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Push for nuclear power in Pueblo unlikely to succeed: renewables win favour.

Pueblo’s Comanche Coal Plant Is Closing Earlier Than Expected. Is Its Future With Nuclear, Or Renewables? CPR News,  By Miguel Otárola, September 13, 2021  ”………………. Faced with a shortened deadline, Pueblo’s leaders are plotting what the city will look like when it loses the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Colorado — and a significant source of local tax revenue.

County commissioners are excited about the potential of generating nuclear energy in the community. Other leaders, including Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar, are banking on other ways to power the local economy. 

“There’s no reason why Pueblo can’t be the renewable energy capital of the world,” Gradisar said.

……… Researchers say Pueblo is already moving in this direction, much of that due to Xcel’s expiration dates for Comanche.

A 2019 study by the Colorado School of Mines suggested the city’s shift to solar and wind could lower electricity costs and bring more private investment and jobs to Pueblo.

One of those projects is currently underway. Workers are installing hundreds of rows of solar panels on a wide expanse of land just south of the Comanche plant.

There have been previous attempts to bring nuclear to Pueblo, but safety was and still is a concern for many……..  Don Banner, a local attorney in 2011 had come to the county with plans to build a nuclear power plant on the outskirts of town.  …  Banner said his [nuclear] proposal attracted resistance from local residents and out-of-state protestors. The county board voted against the project a month after a nuclear plant was destroyed in an earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima, Japan.

There are other roadblocks — namely, a lack of political support and the cost.

Other Pueblo leaders are cautious of nuclear power.

Gradisar said he is worried the plant wouldn’t provide any electricity to Pueblo, similar to the current arrangement with Xcel at Comanche.

State Rep. Daneya Esgar, who represents the area, called it “an idea of a few” and hoped it wouldn’t gain traction……

Nuclear energy faces another practical hurdle: The cost. Nuclear plants cost billions of dollars to build, with costs rising as safety standards have tightened. 

Banner, now 76, said the only way to make nuclear energy a reality in Pueblo is strong political support. It didn’t exist when he pitched his plan 10 years ago, and he questioned whether it exists now…. https://www.cpr.org/2021/09/13/pueblo-comanche-coal-plant-closing-early-nuclear-renewable-energy/

September 14, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, USA | Leave a comment

NRC issues license to store ‘spent nuclear fuel’ in Andrews  

NRC issues license to store ‘spent nuclear fuel’ in Andrews  

Midland Reporter-Telegram Sep. 13, 2021  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported Monday that it has issued a license to Interim Storage Partners LLC to construct and operate a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Andrews.

The license authorizes the company to receive, possess, transfer and store up to 5,000 metric tons of spent fuel and 231.3 metric tons of Greater-Than-Class C low-level radioactive waste for 40 years, according to a NRC release. The company has said it plans to expand the facility in seven additional phases, up to a total capacity of 40,000 metric tons of fuel. Each expansion would require a license amendment with additional NRC safety and environmental reviews.

nterim Storage Partners is a joint venture of Waste Control Specialists LLC and Orano USA. ISP intends to construct the storage facility on property adjacent to the WCS low-level radioactive waste disposal site already operating under a Texas license. Information about the license application and the NRC staff’s reviews is available on the NRC website, according to the news release. The licensing documents will be available on this page as well.

The NRC’s announcement Monday came days after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation to ban high-level nuclear waste from the state of Texas. Odessa Republican Brooks Landgraf was the author of House Bill 7, which was filed in response to an effort to bring the nation’s high-level radioactive waste to a low-level radioactive material disposal facility in Andrews County.

Landgraf, in a statement, offered the following about the NRC’s issuing of the license:

“The Biden administration, through the NRC, would cause a violation of Texas law if their license results in the storage or disposal of spent nuclear fuel or any other high-level radioactive waste. I expect that the State of Texas will deploy our available resources to enforce our laws. Prior to the passage of HB 7, the State of Texas had no leg to stand on if it became necessary to fight back against the Biden administration. HB 7 is our weapon against high-level waste.”

The spent fuel and waste must be stored in canisters and cask systems, the NRC stated. The canisters and cask systems must meet NRC standards for protection against leakage, radiation dose rates, and criticality, under normal and accident conditions. The canisters are required to be sealed when they arrive at the facility and remain sealed during onsite handling and storage activities….

This is the second license issued by the NRC for a consolidated storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, according to the NRC. The first, Private Fuel Storage, was issued in 2006, but the facility was never constructed. The agency is currently reviewing an application from Holtec International for a similar facility proposed for Lea County, New Mexico. A decision on that application is currently expected in January 2022 https://www.mrt.com/news/local/article/NRC-issues-license-to-store-spent-nuclear-16455955.php

September 14, 2021 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Prison sentence for corrupt nuclear executive

Ex-SCANA CEO to become first to get handed a prison sentence over VC Summer failure, https://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article254135578.html      BY JOHN MONK SEPTEMBER 11, 2021 COLUMBIA, S.C.

An Oct. 7 date has been set for the sentencing of Kevin Marsh, the former CEO of SCANA who pleaded guilty earlier this year to federal conspiracy fraud charges involving a cover-up of financial troubles connected to the failure of the company’s $10 billion V.C. Summer nuclear project.

Marsh, 65, who pleaded guilty in February, has agreed to a two-year prison sentence for his role, according to federal court records.

Marsh was eligible to receive a maximum five-year sentence for his crimes, but he caught a break after he agreed to cooperate in other ongoing investigations and prosecutions in the SCANA case, according to court records. Marsh had worked his way from a position in SCANA’s accounting department to CEO.

The Oct. 7 hearing will be at the federal courthouse in Columbia before U.S. District Judge Mary Lewis.

Marsh would be the first person to receive a prison sentence in the failure of the company’s nuclear project. Another former SCANA executive, Stephen Byrne, also has pleaded guilty to similar conspiracy charges.

Marsh is one of four senior executives — two from SCANA and two from Westinghouse Electric Corp. — charged in the four-year federal investigation into the July 2017 abandonment of the nuclear project by SCANA and its junior state-owned project partner, Santee Cooper.

From 2008 to July 2017, Westinghouse was the major contractor for SCANA’s nuclear project, overseeing construction at the utility’s VC Summer site in Fairfield County, north of Columbia.

At Marsh’s guilty plea in February, assistant U.S. Attorney Jim May told Lewis that Marsh’s crime was “a violation of public trust” — not an effort to illegally make millions for himself.

What Marsh did was hide the true state of the project as costs were spiraling out of control and finishing dates were being unduly delayed from the public, investors and regulators, May said at the hearing.

The highly publicized project had a worthy goal, May said.

“The project was to do something that it had not been done in the United States since late 1970’s — build a nuclear power plant — with the idea that this success would spark a nuclear renaissance and provide for reduction on dependence of fossil fuels,” May said.

SCANA was under pressure to meet construction deadlines to qualify for more than $1 billion in federal tax credits, but it also was under obligation to make public true information about the status of the project, May said.

“Mr. Marsh did not make these disclosures but repeated positive (false) information about the project’s status. It is for this failure that he is criminally liable,” May said.

MORE FACE CHARGES

Two of the other three have pleaded guilty and one is fighting the federal charges connected to giving false information about the project. They are:

 Carl Churchman, a Westinghouse official who oversaw construction at the nuclear project. He has agreed to plead guilty to lying to an FBI agent about what he knew about the progress of the project when it was still ongoing.

 Jeffrey Benjamin, a former Westinghouse senior vice president of new plants and projects, faces multiple counts of fraud, according to an 18-page indictment made public in August in U.S. District Court in Columbia. Benjamin’s lawyer has said he is innocent of the charges and plans on seeking a trial.

Stephen Byrne, a former top SCANA official, pleaded guilty in July 2020 to criminal conspiracy fraud charges in federal court in Columbia.

Byrne’s guilty plea, the first of three guilty pleas so far, showed that SCANA’s downfall — triggered by the failed nuclear project — was the result of not just mismanagement or incompetence, but criminal conduct at the company’s highest levels.

Like Marsh, Churchman and Byrne have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and could be witnesses in any future court proceedings, including those concerning Benjamin.

SCANA, a Fortune 500 publicly traded company whose business lineage traced back to 1846, was one of the crown jewels of South Carolina’s economy.

But the failure of its effort to build two nuclear reactors at its plant in Jenkinsville led to multiple lawsuits and mounting financial troubles. Eventually the company was absorbed by Dominion Energy. SCANA’s downfall is perhaps the most costly business failure in state history.

Once SCANA and Santee Cooper announced they were abandoning the venture in July 2017, SCANA’s stock price began to plummet and its financial and political troubles began to mount. SCANA was hit by multiple lawsuits, most of which have now been settled with multi-million dollar payoffs to investors and ratepayers.

The motives of Westinghouse and SCANA officials in covering up the project’s true status were different, according to evidence in the case.

Westinghouse officials lied about of the status in order to have SCANA keep on paying the company for ongoing construction; the lies of SCANA officials were aimed at deceiving the public and regulators in hopes of figuring out a way to still get the federal tax credits, even if SCANA missed the deadline to qualify for the credits, according to evidence in the case.

SCANA’s failure affected the pocketbooks of hundreds of thousands of people and businesses.

For years, the company had jacked up customers’ monthly power bills to help pay billions in ongoing construction costs for the two nuclear reactors that were supposed to be built, but now will never generate power.

When the plant was abandoned, several thousand construction employees also lost their jobs.

September 13, 2021 Posted by | Legal, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

29 Democrats demand Biden cut exorbitant spending on new nuclear weapons

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL LEADS DEMOCRATS IN URGING BIDEN TO LIMIT NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Twenty-nine Democrats call out the president’s embrace of Trump-initiated nuclear weapon programs as the White House creates sweeping new policy. The Intercept, Sara Sirota September 11 2021,  CONGRESSIONAL PROGRESSIVE CAUCUS Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., is leading a group of Democrats in pushing back on President Joe Biden’s plans to continue spending exorbitant sums on an expanding nuclear arsenal.

“We write today to express our grave concern that your Fiscal Year 2022 budget proposal for nuclear weapons does not reflect your longstanding efforts to reduce our reliance on nuclear weapons,” Jayapal and 28 Democratic colleagues wrote Biden today in a letter obtained by The Intercept. (In 2010, Biden led the White House’s efforts to convince the Senate to approve the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The treaty, which passed with a bipartisan majority, reduces the U.S. and Russia’s deployment of nuclear weapons.)

Their letter comes months after Biden caused alarm among progressives and the arms control community by proposing a defense budget that funded nuclear weapon programs initiated by the Trump administration that the Obama administration had deemed unnecessary. The budget also increased funding to develop highly controversial missiles started under President Barack Obama.

The stakes couldn’t be higher as the U.S. continues to grow its nuclear arsenal with an array of new warheads, bombs, cruise missiles, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and delivery vehicles, which activists warn increase the risk of nuclear war. Meanwhile, as Democrats face accusations of hiking the deficit to fund significant investments in health care, family benefits, and clean energy, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated Biden’s FY-22 budget proposal would result in costs of $634 billion over 10 years.

Jayapal and her colleagues see an opening for Biden to reverse course as the president works on crafting a nuclear weapons strategy to replace the Trump administration’s. “We respectfully urge you to use the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) to set a nuclear strategy that aims to limit the role of nuclear weapons in our national security, reduces unnecessary spending, and sets the stage for progress towards your recent agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to pursue additional arms control and risk reduction measures,” they wrote.

They specifically call out Biden for his administration’s request for funds to develop a new high-yield submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead known as the W93 that Donald Trump greenlighted and for his plans to maintain the B83 gravity bomb, which has an explosive yield up to 100 times larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The Obama administration had opposed these initiatives, they note, but Biden is now continuing them. (Obama Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz pledged to retire the B83 since the government is replacing it with the B61-12 bomb.)………………..  https://theintercept.com/2021/09/10/nuclear-weapons-spending-democrats/

September 11, 2021 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Texas bans storage of highly radioactive waste, but a West Texas facility may get a license from the feds anyway

The new law may soon be in conflict with federal regulators. A decision from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on one company’s license could come as early as Monday.

BY ERIN DOUGLAS  TEXAS TRIBUNE,  SEPT. 10, 2021  Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday night signed a bill into law that attempts to block a plan to store highly radioactive nuclear waste at a site in West Texas.

House Bill 7 effectively bans highly radioactive materials from coming to Texas, targeting one company’s plan to build such a facility near the New Mexico border in Andrews County.

But, the new state law may soon be in conflict with federal regulators. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is advancing the company’s application for a license to allow the high-level nuclear waste to Texas, and a decision from the federal agency could come as early as Monday, a spokesperson with the commission said.

For years, environmental and consumer advocates have protested a proposal by a West Texas company, Waste Control Specialists, to build with a partner an interim storage site for high-level nuclear waste, which is mostly spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants. Waste Control Specialists has been disposing of the nation’s low-level nuclear waste, including tools, building materials and protective clothing exposed to radioactivity, for a decade in Andrews County.

Scientists agree that spent nuclear fuel, which is currently kept on-site at nuclear power plants, should be stored deep underground, but the U.S. still hasn’t located a suitable site. The plan by the WCS joint venture, Interim Storage Partners, proposes storing it in above-ground casks until a permanent location is found. Spent nuclear fuel can remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years.

The joint venture, Interim Storage Partners, applied to the NRC for a license to store spent nuclear fuel — the most dangerous type of nuclear waste — on a site adjacent to that existing facility until a permanent underground repository is built. No such facility currently exists in the U.S…………

The legislation includes a ban on disposing of high-level radioactive waste in Texas other than former nuclear power reactors and former nuclear research and test reactors on university campuses (nuclear power plants must keep the waste generated from operations on-site until a long-term disposal site is created). The law will also bar state agencies from issuing construction, stormwater or pollution permits for facilities that are licensed to store high-level radioactive waste.

Environmental groups applauded the state law: “We hope [the law] sends a clear message to the feds: We don’t want it,” said Adrian Shelley, director of Public Citizen’s Texas office, in a statement.

Karen Hadden, director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition, an alliance of businesses and organizations that has long opposed the nuclear waste facility, said in a statement that the law will “prevent unnecessary transportation risks nationwide.”

Landgraf said in a statement that the state law should halt the construction of a site to store high-level nuclear waste because the law now bars the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality from issuing the state permits that would be necessary to construct such a facility. He said the law protects Texas from “becoming the storage site for the entire country’s high-level radioactive waste.”   https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/10/texas-nuclear-waste-ban/

September 11, 2021 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

How America’s war machine is bankrupting us, both financially and morally

“Napoleon said that it’s not necessary to censor the news. It’s more efficient to delay it until it no longer matters. In terms of the dead, it no longer matters.”

Norman Solomon on what the media won’t say: “The American people live in a warfare state” by Chauncey DeVaga — Rise Up Times

Author and activist Norman Solomon on how America’s war machine is bankrupting us, both financially and morally, By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA  Salon  September 8, 2021 ” …………….. America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan is now technically over.

…………………The Afghanistan war cost the American people at least $2 trillion. That amount will increase significantly from the interest paid on the massive debt incurred by the war over the next few decades.

America’s ugly withdrawal from Afghanistan leaves behind many “what ifs” that will haunt the nation’s collective memory for years to come. For example, what if the terrorist attacks of 9/11 had been treated as a law enforcement problem and not a military crisis that led to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq? (Especially since the latter nation had no connection to al-Qaida or the 9/11 attacks.)

What role did the War on Terror and its thousands of U.S. casualties (disproportionately concentrated in the Rust Belt and the American South) play in the election of Donald Trump and the rise of American neofascism? Would Trump ever have become president if there had been no endless war in the Middle East?

The withdrawal from Afghanistan also illustrates how poorly America’s collective memory reflects facts and history. Too many members of the media and political classes, still haunted by the ghosts of Vietnam, the Afghan retreat is being invoked as somehow equivalent to the fall of Saigon in 1975. It is not.

………. These first drafts of history about America’s retreat from Afghanistan are very much works in progress.

As writer and cultural critic Gore Vidal once observed, “We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.” To that point, the American people will not be asked to make sense of Afghanistan and the War on Terror in the context of a much larger history. (And if they were asked, would not generally be able to answer, or interested in doing so).

Here is the central question that is being avoided: What does all this illustrate or exemplify? The answer: America is addicted to war. Since the end of World War II, the country has been involved in dozens of conflicts and interventions around the world. In that sense, America’s war in Afghanistan is part of a much older and much longer story.

To discuss both that longer story and the one before us now, I recently had a conversation with author, activist and journalist Norman Solomon (a frequent contributor to Salon). He is the author of many books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” and “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State.” Solomon is the national director and co-founder of the online activist initiative RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy,

In this conversation, Solomon explains how he believes the American people are propagandized into supporting war by political leaders, the mainstream news media and other elites. He also reflects on how Afghanistan, Iraq and the larger War on Terror have been counterproductive on their own terms — leaving the American people less safe and less secure — as well as profoundly immoral and ruinously expensive.

He explains how human rights and justice demand that the American people learn to practice radical empathy for the Afghan people and others around the world who have suffered immeasurably from American military power. Toward the end of this conversation, Solomon explains that the lives of average Americans could be greatly improved if the U.S. did not spend vast sums of money on a military machine used almost entirely for destructive ends.

As a whole, the news media and the pundit class are generalists and professional “smart people.” They have little specific policy expertise on America’s forever wars or the Middle East, yet are presented as authoritative voices on that subject and too many others. How does the business of “expertise” and “punditry” actually work?

The qualification is largely that you have some type of institutional credential or be in a powerful position in Washington. You also have to stay more or less within the parameters of the bipartisan consensus about American politics, especially in terms of foreign policy.

What is verboten in such conversations?

In terms of U.S. foreign and military policy, there is a type of mass media housekeeping seal of approval. It is not completely monolithic. There are cracks in the wall. However, just because there are cracks does not somehow mean that the wall no longer exists.

The essence of propaganda is repetition. I believe there is a paradigm, a rule where there’s terrain that the corporate media tends to be very comfortable having discourse and debate on and within. Essentially, the mass media are part of the war-making apparatus.

How do you make sense of this public rehabilitation project for the likes of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, two of the most prominent figures who made the decisions that led to these disastrous wars?

Consider all the praise, for example, that was visited on the late Donald Rumsfeld during his obituary period. There were so many members of the mainstream American news media who just basically licked Rumsfeld’s boots when he was giving his daily briefings during the war. Top journalists in the United States, on camera, were saying to Rumsfeld that he was like a “rock star,” that he was a “stud,” because he was articulating U.S. policy so well during those first weeks of the bombing of Afghanistan. I think of that spectacle all the time, where the media bows down to the warmakers in this country………..

The press is supposed to help the public understand current events so they can make better decisions about government, policy and leadership. But relatively few in the mainstream news media gave extensive coverage to the “Afghanistan Papers,” which were leaked not long ago and extensively documented that the war in Afghanistan had been lost for years. There is much fake surprise about the sudden end of the war and the Taliban taking over so quickly. The United States government knew of this highly probable outcome some time ago.

There is tremendous conformity-pressure. Being ahead of the discernment curve is very rarely a career enhancement. Whereas going with the herd, or being a little ahead of the curve but not going too far out on a limb, is a winning strategy for so many people who have risen through the ranks in mass media — and for that matter in government.

Napoleon said that it’s not necessary to censor the news. It’s more efficient to delay it until it no longer matters. In terms of the dead, it no longer matters. The last mistake is chalked up as in fact being just an error. But people who are going deeper in the analysis are saying, “There’s a fundamental dynamic here.”

We, the American people, live in a warfare state. As President Dwight Eisenhower warned as he was leaving office, we have a military-industrial complex. It’s striking how rarely we even hear that term being uttered by a prominent Democratic or Republican leader in Washington. It’s almost verboten………..

How do we better explain to the American people the role of profiteering by private interests and big business in the country’s wars?

When we hear that the war in Afghanistan was a “failure,” it really depends on what vantage point one is talking about. Every war is a colossal success for the military-industrial complex and huge numbers of Pentagon contractors. We call it the “defense industry.” That is a benign term.

I’m not against a defense budget. Too bad we don’t have one! We have a military budget that’s so much larger than a genuine defense budget would be. The profit-taking is enormous.

Where does the $700-something billion a year from the Pentagon go? Add in nuclear weapons and other items that are outside the Pentagon budget, and the number rises to $1 trillion. So much of that money is just going to these huge corporations. How often do we see a serious examination in the mainstream news media of the corporations that are making a killing, literally and figuratively, from the misery and death that’s part of the U.S. warfare state?

How has war been sold to the American people by the country’s leaders? What narratives are used to propagandize them into supporting American empire and war-making?………

Has the mainstream news media ever seen a war they didn’t like?

If there’s a deep division on Capitol Hill within or between the two parties, then the mass media, to some significant extent, might be against it. Again, war is framed around the question, “Is it winnable?”

Ultimately, that is the wrong question. Even now there are critics of the Afghanistan war saying, “It was a terrible idea. It could have never been won.” I can reasonably conclude that the seven-year-old girl I met with one arm didn’t really care if the U.S. won or lost. She didn’t care that Barack Obama was a Democrat overseeing the air war that took one of her arms.  https://riseuptimes.org/2021/09/09/norman-solomon-on-what-the-media-wont-say-the-american-people-live-in-a-warfare-state-by-chauncey-devaga/

September 11, 2021 Posted by | media, politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Dispute in U.S, Congress over costly nuclear weapons modernisation

Lawmakers set for battle over next-gen nuclear missile, Defense News, By Joe Gould  10 Sept 21, WASHINGTON ― Nuclear modernization opponents and defenders are gearing up to fight again over the next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile and other efforts.

Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., and a skeptic of nuclear spending on the House Armed Services Committee, confirmed he plans to offer nuclear-themed amendments when the annual defense bill receives House floor consideration later this month. One aims to pause the Air Force’s nascent Ground Based Strategic Deterrent in favor of maintaining the missile it would replace, the Minuteman III; another would zero out funds for the GBSD’s warhead, the W87-1.

…………  For the land-based missile, the stakes are high for Northrop Grumman, which received a $13.3 billion contract last year to develop GBSD. Last month, Northrop executives cut the ribbon on a $1.4 billion facility in Colorado Springs dedicated to GBSD and other strategic weapons programs.

………. Skeptics have argued modernization plans are dangerously escalatory, exceed what’s necessary for a credible nuclear deterrent and waste money that would be better spent on domestic programs. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., proposed a bill earlier this year to divert $1 billion from the GBSD program to fight the coronavirus……….. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/budget/2021/09/09/lawmakers-set-for-battle-over-next-gen-nuclear-missile/

September 11, 2021 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Texas Legislature passes Bill to prevent import and storage of high level nuclear waste

A bill passed by the Texas Legislature could ban the storage of high-level
nuclear waste in the state and could prove a path to similar efforts in
neighboring New Mexico. House Bill 7 was passed by the Texas House of
Representatives on an 119-3 vote Sept. 2 and unanimously by the Texas
Senate. The bill was sent to Gov. Greg Abbott for a signature and which
would create a new state law. If enacted, the bill would expressly prohibit
the state from issuing permits to construct or operate a facility to store
nuclear waste within the state, with the exception of existing nuclear
facilities like power plants that store the waste on-site.

 Carlsbad Current Argus 9th Sept 2021

https://eu.currentargus.com/story/news/local/2021/09/09/could-new-mexico-follow-texas-ban-radioactive-nuclear-waste-storage/5759271001/

September 11, 2021 Posted by | politics, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

San Onofre’s nuclear waste buried under the beach – the best example of the failure of the nuclear industry and its poor outlook for the future

A combination of failures:’ why 3.6m pounds of nuclear waste is buried on a popular California beach, Guardian, Kate Mishkin 24 Aug 21, 

The San Onofre reactors are among dozens across the United States phasing out, but experts say they best represent the uncertain future of nuclear energy.

“It’s a combination of failures, really,”

Spent fuel is stored at 76 reactor sites in 34 states

“It’s a self-reporting industry,” Hering, the retired rear admiral, said. “And they simply can’t be trusted.”


More than 2 million visitors flock each year to California’s San Onofre state beach, a dreamy slice of coastline just north of San Diego. The beach is popular with surfers, lies across one of the largest Marine Corps bases in the Unites States and has a 10,000-year-old sacred Native American site nearby. It even landed a shout-out in the Beach Boys’ 1963 classic Surfin’ USA.

But for all the good vibes and stellar sunsets, beneath the surface hides a potential threat: 3.6m lb of nuclear waste from a group of nuclear reactors shut down nearly a decade ago. Decades of political gridlock have left it indefinitely stranded, susceptible to threats including corrosion, earthquakes and sea level rise.

The San Onofre reactors are among dozens across the United States phasing out, but experts say they best represent the uncertain future of nuclear energy.

“It’s a combination of failures, really,” said Gregory Jaczko, who chaired the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the top federal enforcer, between 2009 and 2012, of the situation at San Onofre.

That waste is the byproduct of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (Songs), three nuclear reactors primarily owned by the utility Southern California Edison (SCE).

Buried waste

Federal regulators had already cited SCE for several safety issues, including leaking radioactive waste and falsified firewatch records. But when a new steam generator began leaking a small amount of radioactivity in January 2012, just one year after it was replaced, it was SCE’s most serious problem yet. A subsequent report from the NRC’s inspector general found federal inspectors had overlooked red flags in 2009, and that SCE had replaced its own steam generators without proper approval. SCE tried to fix the problem but decided in 2013 to shut the plant down for good.Activists thought they had scored a victory when the reactor shut down – until they learned that the nuclear waste they had produced would remain on-site……

Without a government-designated place to store the waste, the California Coastal Commission in 2015 approved the construction of an installation at San Onofre to store it until 2035. In August 2020, workers concluded the multi-year burial process, loading the last of 73 canisters of waste into a concrete enclosure.

San Onofre is not the only place where waste is left stranded. As more nuclear sites shut down, communities across the country are stuck with the waste left behind. Spent fuel is stored at 76 reactor sites in 34 states, according to the Department of Energy.

Handling those stockpiles has been an afterthought to the NRC, the federal enforcer, said Allison Macfarlane, another former commission chair.

“It was not a big topic at the NRC, unfortunately,” Macfarlane said. “In the nuclear industry in general the backend of the nuclear cycle gets very little attention. So it just never rises to ‘oh this is a very important issue, we should be doing something.’”

Plenty of risks, and not enough oversight

The waste is buried about 100ft from the shoreline, along the I-5 highway, one of the nation’s busiest thoroughfares, and not far from a pair of faults that experts say could generate a 7.4 magnitude earthquake.

Another potential problem is corrosion. In its 2015 approval, the Coastal Commission noted the site could have a serious impact on the environment down the line, including on coastal access and marine life. “The [installation] would eventually be exposed to coastal flooding and erosion hazards beyond its design capacity, or else would require protection by replacing or expanding the existing Songs shoreline armoring,” the document says.

Concerns have also been raised about government oversight of the site. Just after San Onofre closed, SCE began seeking exemptions from the NRC’s operating rules for nuclear plants. The utility asked and received permission to loosen rules on-site, including those dealing with record-keeping, radiological emergency plans for reactors, emergency planning zones and on-site staffing.

San Onofre isn’t the only closed reactor to receive exemptions to its operating licence. The NRC’s regulations historically focused on operating reactors and assumed that, when a reactor shut down, the waste would be removed quickly.

It’s true that the risk of accidents decreases when a plant isn’t operating, said Dave Lochbaum, former director of the nuclear safety project for the Union of Concerned Scientists. But adapting regulations through exemptions greatly reduces public transparency, he argued.

“Exemptions are wink-wink, nudge-nudge deals with the NRC,” he said.

In general, it’s not really a great practice,” former NRC chair Jaczko said about the exemptions. “If the NRC is regulating by exemption, it means that there’s something wrong with the rules … either the NRC believes the rules are not effective, and they’re not really useful, or the NRC is not holding the line where the NRC should be holding line,” he said.

Close calls

In 2015, the NRC tried unsuccessfully to revise its decommissioning rules and reduce the need for exemptions. But commissioners never acted, despite a 2019 Office of Inspector General audit that questioned whether the rule would ever see the light of day and that estimated that eliminating exemptions could save the NRC, utility and taxpayers about $19m for each reactor.

In general, it’s not really a great practice,” former NRC chair Jaczko said about the exemptions. “If the NRC is regulating by exemption, it means that there’s something wrong with the rules … either the NRC believes the rules are not effective, and they’re not really useful, or the NRC is not holding the line where the NRC should be holding line,” he said.

Meanwhile, at San Onofre, two close calls drew the ire of activists and townspeople. In 2018, workers found a loose piece of equipment in one of the canisters, causing a 10-day work stoppage to ensure the error didn’t pose a threat to the public. In a separate incident several months later, a canister filled with radioactive waste became wedged when employees were loading it into the ground and nearly dropped 18ft. The second incident was not made public until a whistleblower brought it up at a community event.

After these incidents, the NRC cited SCE for failing to ensure equipment was available to protect the canister from a drop, and failing to notify the NRC in a timely manner. In a memo, NRC staff told SCE it was “concerned about apparent weaknesses” in managing storage oversight. SCE was fined $116,000 but permitted to continue loading casks within one year.

Another concern is that the CEO of Holtec, the manufacturer of the canisters, told a 2014 community meeting that the canisters are difficult to repair. “It’s not practical to repair a canister if it were damaged,” Kris Singh said.

According to a plan the California Coastal Commission approved in July 2020, SCE will also inspect two of the 73 buried canisters every five years, and a test canister every two and a half years, starting in 2024.

But critics say they are not confident SCE would self-report given the utility’s record. “It’s a self-reporting industry,” Hering, the retired rear admiral, said. “And they simply can’t be trusted.”……….. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/24/san-onofre-nuclear-power-plant-radioactive-waste-unsafe

September 9, 2021 Posted by | Reference, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Iodide tablets offered as precaution to residents living near nuclear plants


Iodide tablets offered as precaution to residents living near nuclear plants 69 News NCPA Staff, Sep 8, 2021 

Harrisburg, Pa. — The Department of Health will offer free potassium iodide, or KI, tablets on Thursday, Sept. 9 and 16, to Pennsylvanians who are within 10 miles of the state’s four active nuclear power plants. 

“Emergency preparedness is an important aspect of public health and having potassium iodide tablets for residents who live or work within 10 miles of a nuclear facility is an essential preparedness action in the case of a radiological emergency,” Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam said. 

“It’s important to remember potassium iodide should only be taken when instructed to do so by state health officials or the governor, and it is not a substitute for evacuation in the case of a radiological emergency at one of Pennsylvania’s nuclear facilities.”  ………

The tablets are available to all Pennsylvanians who live or work within 10 miles of the state’s four active nuclear power plants by visiting a distribution center listed below, calling the Department of Health at 1-877-PA-HEALTH or visiting a  county and municipal health department or state health center. KI tablets are not required for people living and working within 10 miles of the Three Mile Island Generating Station, which closed in Sept. 2019. …….   https://www.wfmz.com/news/state/iodide-tablets-offered-as-precaution-to-residents-living-near-nuclear-plants/article_cdf107cc-5b25-5959-adc1-08805c43f0e4.html

September 9, 2021 Posted by | health, USA | Leave a comment

Exelon Corp hanging on in hope that Illinois government will bail out 2 nuclear power stations

Illinois House inches closer to saving two nuclear plants, By Timothy Gardner  WASHINGTON, Sept 7 (Reuters) – The Illinois House plans to consider an energy bill on Thursday, the House speaker said, that could prevent two Exelon Corp nuclear power plants from shutting in coming days and months.
The Illinois Senate on Sept. 1 passed a bill that contains more than $600 million in carbon mitigation credits for nuclear plants, which generate virtually emissions-free electricity. [as long as you don’t count the full dirty nuclear fuel chain]

………. U.S. nuclear plants have been struggling to compete with wind and solar farms and plants that burn low-cost natural gas. Exelon (EXC.O) has said it will close its Byron nuclear plant on Sept. 13 and its Dresden plant in November if a state or federal program does not come to the rescue.

Preventing nuclear plants from closing has been a priority for the administration of President Joe Biden, which has supported tax incentives for nuclear in federal infrastructure legislation and sees the plants as important to its goal of decarbonizing the power grid by 2035.

Exelon has said the federal incentives alone could not come fast enough to save the plants. The company said it has authorized uranium fuel shipments to Byron for use if the legislation passes. But Exelon said the fuel will be shipped to another plant if no action is taken and Byron will permanently shut. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/illinois-house-inches-closer-saving-two-nuclear-plants-2021-09-07/

September 9, 2021 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

We mustn’t kick the radioactive nuclear waste can down the road any longer. It’s time to tackle the problem head-on.

The current reality, as stated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is that a repository might never materialize, saddling nuclear plants with storing spent fuel onsite indefinitely.

Creating more U.S. nuclear plants and deadly waste is insane when we can’t guarantee the safety of either existing aging plants or the 80,000-pluss metric tons of spent fuel already generated. The argument that nuclear is needed to address global warming reflects the same foolhardy mindset — ignoring adverse long-term impacts for short-term gains — that created the climate crisis in the first place.

We mustn’t kick the radioactive nuclear waste can down the road any longer. It’s time to tackle the problem head-on.  

Opinion: Investing in More Nuclear Power Can’t Be Our Solution to Climate Change  https://timesofsandiego.com/opinion/2021/09/03/investing-in-more-nuclear-power-cant-be-a-solution-to-the-climate-crisis/ by Sarah Mosko, Two days agoIf you live in Orange or San Diego County, hopefully you’re aware that San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station has been turned into a nuclear waste dump for the foreseeable future. If you live on planet earth, you’re wise to be tracking domestic and foreign moves to increase reliance on nuclear energy.

The United States ushered in the atomic age in 1945 by dropping a uranium bomb on Hiroshima and a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki. We now have 3.6 million pounds of these and other lethal radioactive elements sitting on the beach at San Onofre in temporary canisters, scheduled to remain there indefinitely.

No one has figured out how to safely dispose of deadly nuclear waste. Yet, to combat the climate crisis, the United States and the world propose to create more of it by extending the life of existing nuclear power plants and building new ones. Has the world learned nothing from the catastrophes of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima?

Since San Onofre closed down in 2013, controversy has swirled around the dry waste storage systems selected by the plant’s operator, Southern California Edison.

As is true of all U.S.’s nuclear plants, San Onofre wasn’t designed for nuclear waste storage after decommissioning. The Nuclear Waste Act of 1982 mandated construction of a deep geological repository to store the nation’s spent fuel for the hundreds of thousands of years it remains deadly. However, as hopes for a repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain collapsed out of concern about groundwater contamination, talk turned to creating “interim” storage sites in Texas and New Mexico, though those states are balking at the prospect too.

The current reality, as stated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is that a repository might never materialize, saddling nuclear plants with storing spent fuel onsite indefinitely.

As of last August, all of San Onofre’s spent fuel was transferred into 123 dry storage canisters, each with the potential to release as much highly radioactive Cesium-137 as was released during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

San Onofre’s canisters are thin-walled (5/8 inch) stainless steel and susceptible to “stress corrosion cracking” in a marine environment. They weren’t designed for safe maintenance, inspection, storage or transport.

The potential consequences of cracks are far worse than small radiation releases into the atmosphere: Canisters are filled with helium expressly to limit corrosion and prevent explosions triggered by air or water getting inside.

Contrast this with thick-walled (10-19 inches) casks used in most countries which aren’t susceptible to stress corrosion cracking and are designed for maintenance, inspection, storage and transport.

Continue reading →

September 6, 2021 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Global Cooperation, Not Endless War Should Be Future of US Foreign Policy

Biden was right to pull out of Afghanistan, yet wrong on the larger picture.

America’s mortal enemies are not China, Iran, and Russia. Our real enemies are the common scourges facing humanity today. Global problems cannot be solved by individual nations alone.

It is uncertain whether America will change its relentless aggressive foreign policy for our own good, and the world’s. Our nation has been at war for centuries. Our repeated failures have led the political right to double down, calling with increasing fervor for more weapons, and further escalation with China, Iran, Russia, and other alleged foes. Yes, we have pulled out of Afghanistan—42 years too late—and that is good. But will the United States adopt a new foreign policy based on peace and problem-solving? That’s the real question.

Global Cooperation, Not Endless War Should Be Future of US Foreign Policy
Ours have been wars of hatred, not logic, and doomed to fail—at a mind-boggling human and financial cost. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/09/03/global-cooperation-not-endless-war-should-be-future-us-foreign-policy, JEFFREY D. SACHS  September 3, 2021 by the Boston Globe During the past 60 years, the United States has suffered a series of failed wars in Indochina, Central America, the Middle East, and Afghanistan. Each of these wars produced mayhem and suffering, followed by an American retreat. While the American right wing has always argued that success needed just one more surge or bombing spree, the truth has been simpler and sadder. Ours have been wars of hatred, not logic, and doomed to fail—at a mind-boggling human and financial cost.

America has never cared to help those we have pretended to “save” by these wars. For that reason alone, America has never had the broad support of local populations that would have been essential for any kind of success in these misguided wars.

Americans didn’t want to save the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians, who were despised in US popular culture; America wanted to stop communism and the supposed “falling dominoes” across Southeast Asia. America didn’t want to save Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, and others in poverty-stricken Central America; it wanted to stop leftist radicals who threatened American investments in the region. America didn’t want to save the Iraqis, Libyans, and Syrians; it wanted to topple regimes and replace them with US-backed regimes.

And America cared not a whit about Afghanistan, a point confirmed repeatedly by President Biden in recent days. Biden has noted, approvingly, that the United States went to Afghanistan for one reason and one reason only: to get Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda after 9/11, not to help the people of Afghanistan.

Tellingly, Biden has not been truthful about the real origin of US intervention in Afghanistan, following a pattern set by his predecessors. America’s intervention in Afghanistan goes back to 1979, more than 20 years before 9/11, when the CIA secretly trained, armed, and funded Islamic jihadists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. The US-created fighting force morphed into Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but no president, including Biden, has honestly explained the basic facts to the American people.

America’s right-wing culture has often been hostile toward the non-European world—the “shithole countries” in Donald Trump’s disgusting yet telling phrase. For the past 60 years, the United States has waged war after war for America’s narrow interests alone, and has created havoc, destruction, and death in its wake.

I have worked for decades in countries that all too many Americans find contemptible due to their poverty, religion, skin color, desire to migrate from hunger and violence, and insolence for trying to claim control over their own oil, uranium, and other minerals that America craves. Begrudging development assistance to these countries is a congressional pastime. People in those countries know all too well about American power, and its destructive potential. They try their best to stay out of harm’s way.

In pulling the United States out of Afghanistan, Biden showed scant sympathy for the Afghan people. He mocked the idea of “nation-building,” an American phrase of scorn that seems to mean being naïve enough to try to help another country. Is it any surprise that the regime in Afghanistan propped up by American power crumbled so rapidly just as America departed?

Lest any American mistakenly think that much of the roughly $1 trillion the US spent in Afghanistan for war and reconstruction went towards nation-building, it did not. Perhaps 2 percent of the total US spending went for purposes such as health, education, and civilian infrastructure. Almost all the money went for military and security purposes—troops, armaments, Afghan security forces, and the like. After 20 years, we left behind a country where 38 percent of the children are stunted due to chronic undernutrition.

In explaining America’s exit, Biden played the typical American foreign policy tune, that the world is very dangerous place filled with foes of America. The job of the president, Biden emphasized, is to protect America from those enemies, just no longer in Afghanistan. Here is how Biden summarized the global scene:

“This is a new world. The terror threat has metastasized across the world, well beyond Afghanistan. We face threats from Al Shabab in Somalia; Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria in and the Arabian Peninsula; and ISIS attempting to create a caliphate in Syria and Iraq, and establishing affiliates across Africa and Asia … And here’s a critical thing to understand: The world is changing. We’re engaged in a serious competition with China. We’re dealing with the challenges on multiple fronts with Russia. We’re confronted with cyberattacks and nuclear proliferation. We have to shore up America’s competitive[ness] to meet these new challenges in the competition for the 21st century.”

Here is what he should have said instead: All countries—including the United States, members of the European Union, Russia, China, Iran, and, yes, Afghanistan—are destabilized by the COVID-19 pandemic; the effects of the climate crisis (floods, droughts, hurricanes, forest fires, heatwaves); widening income inequality further dividing the haves and have nots; the upheavals of digital technologies; and the dangerous political influence of plutocrats. All of these are shared problems across the globe, and all require intensive global cooperation rather than confrontation.

Biden was right to pull out of Afghanistan, yet wrong on the larger picture.

America’s mortal enemies are not China, Iran, and Russia. Our real enemies are the common scourges facing humanity today. Global problems cannot be solved by individual nations alone.

It is uncertain whether America will change its relentless aggressive foreign policy for our own good, and the world’s. Our nation has been at war for centuries. Our repeated failures have led the political right to double down, calling with increasing fervor for more weapons, and further escalation with China, Iran, Russia, and other alleged foes. Yes, we have pulled out of Afghanistan—42 years too late—and that is good. But will the United States adopt a new foreign policy based on peace and problem-solving? That’s the real question.

September 6, 2021 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Highway safety concerns as DOE plans expanding nuclear waste transports to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)

More nuclear waste may be heading to WIPP on US 285 Albuquerque Journal , BY ISABELLA ALVES / JOURNAL NORTH, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4TH, 2021  

Spanning the length of the state, U.S. Highway 285 is a major thoroughfare for truck transports and other traffic. This busy highway, nicknamed “Death Highway” due to the number of fatal accidents on it, may get busier.

Concerned citizens in Santa Fe County recently called out the U.S. Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for expanding its mission in a permit renewal application to include more nuclear waste being shipped along the 285 corridor.

Part of Highway 285 goes along the southern edge of the city of Santa Fe, and local activists are calling on local and federal leaders to halt this increase in nuclear waste transportation.

The permit application is requesting to add two nuclear waste storage panels to WIPP that would increase the waste volume in these areas. The permit renewal was filed July 30 and, if granted, wouldn’t increase the volume capacity of nuclear waste set by Congress in the Land Withdrawal Act for the plant.

“NMED is in litigation with the DOE for its failure to clean up legacy waste at Los Alamos National Laboratory. A successful resolution of the lawsuit is increased shipments of legacy waste from Los Alamos to WIPP,” James Kennedy, state Environment Department Cabinet secretary, said via email.

“The DOE and Nuclear Waste Partnership continuing to accept out-of-state waste streams or any new waste streams in lieu of cleaning up and shipping legacy waste from Los Alamos to WIPP is completely unacceptable,” he added.

At a recent Santa Fe County Town Hall, activist Cindy Weehler of 285 ALL said the U.S. Department of Energy made it clear that it’s going to expand its nuclear waste program, she said. She said she’s concerned about the new type of radioactive waste that would be traveling through the county, which would be diluted plutonium, instead of contaminated items.

This is consistent with a notice of intent published by the department in December 2020.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) goal is to complete its missions safely and efficiently, including the continued reduction in the amount of transuranic waste at LANL and creating a safer environment for the surrounding communities,” a U.S. Department of Energy spokesperson said via email. “DOE notifies state authorities weeks in advance of all shipments to WIPP, which are done in strict accordance with federal rules and regulations and state law.”

On average, there are about seven waste shipments a week that travel to WIPP through Santa Fe County from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Idaho National Laboratory. In the coming months, pending any pandemic impacts, this number is expected to increase to 10 to 12 shipments per week.

“They have chosen a very unsafe way to deal with the surplus plutonium problem,” Weehler said. “It’s unsafe to our neighborhoods and I think, if people are going to be put at risk, like we are with this new mission, they deserve to know about it.”

Don Hancock, nuclear waste program director at the Southwest Research and Information Center, said the original type of waste being disposed of at WIPP were plutonium-contaminated items, such as gloves and other equipment that came into contact with the radioactive material.

Now, the plant is expected to dispose of the diluted plutonium, which is much more potent than contaminated material — and poses a greater safety risk. Hancock said they expect “a lot” of shipments to the plant and it’s hard to drill down an exact number.

This expansion is going to affect more than just Santa Fe County, it will impact people statewide, Weehler said. She said safety issues, such as preparing emergency responses for a nuclear waste spill if there’s an accident along the highway, will be left up to the local municipalities.

For Santa Fe County, this emergency response falls to its emergency management director who, Communications Coordinator Carmelina Hart said, has a background in these types of responses.

In the event of an emergency, the County’s role would be the initial evaluation, perimeter control and activation of all our state and federal partners who specialize in these responses,” Hart said in an email. “The County maintains relationships with the other agencies in the realm of emergency management. We have participated in full-scale exercises with the Department of Energy and local public safety teams.”

She said the county is reimbursed $15,000 annually by the Department of Energy’s WIPP program for emergency response preparations the county must maintain. The county also is working to identify additional training and equipment needs should nuclear waste transportation changes occur.

Santa Fe County Commissioner Hank Hughes said he has lived in Santa Fe before there was a WIPP project and has shared citizens’ concerns about nuclear waste transportation for many years. He said expanding WIPP’s mission might mean more nuclear waste traveling through Santa Fe County.

He said the county is as equipped as it can be to handle an accident. Since the transportation is considered classified information, local governments aren’t notified when nuclear waste is headed their way.

I think the concern is, while it’s very unlikely that there would be any leak of radioactive material — even if there was an accident — just increasing the number of trucks going through Santa Fe County raises that possibility,” Hughes said.

Since nuclear waste is handled on a federal level, it’s mostly out of the commission’s hands, he said. All the county can really do is make sure it’s prepared for an accident, and help its constituents express their concerns to the federal delegation.

And these worries haven’t gone unnoticed.

Maria Hurtado, spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M., said the office has received a handful of constituent calls regarding the nuclear waste transportation…………. https://www.abqjournal.com/2426206/more-nuclear-waste-may-be-heading-to-wipp-on-us-285.htmladvertisement

September 6, 2021 Posted by | safety, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Downwinders Look to Renew and Expand Radiation Exposure Compensation Act

Downwinders Look to Renew and Expand Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, Sierra Nevada Ally, By Brian Bahouth -September 4, 2021

Audio: a conversation with downwinder Mary Dickson   Between 1951 and 1992, U.S. scientists and engineers conducted 928 nuclear blasts at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), a roughly 1,400 square-mile federal reservation located 65 miles north of Las Vegas.  Eight hundred and twenty eight were underground tests and 100 atmospheric tests in which the atomic weapons were exploded at or above ground level, which releases highly radioactive material high into the atmosphere.

In total, at various locations around the globe, the Atomic Energy Commission and later the Department of Energy, conducted 1,054 atomic weapons tests.

Fallout from these many bombs circled the planet. If a person is in close proximity to a nuclear blast, the symptoms of acute radiation sickness are obvious, but outside the blast area, human senses do not apprehend radioactivity that can lodge in the fat of milk or meat and can linger for decades in the environment. 

The health effects of nuclear testing on those directly downwind of the events in eastern Nevada, Utah and Arizona became evident with cancer clusters and and other related illnesses. Many ranchers lost livestock.

After years of lawsuits and wrangling, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) became law in 1990 and provides one-time benefit payments to “persons who may have developed cancer or other specified diseases after being exposed to radiation from atomic weapons testing or uranium mining, milling, or transporting.” 

The U.S. Department of Justice administers RECA and has distributed over $2.4 billion in benefits to more than 37,000 claimants since its inception in 1990, but the RECA program is scheduled to sunset in 2022.

Geographically, RECA covers people living in a total of 22 counties with some in eastern Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. But research shows that parts of Idaho and Montana saw radioactivity impacts on par with Nevada, Utah and Arizona. Many places in North America realized toxic levels of radiation. Fallout from the tests travelled around the globe.

U.S. Senator from Idaho, Mike Crapo has been a long-time advocate for downwinders. In a recent newsletter to constituents, he said he’s working on bi-partisan legislation that would renew and expand the dimensions of RECA to include many more states. 

Work is in progress with stakeholders to determine the best path forward to reintroduce the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments, which expands coverage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to include victims in Idaho among states impacted by exposure to fallout from nuclear weapons testing.”………….

“The more I started  researching and the more I started following that story, the more I thought, ‘my government did this to me,’” Mary Dickson said. “I’m a casualty of the Cold War.

“My sister, at the time, was ill with an autoimmune disease, and she and I started making a list of all the people in our childhood neighborhood who had cancer or tumors. It didn’t take long before, in a four or five block area, we had about 54 people on that list …

“And we just thought, ‘OK, yeah, something happened to us. Something happened to us, something happened …”……… https://www.sierranevadaally.org/2021/09/04/downwinders-look-to-renew-and-expand-radiation-exposure-compensation-act/

September 6, 2021 Posted by | health, Legal, politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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