage and eventually to permanent storage

Nuclear waste cleanup at the San Onofre nuclear power plant has been on hold since last summer after a mishap involving a 50-ton container of radioactive material.

Rep. Mike Levin says Congress should set new priorities for which power plants get top priority to ship the fuel elsewhere. The oceanfront San Onofre plant within his Oceanside Congressional district would be right at the top of the list, according to his proposed new criteria.

“We probably shouldn’t have had a nuclear power plant here in the first place,” Levin said. “But now that we do, and we’re stuck with 1,600 tons of spent radioactive nuclear fuel, we better do everything we can do to prioritize.”

He wants plants that are closed, and located near near large population centers and at risk from earthquake faults and rising sea levels to get priority permits to transport the waste out of state.

Levin said he would introduce a bill when he returns to Congress that would change the criteria. He said he disagreed with current policies that call for the oldest fuel to be shipped to remote storage first, citing the higher risk to dense nearby populations.

Rouda and Levin were among 15 members who called on Congress earlier this month to spend $25 million hurrying the development of interim storage spots. Two locations, in West Texas and New Mexico, are in the process of getting permits to store nuclear waste on an interim basis while the federal government seeks a permanent home for it.

WHAT WENT WRONG AT SAN ONOFRE LAST AUGUST?

Spent nuclear fuel is being held in cooling ponds and being transferred in giant canisters to new concrete bunkers about 100 feet from the ocean. A 28-foot high seawall is meant to keep seawater out of the bunkers. Edison contractors had already transferred 29 of 73 containers of nuclear waste to the new location.

But on August 3, a 20-foot tall canister containing more than 50 tons of radioactive waste was left suspended on a metal flange 18 feet above a storage bunker floor during its transfer. Safety slings to keep the canister from falling were disabled, so the danger was that the canister could have fallen and perhaps ruptured. SCE’s contractor doing the work did not properly disclose the incident that day.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission found that from Jan. 30 to Aug. 3, 2018, workers loading the canisters into the bunkers “frequently” knocked the canister against components of the vault, potentially gouging the steel container.

Again, the contractors didn’t immediately tell Edison that was happening, depriving the company and other workers of a chance to correct the loading procedure.

The NRC cited “apparent weaknesses in management oversight” of how the waste canisters were stored, and fined Edison $116,000 for the violation. The company did not sufficiently oversee its contractor doing the work of moving the canisters, the NRC said.

The company is waiting for the green light from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume the work of transferring the waste.

Here is the NRC’s November 2018 report that criticized Edison’s handling of waste………https://laist.com/2019/04/17/the_nuclear_cleanup_at_san_onofre_isnt_moving_fast_enough_congressmen_say.php

April 18, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Trump’s administration speeds up the revolving door between Pentagon and nuclear weapons companies

Tomgram: Smithberger and Hartung, The Pentagon’s Revolving Door Spins Faster

Tom Dispatch by William Hartung and Mandy Smithberger , January 29, 2019.Give Donald Trump credit. As a businessman, he’s brought into office some skills that previous presidents lacked. Take, for example, his willingness to plough staggering sums of money into five casinos destined to go bankrupt (and then jump ship, money in hand, leaving others holding the financial bag). Now, he seems to be applying the same principles to the Pentagon. He’s already insisted on establishing a sixth branch of the armed services, a Space Force, which will cost a pretty penny — as much as $13 billion just to set up its new bureaucracy. And lest that seem too financially ambitious, just the other day he unveiled a 2019 Missile Defense Review aimed at creating a modern version of President Ronald Reagan’s extremely expensive (and failed) Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars.” Its purpose, as he put it, will be to “ensure that we can detect and destroy any [nuclear] missile launched against the United States anywhere, anytime.” The cost: possibly up to a trillion dollars without such a system being in any meaningful way capable of taking out Russian or Chinese missiles launched at the U.S. As a plan, however, it could hit the Trumpian trifecta: putting high-tech weaponry in space, heating up a new global nuclear arms race, and busting a Pentagon budget that’s already in the stratosphere……….

As Mandy Smithberger from the Project On Government Oversight and TomDispatch regularWilliam Hartung suggest today, the very Pentagon that President Trump is so eager to launch into space is now filled, from its acting secretary of defense on down, with former officials of, or consultants to, America’s largest arms makers, a crew clearly prepared to give out lucrative contracts for space failure to such firms. Sooner or later, in true Trumpian fashion, they, too, will undoubtedly jump ship — or rather step back through that Washington revolving door and exit the premises, money in hand, before the military version of the Titanic hits an iceberg.

Our Man From Boeing
Has the Arms Industry Captured Trump’s Pentagon?
By Mandy Smithberger and William D. Hartung

The way personnel spin through Washington’s infamous revolving door between the Pentagon and the arms industry is nothing new. That door, however, is moving ever faster with the appointment of Patrick Shanahan, who spent 30 years at Boeing, the Pentagon’s second largest contractor, as the Trump administration’s acting secretary of defense………

Shanahan is unique. No secretary of defense in recent memory has had such a long career in the arms industry and so little experience in government or the military. For most of that career, in fact, his main focus was winning defense contracts for Boeing, not crafting effective defense policies. While the Pentagon should be focused on protecting the country, the arms industry operates in the pursuit of profit, even when that means selling weapons systems to countries working against American national security interests. …….

Shanahan’s new role raises questions about whether what is in the best interest of Boeing — bigger defense budgets and giant contracts for unaffordable and ineffective weaponry or aircraft — is what’s in the best interest of the public……..

He has similarly been the Pentagon’s staunchest advocate when it comes to the development of a new Space Force, something that likely thrills President Trump. He’s advocated, for example, giving the Space Development Agency, the body that will be charged with developing military space assets, authority “on steroids” to shove ever more contracts out the door. As a producer of military satellites, Boeing is a major potential beneficiary of just such a development. ……..

The Revolving Door Spins Both Ways

Shanahan and Faulkner are far from the only former defense executives or lobbyists to populate the Trump administration. Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson is a former lobbyist for Lockheed Martin. Ellen Lord, who heads procurement at the Pentagon, worked at Textron, a producer of bombs and military helicopters. Secretary of the Army Mark Esper — rumored as a possible replacement for Shanahan as secretary of defense — was once a top lobbyist at Raytheon. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood was a senior vice president at Lockheed Martin. And the latest addition to the club is Charles Kupperman, who has been tapped as deputy national security advisor. His career includes stints at both Boeing and Lockheed Martin. (His claim to fame: asserting that the United States could win a nuclear war.)

All of the above, including Patrick Shanahan, spun through that famed revolving door into government posts, but so many former DoD officials and top-level military officers have long spun in the opposite direction ……….

Mandy Smithberger is the director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).

William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy and the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex. http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176521/tomgram%3A_smithberger_and_hartung%2C_the_pentagon%27s_revolving_door_spins_faster#.XLaRC30hTm4.twit

April 18, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Holtec’s nuclear decommissioning and wastes empire to grab Indian Point

Holtec to snap up Indian Point nuclear units for decommissioning, Utility Dive,Iulia Gheorghiu @IMGheorghiu – 17 Apr 19

Dive Brief:

Holtec International announced an agreement on Tuesday to acquire Entergy’s Indian Point nuclear power plant units for expedited decommissioning.
Entergy will sell Units 1, 2 and 3 to a Holtec subsidiary, transferring licenses, spent fuel, decommissioning liabilities and nuclear decommissioning trusts for the units. Unit 1 was retired in 1974 while Unit 2 and Unit 3, totaling about 2 GW, are scheduled to retire in April, 2020 and April, 2021, respectively, according to Entergy’s agreement with New York state.
Holtec announced its intentions in August to buy Entergy’s Pilgrim power plant in Massachusetts and the Michigan-based Palisades nuclear plant, as well as Exelon’s Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey, shut down last September. In each case, the deals will will require approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), along with state agencies.

Dive Insight:

The sale of Indian Point to a decommissioning firm marks the beginning of the end for the nuclear plant — the only one in New York not to receive subsidies under the state’s Zero Emission Credit program.

“The sale of Indian Point to Holtec is expected to result in the completion of decommissioning decades sooner than if the site were to remain under Entergy’s ownership,” Leo Denault, Entergy CEO and chairman, said in a statement.

The NRC is still reviewing the license transfer applications for Pilgrim and Exelon’s Oyster Creek. The regulators had not yet received any formal application regarding Indian Point and Palisades, the latter of which is set to be retired in 2022.

Entergy has not announced the value of the nominal cash considerations it would receive for Indian Point or any of its other nuclear decommissioning transfers.

However, another spent nuclear fuel specialist, NorthStar Group Services, took over Entergy’s closed Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in October. In that case, the NRC required “some additional financial guarantees” beyond the plant’s nearly half a billion dollars in its decommissioning trust fund, according to NRC spokesperson Neil Sheehan

…… The decision for Entergy to shut down its merchant nuclear generation early comes amid several other recent nuclear plant closures.

“The plant owners have found it difficult to deal with the financial realities of low costs of natural gas, subsidies to other forms of power and other factors,” Sheehan told Utility Dive.

Situated near the Hudson River in Buchanan, New York, Indian Point’s two operating units power New York City and the surrounding county.

The Department of Energy is otherwise obligated to remove the waste to a permanent storage site, though selecting one has proved to be a drawn out process in Congress.

Until the DOE acts or the waste can be sent to Holtec, the company plans to transfer the spent nuclear fuel to dry cask onsite storage, which will be under guard, monitored during the shutdown and decommissioning activities.

…….. Two interim storage facilities for nuclear waste are currently seeking regulator approval to begin their intake of used fuel. One of them is Holtec’s proposed facility in New Mexico, HI-STORE Consolidated Interim Storage (CIS). …… https://www.utilitydive.com/news/holtec-to-snap-up-indian-point-nuclear-units-for-decommissioning/552894/

April 18, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | decommission reactor, USA | 2 Comments

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