Trump says firms doing business in Iran to be barred from U.S. as sanctions hit,Babak Dehghanpisheh, Peter Graff, BEIRUT/LONDON (Reuters) 7 Aug 18, – Companies doing business with Iran will be barred from the United States, President Donald Trump said on Tuesday, as new U.S. sanctions took effect despite pleas from Washington’s allies.
Iran dismissed a last-minute offer from the Trump administration for talks, saying it could not negotiate while Washington had reneged on a 2015 deal to lift sanctions in return for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump decided this year to pull out of the agreement, ignoring pleas from the other world powers that had co-sponsored the deal, including Washington’s main European allies Britain, France and Germany, as well as Russia and China.
Trinity site cancer study expected to finish in 2019, Santa Fe New Mexican, By Russell Contreras | Associated Press, 6 Aug 18
ALBUQUERQUE — A long-anticipated study into the cancer risks of New Mexico residents living near the site of the world’s first atomic bomb test likely will be published in 2019, the National Cancer Institute announced.
Institute spokesman Michael Levin told the Associated Press that researchers are examining data on diet and radiation exposure on residents who lived near the World War II-era Trinity test site, and scientists expect to finish the study by early next year.
The study will then be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and could be available by next spring, Levin said.
The announcement comes as descendants of families who lived in nearby communities are pressuring Congress to include them in the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. Descendants say the Trinity Test caused generations of families to suffer from rare cancer and economic hardship.
Currently, the law only covers areas in Nevada, Arizona and Utah that are downwind from a different test site.
Scientists working in Los Alamos developed the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project, which provided enriched uranium for the weapon. The secret program also involved facilities in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Hanford, Wash. The bomb was tested in a stretch of desert near towns with Hispanic and Native American populations.
North Korea’s Pompeo Problem Exposes Widening Rift Over Talks, Bloomberg By Bill Faries, August 7, 2018,
Top U.S. diplomat rebuked after two latest trips to Asia
U.S. told it will ‘get nothing’ from its pressure campaign
North Korea appears to have a Pompeo problem.
The widening gulf between Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s description of nuclear talks with North Korea and Pyongyang’s criticism of his efforts is adding further confusion to the status of negotiations intended to lead to the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
Twice in recent weeks North Korean officials and state media have rebutted the top U.S. diplomat’s characterization of events and suggested the administration has a myopic focus on denuclearization while ignoring issues such as bringing about a final resolution of the Korean War. Even as President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un exchange optimistic messages about their push for peace, Pompeo has increasingly become a target of public disparagement from Pyongyang.
More than 120 groups push NY to lift broad nuclear subsidies. by Associated Press & CNYCentral , August 7th 2018 ALBANY, N.Y. — Some 130 environmental groups are taking aim at New York’s nuclear subsidies.
The coalition, led by the Alliance for a Green Economy, wrote to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday urging him to overhaul the subsidies so New Yorkers who would prefer cleaner forms of energy can opt out. Groups including Earthjustice, the Sierra Club and Food and Water Watch signed on to the letter.
Under a two-year-old policy, New York utility customers pay extra each month to support aging upstate nuclear plants. The subsidy could raise as much as $7.6 billion over several years.
The James A. Fitzpatrick nuclear plant in Scriba, in Oswego County, was in danger of closing in 2016 just before the state announced it would subsidize the plants.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry toured the plant with Rep. John Katko last week, where the issue of subsidies came up. Katko said he disagrees with Cuomo at times but applauded his effort to keep the FitzPatrick plant open.
Could Indian Point be next nuclear power plant up for sale? Lohud, Thomas C. Zambito, Rockland/Westchester Journal News Aug. 6, 2018 The sale of nuke plants in Massachusetts and Michigan could foreshadow Indian Point’s future and unions once pushed for a role in its decommissioning.
Entergy will sell nuclear power plants in Massachusetts and Michigan to a New Jersey firm that’s promised to knock years off a lengthy shutdown process, a move that hints at the company’s plans for Indian Point.
Entergy announced last week that it has agreed to sell the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass., and the Palisades Power Plant in Covert, Mich., to Holtec International, for what will be the company’s first decommissioning venture.
The announcement, coupled with Entergy’s decision to sell its Vermont Yankee plant to NorthStar Groups Services, a New York-based industrial demolition firm, is the latest indication that Indian Point could be sold once it powers down.
……. Decommissioning of nuclear power plants typically extends for decades.
But in recent years, as more than a dozen nuclear power plants have announced plans to close, firms like Holtec and NorthStar have jumped into decommissioning, promising quick turnarounds.
n the case of Pilgrim, Holtec would begin decommissioning in 2020 and wrap up the work in eight years, Entergy officials say.
Palisades is slated to shut down in the spring of 2022 when the timetable for its dismantling would be announced. In both cases, spent nuclear fuel will be moved into cement casks on the site within three years of the shutdown, Entergy says.
“Transferring our Pilgrim and Palisades plants to Holtec, with its vast experience and innovative use of technology will lead to their decommissioning faster than if they were to remain under Entergy’s ownership,” said Leo Denault, Entergy’s chairman and CEO.
While these will be Holtec’s first decommissionings, the company has years of experience with dry cask storage on nuclear power plant sites, including Indian Point. The work will be carried out by Comprehensive Decommissioning International, a newly-formed Holtec subsidiary based in Camden, New Jersey.
Storing nuclear waste
Holtec currently has an application pending before the NRC to operate the nation’s first interim storage facility for nuclear waste in the New Mexico desert.
Major Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemorations at U.S. Warhead Facilities Across the Nation Protest Trump’s Risky Nuclear Posture and Budget; Advocate Disarmament http://www.huntingtonnews.net/158411, August 5, 2018 –
Thousands of peace advocates, Hibakusha (A-bomb survivors), religious leaders, scientists, economists, attorneys, doctors and nurses, nuclear analysts, former war planners and others across the country are coming together to commemorate the 73rd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this August 6 through 9 at key sites in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.
Major commemorations, rallies, protests, many including nonviolent direct action, will place at the Livermore Lab in CA, the Y-12 Plant in TN, the Los Alamos Lab in NM, the Kansas City Plant in MO, the Rocky Flats Plant in CO, the Pantex Plant in TX, in Santa Barbara, CA near Vandenberg’s ICBM launch site, and in GA near the Savannah River Site, along with other locations around the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.
These diverse events are sponsored by members of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), a network of three-dozen groups located downstream and downwind of U.S. nuclear weapons sites. These Hiroshima-Nagasaki commemorations are united by their reflection on the past, and, uniquely, by their focus on the present and future with a resolute determination to change U.S. nuclear weapons policy at the very locations that are linchpins in producing a costly, destabilizing new stockpile of U.S. nuclear warheads, bombs and delivery vehicles.
“Here in Tennessee, as in other locations across the country, I see daily evidence of a dangerous, escalating global nuclear arms race,” noted Ralph Hutchison, the longtime coordinator for the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance. “This is epitomized by government plans for a new Uranium Processing Facility to produce H-bomb components at Y-12, including for new-design weapons.”
“U.S. plans to ‘modernize’ the arsenal are also underway in California at the Livermore Lab,” stated Marylia Kelley, Tri-Valley CAREs’ executive director. “Livermore’s new Long-Range Stand Off warhead design geared toward ‘first use’ and its rapid re-start of an ‘interoperable’ warhead design previously delayed by the Obama Administration reveal two facets of this new arms race,” Kelley continued. “In contrast to the cold war, which was largely about sheer numbers, the new arms race and its dangers stem from novel military capabilities now being placed into nuclear weapons.”
“The Trump Administration has put the U.S. on a trajectory to spend nearly $2,000,000,000,000 [trillion] over the coming thirty years on new nukes and bomb plants to build them, when inflation and the new concepts in this year’s Nuclear Posture Review and fiscal 2019 budget request are considered, said Joni Arends, the director for Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety in NM.
Around the world, pressure for the U.S. to show leadership toward the abolition of nuclear weapons is growing. Pope Francis has repeatedly pressed the moral argument against nuclear weapons, inveighing not only against their use but also against their possession. Moreover, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted by 122 states parties at the United Nations one year ago.
Already, fourteen have completed their ratification procedures for the Treaty, which will fully enter into force when 50 states parties have ratified it. The Treaty establishes new law and a new norm, outlawing nuclear weapons development, testing, possession, use, transfer and/or any offer of assistance in a prohibited activity. “The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons shows us another future is possible,” said Rick Wayman, Deputy Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a member of the ANA Board of Directors. “The Treaty and the aspirations of millions of people for a nuclear weapons free future give me hope on this important anniversary of the first use of a nuclear bomb in war,” he continued. “We must listen to those in the U.S. and around the world who have been impacted by nuclear weapons. These weapons must be eliminated so that no one suffers the same fate ever again.”
Actions this week at U.S. nuclear weapons facilities will highlight the mounting international calls for nuclear abolition, with U.S. organizers lending their deep and often unique “on the ground” knowledge from the gates and fence lines of the facilities involved in creating new and modified U.S. nuclear weapons. “This anniversary should be a time to reflect on the absolute horror of a nuclear detonation,” mused Ann Suellentrop of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Kansas City, “yet the new Kansas City Plant is churning out components to extend U.S. nuclear weapons 70 years into the future. The imperative to change that future is what motivates me to organize a peace fast at the gates of the Plant.”
Key events at U.S. nuclear weapons complex sites include: • Y-12 – remembrance, rally and nonviolent direct action, peace fast and lanterns. (www.orepa.org) • Livermore Lab – peace camp, Aug. 6 rally, march, nonviolent direct action. (www.trivalleycares.org) • Los Alamos Lab – commemoration and vigil, August 4, Ashley Pond, Los Alamos. (jarends@nuclearactive.org or scott@nukewatch.org) • Kansas City Plant – vigil and peace fast. (www.psr.org/chapters/kansas/) • Savannah River Site – Aug. 9 seeds of peace observance, Carter Center Rose Garden, Atlanta, GA. (www.nonukesyall.org) • Rocky Flats Plant – peace quilt, film, labyrinth mourning walk. (judithmohling76@gmail.com) • Pantex Plant – Hiroshima exhibit, panel discussion. (www.peacefarm.us) • Santa Barbara – commemoration to remember victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and all innocent victims of war. (www.wagingpeace.org)
A federal program that has paid out more than $60 million to former Apollo area nuclear workers for radiation-related illnesses is looking for more former nuclear workers throughout the region who might be eligible for compensation.
The U.S. Department of Labor will hold an information meeting for former workers in the nuclear materials industry or their survivors on Aug. 22 from 9 a.m. noon and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Quality Inn in New Kensington.
There are about 14 work sites eligible in Southwestern Pennsylvania, including some steel mills and nuclear fuel processing plants.
Among them are the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. (NUMEC) in Apollo and Parks Township, Westinghouse Atomic Power Development Plant in East Pittsburgh, Westinghouse Nuclear Fuels Division in Cheswick, and Aluminum Co. of America — Alcoa — in New Kensington.
The benefits proved helpful to deceased workers’ families to shore up medical expenses and the financial losses.
But it still doesn’t make up for the loss of a loved one.
“It just seems trivial — $150,000 for someone’s life, but it did help my mom out,” said Shellie Robertson, 57, Washington Township, whose father, John Grazetti, died in 2015 at the age of 74 from acute myeloid leukemia.
Grazetti, of Washington Township, was a NUMEC worker as was his father, John Grazetti Sr., who died of colon cancer and a brother who has recently been diagnosed with rectal cancer, according to Robertson.
All three men had cancers associated with exposures to radioactive substances encountered at work, and the compensation claims to the Labor Department by the three men have been accepted.
“My dad said he would probably die of cancer,” Robertson said. “He knew.”
Grazetti, who worked at NUMEC for about 20 years, didn’t talk much about his job, according to his daughter.
All the family knew what that he was foreman and worked with chemicals. However, Robertson did recall her father having to submit urine samples for the company to test for what is now known as radiation over-exposures.
Near the end of his life, Robertson started to hear NUMEC stories when her dad and uncle would talk.
“They would have to clean up stuff, spray down the walls. I remember the soles of my father’s shoes being eaten away from the stuff he was walking in.”
Paid out so far: $15 billion
To date, the program has paid more than $129.3 million in compensation and medical benefits to 1,138 claimants living in Pennsylvania and more than $15.2 billion nationwide, according to the Labor Department.
The government established the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act (EEOICPA) in 2000 to pay sick nuclear workers a lump sum of $150,000 and coverage of related medical expenses.
The program pays people who became ill because of working for a private business subcontracted by the federal government to develop and produce components for nuclear weapons.
Generally, eligible workers must have worked a certain amount of time and developed one of 22 cancers designated by the program and or other illnesses. The benefit also is payable to families of deceased workers.
The Labor Department has visited the area before and is visiting again because there still might be workers or their families still eligible for the benefit.
In Pennsylvania, most of the nuclear workers covered by the program were employed in the 1960s and 1970s.
It’s difficult to say how many more workers could be eligible for the program, but they could number in the hundreds, according to estimates provided by an EEOICPA program official several years ago.
Mary Ann Thomas is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Mary Ann at 724-226-4691, mthomas@tribweb.com or via Twitter @MaThomas_Trib.
President Trump appeared on Sunday to place blame for massive wildfires in California on the state’s environmental laws, including its water and forest management policies, saying that such regulations have made the blazes “so much worse.”
“California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized,” Trump tweeted. “It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!”
The president’s tweet comes as California continues to face a series of wildfires that have destroyed buildings, homes and left several people dead.
California has seen a spate of highly destructive wildfires in recent years. Fueling those fires, in part, has been a buildup of vegetation in the state, along with long droughts that dried up that vegetation.
Trump Donor Agreed to Pay Michael Cohen $10 Million for Nuclear Project Push
Consulting deal with Franklin L. Haney could have been among the most lucrative struck by president’s then-personal attorney, WSJ, ByMichael Rothfeld, Rebecca Ballhaus and Joe Palazzolo, 2 Aug 18.
A major donor to President Trump agreed to pay $10 million to the president’s then-personal attorney if he successfully helped obtain funding for a nuclear-power project, including a $5 billion loan from the U.S. government, according to people familiar with the matter.
The donor, Franklin L. Haney, gave the contract to Trump attorney Michael Cohen in early April to assist his efforts to complete a pair of unfinished nuclear reactors in Alabama, known as the Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant, these people said.
Authorities are investigating whether Mr. Cohen engaged in unregistered lobbying in connection with his consulting work for corporate clients after Mr. Trump went to the White House, according to people familiar with the probe.
Investigators are also examining potential campaign-finance violations and bank fraud……..
Under the contract, Mr. Haney agreed to pay Mr. Cohen a monthly retainer in addition to the $10 million success fee if he could help obtain the funding, including approval of the full amount of the project’s application under a U.S. Department of Energy loan program, the people familiar with the deal said.
Mr. Cohen’s fee would be reduced proportionally if he helped obtain less funding than the contract stipulated, according to a person familiar with the agreement.
A loan application by Mr. Haney’s company is still pending at the Energy Department. Mr. Cohen hasn’t communicated with Energy Secretary Rick Perry about Mr. Haney’s project, according to the Energy Department. Mr. Cohen made several calls to officials at the Energy Department in the spring to inquire about the loan guarantee process, including what could be done to speed it up, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Wall Street Journal couldn’t determine how much Mr. Haney may have paid Mr. Cohen, if anything, in monthly retainer fees…….
Mr. Cohen’s work for Mr. Haney included participating in an April 5 meeting during which he helped the donor pitch the vice chairman of the Qatar Investment Authority, Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohamed al-Thani, on a possible investment in the nuclear plant, the Journal reported in May, citing people familiar with the matter. …..
Mr. Haney’s company, Nuclear Development, entered into a $111 million contract in November 2016 to purchase the partially completed Bellefonte Nuclear Plant from the Tennessee Valley Authority. Mr. Haney has until November to close on the purchase.
A month after the purchase agreement, in December 2016, Mr. Haney donated $1 million to the Trump inaugural fund through a corporate entity, Federal Election Commission records show. ….
The chair of a New Mexico legislative committee that monitors radioactive and hazardous materials in the state says he finds it troubling Attorney General Hector Balderas has concluded the state cannot legally stop a New Jersey-based company from the building a nuclear waste storage facility.
Holtec International, a New Jersey-based company specializing in nuclear storage, has applied to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to construct a nuclear waste storage facility about 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Carlsbad.
The facility, to be located in western Lea County, could eventually store up to 10,000 shipments of spent nuclear fuel, as much as 120,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste, from nuclear power plants around the country. It would be stored just below the surface.
The facility is intended to be a temporary storage site, storing nuclear waste only until a permanent storage facility can be built. But opponents fear that it could become permanent because plans for a long-term repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, have stalled because of opposition.
Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, said Wednesday that New Mexico should have a say about the proposal and that he was disappointed in the attorney general’s opinion, The Hobbs News-Sun reports .
“It’s troubling that a project of this magnitude with this much exposure to the state — I mean exposure in the sense of the hazardous materials involved and long-term ramifications of it being here — that our state would not have a say in being able to approve it or not,” said Steinborn, who chairs interim Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee.
Balderas said in a letter last month the state cannot legally stop Holtec International from temporarily storing up to 100,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste in New Mexico.
Balderas cited the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and two court cases clearly establishing two principles.
“(F)irst, that the NRC has the statutory authority to license and regulate consolidated interim nuclear waste storage facilities, and secondly, that the comprehensiveness of that federal regulatory scheme pre-empts virtually any state involvement,” Balderas wrote.
NATO Nuclear Sharing, Centre for Security Studies, The CSS Blog Network, By Tim Street , 3 Aug 18
This primer explains the role US-owned B61 tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) play in Europe as part of NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements. It considers these weapons in terms of their economic, political, diplomatic and security significance, including internal NATO dynamics, US-Russia relations and international arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament regimes.
We Now Know the Army Tested Its Own Nuclear ‘Dirty Bombs’. This Is What Happened.Was it a waste of time? National Interest by Joseph Trevithick, 3 Aug 18
We don’t know how long the Army continued to work on these dirty bombs. The Pentagon only declassified these two reports in 2000 as part of larger project to determine how many servicemen and women might have been exposed to dangerous radiation in such experiments over the years. The information had been kept secret under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946.
From television to Hollywood blockbusters, the “dirty bomb” – a device designed to spew radioactive material rather than set off a massive atomic explosion – has captured the public imagination as a potential terrorist weapon. But the U.S. Army once tried to make it into a real weapon of war.
In 1952, the ground combat branch conducted at least two live tests of prototype munitions at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. The experimental E-83 “radiological bomb” consisted of more than 70 pounds of tantalum 181 pellets wrapped around a high explosive charge, as technicians explained in one report :
……….We don’t know how long the Army continued to work on these dirty bombs. The Pentagon only declassified these two reports in 2000 as part of larger project to determine how many servicemen and women might have been exposed to dangerous radiation in such experiments over the years. The information had been kept secret under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946.
But the Pentagon seems to have quickly passed over the radiological weapons for increasingly powerful nuclear bombs. By the 1960s, American and foreign scientists had discovered how to produce similar “enhanced radiation” effects with small hydrogen bombs, more commonly known as neutron bombs.
Environmentalists Fight FPL Plan to Keep Nuclear Plant Open Until 2053, Miami New Times JERRY IANNELLI | AUGUST 2, 2018
Compared to wind farms and solar parks, nuclear power plants are, in general, extremely expensive to operate and terrible for their surrounding environments. Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station in Homestead certainly has not done good things for the local water supply. The power plant’s infamous canal system, a nuclear-fluid cooling setup used nowhere else on Earth, has leaked salt water into Miami’s major drinking-water aquifer and spilled trace amounts of radioactive materials into Biscayne Bay.
So after FPL filed a motion at the beginning of 2018 to renew Turkey Point’s operating license for 20 years, potentially keeping the nuclear plant open until 2053, the environmental nonprofit Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) has filed a legal petition in yet another attempt to finally get rid of the cooling-canal system. The legal filing notes that environmentalists worry about the impact the cooling canals will have in an “increasingly warm climate.”
“We are challenging FPL’s proposal to run Turkey Point for far longer than anticipated because the facility is not being properly managed,” Stephen A. Smith, SACE’s executive director, said today in a media release, which echoed many of the same complaints he’s levied at Turkey Point during the past handful of years. “This open industrial sewer is polluting Biscayne Bay and putting critical drinking water supplies at risk today. This unacceptable status quo cannot continue into the 2050s. Thankfully, there are attainable solutions that can correct this FPL-created mess, and it’s long-past time for FPL to do what’s right, fix these wrongs, and move on.”………
SACE now says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the federal body tasked with renewing Turkey Point’s license, should deny FPL another 20-year extension until the company puts a hard plan in place to get rid of the canal system once and for all. Instead, SACE simply wants FPL to build some normal nuclear cooling towers so the site can at least function like every other nuclear power plant in America.
“FPL should not be allowed another twenty years of operation before analyzing the reasons for the failures of its efforts over the past decades to stem those impacts,” the 34-page legal petition reads. “Nor should FPL be allowed to go forward with a second license renewal term before reckoning with the fact that new measures it proposes for mitigation of the CCS’ impacts in the future are mutually inconsistent and counter-productive. Finally, FPL should be required to address an alternative cooling system, already approved and used by FPL for other plants on the Turkey Point site, which would eliminate the need for the CCS and thereby avoid its adverse environmental impacts: mechanical draft cooling towers.”
In short, SACE’s scientists contend FPL hasn’t done the basic scientific work necessary to ensure the cooling-canal system won’t continue polluting Miami’s waterways. SACE says FPL has underestimated the power plant’s environmental impact on the surrounding environment. The nonprofit also says the cooling canals are leaking chemicals such as tritium, nitrogen, phosphorous, and chlorophyll into Biscayne Bay, as well as wiping out seagrass habitats that are crucial for alligator nests, among other animals.
“FPL claims to have studied the groundwater interface with Biscayne Bay and found that ‘the groundwater pathway is having no discernible influence on Biscayne Bay,'” the legal filing states. “But FPL’s assertion is contradicted by ample evidence that wastewater from the CCS is reaching Biscayne Bay and that it has a significant adverse environmental impact.”
SACE’s latest legal filing merely requests a hearing with the NRC, an agency that tends to rule in favor of major power companies in these kinds of cases. SACE says it expects the NRC to respond to the hearing request sometime this fall.
“Federal environmental law prohibits FPL from continuing to pollute Biscayne Bay and the drinking water supply for another 20 years when a feasible and cost-effective alternative is available to avoid those impacts,” SACE attorney Diane Curran said today in a news release. “SACE intends to use that federal law to push for a solution that will protect public drinking water and the environment.”
Jerry Iannelli is Miami New Times‘ daily-news reporter. He graduated with honors from Temple University. He then earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. He moved to South Florida in 2015.
Morrison cited several fears some of the townsfolk have about the project, such as negative impact on tourism, water contamination from the DGR boring project and the risk of accident while transporting high level waste along the highway.
Morrison said money has already come into Hornepayne because of its progression into the project. NWMO’s Learn More Project provides funding to cover travel expenses for individuals who represent the community to meet with the NWMO at its office in Toronto. It also funds the hiring independent experts to advise the community ($15,000 or less) and pays to support authorities to engage citizens in the community to learn about the project ($20,000 or less).
“Businesses that are for the project get some of that money from council and businesses that aren’t don’t get any.”
Nuclear waste debate divides Northern town Ben Cohen Special To The Sault Star, August 3, 2018 Hornepayne, Ont., a community of 980 people about 400 kilometres northwest of Sault Ste. Marie, is one of the five finalists to see who becomes home to a nuclear waste facility.
In 2011, the town entered a bid to become a repository for 5.2 million log-sized bundles of used nuclear fuel. They were joined by 21 other Canadian communities that have since been whittled down due to internal protest or geological unsuitability.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) of Canada’s plan is to take this used fuel, known as “high-level nuclear waste,” contain it in steel baskets stuffed into copper tubes and encased in clay, and place that in a Deep Geological Repository (DGR), a 500-metre deep hole reinforced with a series of barriers. This is where it will stay for the 400,000 years it remains radioactive.
Bradley Hammond, senior communications manager for NWMO, told the Sault Star that the project only moves forward if it receives “broad social acceptance” within the selected communities.
“We won’t proceed in an area with opposition,” he said, adding that he has complete confidence that NWMO will find a suitable town by 2023.
When asked if there was a plan in place if all five of the finalist communities, Huron-Kinloss, Ont., Ignace, Ont., Manitouwadge, Ont., and South Bruce, Ont., back out of the project, Hammond indicated there isn’t, because that would be impossible.
A rally is being held in Hornepayne Aug. 14 to oppose the town being used for nuclear waste storage. Those at the helm of the rally said the project “exploits” their small town. Continue reading →
Previously the commission had approved what is called the DECON method which assumes that the U.S. Department of Energy will take the spent fuel at the decommissioning time and costs $814 million.
The nuclear plan in Burlington has been operating since 1985 and will decommission in 2045.
The plan approved Thursday, SAFSTOR, keeps the spent fuel at the facility until the unit is removed 60 years later in 2105. It will cost $1.09 billion.
Westar is part of the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operation Corporation (WCNOC) and rates for their customers will increase with the plan.
Spokesperson for Westar and KCP&L Jeremy McNeive said SAFTSOR is actually the better option for Westar customers.
“The change to the decommission plan would be about $800,000 annually which is less than 1 percent for Westar customers,” McNeive said. “Without the change, the decommission cost would have been $1.2 million annually. This is a positive thing, obviously, for Westar customers.”
The WCNOC also includes Kansas City Power & Light, Kansas Gas and Electric and Kansas Electric Power Cooperative.
The decommission order goes under review every three years to make adjustments for inflation and any other factors.
Tell Congress: Prevent Nuclear Catastrophe in Iran
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
The facility is intended to be a temporary storage site, storing nuclear waste only until a permanent storage facility can be built. But opponents fear that it could become permanent because plans for a long-term repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, have stalled because of opposition.
