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Technical troubles delay new tests at huge Eastern WA radioactive waste melter

BY ANNETTE CARY, Tri City Herald, June 21, 2024 

The Department of Energy is unlikely to meet a deadline set by a federal court for the next step to prepare the Hanford site’s vitrification plant to treat radioactive waste for disposal. On Thursday DOE notified the Washington state Department of Ecology that it was at risk of not meeting the Aug. 1 deadline to start cold commissioning of the plant, a test of vitrification using nonradioactive chemicals to simulate waste before radioactive waste is introduced into the plant.

DOE is asking the Department of Ecology to agree to a four-month extension to Nov. 29 of this year. “The process for commissioning this first-in-kind facility is comprehensive and dynamic,” said DOE Hanford Manager Brian Vance in a message to Hanford employees Thursday…………………..

DOE remains committed to starting treating radioactive waste by the federal court consent decree deadline of August 2025, Vance said, despite the shortened time proposed between the start of cold commissioning and introducing radioactive waste into the plant for hot commissioning. DOE broke ground 22 years ago on the vitrification plant at the Hanford nuclear reservation to turn much of the 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous chemical waste stored in underground tanks into a stable glass form for disposal.

The waste is left from chemically processing uranium fuel irradiated at the Hanford site adjacent to Richland in Eastern Washington to produce nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program from World War II through the Cold War.

The current plan is to begin treating some of the least radioactive tank waste next year as DOE continues to work toward meeting a consent decree deadline to also start treating high level radioactive waste in the tanks by 2033.

The 2010 consent decree resulted from a Department of Ecology lawsuit over legal deadlines that DOE had missed or was near certain to miss. The consent decree deadlines originally called for cold commissioning to treat both low activity radioactive waste and high level radioactive waste to begin in 2018. Consent decree deadlines have been extended several times over the last 14 years, including to allow DOE more time due to work delays caused by the COVID pandemic. The Department of Ecology said Thursday morning that it was reviewing the notification from DOE, which also was sent to Oregon.

If the Department of Ecology agrees to the extension, the federal court must then sign off on the change. TECHNICAL ISSUE AT HANFORD PLANT DOE told the Department of Ecology in its notification Thursday that it has had technical issues with the glass former system at the vitrification plant’s Low Activity Waste Facility.

Glass forming materials are planned to be mixed with waste and then heated to fill canisters with a molten glass mixture. After cooling, the radioactive waste will be immobilized and ready for disposal.

The glass forming material is trucked to 12 vertical tanks outdoors at the vitrification plant in central Hanford. From there horizontal pipes with a screw conveyor are used to move the solid glass forming material into vessels inside the plant before the glass forming material and waste or waste simulant are added to melters.

There have been problems with clogging as the system has been used so far to move 40,000 pounds of glass forming material into the plant. The issue with the glass forming system is the main reason DOE has asked for a deadline extension, but it also has some other issues it is addressing at the vitrification plant that might interfere with the Aug. 1 deadline to start cold commissioning. Other issues are with the thermal catalytic oxidizer, the steam plant Morrison tubes and the overall reliability of the mechanical handling system, DOE told the Department of Ecology.

The delay comes as DOE and its vitrification plant contractor Bechtel National have been making progress on preparing to treat waste at the vitrification plant……….

The first shipment of 10,000 gallons of the simulated waste, which is liquid sodium hydroxide, has been delivered to the vitrification plant for the start of cold commissioning after technical issues with the glass forming system are resolved……..  https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article289415648.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawGQ85pleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHXSOmqPdX05-ob45hMlDtydxbNAUQaYy3hZHsjjJN36uXswbGOitN8vfCw_aem_T6xrJeHnpOhqhMLAvIemaQ

November 2, 2024 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Atomic Reaction – a highly recommended feature-length documentary film.

Atomic Reaction (90 minute documentary film)

Gordon Edwards. 30 Oct 24

This feature-length documentary film tells the story of how Canada supplied uranium for the World War II Atomic Bomb Project by using the leftovers from a radium mine on the shore of Great Bear Lake, just south of the arctic circle, and – of central importance – the radium refinery in Port Hope Ontario several thousand miles away. When uranium from the Congo entered the picture in December 1942, it too was refined at Port Hope for the Bomb program.  

The film also tells the story of the most expensive and extensive environmental cleanup of any municipality in Canadian history, a cleanup of 1000 radioactively contaminated buildings (including homes and schools) in Port Hope that is costing 2 and a half billion dollars. The “cleanup” has been going on for forty years and just got a 10-year extension in 2023. The result of the cleanup will be an enormous engineered earthen mound of about one million tonnes of radioactive waste material that will remain dangerous for many thousands of years. 

The gigantic “engineered mound” for Port Hope waste is situated in a marshy area just north of the town, on land that slopes down through the town to Lake Ontario. Incidentally, this small mountain of radioactive waste is not intended to be permanent but only good for the first 500 years, after which further decisions will have to be made. On the other hand the Chalk River mound (the so-called “Near Surface Disposal Facility”, which I call “the megadump”), although inspired by the Port Hope mound, is intended to be permanent. While the Port Hope mound is primarily built to hold highly dangerous naturally-occurring radioactive materials, associated with uranium ore processing, the Chalk River mound is designed to hold mainly human-made post-fission radioactive materials that were not found in nature before 1939. There are three court challenges to the CNSC 2022 approval of this “megadump” that are currently underway.

Atomic Reaction has been shown at the Uranium Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro, where it was given honourable mention, and more recently at the Durham Region International Film Festival in Ontario. On October 27 and 29 it was aired on the CBC Documentary TV Channel, where I saw it for the first time and was favourably impressed by how well the film-makers tell a complicated story in a clear and understandable way, with powerful visuals. The film will be available on GEM TV (streaming online) starting in January.
Look for it early in the New Year. It is well worth watching, once or even twice or more.

November 1, 2024 Posted by | Canada, media | Leave a comment

The Rise and Fall of NuScale: a nuclear cautionary tale

Kelly Campbell, October 29, 2024 ,
https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2024/10/29/the-rise-and-fall-of-nuscale-a-nuclear-cautionary-tale/

A decade ago, NuScale, the Oregon-based small modular nuclear company born at Oregon State University, was on a roll. Promising a new era of nuclear reactors that were cheaper, easier to build and safer, their Star Wars-inspired artist renditions of a yet to be built reactor gleamed like a magic bullet.

As of last year, NuScale was the furthest along of any reactor design in obtaining Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing and was planning to build the first small modular nuclear reactor in the United States. Its plan was to build it in Idaho to serve energy to a consortium of small public utility districts in Utah and elsewhere, known as UAMPS. 

This home-grown Oregon company was lauded in local and national media. According to project backers, a high-tech solution to climate change was on the horizon, and an Oregon company was leading the way. It seemed almost too good to be true. 

And it was. 

image

Turns out, NuScale was a house of cards. The UAMPS project’s price tag more than doubled and the timeline was pushed back repeatedly until it was seven years behind schedule. Finally, UAMPS saw the writing on the wall and wisely backed out in November, 2023.

After losing their customer, NuScale’s stock plunged, it laid off nearly a third of its workforce, and it was sued by its investors and investigated for investor fraud. Then its CEO sold off most of his stock shares. 

NuScale’s project is the latest in a long line of failed nuclear fantasies.

Why should you care? A different nuclear company, X-Energy, now in partnership with Amazon, wants to build and operate small modular nuclear reactors near the Columbia River, 250 miles upriver from Portland.

Bill Gates’s darling, the Natrium reactor in Wyoming is also plowing ahead. Both proposals are raking in the Inflation Reduction Act and other taxpayer funded subsidies. The danger: Money and time wasted on these false solutions to the climate crisis divert public resources from renewables, energy efficiency and other faster, more cost-efficient and safer ways to address the climate crisis. 

A recent study from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis concluded that small modular nuclear reactors are still too expensive, too slow to build and too risky to respond to the climate crisis.

While the nuclear industry tries to pass itself off as “clean,” it is an extremely dirty technology, beginning with uranium mining and milling which decimates Indigenous lands. Small modular nuclear reactors produce two to thirty times the radioactive waste of older nuclear designs, waste for which we have no safe, long-term disposal site. Any community that hosts a nuclear reactor will likely be saddled with its radioactive waste – forever. This harm falls disproportionately on Indigenous and low-income communities.

For those of us downriver, X-Energy’s plans to build at the Hanford Nuclear Site on the Columbia flies in the face of reason, as it would add more nuclear waste to the country’s largest nuclear cleanup site. 

In Oregon, we have a state moratorium on building nuclear reactors until there is a vote of the people and a national waste repository. Every few years, the nuclear industry attempts to overturn this law at the Oregon Legislature, but so far it has been unsuccessful. This August, Umatilla County Commissioners announced they’ll attempt another legislative effort to overturn the moratorium. Keeping this moratorium is wise, given the dangerous distraction posed by the false solution of small modular nuclear reactors. Let’s learn from the NuScale debacle and keep our focus on a just transition to a clean energy future–one in which nuclear power clearly has no place. 

October 31, 2024 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Ontario’s huge nuclear debt and other things Dutton doesn’t understand about cost of electricity

Unfortunately for us, Dutton and O’Brien are also in a hurry. They think they can deliver nuclear power plants far faster than what many experts believe is sensible and what many countries with far more nuclear experience than ourselves have been able to achieve. 

 Dutton and O’Brien also want to do this via a government-owned utility, instead of via a competitive market.

ReNewEconomy, Tristan Edis, Oct 30, 2024

All of this has left taxpayers with a massive budget and timeframe blow-out. This is what happens when we leave it to politicians in a hurry to hand pick power projects.

It seems our alternative Prime Minister Peter Dutton’s favourite topic is your electricity bill.  Given how much he talks about electricity prices, you’d think he might know a fair bit about what makes up your electricity bill, wouldn’t you?

According to Dutton and his Shadow Energy Minister Ted O’Brien, the problem is all about too much renewable energy in the mix. And their answer to the problem is nuclear power, as well as more gas.

According to Peter Dutton, “We can’t continue a situation that Labor has us on of a renewables only policy because, as we know, your power prices are just going to keep going up under this Prime Minister.”

Instead, according to Dutton, “we could be like Ontario, where they’ve got 60 or 70 per cent nuclear in the mix, and they’re paying about a quarter of the price for electricity that we are here in Australia.”

O’Brien, elaborated on this point by saying:

“We will have plenty of time in due course to talk about the costings [for their nuclear plan] once we release them here in the Australian context. But I point to Ontario in Canada, there you have up to 60 per cent of their energy mix in the grid, coming from zero emissions, nuclear energy. Their households pay around about 14 cents kilowatt hour. There are parts in Australia that will be paying up to 56 cents a kilowatt hour from July 1 this year.”

Once you actually delve into these numbers it becomes apparent that O’Brien and Dutton don’t seem know much about electricity costs and pricing.

But even worse, they don’t know how badly Ontario’s taxpayers and electricity consumers were burnt by their utility racking up huge debt building nuclear power plants equal to $70 billion in current day Australian dollars.

Do Dutton and O’Brien understand your electricity bill?

You can actually look up what Ontario households pay for electricity via the Ontario Energy Board’s bill calculator website.

This provides you with a break down on the charges a typical household faces depending on the utility you choose…………………………………………………

But notice there’s also other very significant items in this bill separate to the kilowatt-hour charge? There’s a “delivery” charge which is the cost of paying for the  distribution and transmission poles and wires. There’s also regulatory charges and also their sales tax is known as “HST” rather than GST for us.

So the Ontario 14 cents per kilowatt-hour charge that O’Brien and Dutton are referring to covers only the wholesale energy portion of their bill.

In Australia, we pay a majority of the costs of distribution and transmission in our cents per kilowatt-hour charge, in addition to wholesale energy costs, and then we get GST added on top. O’Brien and Dutton don’t seem to have appreciated this important aspect of electricity pricing in this country, which is different to Ontario.

But it actually gets worse.

I went digging on the official government energy retailer comparison sites- www.energymadeeasy.gov.au and www.energycompare.vic.gov.au and I initially couldn’t find a single Australian retailer selling electricity at 56 cents per kilowatt-hour. 

This was based on looking at offers based on a single rate tariff. Then I had a brainwave and looked at time-of-use rates. In Queensland and Victoria I still couldn’t find anyone wanting to charge me 56 cents for the peak period. 

But eventually I succeeded. Right at the bottom of the EnergyMadeEasy list of retailer offers – which were ordered from best to worst – sat EnergyAustralia as the worst offer, charging 57 cents for the peak period in South Australia (although with a compensating high solar feed-in tariff of 8.5 cents)…………………………………

To help out O’Brien and Dutton, I’ve prepared the table below which provides a proper apples versus apples comparison (as opposed to apples vs peak rate bananas) –[on original ]

…………………………………………….. Ontario’s nuclear debt debacle

Yet this comparison between Ontario and Australia misses a far more important part of the story that O’Brien and Dutton seem to be blissfully ignorant of. 

That is the history of the Ontario’s state owned utility – Ontario Hydro – and the unsustainable level of debt that it racked up over the 1980’s and 1990’s as a result of an ambitious nuclear plant construction program that went wrong. 

While this cost is no longer apparent in current electricity prices, Ontario businesses and households were stuck with paying back CAD$38.1 billion in debt (over $70 billion in Australian current day dollars) for more than 35 years after their public utility committed its last nuclear reactor to construction in 1981. 

So what went wrong?

In anticipation of large growth in electricity demand, over the 1970’s and 1980’s Ontario Hydro committed to construction 12 nuclear reactors with 9,000 MW of generating capacity. To fund the projects the public utility accessed commercial debt markets anticipating that it could comfortably repay this debt from the increased electricity demand it forecast. However, several things went wrong.

 The nuclear power stations took far longer to build and were around twice as expensive to build than had been planned

– Interest rates on debt rose to very high levels by historical standards over the 1980’s in order to contain the high levels of inflation that unfolded over the 1970’s and early 1980’s. With the nuclear power stations taking longer than expected to build, interest was accumulating on this debt with far less output from the plants to offset it.

– Lastly, Ontario Hydro’s estimate of large growth in electricity demand didn’t eventuate. A 1977 forecast projected a system peak of 57,000 MW by 1997. Actual peak demand in 1997 was 22,000 MW. This meant that the very large cost and associated debt of the large nuclear expansion had to be recovered from a much smaller volume of electricity sales than it had anticipated, making it much harder to pay off the debt without substantial increases in electricity prices.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… “On April 1, 1999, the Ministry of Finance determined that Ontario Hydro’s total debt and other liabilities stood at $38.1 billion, which greatly exceeded the estimated $17.2-billion market value of the assets being transferred to the new entities. The resulting shortfall of $20.9 billion was determined to be “stranded debt,” representing the total debt and other liabilities of Ontario Hydro that could not be serviced in a competitive environment.”

So the CAD$38.1 billion in debt was transferred out of the electricity companies and into a special purpose government entity called the Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation (OEFC). This debt management corporation was given the following revenues to service the debt:

– Both residential and business consumers were required to pay a special “Debt Retirement Charge”. This charge was introduced in 2002 and lasted until 2016 for residential consumers and 2018 for business customers.

– The Ontario government would forgo any corporate income and other taxes owed by the offshoot electricity companies from Ontario Hydro so they could be diverted to the OEFC to pay down debt.

– If the cumulative profits of two of the new state power companies exceeded the $520m annual interest cost on their debts, then this would go towards paying stranded debt rather than dividends to the Ontario government.

None of this is apparent on current bills, but the burden of repaying the nuclear debt left the Ontario government and its taxpayers far poorer than Dutton and O’Brien seem to appreciate.

More things O’Brien doesn’t want to understand about Ontario’s nuclear power program

Dutton and O’Brien like to claim that nuclear power plants last a very long time and so therefore the large upfront cost of these plants isn’t something we should be too worried about………………………..

It’s not as simple as this. Nuclear power plants involve a range of components which are exposed to severe heat and mechanical stress. These all need to be replaced well before you get to 60 years, and such refurbishment comes at a cost.

Ontario’s experience is that refurbishment comes at a very significant cost. Less than 25 years after the Darlington Nuclear Power Plant construction was completed, it needed to commence refurbishment. The total cost? $12.8 billion in Canadian dollars or $14 billion Australian dollars. 

This is partly why, even though the original nuclear construction cost debt had been largely paid down and nuclear operating costs are lower than coal or gas plant, Ontario still pays more for its electricity than we do.

This is because the current owner of the nuclear power plants – Ontario Power Generation – operates under regulated return model where the regulator grants them the right to recover these refurbishment costs from electricity consumers.

Are O’Brien and Dutton about to commit to another Snowy 2.0 budget blow-out, but on steroids?

………………………………The problem here is that when you don’t know very much and you’re spending other people’s money, ego can easily cloud your judgement.  Don’t get me wrong, ego will often cloud business leaders’ judgement too. But their ability to spend money to feed their ego can only so far before either competitors or shareholders intervene.

Ontario taxpayers on the other hand realised far too late that their public utility, in cahoots with their politicians, were pursuing a nuclear vanity project built upon a poor understanding of the future, and without any competitor to discipline their ego. 

Australian taxpayers have seen a similar mistake unfold with the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro plant whose cost now stands at five times greater than the original expectation, and double what was meant to be a fixed price construction contract.

Snowy 2.0 is a parable of what goes wrong when:

– Politicians rush things leading to inadequate planning and preparation;

– Politicians fail to objectively and thoroughly evaluate alternatives; and

– Politicians fail to employ open and competitive markets to deliver end consumer outcomes.

All of this has left taxpayers with a massive budget and timeframe blow-out. This is what happens when we leave it to politicians in a hurry to hand pick power projects.

Unfortunately for us, Dutton and O’Brien are also in a hurry. They think they can deliver nuclear power plants far faster than what many experts believe is sensible and what many countries with far more nuclear experience than ourselves have been able to achieve. Dutton and O’Brien also want to do this via a government-owned utility, instead of via a competitive market.

While the budget blowout of Snowy 2.0 is bad enough, it pales into comparison with the kind of cost blow-outs that can unfold with nuclear power projects. As an example, the budget for completion of UK’s Hinkley Point C nuclear project now stands at $89.7 billion which is three times higher than what was originally budgeted.

We’ve all seen this movie before, including in Ontario, and it doesn’t end well……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://reneweconomy.com.au/ontarios-huge-nuclear-debt-and-other-things-dutton-doesnt-understand-about-cost-of-electricity/

October 31, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, business and costs, Canada | 2 Comments

South Bruce Deep Geological Repositary (DGR) opposition promises to keep fighting

Scott Dunn, Oct 29, 2024  Owen Sounds Sun Times

A group opposed to burying high-level nuclear waste in South Bruce says it will keep fighting because having just 78 more votes in favour than against the project in Monday’s referendum isn’t a “compelling” demonstration of community support. 

Bill Noll, the co-chair of Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste, said in an interview that that’s part of what will be argued at regulatory hearings if Nuclear Waste Management Organization selects South Bruce as its preferred site. 

Council for Ignace Township in Northern Ontario, the other site remaining in the running, has already voted in favour of being a willing host, after residents voted in favour of the proposal. First Nations in both locations must still decide if they’re in favour too. 

“People are still concerned, a large group of people in South Bruce who are saying no to this project,” said Noll, a retired electrical engineer who lived in South Bruce for 15 years before moving to near Ottawa to be near family.  

There were 51.2 per cent, or 1,604 voters saying yes, and 48.8 per cent, or 1,526, who voted no, according to unofficial results posted by the municipality Monday night. Eight electors declined their ballot. 

The vote result “doesn’t really give the council a mandate to say we won this,” Noll said. 

But council is expected to ratify the result which Mayor Mark Goetz said is binding on council, even as he acknowledged it was a close vote, at a special council meeting Nov. 12.  ………………………….

Now it will be up to Saugeen Ojibway Nation to decide if it would be a willing host, he said. 

…………………………………………Both Ignace and South Bruce have signed agreements with NWMO that would see them receive millions of dollars over the lifespan of the project — $418 million over 138 years in South Bruce and $170 million over 80 years in Ignace.   

………………………………………………………..Noll credited Protect Our Waterways for obtaining a referendum vote by insisting on a study of the community’s willingness because otherwise, it was going to be done by council vote.  

“NWMO said in their early stages that the community needed to have two things: one, they needed to demonstrate a compelling willingness and the other thing was they needed to be informed,” Noll said. 

“Well, I don’t think either of those conditions have been met at this stage. So that will be our agenda when we get into the regulatory process.”  https://www.owensoundsuntimes.com/news/local-news/south-bruce-dgr-opposition-promises-to-keep-fighting

October 31, 2024 Posted by | Canada, opposition to nuclear | Leave a comment

South Bruce voters narrowly approve being host to nuclear waste

Scott Dunn Oct 29, 2024 , Horeline Beacon

Teeswater is near one of the two proposed sites for an underground storage facility for the country’s highly radioactive nuclear fuel.

By a thin majority, the answer in South Bruce was yes. Bruce declaring South Bruce to be a willing host for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s proposed Deep Geological Repository (DGR)? resulted in 51.2 per cent, or 1,604, of voters saying yes, and 48.8 per cent, or 1,526, saying no, according to unofficial results posted by the municipality Monday night. Eight electors declined their ballot.

Voter turnout was 3,138 of 4,525 electors, or 69.3 per cent. Since turnout was above 50 per cent, the results are binding on municipal council…………………

Teeswater’s residents were divided by the prospect of burying spent nuclear fuel in a deep, underground vault, people said in interviews outside the community’s post office earlier Monday.

 Nuclear Waste Management Organization has secured  land for a possible DGR site northwest of Teeswater, part of South Bruce. If the area is selected, the NWMO would build and manage the bunker to be some 650 metres underground.

 But first NWMO needed to confirm if the community was a willing host. A referendum was chosen as the way to do that, and voting is to end at 8 p.m. today. It would take 50 per cent plus one of eligible voters to signal willingness, as long as at least 50 per cent of South Bruce voters cast ballots. Otherwise the decision was council’s to make.

……………………………….. there’s the risk of a leak, and the implicit requirement to trust officials who say the job can be done safely. Still others said they think government has already decided it will build the nuclear storage facility in South Bruce……………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.shorelinebeacon.com/news/local-news/update-south-bruce-voters-narrowly-approve-being-host-to-nuclear-waste

October 31, 2024 Posted by | Canada, politics, wastes | Leave a comment

South Bruce Municipality narrowly votes to host underground nuclear waste disposal site

Matthew McClearn, October 28, 2024, Globe and Mail,

Residents in Ontario’s Municipality of South Bruce narrowly voted in favor of hosting a nuclear waste disposal site in a referendum completed on Monday.

Unofficial results published Monday evening by Simply Voting, an online voting platform, reported that of the 3,130 votes case, 51.2% voted in favor, while 48.8% were opposed.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), a non-profit organization representing major nuclear power generation utilities, has been hunting since 2010 for a site to store spent fuel from nuclear power reactors. Known as a deep geological repository, or DGR, the facility would be built more than half a kilometer underground, at an estimated cost of $26 billion.

South Bruce, located more than 120 kilometres north of London and home to about 6,200 residents, is a rural, largely agricultural area of less than 500 square kilometers. It includes a few small communities including Mildmay, Formosa, Culross and Teeswater. The NWMO has secured more than 1,500 acres of land north of Teeswater for the project.

From the outset, the NWMO said it would build the facility only “in an area with informed and willing hosts,” which meant one municipality and one Indigenous group. South Bruce is one of two finalists to host the DGR, down from an original list of 22 communities that expressed interest. The NWMO said it will announce its final selection by Dec. 31st.

Under a hosting agreement the municipality signed earlier this year, South Bruce stands to receive $418-million over nearly a century and a half if selected. The municipality agreed not to do anything to oppose or halt the project, and at the NWMO’s request will communicate its support. The NWMO can modify the project in several respects, including changing the sorts of waste it will store there. The facility would be constructed between 2036 and 2042, ns would then receive, process and store nuclear waste for another half-century.

South Bruce’s byelection, which began last week, asked residents to vote by phone or Internet on whether they were in favor of hosting the DGR. Simply Voting reported turnout of 69.3%, substantially above the 50% minimum required to make the outcome binding under Ontario’s Municipal Elections Act.

The other community in the running is Ignace, Ont., a town of 1,200 more than 200 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay. Its council voted to accept the DGR in July, and would receive $170-million under its own hosting agreement. (The move was supported by 77% of registered voters who participated in a non-binding online poll.) That location, known as the Revell site, is about 40 km west of the town.

The NWMO also seeks approval from two Indigenous communities: The Saugeen Ojibway Nation for the South Bruce site, and the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation for the Revell site. Neither First Nation has yet signaled consent, but the NWMO spokesperson Craig MacBride said the organization is “in active discussions” with both.

“The NWMO still anticipates selecting a site by the end of this year,” he wrote in an e-mailed response to questions.

As of June 2023, Canada had accumulated 3.3 million spent fuel bundles, each the size of a fire log. They’re currently stored at nuclear power plants in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick, and roughly 90,000 new ones are added each year. Upon removal from a reactor, they’re highly radioactive and must be stored in pools of water for about a decade; afterward, they’re moved to storage containers made from reinforced concrete and lined with half-inch steel plate.

The South Bruce referendum follows a campaign that lasted a dozen years and produced rifts within the community.

Protect Our Waterways, a local group opposed to the DGR from the outset, had demanded a referendum. Some DGR supporters opposed putting the matter to a public vote, preferring to leave the decision to elected officials. Municipal officials pointed to the area’s declining economy and population, and emphasized the benefits brought by the NWMO’s spending. Supporters and opponents often accused each other of producing misinformation………………………………………………………….. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-south-bruce-municipality-narrowly-votes-to-host-underground-nuclear/#:~:text=Its%20council%20voted%20to%20accept,km%20west%20of%20the%20town.

October 30, 2024 Posted by | Canada, politics | Leave a comment

Biden to Bibi: ‘OK to continue Gaza genocide till after election’

Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coaliton, Glen Ellyn IL, 27 Oct 24

On October 14, President Biden sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu giving Israel 30 days to allow more aid of food, water and medicine into Gaza’s 139 square miles being utterly destroyed by Israel for the past year. It’s noteworthy that the 30 day time limit ends 9 days after the US election. Biden’s letter is brilliant politics and grotesque governance. Biden, who has been funding, supporting and enabling the yearlong genocide in Gaza, desperately needs to appear peace loving ahead of the election. He knows a majority of his Democratic voters are horrified by his genocide enabling. They want him to end the so far 50,000 tons of weapons he’s already given Israel to demolish Gaza.

The letter, designed to promote his concern for the devastation he’s enabled, will do nothing to end the genocide in Gaza. Netanyahu has ignored every one of Biden’s pleas for supplying life sustaining aid there. The letter doesn’t even state Biden will cut off aid to Israel. It merely implies that if US demands aren’t met, the US might consider enforcing foreign assistance laws. Those laws forbid the US from sending weapons to any nation committing wholesale destruction of civilian populations. But not one word about actually cutting off those weapons destroying Gaza.   

Every day dozens, hundreds, even a thousand or more Palestinians die in Gaza, obliterated by Biden’s 2,000 lb. bombs, or killed more slowly from disease or starvation. Biden does not care. His toothless letter begging for more aid to the 2,300,000 Palestinians will do nothing to alleviate their suffering. But it may mollify his antiwar critics enough to help achieve Democratic victory Election Day.

Win or lose November 5, Biden is unlikely to do anything substantive to end the genocidal ethnic cleansing of Gaza. It goes against everything he’s believed in and supported about Israeli colonial domination of Palestine for his entire 52 year governmental career. But it will ensure he descends into historical infamy for enabling the worst genocide of the 21st century. 

October 29, 2024 Posted by | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

‘You couldn’t make this up’: Expert pans Ontario nuclear option

SMH, By Bianca Hall and Nick O’Malley, October 28, 2024

Ontario subsidises its citizens’ electricity power bills by $7.3 billion a year from general revenue, an international energy expert has said, contradicting the Coalition’s claim that nuclear reactors would drive power prices down in Australia.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has repeatedly cited the Canadian province as a model for cheaper power prices from nuclear.

“In Ontario, that family is paying half of what the family is paying here in Perth for their electricity because of nuclear power,” Dutton said in March. “Why wouldn’t we consider it as a country?”

In July, Dutton said Canadian consumers paid about one-quarter of Australian prices for electricity.

Professor Mark Winfield, an academic from York University in Canada who specialises in energy and environment, on Monday said the reaction among people in Ontario to the comparison had ranged from disbelief to “you couldn’t make this up”.

Ontario embarked on a massive building spree between the 1960s and the 1990s, Winfield told a briefing hosted by the Climate Council and the Smart Energy Council.

In the process, he said, the provincial-owned utility building the generators “effectively bankrupted itself”. About $21 billion in debt had to be stranded to render the successor organisation Ontario Power Generation economically viable.

In 2015, the Canadian government approved a plan to refurbish 10 ageing reactors, but Winfield said the refurbishment program had also been beset by cost blowouts.

“The last one, [in] Darlington, east of Toronto, was supposed to cost $C4 billion and ended up costing $C14 [billion],” Winfield said.

“And that was fairly typical of what we saw, of a cost overrun in the range of about 2.5 times over estimate.”

In Melbourne, Dutton said while he respected new Queensland Premier David Crisafulli’s opposition to nuclear, he would work with “sensible” premiers in Queensland, South Australia and NSW on his plan, if he was elected………………………………………………..

Winfield said household bills were kept artificially low under the Ontario model, despite the high cost of refurbishing ageing nuclear facilities.

“There’s a legacy of that still in the system that we are effectively subsidising electricity bills to the tune of about $C7.3 billion a year out of general revenues. That constitutes most of the provincial deficit; that’s money that otherwise could be going on schools and hospitals.”

Dutton’s comments came as a parliamentary inquiry into the suitability of nuclear power for Australia continued in Canberra. Experts provided evidence on how long it would take to build a nuclear fleet, and the potential cost and impact on energy prices compared with the government’s plan to replace the ageing coal fleet with a system of renewables backed by storage and gas peakers.

……………………………………………………….. In its annual GenCost, CSIRO estimated earlier this year that a single large-scale nuclear reactor in Australia would cost $16 billion and take nearly two decades to build, too late for it to help meet Australia’s international climate change commitments, which requires it to cut emissions 43 per cent by 2030. It found renewables to be the cheapest option for Australia.

Dutton has so far refused to be drawn on the costs of his nuclear policy. Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said the Coalition would release costings before the next federal election, which must be held by May.

O’Brien told this masthead “expert after expert” had provided evidence that nuclear energy placed downward pressure on power prices around the world. ……………. https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/you-couldn-t-make-this-up-expert-pans-ontario-nuclear-option-20241028-p5klx1.html

October 29, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, Canada, spinbuster | Leave a comment

US nuclear regulator kicks off review on Three Mile Island restart

By Laila Kearney, October 26, 2024

  • Summary
  • Companies
  • NRC holds first public meeting on Three Mile Island restart
  • Constellation wants to restore Unit 1’s operating license
  • NRC requests more emergency, environmental restart plan details
  • Watchdog group questions plans, including simulator

NEW YORK, Oct 25 (Reuters) – U.S. nuclear regulators kicked off a long-winding process to consider Constellation Energy’s (CEG.O), opens new tab unprecedented plans to restart its retired Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in an initial public meeting held on Friday.

Constellation, which announced last month that it had signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft that would enable reopening the Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island, made its case before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restore its operating license for the plant.

The company also sought to extend the life of the plant and change its name to the Crane Clean Energy Center.

Three Mile Island, which is located in Pennsylvania on an island in the Susquehanna River, is widely known for the 1979 partial meltdown of its Unit 2 reactor. That unit has been permanently shut and is being decommissioned.

Members of the NRC requested details about the emergency evacuation plans for the restarted plant and information about the commercial deal with Microsoft, while imploring Constellation to quickly work on permitting related to its water use for the plant.

The NRC also raised questions about how the restart of Unit 1 would intersect with the decommissioning of Unit 2, which began last year, nearly 45 years after the partial meltdown.

Utah-based nuclear services company EnergySolutions owns Unit 2 and related infrastructure, while Constellation owns Unit 1 and the site’s land.

Unit 1 shut down due to economic reasons in 2019, some 15 years before the operating license was set to expire. At the time, Constellation said it did not anticipate a restart.

Constellation now expects to restart the 835-megawatt Unit 1 in 2028, delivering power to the grid to offset electricity use by Microsoft’s data center in the region.

A recent jump in U.S. electricity demand, driven in part by Big Tech’s energy-intensive AI data center expansion has led to a revival of the country’s struggling nuclear industry.

No retired reactor has been restarted before. The Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, owned by Holtec, is also in the process of being resurrected.

…………………..The physical work to restore Three Mile Island, which is expected to start in the first quarter of 2025, cost at least $1.6 billion, and could require thousands of workers, still needs licensing modifications and permitting.

Local activists have also vowed to fight the project over safety and environmental concerns, including the storage of nuclear waste on the site.

Scott Portzline, who is with nuclear watchdog group Three Mile Island Alert in Harrisburg, questioned the site’s backup power and criticized the proposed nuclear control room simulator used for training.

“I have a constitutional right to know how my nuclear plants are operating and the utility ought to be able to answer that,” Portzline said during the meeting……….

Under the National Environmental Policy Act, the NRC will be required to complete an environmental assessment within the final year of any restart. The plant will require other environmental permits, including ones for air emissions and water pollutants. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-nuclear-regulator-hears-three-mile-island-power-plant-restart-plan-2024-10-25/

October 28, 2024 Posted by | safety, USA | Leave a comment

Letter laments the unscientific assurances of safety by spokesmen from the nuclear industry.

Dr. Paul Moroz, 25 Oct 24

I am writing about the Deep Geological Registry (DGR) proposed for Teeswater by the NWMO as a way of managing all of Canada’s high-energy nuclear waste. I can no longer remain silent as I have witnessed the reckless way that the NWMO has misinformed the public and municipal leaders on the real potential risks of DGR technology.

I am a Professor of Medicine having taught in Canadian and US medical schools for more than three decades. I have served as an independent reviewer for many, many research proposals for new medications, new surgical procedures, new technologies with the obvious focus being on the evidence-based demonstration of human safety for the proposed intervention.

Having observed for the last two years the public disclosures by the NWMO, I am appalled at their claims of DGR technology as a “settled science” and “best practice” for the management of high-level nuclear waste near human settlements and water-sources. There are currently no functioning DGRs anywhere in the world. One currently being built in Finland is years away from starting up. Also, three test-DGRs done in the last two decades (one in the US and two in Germany) all reportedly leaked or had major problems. The NWMO are simply in no position to call this a “settled science” or “best practice”.

The NWMO may think it is a “settled science” from a geological point of view, but they cannot claim this from a medical or population health perspective at this time. No one can. Yet, NWMO nuclear engineers and physicists claim it is safe for humans; but, where are NWMO’s doctors, professors, population health experts and epidemiologists? They do not have any, as far as I can see.

I contacted Health Canada to ask about DGR safety and they told me they have left this all to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), an offshoot of the nuclear industry. I cannot trust this relationship as a truly independent assessment of something so crucial as the possibility of thousands of years of leaking radiation into our environment. This is just so wrong.

No Canadian or US medical school or medical regulatory board would accept this kind of non-evidence-based, non-independent claim of safety of an unproven technology, I believe. If a surgeon tried to perform a never-done-before surgical procedure without first extensive study, testing and reliable confirmation of testing over time, that surgeon would very quickly lose [his or her] medical license. 

Yet, it seems OK for the NWMO to so openly mislead the public and council members with claims of safety when they simply do not know how safe a DGR really is. No one does, since there are no working DGRs anywhere in the World. “Taking a chance” with a million years of decaying high-level nuclear waste in populated farmland and watershed is simply just unacceptable if it can first be tested remotely.


Canada’s first DGR should be done in an area far away from populated farmland and waterways and certainly away from the Great Lakes, the source of water for 40 million people in both Canada and the US. Such a DGR could then be tested for a reasonable period of time before it can be labeled “safe”. I would suggest testing a DGR for at least 100 years. Yes, 100 years is not unreasonable given that DGR radioactivity will be active for an estimated one million years. Only then might we call a DGR “reasonably safe” to nearby humans.

I went to NWMO sponsored DGR public meetings twice, once in Teeswater in 2023 and once in Mildmay in 2024. Opposition voices were not allowed a platform – so much for an open public meeting. No open microphone for questions were allowed and written submitted questions were hand-picked. I submitted questions that were not read out or answered.

On Oct 5, 2024 Protect Our Waterways featured presentations in Teeswater by physicians, nuclear physicists, scientist/broadcaster David Suzuki and a legal scholar, all of whom were never invited to speak at NWMO public meetings. Open minded people should be asking themselves why? All these speakers were against the unproven DGR claims made by NWMO.

I am not anti-nuclear, and I am not even anti DGR technology. But the fashion in which this has been presented by the NWMO is irresponsible and misleading, I believe. No one should accept placing never-before tested DGR technology into populated farmland and cattle country near the Great Lakes, the biggest collection of fresh water in the world. The risks over the course of thousands of years of possible radiation leakage, even a small one, is simply too much for a never tested technology.

Dr. Paul Moroz, MD, MSc, FRCSC, FAAOS,

Southampton, Ontario

Prof of Surgery (part-time), McMaster University,

Faculty of Health Sciences.

Former Prof of Surgery,

University of Hawaii,

John A. Burns School of Medicine.

October 27, 2024 Posted by | Canada, safety | Leave a comment

Wildlife Refuge’s Toxic Past Still A Colorado Concern

A national wildlife refuge that was contaminated by plutonium from the 1950s through the early 1990s is still a health concern for nearby Colorado communities.

Gary Stoller, Forbes, Oct 25, 2024

For many decades, Rocky Flats has been a controversial contaminated site south of Boulder, Colorado, about 20 miles north of Denver. The controversy continues, as nearby communities refuse to further develop the 6,200-acre site that’s now a wildlife refuge with trails for walkers and cyclists.

Rocky Flats, which housed facilities to produce nuclear weapons components from 1952 through the early 1990s, was contaminated by plutonium and other nuclear materials. Cleanup ended in 2006, and, a year later, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated the site as the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Federal government officials say the area used for the refuge is safe for human visitors, but neighboring cities Westminster and Broomfield and the town of Superior apparently remain unconvinced.

For many decades, Rocky Flats has been a controversial contaminated site south of Boulder, Colorado, about 20 miles north of Denver. The controversy continues, as nearby communities refuse to further develop the 6,200-acre site that’s now a wildlife refuge with trails for walkers and cyclists.

Rocky Flats, which housed facilities to produce nuclear weapons components from 1952 through the early 1990s, was contaminated by plutonium and other nuclear materials. Cleanup ended in 2006, and, a year later, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated the site as the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Federal government officials say the area used for the refuge is safe for human visitors, but neighboring cities Westminster and Broomfield and the town of Superior apparently remain unconvinced.

Last month, Westminster withdrew from an intergovernmental agreement to fund the building of a tunnel and a bridge into the refuge. Such construction would improve access to the refuge — home to more than 200 wildlife species— for hikers, walkers, cyclists and outdoor enthusiasts. Broomfield and Superior had previously withdrawn their support.

The refuge is part of the Rocky Mountain Greenway, a 25-mile trail that reaches from Commerce City, a Denver suburb, into Boulder and Jefferson counties. The trail links Rocky Flats with the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, land outside of downtown Denver that also was cleaned up after contamination from the manufacture of chemical warfare agents, including mustard gas, for World War II.

In a 2006 report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said $10 billion had been spent since 1995 to clean up Rocky Flats. The amount of cleanup waste that had to be removed “was equivalent to a 65-story building the length and width of a football field,” the GAO said…………….

The majority of Westminster city councilors said last month they feared foot traffic could stir up plutonium, according to a story published by Colorado Community Media, which has publications in eight Colorado counties. Critics said measurable radioactive materials remain in and around the Rocky Flats site and will remain for thousands of years, the media group reported.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/garystoller/2024/10/25/wildlife-refuges-toxic-past-still-a-colorado-concern/

October 26, 2024 Posted by | environment, USA | Leave a comment

Has Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization earned the public’s trust?

by Gordon Edwards, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, October 24 2024.

http://www.ccnr.org/NWMO_and_Public_Trust_2024.pdf

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) represents Canada’s nuclear waste producers. For 14 years, NWMO has been searching for a “willing host community” to accept all of Canada’s high-level radioactive waste (used nuclear fuel) for burial in a Deep Geological Repository (DGR). In 2010, NWMO promised “the industry’s plan will only proceed in an area with informed and willing hosts.”

The residents of South Bruce are now voting on whether or not to lock themselves into the NWMO plan. I am deeply disappointed to find that, for more than a dozen years, NWMO has been consistently misleading these residents about the true nature of the hazards from used nuclear fuel. In fact, NWMO has systematically withheld the most relevant scientific information from candidate host communities.

Each candidate community has a Community Liaison Committee (CLC) that meets with NWMO 10 times a year under a program called “Learn More”. Despite more than a hundred meetings over a dozen years, NWMO has never called attention to the dozens of varieties of human-made radioactive materials – the very thing that makes used fuel so dangerous. These toxic materials include radioactive varieties of commonly occurring non-radioactive elements like iodine, cesium , and strontium.

All reactor-created radioactive waste materials are known carcinogens. Most of them are not found in nature. They are particularly dangerous when ingested, inhaled or otherwise absorbed into the body. To get into the environment, they must leak out of the used fuel – something that happens regularly in reactor cooling systems, including the used fuel storage pools.

Does NWMO think that Canadians are not entitled to know about these  materials and their dangers to humans and the environment?

When I spoke to the South Bruce Community Liaison Committee (CLC) in 2020, one man who had already served for seven years on the CLC for South Bruce was caught completely off-guard when I spoke about these things.

He said, “You mentioned about radioactive materials. I guess that’s the first I’ve heard of them. There are names I have not heard of before – strontium [radioactive strontium], iodine [radioactive iodine]. That’s the first I’ve heard of it. How are they created, or generated? How do they come about?”

from a South Bruce CLC member, November 4 2020

I was stunned. This man had met with NWMO at least 60 or 70 times to “Learn More”, yet he knew nothing about the nature of these radioactive waste materials that will almost certainly be released into the local environment when six million individual fuel bundles are repackaged for burial.  Even tiny cracks or pinholes in the metallic fuel cladding will allow radioactive iodine and cesium to be released in the form of a gaseous vapour that is difficult to contain completely. These gases turn back into a solid on contact with any cool surface.

In particular, radioactive iodine contaminates cattle feed such as hay or alfalfa, and then re-concentrates in the cow’s milk. When children drink that milk, the radioactive iodine concentrates even further in the thyroid gland. The iodine in the thyroid is typically 10,000 times more concentrated than the iodine released in the air. In Belarus, 5000 children had to have their thyroid glands surgically removed as a result of radioactive iodine from the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Do the dairy farmers in the South Bruce area not deserve to be informed of such facts?

Radioactive cesium released from Chernobyl contaminated sheep meat in Northern England and Wales for twenty years after the accident. Even today, when hunters kill a wild boar in Germany or Eastern Europe, the meat is unfit for human consumption due to radioactive cesium contamination from Chernobyl. Radioactive cesium concentrates in the soft tissues, hence the meat of farm animals. On the other hand, radioactive strontium goes to the bones, where it can cause bone cancer and/or leukemia.

NWMO has insisted that the used fuel is completely solid, implying that there can be no leakage. On the NWMO web site we are told that, in order to prevent leakage, “the first barrier in the multiple-barrier system is the fuel pellet … a ceramic material, which is baked in a furnace to produce a hard, high-density pellet.”

But NWMO does not reveal that used fuel pellets are always badly cracked and fractured. About 2 percent of the radioactive iodine and cesium vapours have already escaped from the used pellet and are available for immediate release as soon as there is the slightest penetration of the cladding. 

Iodine-129 has a half-life of 16 million years, so when it is released into the environment it is there to stay.  Cesium-135 has a half-life of 3.5 million years, so it too will be a permanent threat. Cesium-137 has a half-life of only 30 years, so half of it is already gone by the time the used fuel arrives at its final destination, but the amount released into the local environment will stick around for several centuries. 

As a science educator, I find NWMO’s failure to highlight these facts unforgivable. They are asking the public to trust them for countless generations to come. I do not believe they have earned that trust.

P.S. Here is a video of my presentation to the residents of Teeswater and South Bruce on October 5, 2024. Other speakers included David Suzuki, Brennain Lloyd of Northwatch, Dale Dewar of IPPNW-Canada, and Theresa McClenaghan of the Canadian Environmental Law Association.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM1kfDsS9Uc  -a video of the entire event:

October 26, 2024 Posted by | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment

Mission Innovation should not send tax-payer money to Bill Gates’ nuclear dream

We cannot trust billionaire philanthropists to lead the way on climate action, Online Opinion, By Noel Wauchope , 16 December 2015  “…….At the opening of the Paris Climate Summit (COP21), with the blessing of the White House, Bill Gates announced the Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEA), with an ambitious goal to deal with climate change. 24 billionaire philanthropists have joined in the BEA. They include Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos.

Simultaneously 19 governments, including the United States, China and India, announce “Mission Innovation”, a project that will involve tax-payer money to explore and invent new ways to develop low carbon energy.

Not surprisingly, the two organisations will work in tandem. The billionaire philanthropists plan a public-private partnership between governments, research institutions, and investors that will focus on new energy methods especially for developing countries……

For a start, this twin project is directed at researching new forms of low carbon energy. A lot of money therefore is to go into trying out new plans, that exist at best, only in blueprint form. Yet already there are in operation large scale and small scale renewable energy projects that could be deployed. In particular, small scale solar energy is very well suited to being deployed in rural India, Africa, and other developing nations, as well as in Australia and other developed nations. It is happening now. Projects such as Barefoot Power have operated for years now, bringing affordable solar power to millions of rural poor in Africa, Asia Pacific, India and the Americas.

The energy need now for poor countries is deployment of existing technologies, not years of research and testing of so far non-existent ones………

  • The one and only University that has joined BEA is the University of California, which runs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, well known for its nuclear research.
  • Bill Gates is co-founder and current Chairman of the innovative nuclear energy company TerraPower Gates has a long term history of enthusiasm for small nuclear power reactors. Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, USA’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission has tightened the rules for new reactors. Fortunately for Mr Gates, China is less fussy about this, so Gates has been able to do a deal with the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). TerraPower and CNNC will build the first small 600 MW unit in China, and later deploy these nuclear reactors globally.

Gates and Branson

I don’t doubt that Bill Gates is sincere in his goal of reducing greenhouse gases. It’s just that I have reservations about Small Nuclear Reactors having any impact on global warming.

If Small Nuclear Reactors did in fact reduce greenhouse gases, the world would need thousands of them to be up and running quickly, but they’re still at the planning stage. They’re supposed to be much safer than conventional nuclear reactors, but still produce radioactive wastes, and are targets for terrorism. Each and every one of them would need 24 hour guarding. It gets expensive………

The term selected “Breakthrough Energy Initiative” gives the game away. For many years now, America’s Breakthrough Institute has lobbied and publicised “new nuclear” as the solution for climate change. The Breakthrough Institute has many well-meaning and enthusiastic environmentalists as members. Its philosophy, expressed in “The Ecomodernist Manifesto” is full of beautiful motherhood statements about climate and environment, and only a few paragraphs about new nuclear technology.

This Manifesto, by the way, appears as a Submission to the South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission.

The effect of the Breakthrough Institute, over the years, has been to slow down action on reducing the use of fossil fuels. It has also aimed to discredit renewable energy……..http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17899

October 25, 2024 Posted by | technology, USA | Leave a comment

The New Nuclear Push: New Package, Same Lies

Karl Grossman,  https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/10/23/the-new-nuclear-push-new-package-same-lies/

Nuclear power zealots are engaged in their biggest push in years in the United States and internationally. Headlines of recent pieces online about nuclear power include: “Japan’s top business lobby proposes maximum use of nuclear energy.” And, U.S. “looks to resurrect more nuclear power.” And, “European nations back nuclear power ahead of major climate summit.” And, “The super-rich are looking at nuclear power for emission-free yacht voyages.” And, “France plans to turn nuclear waste into forks, doorknobs and saucepans.”

Central to the drive: they’re trying to latch on to climate change as a new reason for nuclear power with the claim that it is “carbon-free” or “emissions-free.”

This is untrue especially when the “nuclear fuel chain” is taken into account.

“The dirty secret is that nuclear power makes a substantial contribution to global warming. Nuclear power is actually a chain of highly energy-intense industrial processes,” Michel Lee, an attorney and chair of the Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy, has said. “These include uranium mining, conversion, enrichment and fabrication of nuclear fuel; construction and deconstruction of the massive nuclear facility structures; and the disposition of high-level nuclear waste.”

In a two-page fact sheet that is online titled “How Nuclear Power Worsens Climate Change,” the Sierra Club Nuclear Free Campaign says: “Nuclear power has a big carbon footprint. At the front end of nuclear power, carbon energy is used for uranium mining, milling, processing, conversion, and enrichment, as well as for formation of [fuel] rods and construction of nuclear…power plants….All along the nuclear fuel chain, radioactive contamination of air, land and water occurs. Uranium mine and mill cleanup demands large amounts of fossil fuel. Each year 2,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste and twelve million cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste are generated in the U.S. alone. None of this will magically disappear. Vast amounts of energy will be needed to isolate these dangerous wastes for generations to come.”

The main release of carbon occurs during this nuclear fuel cycle; however, nuclear plants themselves also emit carbon, a radioactive form, Carbon 14.

Still, many politicians and much of media continue to use the words “carbon-free” or “emissions-free” when it comes to nuclear-generated electricity. Consider the front-page story in the business section of The New York Times this month that began: “Technology companies are increasingly looking to nuclear power plants to provide the emissions-free electricity needed to run artificial intelligence and other businesses.”

And there was an Associated Press article last month in the Long Island daily newspaper Newsday which started: “Amazon on Wednesday said that it was investing in small nuclear reactors, coming just two days after a similar announcement by Google, as both tech giants seek new sources of carbon-free electricity to meet surging demand from data centers and artificial intelligence.”

Among the politicians buying into the climate change claim appears to be New York Governor Kathy Hochul who just organized a “summit” with a focus on nuclear power. At it, a “Draft Blueprint for Consideration of Advanced Nuclear Technologies” from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) was released. It asserted that “a growing and innovative group of advanced nuclear energy technologies has recently emerged as a potential source of carbon-free power.”

As the Washington, D.C. organization Food & Water Watch says: “Governor Hochul’s latest bad idea is to build new nuclear power plants in New York. In September, she hosted an ‘Energy Future Summit’ in Syracuse where she wined and dined the nuclear industry, and now her administration has published a ‘blueprint’ for promoting the construction of new nuclear reactors.”

I live on Long Island, New York where for decades the now defunct Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) planned to build seven to eleven nuclear power plants. Long Island was to become in the parlance of nuclear promoters what they called a “nuclear park.”

It took years, but the scheme was stopped by strong actions at the grassroots, opposition by Suffolk County government and also then New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and the creation by the state of the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) with the power to utilize condemnation if LILCO persisted in its nuclear plans. The first nuclear power plant LILCO constructed, at Shoreham, was turned over to the state for $1 after problem-plagued low-power testing and was decommissioned as a nuclear facility.

Safe-energy activists on Long Island are now concerned that the area might again be targeted for nuclear power plants. The 120-mile-long island jutting out into the ocean east of Manhattan has been regarded as an advantageous area for nuclear power plants because of it being surrounded by vast amounts of water which can be tapped as coolant—a nuclear power plant needs up to a million gallons of water a minute as coolant.

Moreover, established on Long Island in 1947 by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was Brookhaven National Laboratory with developing civilian uses of nuclear technology as a main mission. Its staff included many scientists and engineers who had worked at the Manhattan Project who at BNL sought to develop uses of atomic energy in addition to nuclear bombs. At the start of 1947, on January 1, 1947, the Manhattan Project, the World War II crash program to build nuclear weapons, was succeeded by the AEC.

BNL scientists and engineers joined with LILCO attorneys at hearings on LILCO nuclear plant projects and they formed an organization, Suffolk Scientists for Cleaner Power and Safer Environment, to promote them.

BNL’s administrators were closely involved with LILCO. Phyllis Vineyard, wife of BNL’s long-time director, George Vineyard, was a member of the board of directors of LILCO, advocating nuclear power. And in the years before LILCO went under due to its failed nuclear power pursuit, its CEO and chairman was William Catacosinos, a former assistant director of BNL

Long Island safe-energy activists —some who were veterans of the battle against LILCO’s drive for nuclear power—are now readying a letter to the board of trustees of LIPA stating they “reaffirm the long-held consensus that nuclear power has no place on Long Island. We are also convinced that nuclear power has no place in planning New York’s energy future.”

“LIPA exists because the people of Long Island said no to nuclear power. Public safety, the impossibility of evacuation and ever-rising costs and electric rates were the reasons for this decision. Nuclear energy was neither necessary nor appropriate for Long Island.  This is still true,” it continues.

“A recent study by the Nature Conservancy found that ‘Long Island has enough low-impact solar PV siting potential to host nearly 19,500 megawatts (19.5 gigawatts) of solar capacity in the form of mid-to large-scale installations (250 kilowatts and larger),’” the letter went on. “A gigawatt of energy can power 750,000 homes. These estimates, totaling almost three times more power than is currently required, do not even include the potential for residential solar. Additionally, solar is the most widely accepted and supported form of renewable energy in the nation. By contrast, nuclear power garnered the most public opposition.

“Long Island’s abundant energy resources also include offshore wind. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the full offshore wind potential in our region is 323,000 megawatts or 323 gigawatts of energy. LIPA has led the way with the South Fork Wind Farm. Clearly, there is no shortage of renewable energy potential on Long Island. Nuclear energy will not be needed here.”

Also, the letter points out, “LIPA’s enabling legislation clearly states that the ‘authority shall utilize to the fullest extent practicable, all economical means of conservation, and technologies that rely on renewable energy resources, cogeneration and improvements in energy efficiency which will benefit the interests of the ratepayers of the service area.’”

It calls for opposing “any effort” by the state’s Public Service Commission or NYSERDA to site nuclear power facilities on Long Island.

Food & Water Watch is asking that people to relate their views about the Hochul administration’s advocacy of nuclear power by letter or email to Hochul and Doreen Harris, president of NYSERDA, both in Albany, before a November 8th deadline set for comments. “Take action: Demand they stop this fast-track to danger and instead chart a path to the renewable energy future we need,” asks the group.

This month, the U.S. Department of Energy released a report saying: “U.S. nuclear capacity has the potential to triple from 100 GW [gigawatts] in 2024 to 300 GW by 2050.” It said: “In 2022, utilities were shutting down nuclear reactors; in 2024, they are extending reactor operations to 80 years, planning to uprate capacity [pushing nuclear power plants to run harder and generate more electricity]; and restarting formerly closed reactors.”

The nuclear power issue remains—indeed, is getting even more intense.

“We are up against the biggest push for nuclear power that I’ve ever experienced in 32 years of anti-nuclear power activism,” said Kevin Kamps of the Takoma Park, Maryland-based organization Beyond Nuclear in a TV program I hosted this year. It and a follow-up program were syndicated by Denver, Colorado-based Free Speech TV and broadcast on nearly 200 cable TV systems in 40 states and the major satellite TV networks and also on internet platforms.

Of the new main argument for nuclear power, that it is “carbon-free,” Kamps stated: “It’s not true. It’s not carbon-free by any means,” and “not even low carbon when you compare it to genuinely low carbon sources of electricity, renewables like wind and solar.” But the nuclear industry, he said, is involved in a “propaganda campaign” attempting to validate itself by citing climate change. He speaks of many in government having “fallen for this ploy.”

Karl Grossman, professor of journalism at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury, and is the author of the book, The Wrong Stuff: The Space’s Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, and the Beyond Nuclear handbook, The U.S. Space Force and the dangers of nuclear power and nuclear war in space. Grossman is an associate of the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.

October 25, 2024 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

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