We have to create such a social movement that the press cannot ignore it, and then the press starts reporting.
people, when they get themselves mobilized, can really have an effect on events
A conversation with Dr. Gordon Edwards: contemporary issues in the Canadian nuclear industry, and a look back at the achievements of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), http://www.ccnr.org/Montreal, August 25, 2018, Nuclear waste management: an exercise in cynical thinking. DiaNuke.org, 24 
Sept 2018 “…………
What to expect from media and politicians
I think you appear sometimes on CBC and they give you five minutes or ten minutes, so has any of that sort of transformed into journalists picking up the issue and working with it more seriously, or politicians bringing up the issue in parliament?
We live in a very scattered society right now with what’s going on with President Trump in the United States, and what’s going on with the media. The concentration of ownership of the media, the elimination of a lot of independent journalism, like neighborhood newspapers and that sort of thing, community newspapers. Even within the mainstream media there is the idea that journalists are now being shunted into media conglomerates where the reporting is expected to go simultaneously into numerous papers, and so this makes it more and more difficult for these kinds of things to be done. However, as I point out to my friends, we’ve had many, many examples like, for instance, apartheid South Africa, or the Soviet Union before its demise, where there was no free press, and yet people got things done. The thing is that I don’t think the absence of a vital press should be a serious obstacle. I think we have to use whatever tools we have available to us, and we in North America have all kinds of freedom to express ourselves, and so we have to use what tools are available to us. For example, we’ve had many victories.
19. VictoriesI could tell you a few stories because without knowing specific examples, it all sounds very airy-fairy. It all sounds very theoretical, but, for example, we have Bruce Power, which is a private company that rents publicly owned nuclear reactors in Ontario, eight of them, and operates them for profit. They wanted to ship sixteen contaminated steam generators through the Great Lakes and through the Saint Lawrence Seaway and across the ocean to Sweden for their convenience basically. It was for their convenience so that they could have these things dismantled in Sweden. And also some of the radioactive left leftovers would be in fact secretly blended, and I say secretly. They would not reveal the names of the companies involved. Those are secret because those companies would not want the public to know what they’re engaged in. And that was actually recorded in public hearings. They wanted to secretly blend some of this less radioactive metal with non-contaminated metal. So they wanted to deliberately contaminate scrap metal. They wanted to deliberately contaminate the scrap metal market without any knowledge or notification that this scrap metal contained post-fission radioactive waste. And of course more and more of this is going to be happening as time goes on.
So we managed to stop that, and we managed to stop that through very word-of-mouth methods. We managed to get hundreds of communities passing resolutions against it on both sides of the border, both in the United States and Canada. We got lawmakers in the United States sending letters objecting, and the press was never playing a leadership role in this, but as the story became more interesting they would report on it just because it’s a good news story.
But to expect the press to play any leadership role is dreaming in technicolor, I think, especially in today’s world. We have to create such a social movement that the press cannot ignore it, and then the press starts reporting. And the same thing goes with the government. In certain respects you could say that our government leaders are not leaders. They’re followers, and the largest voices, the loudest voices are usually the voices of industry, and so they follow what they’re being told by industry or by other countries, big players like the United States, for example, but occasionally the public voice becomes loud enough that it drowns out the industrial voice or at least rivals it. In those cases a government can finally act, in their own self-interest, but not totally in their own self-interest. I hope that there’s a glimmer of concern, genuine concern about the future and the environment and doing the right thing.
But you’ve got to have a combination. It’s often said, for example, in lawsuits that behind the technical judgment where a judge might make some technical decision which lets somebody off the hook or which convicts somebody of some crime, there’s often a non-technical reason behind. Certain evidence has been heard and certain issues have been raised which, if a judge is touched by those issues, and feels that this is a case which deserves very careful consideration, then without breaking the law or even bending the law, the judge can find some legal aspect which will allow her or him to do the right thing. That’s not the judge’s main prerogative. His or her main prerogative is to ensure that the law is obeyed, and that can be done, but there has to be some kind of a conscience involved there, too, and I think there often is.
I think it’s the same thing with government. As I’ve said to people here, even if you yourself were the Minister of Energy all of a sudden, you couldn’t just do what you wanted. You have to have the support of your colleagues in cabinet. You have to have the support of people who have contributed to the party, and so on. These are all considerations, but if you have a vocal public who are clamoring to have something done, and it’s something you agree should be done, it strengthens your hand as a political person to be able to enact a law or to be able to take some political step which can be justified to colleagues. I don’t know if I’m making much sense here, but we’ve had some very good examples of this, not only with the steam generators.
20. Cross-border activism for environmental protectionI’ll give you one other example. In Vermont, the US Department of Energy were hunting for a repository in crystalline rock for high-level radioactive waste. This is back in the 90s. We had a busload of people here from Quebec who went down to Vermont and participated in public meetings and so on, and the Vermonters were delighted to see us there. And we raised some very pointed questions which the industry found difficult to answer. For example, the first question I asked at a public meeting was, “If this project is so safe, why is low population density one of your criteria?” And the man from the Department of Energy said that’s a good question, and he went red in the face, and he couldn’t give an answer.
So this thing blew up until the point where we had many public meetings in Vermont and we, as Quebecers, were invited to attend, and the US Department of Energy said, “Look, we have no choice. We have to obey the law, and the law has been written by the US Congress, the highest law of the land, and they passed a law saying that there will be a repository in crystalline rock in the Northeast United States, so don’t blame us. We can’t just snap our fingers and say we’re not going to do this.” But the voices of the people were so strong, and what really happened here was that it became an international incident because a lot of the people who were interacting within this debate were from the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Sherbrooke in particular, and the Member of Parliament from Sherbrooke was Jean Charest, who subsequently became the premier of Quebec. He was at that time a federal member of parliament. He went to his bosses in his own party, and who were the ruling party at that time, and they had a diplomatic note delivered to the Americans through the Canadian ambassador in Washington, saying that Canada would not look kindly on a nuclear waste repository right on our border where the water flows into Canada from the United States.
So to make a long story short, what happened was the impossible was done. The law was rewritten, and there was no repository in Vermont. Now you might say, “Well, that’s just postponing the problem or pushing it off.” True. But it’s a victory for us, and it shows that people, when they get themselves mobilized, can really have an effect on events, and we’ve had many successes of that sort, here in Quebec, in particular, and we hope to have many more. But the purpose is not to pursue a NIMBY idea (not in my backyard). The purpose is to call attention to the fact that this whole exercise is really an exercise based on dishonesty. It’s based on the dishonest claim that they in fact know what they’re doing, and that they in fact know that this will be a solution. It is really the survival strategy for the nuclear industry rather than a strategy that will ensure the safety of future generations. So we don’t feel that we’re acting in bad faith. We feel that we’re acting in good faith, and we’re doing our best to enlighten people as to the nature of this bad deal, and the nature of the fact that the wrong people are in charge of the program.
21. High, medium or low-level waste: similar ingredients in all of themGE: We have concentrated a lot here on the high-level waste, but in fact this consortium is not dealing with high-level waste. They’re dealing with low-level waste, medium-level waste. I hate these words because, of course, it’s the same material in many cases. They are exactly the same isotopes that you find in the high-level waste in many cases. They’re just at lower concentrations, so it’s bad language from the nuclear industry that is again fundamentally dishonest. But it’s really the decommissioning and the storage of all those other post-fission wastes that most people have never even given a thought to because they’ve been misled into thinking they don’t exist…….. https://www.dianuke.org/a-conversation-with-dr-gordon-edwards-contemporary-issues-in-the-canadian-nuclear-industry-and-a-look-back-at-the-achievements-of-the-canadian-coalition-for-nuclear-responsibility-ccnr-http-ww/
September 26, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Canada, media |
2 Comments
A conversation with Dr. Gordon Edwards: contemporary issues in the Canadian nuclear industry, and a look back at the achievements of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), http://www.ccnr.org/ Montreal, August 25, 2018, Nuclear waste management: an exercise in cynical thinking. DiaNuke.org, 24 Sept 18, Dennis Riches (DR): Instead of a question I thought we would ask you to comment on something that has been published by an organization called Waste Management Symposia (Waste Management Symposia Inc. http://www.wmsym.org/wm2019 ). They are a non-profit organization, but they seem to be something that was set up by the nuclear industry so that different players in the field could get together and talk about waste management issues. They have a symposium coming up in March of 2019
Gordon Edwards (GE): Well it’s an exercise in cynical thinking……….Of course, the problem is that there’s no way of destroying this stuff. There’s no way of getting rid of it that is technically or economically feasible, so all we’re really doing is repackaging. We’re not getting rid of it, and of course the packages do not last forever, so you can’t eliminate this liability by simply repackaging it and moving it from one place to another. It may be justified on the basis of environmental protection—for example, moving it away from waterways and so on so as to have less opportunity for the material to be dispersed, but once again you really can’t get rid of it. So the with language itself, they talk about “disposal.” Disposal implies that you somehow magically eliminate or get rid of this waste when in fact all you’re doing is reconstituting it in a different form, a different physical form, a different chemical form, but generally not changing the nature of the problem fundamentally.
2. Private solutions for public problemsSo when the last government approached this problem they decided, being Conservative, that it’s better to get private enterprises to look after these things, so they hired a consortium of multinational corporations to solve the problem for us, and in the absence of any policy—the trouble is that Canada has absolutely no policy regarding any nuclear waste except for the irradiated nuclear fuel itself………..
3. Early days: ignorance about nuclear wasteBut if we just back off on all this, the way my organization sees the picture, my organization being the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, which formed in the early 1970s—Well, basically in 1974 we formed, and from our view, the first thirty years of the nuclear age were characterized by a total ignorance about nuclear waste. That is, the public was not informed that there was such a thing as nuclear waste and the decision-makers who authorized the spending of billions of dollars in building a nuclear infrastructure and nuclear reactors were also not informed that this was a major unsolved problem. So it was basically a lie
Nuclear energy was presented as an absolutely clean energy source and people interpreted that to mean, “Hey, no problem. There is no waste.” When it became clear that it is, in fact, the most dangerous industrial waste ever produced on the face of the earth, in the form of the irradiated nuclear fuel, the industry then embarked upon a second lie which was, “Yes, we do have this waste product, the irradiated fuel, and it is very dangerous, and it is essentially indestructible, but we know exactly what to do with it. We know how to solve the problem, and the solution is simply to stick it underground in an undisturbed geological formation and then it’s all safe. We just walk away from it, and no problem.”
4. Belated realization of the problemWell, of course, that was then and this is now, and in the light of experience in the intervening years… In the mid-1970s there was a series of reports in Canada, the United Kingdom, the USA and other countries calling attention to this nuclear waste problem and basically saying quite plainly that unless this problem could be adequately solved that there should be no more nuclear power plants built. So I call this the nuclear ultimatum. It was really an ultimatum to the nuclear industry: You do not have a future if you don’t solve this problem. And because the industry said that they knew what to do with it, the expectation was that they could solve it in ten or twenty years. It would only take ten or twenty years……….
DR: But it seems like they want to keep up the impression that the solution is being worked on. It’s underway. As long as they can keep doing that, the nuclear plants can keep running.
GE: That’s correct, and people have been bamboozled by this empty promise really, and of course it’s become increasingly clear. There have been eight attempts in the United States to locate a high-level waste repository, all of which have failed. There have been two underground repositories in Germany which have failed, for low-level and intermediate-level waste. There’s no facility anywhere in the world which is operational for high-level waste, although there are some that have been built like the one in Finland, for example, near Olkiluoto.
5. Barbaric plans for nuclear wasteAnd now we have this consortium of private companies that has come into Canada to deal with not the irradiated nuclear fuel, but the decommissioning waste and the other post-fission waste, and they have come up with what we consider to be barbaric suggestions.One of them is to, just less than one kilometer from a major river—the Ottawa River which flows into the St. Lawrence River and which comes right down here to Montreal flowing through the nation’s capital—they wanted to build a gigantic mound, basically a surface facility, which is simply a landfill, nothing more than a glorified landfill, and put all the low-level and intermediate-level waste into this one facility which would be five to seven stories high and cover an area which would be equivalent to 70 major-league hockey rinks, and this would basically have no solidity to it. It would be just a mound, an earthen mound of radioactive waste, about million cubic meters.
There has been a massive outcry over this. For example, the twenty-eight communities which make up the municipality of Montreal, as an agglomeration of municipalities, have all come out unanimously against this project. And there are over a hundred municipalities up and down the Ottawa River.
DR: How about Ottawa itself?
GE: No, not Ottawa itself, unfortunately. Most of the opposition has come from the Quebec side of the border. There has been far, far less opposition on the Ontario side. Of course, Ontario is also largely dependent upon nuclear power and so that may be the reason why.
We do not find that Canada has produced any enviable plans for nuclear waste disposal. On the contrary, we feel that they’re setting a terrible example for the rest of the world, and we are fighting to stop it cold in its tracks. We actually had a press conference just last week in Ottawa, just the last few days, in fact, and a march and a demonstration and so on, calling upon the federal government to stop these plans which are underway right now.
6. In situ abandonment of nuclear facilitiesIn addition to piling up the waste on the surface, as I was mentioning, in a huge mound, they’re also planning to take four prototype nuclear reactors, or at least two of those four (they haven’t talked about the other two), and use a process of entombment whereby they will simply dump all the radioactive waste from the reactor itself into the sub-basement and then flood the interior of the building with concrete and turn it into a concrete mausoleum, very close to various rivers, including the Ottawa River, and the Winnipeg River in Manitoba. This they call in situ decommissioning. What it means is that you are taking a facility which was originally licensed to house a nuclear reactor, and you’re turning it into a permanent nuclear waste repository, even though it was never chosen with that in mind. It never went through the examination, the scrutiny, and the qualification that would be associated with a permanent waste repository. And yet that’s what they’re planning to do: just wave their magic wand and turn it from a reactor into a waste repository. We are totally opposed to this, and we’re mobilizing citizen opposition to it……….
7. Wrong people in charge, telling rather than consultingThe nuclear industry wants to abandon these wastes because they cannot possibly look after them for the period of time we’re talking about. Who can really? But we feel that they’re the wrong people to be in charge of this because they have a clear conflict of interest, and this conflict of interest manifests itself in many different ways.
There has been no consultation with Canadians to arrive at these plans. These plans have been announced, and then there have been meetings to inform the public of what they’re planning to do, with no opportunity to change those plans other than to criticize them. Basically it is regarded as a fait accompli.
DR: Yeah, in Japan they call those setsumeikai—explanatory meetings, which means it goes in one direction—we’re explaining to you what’s going to happen.
GE: Yeah. This is by no means a consultation. And we’re calling upon the Canadian government to actually stop these plans and to launch true consultations with Canadians and with First Nations, and to follow up on the recommendations that have been made by several independent bodies in Canada, all of which have recommended that there should be a nuclear waste agency completely independent from the nuclear industry and which has on its board of directors major stakeholders, including First Nations people, in order to ensure that the sole efforts of this organization should be the protection of the public and the environment, and not the furtherance of the nuclear industry, the promotion of expansion of the nuclear industry, which is what the consortium is interested in……….https://www.dianuke.org/a-conversation-with-dr-gordon-edwards-contemporary-issues-in-the-canadian-nuclear-industry-and-a-look-back-at-the-achievements-of-the-canadian-coalition-for-nuclear-responsibility-ccnr-http-ww/
September 26, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Canada, wastes |
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ATLANTA (AP) — The Latest on budget overruns in construction of a Georgia nuclear power facility U.S.News 24 Sept 18
The nation’s only major nuclear power plant under construction appears to still be alive after the owners voted to push forward despite another multibillion-dollar cost overrun.
But Oglethorpe Power says they’re only willing to move forward with the construction of two new reactors at the Vogtle nuclear power plant near Waynesboro, Georgia if cost-control measures are implemented.
It is unclear how the other utilities that own a stake in the project will respond to the conditions.
The Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and Georgia Power, the other two primary owners of the project, had previously said they’re willing to move forward.
The project is billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule.
A similar project in South Carolina died in July 2017 when the V.C. Summer plant was abandoned after going billions of dollars over budget.The board of a Georgia utility has voted to continue the expansion of a nuclear power plant that’s years behind schedule and billons of dollars over budget.
The Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia’s board voted unanimously Monday to continue building two new reactors at the Vogtle nuclear power plant near Waynesboro.
That leaves one co-owner, Oglethorpe Power, left to decide whether to move forward or abandon the project.
A third owner, Georgia Power, already indicated it’s ready to push forward.
The critical votes came after a new $2.3 billion cost increase was recognized, bringing the total estimated cost to $27 billion. That triggered a clause in the ownership agreement where 90 percent of ownership needs to agree to forward.
A down vote from Oglethorpe Power could sink the project. Oglethorpe Power is expected to vote on it later this week…….https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/georgia/articles/2018-09-24/the-latest-georgia-nuclear-plant-gets-tentative-up-vote
September 26, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, USA |
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A conversation with Dr. Gordon Edwards: contemporary issues in the Canadian nuclear industry, and a look back at the achievements of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), http://www.ccnr.org/ Montreal, August 25, 2018, Nuclear waste management: an exercise in cynical thinking. DiaNuke.org, 24 Sept 18, 2. “……. Six hundred Lake Superiors needed to dilute nuclear waste to a safe levelThe Ontario government had a Royal Commission on electric power planning back in the 70s, and they made this comparison. They said, “Look, just to try and get an idea or try to communicate the toxicity of this material, let’s ask this question: If you took one year’s worth of spent fuel from one CANDU reactor only, and if you wanted to dissolve this in water to the point where the water was contaminated to the maximum legal degree permitted, the maximum degree of contamination for drinking water, how much water would you need for one year’s worth from one reactor?” And the answer is approximately the volume of Lake Superior. So now you multiply that by 600 because we have 20 reactors operating each for 30 years, so it’s 600 times. 600 Lake Superiors! Well, nobody has that much fresh water, so the only purpose of that calculation is simply to highlight the disparity between what we normally think of as toxic and what we must acknowledge as toxic in this setting.
13. No solution assumedSo in my organization, the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, we feel that it is wrong to assume that there is a solution. We do not know that there is a solution. These proposed solutions are really untested ideas, and in fact, there is not even a scientific definition of the word disposal. If you look at the IAEA, at the nuclear industry’s definition of disposal, all it says is they have no intention of retrieving it. That’s a political definition, not a scientific definition. There is no scientific criterion which allows you to say, if you check the boxes, “Yes, disposal has been achieved.” In other words, that we have achieved this goal of disposal. We’re really conducting experiments on the planet on the assumption that we can achieve a goal which has never been achieved by the human race ever before. We’ve never actually disposed of anything in the whole history, and now we think that we can dispose of the most toxic material we’ve ever created. So how come we can do it now when we never could before, to truly dispose of this material?………..https://www.dianuke.org/a-conversation-with-dr-gordon-edwards-contemporary-issues-in-the-canadian-nuclear-industry-and-a-look-back-at-the-achievements-of-the-canadian-coalition-for-nuclear-responsibility-ccnr-http-ww/
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September 26, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Canada, wastes |
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Colorado wildlife refuge at old nuclear plant is open – for now, Euro News, By Reuters• last 25/09/2018 By Keith Coffman, ROCKY FLATS, Colo. (Reuters) – “….Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge since it opened on Sept 15.
The unique prairie ecosystem, is home to 239 wildlife species, ranging from elk and mule deer to black bears, cougars, numerous bird species, and monarch butterflies, Lucas said.
It’s unclear how long the refuge will remain open.
Five environmental and community activist groups have sued the government, arguing the Rocky Flats refuge should be closed until more testing is done. A judge last month rejected their request to delay the opening while the lawsuit is heard.
The suit is pending in Denver federal court.
The Rocky Flats plutonium plant had a history of fires, and radioactive spills during its 37 years in operation before shutting down permanently in 1989 during a criminal investigation into environmental violations.
Now that it’s a refuge, its 10.2 miles (16.4 km) of trails are open to naturalists, hikers, cyclists and equestrians. About 1,300 acres (526 hectares) immediately surrounding the old production facility is permanently closed off to the public……
REMNANT PLUTONIUM
In the lawsuit, pending before U.S. District Judge Philip Brimmer, opponents of the refuge argue that a $7.7 billion Superfund cleanup overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency was flawed and a new environmental study should be conducted.
“Our case will clearly demonstrate that the government does not have an up-to-date assessment of risks to the environment and human health from allowing unlimited public visits to the refuge,” Randall Weiner, an attorney for the coalition, told Reuters.
Human activity could stir up remnant plutonium, which if ingested by refuge visitors or residents downwind can cause cancer, Weiner said………
Rocky Flat’s demise began in 1989, when FBI agents and EPA investigators raided the plant based on a whistleblower’s tip that contractors were illegally disposing of hazardous materials.
The contractor at the time, Rockwell International Corp., pleaded guilty to violating environmental laws and paid $18.5 million in fines. In 2015, Rockwell and the plant’s previous contractor, Dow Chemical Co., paid $375 million to 12,000 homeowners downwind from the plant after a federal jury found the companies were liable for devaluing their properties due to plutonium releases.
It is unknown when Judge Brimmer will rule on the current lawsuit, but it may not end the controversy. The losing party could appeal and a lawsuit filed by the nearby town of Superior seeking to close the refuge is in its early stages. https://www.euronews.com/2018/09/25/colorado-wildlife-refuge-at-old-nuclear-plant-is-open-for-now
September 26, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
legal, USA |
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US and Russia to discuss nuclear weapons treaty extension in October https://www.ft.com/content/b26d62fe-c0a1-11e8-95b1-d36dfef1b89a, Henry Foy in Moscow
Russia and the US will hold talks on a potential extension to the New START nuclear weapons treaty in Geneva in October, a Russian official said on Tuesday. The future of bilateral treaties that govern the use of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles is one of the most critical issues in US-Russia relations. Experts have warned that the recent breakdown in relations between Washington and Moscow could jeopardise longstanding agreements on so-called ‘strategic stability’ that were designed to prevent nuclear armageddon.
New START, a 2010 agreement that limits the number of nuclear warheads held by both countries, expires in February 2021. Separately, both capitals have accused the other of breaching the 1987 INF Treaty, which limits the use of long-range missiles. “It is absolutely realistic to reach an agreement on an extension [to New START], if there is political will on the part of the American side. There are readiness from the Russian side,” said Vladimir Yermakov, director of the department of non-proliferation and arms control at the Russian foreign ministry. “We have given suggestions on how to do this, and in a couple of weeks we will meet in Geneva within the framework of a bilateral advisory commission,” he added, in comments reported by local newswires.
The US and Russia possess 13,300 nuclear warheads between them, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 92 per cent of the world’s stockpile. New START’s terms allow for a five-year extension, and experts have suggested that writing a whole new agreement would not be possible before its expiry. Regarding the INF Treaty, Mr Yermakov said Russia was “ready to discuss any issues relating to the treaty with our American partners, in any format.” Mr Yermakov added that there was “not a very big possibility” of Russian signing any brand new arms control agreements in the next few years.
September 26, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics international, Russia, USA, weapons and war |
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Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Paul Meyer, September 25, 2018, If grades in disarmament diplomacy were given out for perseverance, then Canada would surely merit an “A” for its efforts on behalf of the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, or FMCT. Forging this treaty, which would ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, has been a supposed goal of the international community for over half a century. In that time, though, negotiations to bring the treaty about never even started, suggesting that the FMCT is one of those worthy goals that are periodically affirmed without any serious effort to realize them. And though Canada has traditionally led efforts to move forward on the treaty, the Canadian-led group most recently charged with supporting future negotiations has submitted a report that deserves a failing grade.
This is unfortunate, because the FMCT, if it ever happens, could have a major impact on reducing nuclear proliferation. The problem is that the 25-member preparatory group asked to facilitate the task of future negotiators has recommended that “the negotiation of a treaty … begin without delay in the Conference on Disarmament.” This is not a realistic solution, as anyone familiar with the Conference on Disarmament knows it does not act “without delay” on anything. It simply does not get things done. To initiate work on the FMCT will require its liberation from this diplomatic dungeon……..
To initiate work on the FMCT will require it to be freed from the constraints of the Conference on Disarmament and granted a fresh start under the authority of a diplomatic body not subject to the veto of any one state. This might be best achieved via a UN General Assembly resolution. Alternatively, a group of concerned states—such as the five official nuclear weapon states under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or some other group that possesses fissile material—could undertake ad hoc negotiations.
Until the political will can be generated for such concrete action, the disarmament community should avoid exercises in treading water like the recent FMCT preparatory group. However well-intended, they only provide an illusion of progress, and further erode the credibility of the global nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime. https://thebulletin.org/2018/09/talks-to-ban-nuclear-materials-need-a-fresh-start/
September 26, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Canada, weapons and war |
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Last U.S. Nuclear Project Faces `Jeopardy’ as Owners Mull Exit, Bloomberg, By Mark Chediak, Margaret Newkirk, and Ari Natter, September 24, 2018,
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Costs of Southern’s Vogtle project have doubled to $28 billion
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orida utility seeking to cancel contract to buy Vogtle power
The only nuclear power plant under construction in the U.S. is facing stiff headwinds, as two minority owners are mulling whether to pull out of the $28 billion project led by
Southern Co.Vogtle’s primary municipal co-owners, Oglethorpe Power Corp. and Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia, are scheduled to vote Monday whether to move forward with construction on the Vogtle plant in Georgia after Southern’s Georgia Power utility disclosed in August that costs had increased by $2.3 billion.
As the vote looms, a Florida utility is suing to get out of a contract to buy electricity from the plant. Georgia lawmakers, meanwhile, called this week for a price cap on the project.
If one of the major parties decides not to continue, that could put the project in serious jeopardy,” said Kit Konolige, an analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.
The Vogtle decision comes at a critical time for the U.S. nuclear industry. Existing reactors are struggling to compete with cheap natural gas and renewables, and efforts to build new ones have all but dried up. Cost overruns forced Scana Corp. to abandon a half-built project in South Carolina last year, leaving Southern and its partners as the only companies left building reactors in the U.S……….https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-21/last-u-s-nuclear-project-faces-jeopardy-as-owners-mull-exit
September 24, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, USA |
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Utility begins restoring power to only nuclear plant to shut down during Hurricane Florence https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/utility-begins-restoring-power-to-only-nuclear-plant-to-shut-down-during-hurricane-florence, by Josh Siegel September 20, 2018 Utility company Duke Energy is restoring power at Brunswick nuclear plant in North Carolina after the site closed because of Hurricane Florence, with one reactor in service and the other set to restart soon.
Shannon Brushe, a Duke spokeswoman, confirmed to the Washington Examiner that it returned power Thursday to one of two units at the 1,978-megawatt Brunswick nuclear plant near Wilmington.
Duke had shut down the two reactors as a precaution before Florence hit. It was the only nuclear plant to close in either North or South Carolina because of the storm.
Over the weekend, Duke workers had limited access to the Brunswick plant because of flooding.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday that the plant was completely surrounded by water, with no way in or out of the facility.
Duke issued an emergency alert to the nuclear watchdog commission on Saturday, called an “unusual event” notice, which is the lowest emergency alert that the power plant is required to issue.
Roads in and out of the power plant’s 1,200-acre campus were impassable, making it impossible to relieve the Duke Energy and federal NRC staff stationed at the plant to ride out Hurricane Florence.
But a NRC spokesperson told the Washington Examiner on Thursday that there is now “adequate access to the plant and no other concerns related to flooding at the Brunsw
As of 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, 114,000 Duke customers — most of them in North Carolina — remained without power.
September 22, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, USA |
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Activists rally against nuclear waste transport, By JOSHUA SOLOMON
Staff Writer,Greenfield Recorder September 21, 2018 GREENFIELD — In a lot of ways it was like a party, celebrating the accomplishments of the past few years: The closures of the Vermont and Rowe nuclear plants. ……..The theme of the night? The high-level nuclear power plant waste being stored in Rowe and Vernon, Vt., must go — but only once the right and final safe place for it is decided.
“I haven’t bothered you for three or four years at this point,” leader of CAN and Rowe resident Deb Katz said. “But we’ve come back to our community to say: We need to be involved again. And I wish it wasn’t so.”
Katz and CAN just begun a tour of New England, and after spending their first two nights in Vermont, they came to Greenfield Thursday. On Friday, they will take the tour to the Statehouse on Beacon Hill.
Currently, the anti-nuclear activists are rallying against a bill that could allow for the high-level nuclear waste in Rowe and Vernon, Vt., to be shipped in canisters across the country to Texas or New Mexico. It would place the waste in what CAN is calling “parking lots” that are seen as more temporary holdings than anything else, but could be pitched as helping tthe economy in these regions in the Southwest of the country.
“Why shouldn’t we just say ‘yes, wow. Thank you so much’? The trouble is this is a really bad idea,” Katz said. “We all want the waste off the site, but we want it done right. And we want it done once.” ………
At the moment there isn’t a distinct solution on where to move the high-level nuclear waste, but Katz and fellow lead organizer Chris Williams of Vermont advovated for more science to figure out the best solution to storing waste that remains toxic for thousands of years.
“It took a lot of hard science to create this mess,” Williams said. “To get rid of this stuff properly, we’re going to have to apply real science and not just political expediency.”
The goal is to look to scientists to find the place for “deep geological storage,” Williams said.
Preaching to find a better, scientific solution was organizer and activist Kerstin Rudek from the Peoples Initiative, based out of Germany, where her neighbors have faced similar issues.
“It’s an international thing,” Rudek said, pointing to the lack of answers of what to do with the nuclear waste and the need for answers. “It’s not just a local thing.”
The meeting, which Williams described as a “little more lively than your usual nuclear waste meeting,” also included the speaker Leona Morgan, from the Navajo Nation and an Albuquerque, N.M. resident.
“It’s great news when we hear a nuclear power plant has been shut down, but it makes me nervous because it makes the push for these false solutions even harder,” Morgan said.
She described the political climate in New Mexico as pitching to residents that moving the nuclear waste there would be good for their economy, creating jobs, but ignoring the will of the residents who might be affected by it most.
“I’m here tonight to tell you we don’t want it,” Morgan said. “We don’t want this waste.”………
You can reach Joshua Solomon at: jsolomon@recorder.com 413-772-0261, ext. 264 https://www.recorder.com/Anti-nuclear-group-CAN-advocated-for-one-final-location-for-waste-at-tour-event-at-Hawks—Reed-20333471
September 21, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
opposition to nuclear, safety, USA, wastes |
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Nuclear power’s weapons link: Cause to limit, not boost exports https://thebulletin.org/2018/09/nuclear-powers-weapons-link-cause-to-limit-not-boost-exports/By Victor Gilinsky, Henry Sokolski, September 20, 2018 The criticism that supporters of US nuclear exports have found most difficult to counter has been that their wares give an importing country a big leg up on getting a bomb. For decades the exporters’ response has been to pretend this was not so. Now comes Michael Shellenberger, a prominent nuclear power advocate, who casts all this aside. Yes, he writes, there is a strong link between nuclear electricity and weapons, and in fact most countries that built nuclear power plants did so with weapons at least partly in mind. But this is not so much a confession as a sales pitch. He thinks the weapons potential of nuclear power plants actually prevents war—the weapons shadow cast by nuclear plants itself deters enemies—and that this attribute should be exploited as a sales advantage by US nuclear exporters.
Shellenberger’s assessment of the nuclear power-weapons link is important rhetorically because it comes from the nuclear side of the house. He has been celebrated by the nuclear industry and the conservative
press as one of the new breed, “pro-technology,” environmental activists who joined the nuclear ranks and are not afraid to do battle with their colleagues over nuclear power. So, his admission about the closeness of civilian and military nuclear technology—realistically what lawyers call a declaration against interest—carries a certain weight and may convince people who have up to now resisted the notion.
But Shellenberger goes on. He was always a bit unrestrained in his advocacy of nuclear power, and in speaking of nuclear weapons he surpasses himself. In an earlier piece, he presents an anecdotal case on why nuclear weapons were a cure-all for world conflict.
He said if only “weak” France had nuclear weapons in 1940 then “strong” Germany would not have attacked. But what if Germany was the one with the bomb?
He also points to India and Pakistan: They had three large wars before they armed themselves with nuclear weapons but none afterwards, only “border skirmishes” with relatively low casualties. And if such conflicts got out of hand and led to nuclear weapon use, well, not to worry—Shellenberger cites an academic “expert” who claims that the nuclear conflict would surely be contained at the “tactical” level. In truth, of course, no one has any idea.
That the presence of nuclear weapons has reduced the frequency of war is an arguable proposition. But one only has to consider the experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis to realize it comes at the price of gambling on nuclear war. Most people have forgotten about them, but our nuclear forces are still on alert, and their use is not ruled out. The “experts” speak of deployment for deterrence only, but deterrence is predicated on use in certain circumstances.
All these inescapable uncertainties apparently got swept away in Shellenberger’s mind by the “Eureka” moment he describes in the latest article: Based on a paper by a couple of political science professors, he asserts that a nuclear power program itself provides a significant level of “deterrence-related” benefits—“a bomb isn’t even required.” He says that when he thought of this, he almost fell off his chair. Why, he wondered, was this fact “not being promoted as one of nuclear power’s many benefits?”
One reason is that it’s a ridiculous proposal based on half-baked ideas.
But there is a serious side to this too. Unfortunately, his views, foolish as they are, are not so different from primitive views privately held in high official and semi-official nuclear circles. It is useful to bring them out of hiding, and we have to thank Shellenberger for that.
Take the Bush Administration’s 2005 nuclear deal with India. It tore a gaping hole in the Non-Proliferation Treaty and yet was described as promoting nonproliferation. Is there anyone so foolish as to believe that hypocrisy? Or to doubt that India’s interest in the arrangement was mainly fortifying its nuclear weapons? And wasn’t the notion of supporting India as a strategic foil to China at the core of US interest?
Consider also the current administration’s efforts to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia to facilitate nuclear exports to that country. One doesn’t even have to speculate about the Saudis’ interest in bombs—the Crown Prince famously made that clear. And from the US side, it is also clear that a reason to put nuclear technology in the hands of the Saudis is to frighten Iran.
The immediate nuclear issue now is what controls, if any, our government should impose on the proposed US-Saudi nuclear cooperative agreement. The sensible course from the security point of view, which Secretary of State Pompeo has publicly backed, is to make sure Saudi Arabia will not have the capacity to produce nuclear explosives—a controlling condition called the gold standard. But the Saudis are pushing back on that—for obvious reasons—and their supporters in the administration would like to relax the export controls that would apply, in part to get the business but also to have another stick to shake at Iran.
We should have none of this. It has been settled US policy for decades that we don’t want more countries with nuclear weapons or countries threatening to make them. Where we haven’t been consistent in applying that policy regarding nuclear power exports, we need to make corrections, not by exporting more, but less.
September 21, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
spinbuster, USA, weapons and war |
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Cost of Georgia nuclear plant draws scrutiny from lawmakers, https://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/cost-of-georgia-nuclear-plant-draws-scrutiny-from-lawmakers Financial Post, The Associated Press, Ben Nadler, 21 Sept 18, ATLANTA — A group of ranking Georgia lawmakers is sounding the alarm about cost overruns from construction at a nuclear power plant near Augusta.
The two additional reactors being built at Plant Vogtle, approximately 30 miles (50 kilometres) south of Augusta, are years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. The lawmakers said they want a “cost cap” established to protect Georgians from getting gouged on their electricity bills.
In August, the plant’s owners, which include Georgia Power, Oglethorpe Power Corporation and Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia, learned that the plant would require an additional $2.3 billion, bringing the total cost estimate to $27 billion.
That new overage initiated a clause in the ownership agreement where ninety per cent of ownership must agree to move forward. A down vote from any one of those organizations would mean the multibillion-dollar project is abandoned.
Georgia Power’s parent company, Southern Company, pledged that its shareholders would absorb its share of the costs. That leaves Oglethorpe Power and MEAG with a decision: pay up or pull out.
The letter lawmakers sent Wednesday was signed by 20 members of the Georgia General Assembly, including Rep. Terry England, chairman of the House appropriations committee, and Sen. Butch Miller, president pro tempore of the Senate. It said that unlike Georgia Power, the other organizations “don’t have the luxury of shareholders to absorb these additional costs and will have to increase rates even higher.”
They asked the owners to “ensure prior to voting in support of moving forward … that a cost cap is established to protect all Georgia electric ratepayers from this and future overruns.”
But Gov. Nathan Deal took a different stance. A day before the lawmaker’s letter was sent, Deal sent a letter to Oglethorpe Power encouraging completion of the project.
“Given the project’s critical economic impact to the State of Georgia, I strongly encourage (the project’s) co-owners to continue work and complete the construction,” Deal said. “I am counting on the project co-owners to follow through on the commitments you made to the citizens of Georgia, ratepayers and myself.”
The plug was pulled on a similar project in neighbouring South Carolina in July 2017 when the V.C. Summer plant was abandoned after going billions of dollars over.
September 21, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, politics, USA |
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Beyond Nuclear 20th Sept 2018 , The two-unit coastal Brunswick nuclear power station in South Port, NC was
powered down to zero power shortly in advance of the September 14th arrival
Hurricane Florence with Category 1 winds (sustained < 75 mph), storm surge
and torrential rainfall. Operators maintained the Brunswick units in “hot
standby” (reactor cooling water at 212O F and capable of steam powering
onsite turbines for emergency electricity) to provide an added measure of
power supply for reactor safety and cooling systems in the event of loss of
offsite power and backup emergency diesel generators.
However, throughout the storm, Duke Energy reported that the nuclear power station was in
“stable” condition and never lost offsite electricity power from the
grid providing primary power to safety systems and cooling.
A low-level emergency was declared September 15th when the reactor site was completely
surrounded by rising flood waters making it inaccessible by road. Two
shifts of workers were already housed onsite and supplied in advance for
the storm’s duration. Offsite access by road to the Brunswick units was
restored on September 18th and the “Unusual event” emergency was
terminated.
The continued flooding has damaged many of the bridges and
roads within the ten-mile radius that encompasses the radiological
evacuation planning zone for the Brunswick nuclear power station. As the
flooding recedes, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will
assess the damage to the infrastructure and will provide its recommendation
to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) before Brunswick is allowed
to restart.
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/nuclear-reactors-whatsnew/2018/9/20/brunswick-nuclear-plant-remains-shut-down-following-hurrican.html
September 21, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, USA |
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Even if the optimism of the scientists and engineers is well-founded, it will still take almost two more decades for the vitrification plant to run at full bore. So it may be 2047—or later—before the ghosts of plutonium are finally laid to rest.
illustration by Abigail Malate, Staff Illustrator, American Institute of Physics
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Plutonium Waste Continues to Haunt Nuclear Site https://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2018/09/plutonium-waste-continues-haunt-nuclear-site 09/20/2018 – by Valerie Brown, Inside Science Nearly 30 years ago, the state of Washington and two federal agencies agreed to clean up the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a 586-square-mile chunk of sagebrush desert where the U.S. produced plutonium for nuclear weapons starting 75 years ago. In the process, half a trillion gallons of chemically toxic and radioactive waste was dumped on the ground or injected into groundwater. Some of it has reached the Columbia River. Another 56 million gallons of concentrated, radioactive sludge and crystallized salts sit corroding within 177 steel-and-concrete underground tanks.Although the tank waste is only a fraction of the total, its safe disposal is one of the site’s most urgent priorities, especially to the policymakers and residents of Washington and Oregon. Eighteen years ago, workers began constructing a plant for “immobilizing” the remaining waste by vitrifying it—a process whereby it is mixed with molten glass, cooled and encased in stainless steel canisters for long-term storage underground in an as yet undesignated location.
Today the task remains unfinished. Prominent among the reasons for this is that designing, building and operating the infrastructure to treat the waste may be the most complicated project of its kind ever attempted. And that’s because the waste itself is, well, complicated. Although plutonium is no longer being created at Hanford this most peculiar element continues to loom ghostlike over the government’s efforts to mitigate the damage its creation caused and prevent any further environmental and human risk for centuries to come. Continue reading →
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September 21, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
- plutonium, Reference, USA |
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Duke Energy lifts emergency at Brunswick nuclear plant; relief workers start to arrive https://www.heraldsun.com/news/state/north-carolina/article218633480.html
Duke Energy began ferrying workers by boat out of the Brunswick nuclear plant Tuesday as the 1,200-acre complex, about 4 miles inland, remains largely inaccessible by land.
The Charlotte-based electric utility also notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday to lift an emergency notification that Duke had filed Saturday when the Brunswick plant, 30 miles south of Wilmington, was cut off by rising water and workers could not get to the site in their cars.
Nearly 300 Duke employees, and two NRC “storm riders,” had spent days at the facility, sleeping on cots, using portable toilets and drinking bottled water because county water service is not available. Duke’s aviation service used a helicopter to bring in extra food on Monday.
Duke spokeswoman Rita Sipe said the company is bringing in fresh crews to relieve the workers on site; some hadn’t left the complex since the middle of last week. Sipe said the company would not disclose details about transporting workers by boat or discuss its plans to restart Brunswick’s twin nuclear reactors, which were untouched by flood waters.
Duke’s emergency notice alerted NRC of an “unusual event,” the lowest level of emergency at a U.S. nuclear facility, and did not indicate a threat to public safety.
The reactors were never at risk of flooding inside the facility, according to Duke and the NRC, but Duke shut them down as a precaution when Florence, then a Category 4 hurricane, approached the state.
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September 21, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
safety, USA |
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nuclear-news 