Contentious debate expected as USA House debates annual Defense Bill
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House defense bill sets stage for contentious nuclear debate, The Hill BY REBECCA KHEEL – 06/10/19 The House version of the annual defense policy would require an independent study on the United States adopting a “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons.Nuclear issues are shaping up to be among the most contentious issues as Congress debates this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), with Republicans already coming out strongly against what’s in the bill.
The bill, a summary of which was released Monday morning, does not go as far as Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) has opined about in the past. But it does seek to “start that debate” about the appropriate size and cost of the nuclear arsenal, staffers told reporters ahead of the bill’s release. “The chairman feels strongly that the nuclear arsenal is too large, that we spend too much money on legacy weapons systems when we have emerging requirements like cyber, like [artificial intelligence], like space, which aren’t getting the kind of focus that’s required, and he wants to reevaluate where we’re spending money, if we’re going to have another money to spend on these emerging things that are coming out,” a staffer said. Smith, who has long lambasted the price tag for nuclear modernization, pledged to make the issue a priority when he took control of the gavel after Democrats won back the House. In hearings and speeches, he has questioned the need for the nuclear triad, said he wants to “kill” the low-yield warhead and blasted Trump for casting aside nuclear treaties. n late January, Smith also reintroduced his No First Use Act that would make it U.S. policy not to use nuclear weapons first. Right now, U.S. policy leaves open the possibility of being the first to use a nuclear weapon in a conflict. Rather than incorporating that bill, the NDAA requires the independent study on the implications of adopting such a policy. Staffers also stressed the bill would not eliminate a leg of the triad, which refers to the three methods of delivering nuclear warheads. …….. Every Republican on the subcommittee voted against the bill last week over the low-yield warhead provision and three other issues. ……. https://thehill.com/policy/defense/447664-house-defense-bill-sets-stage-for-contentious-nuclear-debate |
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NO to high-level nuclear waste- governor of New Mexico
New Mexico governor says no to high-level nuclear waste, June 8, 2019, ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico’s governor said Friday she’s opposed to plans by a New Jersey-based company to build a multibillion-dollar facility in her state to temporarily store spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors around the U.S.
In a letter to U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said the interim storage of high-level radioactive waste poses significant and unacceptable risks to residents, the environment and the region’s economy.
She cited the ongoing oil boom in the Permian Basin, which spans parts of southeastern New Mexico and West Texas, as well as million-dollar agricultural interests that help drive the state’s economy.
Any disruption of agricultural or oil and gas activities as a result of a perceived or actual incident would be catastrophic, she said, adding that such a project could discourage future investment in the area.
“Establishing an interim storage facility in this region would be economic malpractice,” she wrote…………
Lujan Grisham’s stance marks a shift from the previous administration, which had indicated its support for such a project.
During her last year in Congress, Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, opposed changes to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and the possible development of a temporary storage facility in New Mexico. She was concerned that loopholes could be created and result in the waste being permanently stranded in New Mexico.
The Permian Basin Petroleum Association, the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau and the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association all have sent letters of concern to the governor.
Several environmental groups also have protested the idea of an interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel. The groups raised their concerns during a hearing before federal regulators earlier this year.
Opponents question the project’s legality, the safety of transporting high-level waste from sites scattered across the country and the potential for contamination if something were to go wrong.
The governor’s letter came as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers whether to issue a 40-year license for the facility proposed by Holtec. ……..
Municipalities elsewhere in New Mexico and Texas have passed resolutions expressing concerns about an interim storage proposal in the region.
Reams of documents have already been submitted to the regulatory commission, and the overall permitting process is expected to be lengthy.
A Texas-based company also has applied for a license to expand its existing hazardous waste facility in Andrews County, Texas, to include an area where spent fuel could be temporarily stored. https://www.apnews.com/25e295f2157343b7b644c82936aee01d
Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s “Reference Man” gives a distorted, inaccurate picture of radiation impacts
Mary Olsen: Disproportionate impact of radiation and radiation regulation. Journal of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (accessed) 9th June 2019 Abstract. Reference Man is used for generic evaluation of ionizing radiation impacts, regulation, and nuclear licensing decisions made by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (US NRC).
particularly when exposed as young girls, than is predicted by use of Reference Man; the difference is a much as 10-fold. Since females have been ignored in regulatory analysis, this has resulted in systematic under-reporting of harm from ionizing radiation exposure in the global population.
A critique is also offered on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to include females in its regulation. Recommendations for interim regulation to provide better protection, and questions forfurther study are offered.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03080188.2019.160386
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USA court deliberates on whether or not global warming violates children’s rights
US court weighs if climate change violates children’s rights Business Mirror, By The Associated Press, June 10, 2019 PORTLAND, Oregon—In a courtroom packed with environmental activists, federal judges wrestled last week with whether climate change violates the constitutional rights of young people who have sued the US government over the use of fossil fuels.USA in a real mess over nuclear wastes: stalemate in storage options
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House Panel Highlights Risks Over Nuclear-Storage Stalemate, https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2019-06-07/house-panel-highlights-risks-over-nuclear-storage-stalemate
Members of Congress say America’s long stalemate over where to put its nuclear waste needs to end _ and as soon as possible. By Associated Press, Wire Service Content June 7, 2019 BY MICHAEL R. BLOOD, LAGUNA NIGEL, Calif. (AP) — Southern California‘s San Onofre nuclear power plant was permanently closed in 2013, but the site remains home to 3.5 million pounds (1.59 million kilograms) of nuclear waste that has nowhere else to go. Members of a House subcommittee held a hearing Friday not far from the defunct plant to highlight the urgency behind efforts to build a long-term national repository for used radioactive fuel, a proposal that has languished for decades in Washington. “The federal government has failed, and continues to fail, to find a solution to our country’s nuclear waste problem,” said Rep. Harley Rouda, a Democrat whose district is up the coast from the seaside San Onofre plant. Even if a bipartisan agreement is reached soon, development of a site would be at least a decade away, he said. In the meantime, 8.4 million residents live within 50 miles (about 80 kilometers) of the plant, which is within sight of a busy freeway and in a region crossed by earthquake faults. Nationally, one in three Americans lives within 50 miles of nuclear waste, Rouda said. The nation does “not have any more time to waste” to find a solution, he said, citing potential safety risks. Development of a proposed long-term storage site at Nevada‘s Yucca Mountain was halted during the Obama administration, although the Trump administration has moved to restart the licensing process while the plan continues to face stiff resistance in Nevada. Meanwhile, proposals in New Mexico and Texas for temporary storage sites are also facing criticism. On Friday, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she’s opposed to plans to build the facility in her state. Building a long-term storage site would lead to another question: How would the radioactive waste get there from nuclear power plants? “There is not consensus about health and safety standards, including whether commercial spent fuel is safe where it is,” said Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center, a nonprofit watchdog group. “If it is safe where it is, why move it? If it’s not safe where it is, how can it be safe to transport through many other communities?” During the hearing, Democratic Rep. Mike Levin, whose 49th District includes the plant site, urged federal regulators to increase oversight at San Onofre, which received approval in 2015 to move tons of highly radioactive fuel from storage pools into steel canisters sheathed by concrete. Those transfers were halted about a year ago after a 50-ton canister of spent fuel was left hanging and at risk of being dropped rather than lowered 18 feet (5.5 meters) into a storage vault. Federal regulators later fined plant operator Southern California Edison $116,000. Levin has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to appoint a full-time inspector at the plant, which is no longer producing power. NRC Administrator Scott Morris told the panel it would take a change in policy by the commission. The NRC has given Edison permission to resume transferring canisters filled with nuclear waste to the separate storage site. But the commission announced this month it will conduct surprise inspections at the plant to help make sure it’s running smoothly. Edison said in a statement that it strongly encourages action by Congress, but warned that “misrepresenting the science and potential consequences of spent nuclear fuel makes the challenge of finding a … location for storage more difficult.” “The federal government must honor its decades-long obligation to create a permanent repository and begin the process of relocating spent nuclear fuel from reactor sites throughout the country,” the company said. San Onofre was shut down in January 2012 after a small radiation leak led to the discovery of extensive damage to hundreds of tubes inside the virtually new generators. The plant never produced electricity again. Edison closed San Onofre for good in 2013 amid a fight with environmentalists over whether the plant was too damaged to restart safely. |
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Mike Pompeo thinks that climate change is not really a serious problem, could be good for trade
“The climate’s been changing a long time. There’s always changes that take place,” Pompeo said during an interview with the Washington Times published Friday, when asked whether he thought climate change was man-made and how best to address it. He did not mention anything about man-made pollution in his remarks…..
The comments aren’t Pomepo’s first foray into controversial climate assessments.
In May, Pompeo praised the Arctic’s rapidly shrinking sea levels for their subsequent economic opportunities, despite continued warnings about the catastrophic effects of climate change….. https://myfox8.com/2019/06/09/pompeo-downplays-climate-change-suggests-people-move-to-different-places/
A mistake for USA to deploy the low-yield Trident nuclear warhead
The Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review called for a low-yield warhead on some Trident D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). The plan modifies a W76-1 warhead, which has an explosive yield of 100 kilotons — seven times the size of the weapon used against Hiroshima — to produce the W76-2, reportedly with a yield of “just” five-seven kilotons.
Adding this weapon to the arsenal would risk lowering the nuclear threshold. To be sure, Pentagon officials assert that new low-yield weapons would not lower the threshold.
Yet the Nuclear Posture Review argued for low-yield weapons out of concern that Russia might feel it could use its “small” nuclear weapons free of concern about U.S. retaliation because the United States arsenal consists mainly of large-yield weapons.
So, at a minimum, the goal of new U.S. low-yield nuclear weapons would appear to be to persuade Moscow that the United States is more likely to go nuclear.
It is in the U.S. interest to maintain the highest possible threshold against the use of any nuclear arms. We should avoid steps that might signal, even inadvertently, that the use of “small” nukes is somehow acceptable………
SLBMs on submarines at sea constitute the most important and most survivable leg of the U.S. strategic triad, because the submarines can hide underwater and have lots of ocean in which to roam. Each submarine at sea carries a significant portion of the survivable U.S. nuclear deterrent.
The problem with launching an SLBM with a W76-2 is that it would reveal the submarine’s location. The submarine could maneuver away from the launch point, but it still would have compromised its general position, putting at risk the boat and the other 80-90 warheads it carried. Would the U.S. military run that risk, particularly given the availability of other low-yield options?
A bigger problem is discrimination. The Russians could not tell whether a launched SLBM carried a W76-2 or a W76-1 (100 kilotons) or, for that matter, a W88 (450 kilotons) until the weapon (or weapons) detonated………
The problem is that a launch from many parts of the Atlantic toward the Baltics would also appear, at least initially, to be a launch against Moscow.
Would the U.S. leadership launch a W76-2 — and run the risk that the Russians misread it as larger warhead intended to flatten Moscow in a decapitation strike — when F-35s and B61-12 bombs are available in Europe (as they will be in the early 2020s)?
The W76-2 makes little strategic sense, could inadvertently lower the nuclear threshold and likely would never be used, even in the most dire circumstances.
The Trump administration made a mistake by deciding to produce it. Congress should use the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act to correct that mistake and prohibit its deployment.
Steven Pifer is a William Perry fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/447514-stop-the-low-yield-trident-nuclear-warhead
America came close to having its own Chernobyl-level nuclear catastrophe
Command and Control, Chapter 1
The U.S. kept nuclear accidents like the Damascus Incident secret for decades.
HBO’s Chernobyl is over, but if you’ve seen the series, you’ll remember it for a long time.
Coming on the heels of the mega-hyped Game of Thrones series finale, the five-part miniseries—created and written by Craig Mazin, and directed by Johan Renck—quickly overtook the fantasy story with its astonishing performances and commitment to its immersion in a world that Americans never really understood.
The focus in the discussion around Chernobyl lies where the miniseries has gone: nuclear reactors meant for peaceful energy. The safety of nuclear plants is of upmost importance, but that’s not the only place nuclear energy is located. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the Department of Defense maintains an estimated stockpile of approximately 4,000 warheads. Mishaps with these weapons of mass destruction are referred to as “Broken Arrow” accidents.
The United States has officially had approximately 32 of these incidents, often involving the transport of weapons from one location to another. None of these incidents caused a major disaster, let alone a Chernobyl-like event. Two nuclear weapons were dropped on Goldsboro North Carolina in 1961 and are now commemorated with an historical marker. But there’s no such memorial for the 1980 accident in which a Titan II missile carrying a thermonuclear reactor exploded near Damascus, Arkansas.
Chernobyl offers a new chance to examine these Broken Arrows. Fortunately, both the stories of Goldsboro, the Damascus Incident, and other Broken Arrows have already been documented in the film Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner and based on a book by Eric Schlosser.
Available on PBS, Netflix, and other streaming services, the documentary shows that the story of lies and of nuclear mismanagement is not limited to Soviet borders.
On September 18, 1980, routine maintenance on an Titan II went awry. A Propellant Transfer System (PTS) team was working on the missile under the authority of the Air Force. A ratchet was used instead of a torque wrench, and that was all it took for a socket from the missile’s oxidizer tank to fall 80 feet down, where a freak bump allowed it to puncture the missile’s first-stage fuel tank.
Efforts to stabilize the missile failed, and late into the night, it exploded. Two men sent in to vent the gas were presumed dead. One of them, Senior Airman David Livingston, died 12 hours later. The nuclear warhead was later found in a field.
There are many differences between Damascus and Chernobyl, of course. Honesty was maintained within the chain of command, although the man who dropped the socket had trouble articulating the truth of the situation for half an hour afterward. And while safety protocols couldn’t keep the 7-story missile from exploding, they did keep the warhead in check.
But when it comes to nuclear incidents, Command and Control makes it clear that the U.S. shares more with the scientists of Chernobyl than many feel comfortable to admit.
There may not be a deeply embedded culture of lying stateside, but the U.S. was as willing to cover up the truth of Damascus, as well as thousands of other nuclear accidents, for decades. And when it came down to the final decision making in Damascus, the documentary paints a picture of an out-of-touch Strategic Air Command that issued commands without any understanding of the situation on the ground—decisions that resulted in Livingston’s death.
Mazin has made it clear that his Chernobyl is not primarily focused on nuclear power. It’s a complex subject, as Valery Legasov, played masterfully by Jared Harris, makes clear in the final episode. But perhaps the greatest similarity between Damascus and Chernobyl was the confident belief that nuclear power could be safely managed at all.
Explaining how nuclear power works in a Soviet court, Legasov describes a dance that can generate tremendous energy. But as Adam Higginbottom shows in Midnight in Chernobyl, it’s a dance that people have been trying to get right for many years.
The Soviet system might have set up the scientists at V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant for failure. But even with the best dancers in the world, there’s eventually a missed step.
Holtec” nuclear waste canisters – a pot of gold for the company – a load of trouble for the future?
Last month, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) fined Southern California Edison an unprecedented $116,000 for failing to report the near drop of an 54 ton canister of radioactive waste, and is delaying giving the go-ahead to further loading operations until serious questions raised by the incident have been resolved.
Critics have long been pointing out that locating a dump for tons of waste, lethal for millions of years, in a densely populated area, adjacent to I-5 and the LA-to-San Diego rail corridor, just above a popular surfing beach, in an earthquake and tsunami zone, inches above the water table, and yards from the rising sea doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense from a public safety standpoint.
The near drop incident last August, revealed by a whistleblower, has drawn further attention to the many defects in the Holtec-designed and manufactured facility. It has been discovered that the stainless steel canisters, only five-eights inches thick, are being damaged as they are lowered into the site’s concrete silos. Experts have warned that the scratching or gouging that is occurring makes the thin-walled canisters even more susceptible to corrosion-induced cracking in the salty sea air, risking release of their deadly contents into the environment and even of hydrogen explosions.
Furthermore, critics point out, these thin-walled canisters are welded shut and cannot be inspected, maintained, monitored or repaired.
Systems analyst Donna Gilmore is the founder of SanOnofreSafety.org, and a leading critic of the Holtec system. She explains her concerns this way in a recent email:
The root cause of the canister wall damage is the lack of a precision downloading system for the canisters. Holtec’s NRC license requires no contact between the canister and the interior of the holes. The NRC admits Holtec is out of compliance with their license, but refuses to cite Holtec for this violation.
NRC staff said the scraping of the stainless steel thin canister walls against a protruding carbon steel canister guide ring also deposits carbon on the canisters, creating galvanic corrosion. The above ground Holtec system has long vertical carbon steel canister guide channels, creating similar problems.
Once canisters are scraped or corroded they start cracking. The NRC said once a crack starts it can grow through the wall in 16 years. In hotter canisters, crack growth rate can double for every 10 degree increase in temperature.
Each canister holds roughly the radioactivity of a Chernobyl nuclear disaster, so this is a critical issue people need to know about.
Unless these thin-wall canisters (only 1/2″ to 5/8″ thick) are replaced with thick-wall bolted lid metal casks – the standard in most of the world except the U.S. – none of us are safe. Thick-wall casks are 10″ to 19.75″ thick. Thick-wall casks survived the 2011 Fukushima 9.0 earthquake and tsunami.
U.S. companies choose thin canisters due to short-term cost savings. These thin-wall pressure vessels can explode, yet have no pressure monitoring or pressure relief valves. The NRC gives many exemptions to ASME N3 Nuclear Pressure Vessel standards (a scandal in and of itself).
The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board December 2017 report to Congress raises concerns of hydrogen gas explosions in these canisters. The residual water in the canisters becomes radiated and results in buildup of hydrogen gas.
The gouged canister walls reduces the maximum pressure rating of these thin canisters, creating the perfect storm for a disaster. Ironically, Holtec calls their system “HI-STORM”.
How many “Chernobyl disaster can” explosions can we afford? There are almost 3000 thin-wall canisters in the U.S. Yet the NRC has no current plan in place to prevent or stop major radioactive releases or explosions.
Many are advocating that the San Onofre storage facility be moved to higher ground in thicker casks housed in more securely hardened structures. Others are advocating for the waste to be shipped across country to New Mexico to a facility being proposed there by Holtec and a local group of entrepreneurs calling itself the Eddy-Lea Alliance.
Holtec International, a family-owned company, based in Camden, New Jersey, with mixed reviews from employees. True to its name, the company has international ambitions for building small nuclear reactors (SMRs) and become dominant in the burgeoning global market of radioactive waste management. It is working hard to convince the NRC and members of the public that concerns about its San Onofre ISFSI are over-blown and unfounded.
Holtec canisters are reportedly installed at three-dozen other reactor sites around the country, including Humboldt Bay in California. Holtec is in the running, too, for a waste storage facility at the state’s Diablo Canyon nuclear site, scheduled for shutdown in 2025.
Holtec is also offering to buy four other US phased out nuclear power stations, – Oyster Creek in New Jersey, Pilgrim in Maine, Palisades in Michigan and Indian Point in New York. As of this writing three of those proposed deals have yet to be approved, but on April 18, 2019, Holtec announced that it has closed the deal with Entergy to acquire the leaking and controversial Indian Point energy center just outside New York City after the last of its three reactors shuts down.
The pot of gold in the radioactive waste business is that, thanks to fees charged to ratepayers over the years, each plant has accumulated hundreds of billions of dollars in a decommissioning trust fund, which would all go to Holtec once the sales have been completed.
With Three Mile Island now scheduled for shutdown by the end of September, will Holtec attempt to buy TMI, as well?………… https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/07/halting-holtec-a-challenge-for-nuclear-safety-advocates/
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS DOWNGRADING TOXIC NUCLEAR WEAPONS WASTE TO CUT DISPOSAL COSTS—SHOULD WE BE WORRIED?
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS DOWNGRADING TOXIC NUCLEAR WEAPONS WASTE TO CUT DISPOSAL COSTS—SHOULD WE BE WORRIED? https://www.newsweek.com/trump-toxic-nuclear-weapons-waste-disposal-reclassify-1442573 BYON 6/6/19 The Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it is moving forward with plans to reclassify toxic nuclear waste from Cold War weapons research, downgrading some of it from the highest level, in order to cut costs and quicken the disposal process.
The waste under review is currently located at three DOE Defense Reprocessing Waste Inventories: the Hanford Site in Washington, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, and the Idaho National Laboratory.
Environmental campaigners hit back, accusing the Department of Energy (DOE) of risking the health and safety of Americans through what it characterized as a reckless and dangerous departure from decades-long convention in the country’s handling of its nuclear waste.
But an expert in nuclear waste management said DOE’s shifting approach is both reasonable and desirable—provided it is transparent with the American public in order to build confidence that it is disposing of the toxic material responsibly and safely.
Currently, DOE treats most of its radioactive waste as “high-level” (HLW) because of how it was made rather than classifying it by its characteristics, such as radioactivity. HLW must be buried deep underground when it is disposed of.
DOE said in a release that this “one size fits all” approach to waste management has caused delays to permanent disposal, leaving toxic waste stored in DOE facilities, which causes health risks to workers and costs the taxpayers billions of unnecessary dollars.
Now, DOE will seek to lower the classification of waste of lesser radioactivity, meaning it can be disposed of with greater ease because it does not need to be stored deep below ground—and both sooner and at a lower cost.
Professor Neil Hyatt, an expert in nuclear materials chemistry and waste management at the U.K.’s University of Sheffield, told Newsweek this is potentially a positive change by the DOE.
“DOE is proposing to manage waste on the basis of risk rather than how it was produced, which is quite reasonable—and desirable. We would want resources to be focused on dealing with the waste of highest risk,” Hyatt said.
“That said, it is important that this is achieved with regard to the risk to health and the environment over the full lifecycle of waste management—including the period of waste disposal, which is some 250,000 years.”
Hyatt added: “The new interpretation has the potential to radically change the location, inventory, and nature of waste disposed of, which will be of concern to local communities.”
For the new interpretation of HLW to succeed, Hyatt said, those communities will need to be engaged by authorities in a transparent way.
“The problem is that the action will be seen as moving the goalposts, for unfair means, whilst the game is in progress,” Hyatt told Newsweek.
“If you have agreed that waste is to be classified and managed in a certain way for decades, how do you now build confidence in a new approach?
“This cannot be taken for granted. Transparency, effective public engagement and independent expert scrutiny, in evaluating the risk, will be key. But with a new approach comes a new opportunity to get that right.”
Another expert concurred. Pete Bryant is a consultant in nuclear waste management and president of The Society for Radiological Protection in the U.K. He also teaches in the field at the University of Liverpool.
“By characterizing the waste and classifying it according to its radioactivity and ultimately the risk it poses to human health and the environment, it is possible to dispose of some of the less hazardous waste, reducing the burden of managing them all of HLW,” Bryant told Newsweek.
“As long as this is done under appropriate arrangements and checks this will not present a risk to members of the public and the environment,” he said, adding that this is all in line with global standards of toxic waste management.
After DOE’s announcement, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRD), an environmental campaign group, hit out at the imminent reclassification of some HLW.
“The Trump administration is moving to fundamentally alter more than 50 years of national consensus on how the most toxic and radioactive waste in the world is managed and ultimately disposed of,” Geoff Fettus, a senior attorney at NRDC, said in a statement.
“No matter what they call it, this waste needs a permanent, well-protected disposal option to guard it for generations to come. Pretending this waste is not dangerous is irresponsible and outrageous.”
DOE said the change will bring its practices in line with international standards on nuclear waste disposal.
USA aims to save money and time by classifying some “high level” radioactive wastes as “low level”
US to label nuclear waste as less dangerous to quicken cleanup, Guardian, 6 June 19,
Energy department says labeling some waste as low-level at sites in Washington state, Idaho and South Carolina will save $40bn, The US government plans to reclassify some of the nation’s most dangerous radioactive waste to lower its threat level, outraging critics who say the move would make it cheaper and easier to walk away from cleaning up nuclear weapons production sites in Washington state, Idaho and South Carolina.The Department of Energy said on Wednesday that labeling some high-level waste as low level will save $40bn in cleanup costs across the nation’s entire nuclear weapons complex. The material that has languished for decades in the three states would be taken to low-level disposal facilities in Utah or Texas, the agency said………
Critics said it was a way for federal officials to walk away from their obligation to properly clean up a massive quantity of radioactive waste left from nuclear weapons production dating to the second world war and the cold war.
The waste is housed at the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina, the Idaho National Laboratory and Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state – the most contaminated nuclear site in the country.
Washington’s Governor Jay Inslee, a Democratic presidential candidate, and the state attorney general, Bob Ferguson, said the Trump administration was showing disdain and disregard for state authority.
“Washington will not be sidelined in our efforts to clean up Hanford and protect the Columbia River and the health and safety of our state and our people,” they said in a joint statement.
The new rules would allow the energy department to eventually abandon storage tanks containing more than 100m gallons (378m liters) of radioactive waste in the three states, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The change means that some of the “most toxic and radioactive waste in the world” would not have to be buried deep underground, the environmental group said.
“Pretending this waste is not dangerous is irresponsible and outrageous,” the group’s attorney Geoff Fettus said.
Tom Clements of Savannah River Site Watch, a watchdog group for the South Carolina nuclear production site, called the reclassification of waste “a cost-cutting measure designed to get thousands of high-level waste containers dumped off site”. He said moving the waste to Utah or Texas is a bad idea involving “shallow burial”.
The old definition of high-level waste was based on how the materials were produced, while the new definition will be based on their radioactive characteristics – the standard used in most countries, the energy department said……..
The nuclear site 200 miles (322km) south-east of Seattle contains about 60% of the nation’s most dangerous radioactive waste that’s stored in 177 ageing underground tanks, some of which have leaked.
Cleanup at Hanford has been under way since the 1980s, at a cost of more than $2bn a year.
The energy department said it would immediately begin studying one waste stream at the Savannah River Plant to see if it should be reclassified as low-level waste. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/05/us-to-label-nuclear-waste-as-less-dangerous-to-quicken-cleanup?fbclid=IwAR1NuNSVrKbw8rn_rLUwOZlx
The arguments for and against reclassifying nuclear wastes
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS DOWNGRADING TOXIC NUCLEAR WEAPONS WASTE TO CUT DISPOSAL COSTS—SHOULD WE BE WORRIED? https://www.newsweek.com/trump-toxic-nuclear-weapons-waste-disposal-reclassify-1442573 BYON 6/6/19 The Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it is moving forward with plans to reclassify toxic nuclear waste from Cold War weapons research, downgrading some of it from the highest level, in order to cut costs and quicken the disposal process.The waste under review is currently located at three DOE Defense Reprocessing Waste Inventories: the Hanford Site in Washington, the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, and the Idaho National Laboratory.
Environmental campaigners hit back, accusing the Department of Energy (DOE) of risking the health and safety of Americans through what it characterized as a reckless and dangerous departure from decades-long convention in the country’s handling of its nuclear waste.
But an expert in nuclear waste management said DOE’s shifting approach is both reasonable and desirable—provided it is transparent with the American public in order to build confidence that it is disposing of the toxic material responsibly and safely.
Currently, DOE treats most of its radioactive waste as “high-level” (HLW) because of how it was made rather than classifying it by its characteristics, such as radioactivity. HLW must be buried deep underground when it is disposed of.
DOE said in a release that this “one size fits all” approach to waste management has caused delays to permanent disposal, leaving toxic waste stored in DOE facilities, which causes health risks to workers and costs the taxpayers billions of unnecessary dollars.
Now, DOE will seek to lower the classification of waste of lesser radioactivity, meaning it can be disposed of with greater ease because it does not need to be stored deep below ground—and both sooner and at a lower cost.
Professor Neil Hyatt, an expert in nuclear materials chemistry and waste management at the U.K.’s University of Sheffield, told Newsweek this is potentially a positive change by the DOE.
“DOE is proposing to manage waste on the basis of risk rather than how it was produced, which is quite reasonable—and desirable. We would want resources to be focused on dealing with the waste of highest risk,” Hyatt said.
“That said, it is important that this is achieved with regard to the risk to health and the environment over the full lifecycle of waste management—including the period of waste disposal, which is some 250,000 years.”
Hyatt added: “The new interpretation has the potential to radically change the location, inventory, and nature of waste disposed of, which will be of concern to local communities.”
For the new interpretation of HLW to succeed, Hyatt said, those communities will need to be engaged by authorities in a transparent way.
“The problem is that the action will be seen as moving the goalposts, for unfair means, whilst the game is in progress,” Hyatt told Newsweek.
“If you have agreed that waste is to be classified and managed in a certain way for decades, how do you now build confidence in a new approach?
“This cannot be taken for granted. Transparency, effective public engagement and independent expert scrutiny, in evaluating the risk, will be key. But with a new approach comes a new opportunity to get that right.”
Another expert concurred. Pete Bryant is a consultant in nuclear waste management and president of The Society for Radiological Protection in the U.K. He also teaches in the field at the University of Liverpool.
“By characterizing the waste and classifying it according to its radioactivity and ultimately the risk it poses to human health and the environment, it is possible to dispose of some of the less hazardous waste, reducing the burden of managing them all of HLW,” Bryant told Newsweek.
“As long as this is done under appropriate arrangements and checks this will not present a risk to members of the public and the environment,” he said, adding that this is all in line with global standards of toxic waste management.
After DOE’s announcement, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRD), an environmental campaign group, hit out at the imminent reclassification of some HLW.
“The Trump administration is moving to fundamentally alter more than 50 years of national consensus on how the most toxic and radioactive waste in the world is managed and ultimately disposed of,” Geoff Fettus, a senior attorney at NRDC, said in a statement.
“No matter what they call it, this waste needs a permanent, well-protected disposal option to guard it for generations to come. Pretending this waste is not dangerous is irresponsible and outrageous.”
DOE said the change will bring its practices in line with international standards on nuclear waste disposal.
Town of Pilgrim now faces long lasting problem of dangerous nuclear wastes
What to do with nuclear waste remains a national problem with no solution, despite a promise by the federal government to have a facility ready to permanently store it ready by 1998.
About 80,000 tons of spent fuel is currently sitting on nuclear plant properties across the country. To give the number perspective, if existing radioactive fuel assemblies were stacked end-to-end and side-by-side, they would stand over two stories high and cover a football field.
And like those other communities that have hosted nuclear plants during the last 50 years, residents and officials in Plymouth are crying foul. “The Department of Energy has absolutely dropped the ball on this for our communities and all the others, which are becoming de facto nuclear waste repositories,” said Kevin O’Reilly, former executive director of the Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce and current vice chairman of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel. “The federal government needs to step up to the plate and fulfill their promise.”
“Spent fuel” is nuclear fuel that has been used and removed from the reactor core. The Government Accountability Office calls the hot and highly radioactive stuff one of the most hazardous substances created by humans. Some components stay radioactive for tens of thousands of years.
“If not properly contained or shielded, the intense radioactivity of spent fuel can cause immediate deaths and environmental contamination, and in lower doses can cause long-term health hazards such as cancer,” according to a GAO study done at the request of Congress in 2012……….
Holtec International and Waste Control Services have submitted applications to operate interim storage facilities in New Mexico and West Texas that are under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But the review process hasn’t been smooth, as both proposed locations have drawn opposition.
Meanwhile, a small startup group in California is working on yet another alternative, which the company says would provide permanent storage right on current plant sites or close by.
The proposal from Deep Isolation calls for drilling a vertical access channel up to a mile or more down, then gradually running the hole horizontally along the line of the rock formation, where company officials say the nuclear waste would remain unaffected by surface impacts such as sea level rise.
While the debate over where to put spent fuel continues, owners of commercial plants are suing the federal government to recoup money they’ve spent on storing fuel. To date, the Department of Energy has paid out $6.1 billion in damages.
All payouts so far have gone to nuclear power companies. Towns that store the spent fuel have lobbied to be paid for being de facto waste sites. While no such bill has been filed during the current session, legislators in states hosting spent fuel have filed legislation during the past three years called Nuclear Waste Accountability Act. Its provisions require the Department of Energy to provide payments to host communities equal to $15 per kilogram of spent fuel stored there.
FUEL DANGERS
Spent fuel stored in pools has historically caused worry. A zirconium fire could release radiation over hundreds of miles if the water in them is drained away through a seismic event, operator error or act of malice.
Much of the fuel will still be in the pool when Plymouth celebrates its 400th anniversary in 2020, with events throughout the year that will attract crowds of tourists and dignitaries from around the world.
“Spent fuel is a misnomer,” said Mary Lampert, president of the citizens group Pilgrim Watch. “It will be highly toxic as far into the future as dinosaurs were in the past.”
Fuel pool storage is particularly dangerous, she said. “The pool is vulnerable to water loss resulting in a fire that could contaminate an area larger than Massachusetts and force the evacuation of millions.”
The casks, once loaded, will ultimately be situated on a spent fuel pad about 75 feet above sea level………
Holtec International, the company looking to buy Pilgrim and decommission it, has long been involved in the manufacture of dry casks. Entergy has used Holtec’s Hi-Storm 100 casks and plans to continue with that model.
Watchdogs like Lampert worry over what will happen if those casks give out over time. They could crack or corrode from the coastal salt air. “We will only know after the fact that a cask has leaked radiation,” she said…… https://www.capecodtimes.com/news/20190601/radioactive-waste-big-concern-for-now-closed-pilgrim-plant
Holtec’s involvement in the Ukraine’s Chernobyl’s dry store facility
Halting Holtec – A Challenge for Nuclear Safety Advocates, CounterPunch, 7 June 19 “……….The California – Chernobyl Connection
Holtec and its client Edison would have the public believe that the San Onofre ISFSI is top of the line, up to date and state-of-the-art spent fuel handling. But that image seems to be contradicted by a recent Holtec press release and accompanying animated video that may seem to describe something like the kind of waste storage system many are advocating for at San Onofre.
On May 6, 2019, Holtec was “pleased to announce the start of final system-wide trials for Chernobyl’s dry store facility….” In the next two months, Holtec expects to complete “stem-to stern functional demonstrations of the [SF-2] spent fuel handling and storage processes before handing over the facility to Ukraine’s State owned enterprise Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP).”
The Holtec press release boasts, “Dismembering more than 21,000 RBMK spent fuel assemblies in a special purpose “hotcell,” packaging those fuel assemblies in double walled canisters(DWCs), and transferring them from (open) water-cooled pools into hermetically sealed rugged helium-filled storage systems inside ventilated modules will mark a huge safety milestone for Ukraine.” https://youtu.be/GYR3GmkRZV0
Holtec is also building a project called a Central Spent Fuel Storage Facility (CSFSF) for the Ukrainian company Energoatom. Holtec says the “CSFSF will employ double-confinement DWCs, the world’s first double-walled, double-lid multi-purpose canister system for dry storage of spent nuclear fuel.”
Many may now be asking, “Why isn’t what’s good for Ukraine, also good for California?” But, Donna Gilmore points out that, “It’s a thin-wall canister system. Exterior wall is 3/8″ thick. Interior wall is 1/2″ thick. Both welded shut. Still must be stored in Holtec concrete cask with air vents. Still cannot be inspected, maintained, monitored or repaired inside or out.” …………https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/07/halting-holtec-a-challenge-for-nuclear-safety-advocates/
Texas Governor vetoes a Bill (on domestic violence) because a pro nuclear amendment was tacked onto it at the last minute
Greg Abbott Signals Limits To Nuclear Waste Disposal In Texas With Bill Veto https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/greg-abbott-signals-limits-to-nuclear-waste-disposal-in-texas-with-bill-veto/ – Written by Caroline Covington
He vetoed a bill in which a radioactive waste provision was tacked on, at the last minute, to a domestic violence bill that had broad support in the Texas House and Senate. By June 7, 2019
A bill to help survivors of domestic violence ended up passing in the Texas Legislature with an odd amendment: a provision that would temporarily waive fees for storing radioactive waste in West Texas. But Gov. Greg Abbott was displeased with the waiver, and vetoed the bill altogether.
Asher Price, energy and environment reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, says the two very different issues ended up being in the same bill because Rep. Poncho Nevárez, a Democrat from Eagle Pass, added an amendment at the last minute.
“The person at the dais, who was leading the House at the time said, ‘Is there any objection?’ Hearing none [they] gaveled in, and suddenly this amendment was attached to this bill,” Price says.
Listen to the rest of the story in the player above. [on original]
1 This Month
Read the Public Inquiry Report, the Commissioners’ report, Surrendering Australia: The AUKUS Deception is available to download for free at aukuspublicinquiry.com. Or just watch the replay of the National Press Club Luncheon.
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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