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Space travel enthusiasts show their ignorance of ecology and the dangers of Plutonium 238

I do not have time at the moment to really think about this one, –  But –  a couple of  lovely sentences just leaped out at me:

Plutonium-238 is very special for the fact that it’s a material that poses virtually no danger to anyone unless you do something insane 

we have to put our illogical fears aside 

That’s from this absolute hymn to Plutonium 238  – Forbes 13 Dec 18 – NASA Doesn’t Have Enough Nuclear Fuel For Its Deep Space Missions

 

December 15, 2018 Posted by | space travel, USA | Leave a comment

Trump and Putin could save The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty, and it’s worth saving

The INF nuclear treaty is worth saving. Trump and Putin should give it a 6-month try. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/12/13/trump-putin-nato-save-landmark-inf-nuclear-treaty-column/2277732002/

Richard Burt and Ellen Tauscher, Dec. 13, 2018

Landmark nuclear treaty can still benefit US, NATO and Russia security. They should delay action for six months and negotiate ways to show compliance. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty — a key part of the post cold war nuclear system of controls and restraint — is on life support. President Donald Trump announced his desire to withdraw from the 1987 INF pact in October, citing Russian cheating and a desire to deploy missiles against China as motives. German Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly convinced Trump this month to hold off on withdrawal for at least two months so the NATO alliance could act in a more united fashion to either bring Russia back into compliance or show it was trying.

As officials who helped negotiate the last two major strategic arms control agreements, we believe there is a deal to save the treaty and ensure its benefits can continue. This will require creative, serious and genuine negotiations by Washington and Moscow. We know firsthand, however, that negotiating with Russia can lead to surprising and positive results. Such engagement is desperately needed now, and could save a critical part of the post-Cold War arms control system that benefits American security

There’s no doubt that Russia violated INF Treaty  The INF Treaty signed by President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev bans the US and Russia from having land-based missiles with ranges from 500-5500 kilometers. The Treaty helped end the cold war and paved the way for reductions in strategic nuclear weapons. Banning these weapons gave leaders in Russia, Europe and America more time to make decisions in a crisis, and the treaty is worth saving if all sides can show there are fully complying with the deal.

There is no real question that Russia has violated the INF treaty. The United States has been sure of this since 2013 and has been increasingly clear about how Russia has violated the deal. Russia tested its 9M729 cruise missiles from a mobile fixed launcher to a distance of over 500 KM — something allowed by the treaty — and then later tested the same system from a ground-mobile launcher, making the missile a ground-launched system under the terms of INF.

Russia denies the 9M729 missile violates INF and instead accuses the United States of violating the INF by deploying the Mark-41 missile launcher as part of NATO missile defenses in Europe. The Mk-41 on shore is used to launch missile defense interceptors, but is used by the U.S. Navy on ships to launch offensive missiles. Russia claims this violates INF. Washington says the Mk-41 launcher for NATO’s defense is physically capable of holding canisters to launch offensive missiles like the Tomahawk cruise missile, but the land-based variant deployed in NATO is not equipped with firing software. Washington claims this makes the launcher legal, but this explanation gives Moscow little comfort.

For five years, the two countries have tried to get the other to admit their violation. That approach has failed and the treaty is now at risk of disappearing. The only way to save it — something both countries say they want — is for both to go beyond what the treaty requires to assure the other that it is in compliance.

Over the last year, former officials and experts from Russia and the United States have met privately to explore what an extra transparency regime might look like. Russian former military officials have said that the 9M729 should be made available for both inspection and even taken apart for American inspectors to determine if it can travel over 500km. While not an official Russia government offer, it seems unlikely that former officials would suggest such a thing without a sense that it might be possible.

The INF Treaty is beneficial and worth saving

Former American officials, for their part, have said NATO missile defense sites could be made available for visits by Russian officials to show no offensive missiles deployed on site. Other more extreme steps might be to modify the Mk-41 launcher so that it cannot physically hold or launch offensive missiles.

This deal is worth official exploration. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin should pledge not to take any unilateral steps on the INF Treaty — including withdrawal — for at least six months. They should send senior officials from their militaries, the State and Defense departments, and the White House and Kremlin to negotiate on a continual basis to see if such a deal is technically feasible. The teams should be directed to produce a draft deal for both presidents and for NATO — whose security is most at risk and whose members will need to agree to steps providing transparency over NATO missile defense sites — in three months for official consideration.

Trying to save the INF treaty can have important benefits for the United States and its NATO allies. Now that the US has publicly released details of Russia violations, European NATO states may be able to bring more pressure on Russia to come back into compliance. If in the end, Russia’s violations cannot be reversed, making these efforts will show it is a lack of political will, and not technical problems, that led to the treaty’s demise. This will in itself help NATO allies as they wrestle with how to manage security and stability in a post-INF world.

Treaties should only remain in force if they benefit American and allied security, and sometimes treaties outlive their usefulness. But the INF still can protect these interests, and Russian security as well, if all sides are prepared to show that they remain in compliance.

Richard Burt is for the former ambassador to Germany and led the 1991 START Agreement talks. Ellen Tauscher is the former undersecretary of state for arms control and international security and oversaw negotiation of the New START Treaty. Both are members of the Nuclear Crisis Group based in Washington.

December 15, 2018 Posted by | politics international, Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Transport of nuclear wastes to USA’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is stalled while maintenace work is on

US Nuclear Repository Turns Focus to Maintenance Projects https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/new-mexico/articles/2018-12-14/us-nuclear-repository-turns-focus-to-maintenance-projects  Work to dispose of tons of radioactive waste from defense sites around the United States will be put on hold next month so maintenance can be done at the federal government’s only underground nuclear waste repository. CARLSBAD, N.M. (AP) — Work to dispose of tons of radioactive waste from defense sites around the United States will be put on hold next month so maintenance can be done at the federal government’s only underground nuclear waste repository.

Officials at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant announced during a meeting Thursday that the three-week work stoppage will begin Jan. 7.

The maintenance will include work on electrical substations and the refurbishing of areas where waste is stored until it’s taken below ground to be disposed of in rooms carved from an ancient salt formation.

The facility receives between five and 10 shipments weekly. That’s not expected to increase much until a new $135 million ventilation system is installed.

Repository managers say they’ve made progress this year but that air quality remains an issue.

December 15, 2018 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

PG and E needs $1.6 billion more to decommission Diablo Canyon — and it’ll come from your bill,

PG&E needs $1.6 billion more to decommission Diablo Canyon — and it’ll come from your bill Tribune BY KAYTLYN LESLIE 14 Dec 18 PG&E needs to collect $1.6 billion from ratepayers by 2025 to pay for Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant’s closure, according to new filings with the state.

For a typical residential customer, this would translate to about $1.98 more on your bill, though the exact amount would vary depending on usage.

In its Nuclear Decommissioning Cost Triennial Proceedings, filed on Thursday, the company said it expects the total cost of decommissioning Diablo Canyon to be about $4.8 billion — up from the $3.8 billion it estimated in its last triennial report in 2015. https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/environment/article223058625.html

December 15, 2018 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

Environmentalists fear that reclassifying some nuclear wastes means abandoning clean-ups

Energy Department Plan to Reclassify Nuclear Waste Worries Environmentalists https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2018-12-10-energy-department-reclassify-nuclear-waster
At a Glance

    • The U.S. Department of Energy wants to reclassify some of the waste that meets highly technical conditions.
    • The agency says the change could save the federal government $40 billion in cleanup costs at nuclear sites across the nation.
    • About 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical wastes are stored in tanks in Washington state.
    • Environmentalists fear a U.S. Department of Energy proposal to reclassify some radioactive waste left from the production of nuclear weapons is simply a way to abandon the cleanup of places like the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state.The Trump administration proposal to lower the status of some high-level radioactive waste would make disposal cheaper and easier. Reclassifying the material to low-level could save the agency billions of dollars and decades of work by essentially leaving the material in the ground, critics say.
    • The proposal joins a long list of Trump administration efforts to loosen environmental protections. Just last week, the Environmental Protection Agency acted to ease rules on the sagging U.S. coal industry.Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge, a nuclear watchdog group, said it wants a thorough cleanup of the Washington state nuclear site, which is half the size of Rhode Island. That includes building a national repository somewhere else to bury the waste once it has been stabilized.
  • “The cleanup of the site is really at stake,” Carpenter said about the proposed change.

    He noted that Hanford is located in an environmentally sensitive site adjacent to the Columbia River and susceptible to earthquakes, volcanoes and flooding.

  • Hanford was established by the Manhattan Project in World War II to make plutonium, a key ingredient in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. The plant went on to produce most of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear arsenal.As a result, the site also contains the nation’s largest collection of nuclear waste. The most dangerous is stored in 177 aging underground tanks, some of which have leaked. The tanks hold some 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical wastes waiting to be treated for permanent disposal.Cleanup efforts at Hanford have been underway since the late 1980s and cost about $2 billion a year.

    Current law defines high-level radioactive waste as resulting from processing irradiated nuclear fuel that is highly radioactive. The Energy Department wants to reclassify some of the waste that meets highly technical conditions.

    The agency says the change could save the federal government $40 billion in cleanup costs across the nation’s entire nuclear weapons complex, which includes the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina and Idaho National Laboratory.

  • Environmental groups and the state of Washington, which has a legal commitment with the Energy Department to oversee the Hanford cleanup, said the proposal is a concern.”They see it as a way to get cleanup done faster and less expensively,'” said Alex Smith of the Washington state Department of Ecology.Carpenter said there “is not much point in doing much else if they don’t clean up the high-level waste.”

    At the request of U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, the agency extended the public comment period on the proposal to Jan. 9. The agency can make the change without the approval of Congress.

    “No one disputes the difficulty of retrieving and treating high-level waste from Hanford’s aging storage tanks,” Wyden wrote to the DOE. “However, lowering the bar for level of protection of future generations and the environment by changing the definition of what has always been considered high-level waste requiring permanent disposal is a significant change.”

December 13, 2018 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Maine watchdogs keep close eye on Trump’s bid to change nuclear waste storage rules

December 13, 2018 Posted by | politics, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

TRUMP WANTS TO RECLASSIFY RADIOACTIVE WASTE FROM NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO ‘LOW LEVEL’ SO DISPOSAL IS CHEAPER

December 13, 2018 Posted by | radiation, USA | Leave a comment

Pacific island countries accuse USA of obstructing talks at UN climate change summit

US accused of obstructing talks at UN climate change summit
Vanuatu’s foreign minister says worst offenders on global warming are blocking progress, Guardian, Ben Doherty in Katowice @bendohertycorro, Wed 12 Dec 2018 

 The United States and other high carbon dioxide-emitting developed countries are deliberately frustrating the UN climate summit in Katowice, Poland, Vanuatu’s foreign minister has said. His warning came as Pacific and Indian ocean states warned they faced annihilation if a global climate “rule book” could not brokered.In a bruising speech before ministers and heads of state, Vanuatu’s foreign minister, Ralph Regenvanu, singled out the US as he excoriated major CO2-emitting developed countries for deliberately hindering negotiations.

“It pains me deeply to have watched the people of the United States and other developed countries across the globe suffering the devastating impacts of climate-induced tragedies, while their professional negotiators are here at COP24 putting red lines through any mention of loss and damage in the Paris guidelines and square brackets around any possibility for truthfully and accurately reporting progress against humanity’s most existential threat,” he said.

Regenvanu said the countries most responsible for climate change were now frustrating efforts to counter it.

The UN’s climate change talks in Poland have been distracted by a semantic debate over whether the conference should “welcome” or “note” the IPCC’s special report warning of dire consequences if global warming rises more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, with a bloc of four oil-producing countries – the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Kuwait – insisting the report be only “noted”.

Documents from the conference presidency, seen by the Guardian, indicate the issue of how to acknowledge the report will be returned to later in the week and is likely to further slow progress on negotiating a final outcome. Negotiators said they are growing increasingly pessimistic that talks can be concluded by their deadline on Friday…….

As 193 countries at the climate talks seek to establish a “rule book” on how to implement the commitments made in the Paris agreement three years ago, Regenvanu condemned a two-tier system that exempted high-emissions countries from reductions obligations, saying the world needed “one common rule book, in which rules apply to all”.

The US state department declined to comment on his remarks……https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/11/us-accused-of-obstructing-talks-at-un-climate-change-summit

December 13, 2018 Posted by | climate change, OCEANIA, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Washingtonhelping nuclear workers to get compensation State will defend its law

State will fight feds over Hanford worker compensation, Q13 FOX, , DECEMBER 11, 2018, BY ASSOCIATED PRESS SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Officials for the state of Washington said Tuesday they will defend a new law that helps employees of a former nuclear weapons production site win worker compensation claims, after the federal government filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the law.

Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee criticized the lawsuit as outrageous and “depraved.”

“The people who fought communism shouldn’t have to fight their federal government to get the health care they deserve,” said Inslee, who is weighing a run for the White House in 2020.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed the lawsuit on Monday in federal court for the Eastern District of Washington.

The Washington Legislature last spring passed a law that says some cancers and other illnesses among Hanford Nuclear Reservation workers are assumed to have been caused by chemical or radiological exposures at work, unless that presumption can be rebutted by clear and convincing evidence.

…….The legislation signed into law in March by Inslee was propelled through the Legislature by the concerns of sick Hanford workers frustrated by state denials of their compensation claims…..

Ferguson said he presumed the federal government was worried the new Washington law might spread to other states where federal employees were involved in dangerous work. He predicted the issue would likely be resolved at trial.

“Before this, workers had to prove that whatever illness they had was not caused by something else in their lives,” Ferguson said.

Inslee called it another attempt by the Trump administration to take health care away from people in the state.

“They want to tell workers at Hanford to go hang,” said Inslee, who used to represent the Hanford site in Congress.

Lynne Dodson of the Washington State Labor Council said the federal government should be working to improve worker safety, rather than pursuing this lawsuit.

“Donald Trump and (Energy Secretary) Rick Perry would kick these workers while they are down,” Dodson said. https://q13fox.com/2018/12/11/state-will-fight-feds-over-hanford-worker-compensation/

December 13, 2018 Posted by | employment, Legal, politics, USA | Leave a comment

White House fury as Russian nuclear planes visit Venezuela 

December 13, 2018 Posted by | Religion and ethics, Russia, SOUTH AMERICA, USA | Leave a comment

USA’s intractable nuclear waste problem: a new approach is needed

U.S. must start from scratch with a new nuclear waste strategy, a Stanford-led panel says

Thousands of tons of highly radioactive spent fuel are in temporary storage in 35 states, with no permanent solution being discussed. International experts led by Stanford show how to end this status quo. Stanford News, BY KATHLEEN GABEL CHUI AND MARK GOLDEN, 10 Dec 18,  The U.S. government has worked for decades and spent tens of billions of dollars in search of a permanent resting place for the nation’s nuclear waste. Some 80,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and millions of gallons of high-level nuclear waste from defense programs are stored in pools, dry casks and large tanks at more than 75 sites throughout the country.

A Stanford University-led study recommends that the United States reset its nuclear waste program by moving responsibility for commercially generated, used nuclear fuel away from the federal government and into the hands of an independent, nonprofit, utility-owned and -funded nuclear waste management organization.

“No single group, institution or governmental organization is incentivized to find a solution,” said Rod Ewing, co-director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and a professor of geological sciences.

The three-year study, led by Ewing, makes a series of recommendations focused on the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The report, Reset of America’s Nuclear Waste Management Strategy and Policy, was released today.

A tightening knot

Over the past four decades, the U.S. nuclear waste program has suffered from continuing changes to the original Nuclear Waste Policy Act, a slow-to-develop and changing regulatory framework. Erratic funding, significant changes in policy with changing administrations, conflicting policies from Congress and the executive branch and – most important – inadequate public engagement have also blocked any progress.

“The U.S. program is in an ever-tightening Gordian knot – the strands of which are technical, logistical, regulatory, legal, financial, social and political – all caught in a web of agreements with states and communities, regulations, court rulings and the congressional budgetary process,” the report says.

The project’s steering committee sought to untangle these technical, administrative and public barriers so that critical issues could be identified and overcome. They held five open meetings with some 75 internationally recognized experts, government officials, leaders of nongovernmental organizations, affected citizens and Stanford scholars as speakers.

After describing the Sisyphean history of the U.S. nuclear waste management and disposal program, the report makes recommendations all focused around a final goal: long-term disposal of highly radioactive waste in a mined, geologic repository.

“Most importantly, the United States has taken its eyes off the prize, that is, disposal of highly radioactive nuclear waste in a deep-mined geologic repository,” said Allison Macfarlane, a member of the steering committee and a professor of public policy and international affairs at George Washington University. “Spent nuclear fuel stored above ground – either in pools or dry casks – is not a solution. These facilities will eventually degrade. And, if not monitored and cared for, they will contaminate our environment.”

The new, independent, utility-owned organization would control spent fuel from the time it is removed from reactors until its final disposal in a geologic repository.   ………https://news.stanford.edu/2018/12/10/square-one-u-s-nuclear-waste-management-program/

December 11, 2018 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

The worst performing countries for climate action- USA and Saudi Arabia

US, Saudi Arabia back-of-the-pack on curbing climate change,  Researchers have identified the United States and Saudi Arabia as the climate change laggards. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/us-saudi-arabia-back-of-the-pack-on-curbing-climate-changeThe United States and Saudi Arabia rank last when it comes to curbing climate change among the 56 nations accounting for 90 percent of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, researchers said Monday.A large number of laggards means the world is dangerously off-track when it comes to slashing the carbon pollution that has already amplified droughts, flooding and deadly heatwaves worldwide, they reported on the margins of UN climate talks in Katowice, Poland.

Only a few countries have started to implement strategies to limit global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit),” the cornerstone target of the 2015 Paris climate treaty, according to NewClimate Institute and Germanwatch, an NGO.

Most governments “lack the political will to phase out fossil fuels with the necessary speed.”  Continue reading →

December 11, 2018 Posted by | climate change, Saudi Arabia, USA | Leave a comment

No answer to clean up Washington’s Hanford nuclear site

December 11, 2018 Posted by | Reference, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Cold war efforts to provide bunker protection against nuclear bombing

December 11, 2018 Posted by | safety, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US and Russia ally with Saudi Arabia to water down climate pledge 

Guardian, Jonathan Wattsand Ben DohertyMon 10 Dec 2018 , Move shocks delegates at UN cnference as ministers fly in for final week of climate talks The US and Russia have thrown climate talks into disarray by allying with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to water down approval of a landmark report on the need to keep global warming below 1.5C.

After a heated two-and-a-half-hour debate on Saturday night, the backwards step by the four major oil producers shocked delegates at the UN climate conference in Katowice as ministers flew in for the final week of high-level discussions.

It has also raised fears among scientists that the US president, Donald Trump, is going from passively withdrawing from climate talks to actively undermining them alongside a coalition of climate deniers.

Two months ago, representatives from the world’s governments hugged after agreeing on the 1.5C report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), commissioned to spell out the dire consequences should that level of warming be exceeded and how it can be avoided.

Reaching a global consensus was a painstaking process involving thousands of scientists sifting through years of research and diplomats working through the night to ensure the wording was acceptable to all nations.

But when it was submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change on Saturday, the four oil allies – with Saudi Arabia as the most obdurate – rejected a motion to “welcome” the study. Instead, they said it should merely be “noted”, which would make it much easier for governments to ignore. The motion has not yet been able to pass as a result of the lack of consensus.

t opened up a rift at the talks that will be hard to close in the coming five days. During the plenary, the EU, a bloc of the 47 least developed countries, as well as African and Latin and South American nations, all spoke in favour of the report. Several denounced the four countries trying to dilute its importance. ………

Scientists were also outraged. “It is troubling. Saudi Arabia has always had bad behaviour in climate talks, but it could be overruled when it was alone or just with Kuwait. That it has now been joined by the US and Russia is much more dangerous,” said Alden Meyer, the director of strategy and policy in the Union of Concerned Scientists….

Ministers have only five days to establish a rulebook for the Paris agreement. A wild card is the role of the host nation, Poland – the most coal-dependant nation in Europe – which will chair the final week of the meeting………

As well as acceptance of the report, there are several other potential fights brewing regarding transparency rules for reporting emissions and proposals for wealthy high emitters to provide financial support to poorer nations struggling to adapt. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/09/us-russia-ally-saudi-arabia-water-down-climate-pledges-un

December 10, 2018 Posted by | climate change, Russia, Saudi Arabia, USA | Leave a comment

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