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Nuclear Rubberstamping Commission rushes to approve Holtec’s New Mexico nuclear waste plan

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has categorically denounced the Holtec project and all other proposals to store nuclear waste in the area.

there are “no plans of ever removing” the waste. “We see no reason,” they said, “to rush a decision that affects generations of New Mexicans during a pandemic on behalf of an international, for-profit corporation.”

New Mexico’s nuclear rush,  A massive nuclear waste site near Carlsbad is seemingly on a fast track. Can the company behind it be trusted?   Searchlight New Mexico, By Sammy Feldblum and Tovah Strong|February 3, 2021

This article was reported in collaboration with the Institute of American Indian Arts’ journalism program.

For most New Mexico businesses, the arrival of COVID-19 wreaked havoc, caused shutdowns or threatened doom. But for one enterprise — potentially one of the world’s largest nuclear waste sites — the pandemic offered an unusual opportunity.

A long-planned nuclear waste storage facility in the southeastern New Mexico desert was rushed through the approval process during the pandemic, according to New Mexico’s congressional delegation, environmentalists and other opponents.

Typically, project foes would have been able to voice their disapproval at Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearings around the state. The coronavirus brought an end to such public gatherings, however, so New Mexico lawmakers asked the NRC to pause the hearings.

Instead, the agency switched to online meetings — and shut out dissenters in the process.

“There is a large population of individuals living in New Mexico without internet or phone access” — and the virtual hearings required both, said environmental activist Leona Morgan of the Nuclear Issues Study Group. A Diné woman who protests what she calls nuclear colonialism, Morgan said that many people couldn’t join the meetings because they didn’t have robust broadband connections, a common problem in tribal areas and remote parts of New Mexico. Continue reading →

February 4, 2021 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Although Biden is pro-nuclear, there’s a chance that the new Nuclear Regulatory Commission might get out of bed with the nuclear lobby.

NRC has been too deferential to a nuclear industry eager to reduce the cost of operating nuclear plants while keeping aging plants online.

Nuclear has another friend in Biden, but changes at the NRC could mean more scrutiny ahead, Utility Dive . 1 Feb 21,  Matthew Bandyk

Nuclear power is in a period of transformation, and so is the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On Jan. 23, President Joe Biden appointed NRC Commissioner Christopher Hanson, a Democrat, as the new chairman of the agency. Hanson replaces Kristine Svinicki, a Republican who was designated by President Donald Trump to lead the commission days after his 2017 inauguration, and left Jan. 20, ending a 3-2 Republican majority on the commission……..

And now, while the industry faces an administration that sees nuclear as an important source of carbon-free power  [ carbon-free – this is a lie] , the NRC under Biden is not likely to have the same regulatory approach as the commission did under Trump.  ……

Environmental groups say NRC has been too deferential to a nuclear industry eager to reduce the cost of operating nuclear plants while keeping aging plants online. Jeffrey Baran, the sole remaining Obama appointee on the commission, has echoed these criticisms across a number of issues, such as the new safety rules for reactors based on lessons learned from the 2011 Fukushima incident and the process for evaluating advanced reactors.  ……..

Biden enters the White House with one of the most explicitly pro-nuclear agendas of any president. His climate plan calls out nuclear as a zero-carbon technology [ but it’s NOT zero-carbon] that has a role to play in addressing climate change, and says his administration will look at ways to overcome the cost, safety and waste disposal challenges for nuclear power.

Based on his campaign’s policies, Biden’s presidency “bodes well” for nuclear power, Doug True, the chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the main advocacy organization for the industry, said in an interview…….

Subsequent license renewal

A top priority of the nuclear industry continues to be extending the lifetime of existing nuclear plants, …….

Over the past several years the NRC started accepting applications from nuclear plants to remain open for 80 years. The commission is also considering whether it should begin developing a framework for licensing plants to run for up to 100 years, holding the first public meeting on that topic on Jan. 21.

No U.S. nuclear plant had ever been licensed to operate beyond 60 years until Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point reactors received a second license renewal from the NRC at the end of 2019, allowing operation for 80 years. Exelon’s Peach Bottom plant in Pennsylvania got permission to operate up to 80 years a few months later. These approvals came despite objections from environmental groups that the NRC was failing to do its duty by not requiring these plants to undergo more extensive reviews of the potential environmental and safety risks from 80 years of operation.

The NRC rejected a challenge to the Turkey Point relicensing process filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Friends of the Earth. Baran dissented, saying the commission should evaluate the groups’ position that Turkey Point cannot rely on a review of the environmental impacts of relicensing the reactors that was from 2013 and not specific to the site, and that the plant must instead perform a new review.

NRDC and Friends of the Earth have appealed the NRC’s decision on Turkey Point, and that challenge is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The nuclear watchdog group Beyond Nuclear brought a similar challenge against the Peach Bottom relicensing, and Baran once again dissented when the NRC released its order in November 2020 rejecting the group’s claim, but this time, he was joined by Hanson, who had been appointed to the commission after the Turkey Point decision.

The dissent of Baran and Hanson “conveys that a Democratically-led commission is at least more open to taking the hard looks at these license extensions that [the National Environmental Policy Act] demands,” said Paul Gunter, reactor oversight project director at Beyond Nuclear. A “hard look” would mean performing new environmental assessments of issues related to the aging of a nuclear plant, such as whether components of the plant have been embrittled by exposure to radiation over the course of decades, according to Gunter.

Dominion’s North Anna and Surry reactors in Virginia are next in line to potentially receive 80-year licenses. In addition, last November, NextEra Energy applied for license extensions up to 80 years for both of its reactors at the Point Beach plant in Wisconsin, and Duke Energy has told the NRC it intends to apply for similar extensions for the three reactors at its Oconee plant in South Carolina later this year.

Beyond Nuclear is still reviewing whether or not it will file more challenges to the environmental reviews of plants going for 80 year licenses, according to Gunter. An NRDC spokesman said that given the group’s active litigation on the mater, it cannot comment on how the change in the NRC leadership could affect future relicensing challenges.

The future of nuclear technology

Another priority for the NRC that will continue under the Biden administration is the consideration of new types of reactors that are intended to represent a leap forward for nuclear technology …….

The commission is wrestling with the question of how much of the safety requirements that apply to existing power reactors, such as the need to maintain evacuation zones, strict security procedures and more, should apply to advanced reactors. It also recently announced it is seeking public comments on how the process for licensing new reactors can be made overall more efficient……….

The NRC is expected to make many future decisions about the extent to which advanced reactors should be subject to existing regulations. One issue that has not been decided yet but could be voted on by the new commission, according to Merrifield, concerns the security measures that advanced reactors must follow, such as how much security staff a reactor must maintain.

The commission is under pressure to transform its treatment of advanced reactors — under the 2019 Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, by this summer, the NRC must report to Congress on how it has established a “technology-inclusive regulatory framework” that eases the path to approval for advanced reactors.

Safety regulations

Another area where opposing views inside and outside the NRC have clashed is over nuclear plant safety and whether or not the commission is mitigating the risk of severe accidents at the existing nuclear fleet to a reasonable level.

“A general trend toward deregulation and streamlined regulation…accelerated under Svinicki, for sure,” according to Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a group focused on creating “a nuclear-free, carbon-free world.” He said “the industry is desperately trying to reduce regulation to reduce operating costs.” 

Nuclear plants have a financial incentive to reduce the amount of inspections because “they are billed for every hour that inspectors are on site,” said Lyman, of UCS.

Baran has also expressed concern that the NRC is easing off safety regulations. One of his most strident dissents came in 2019 when he said that a decision approved by a majority of the commission “guts” the U.S. safety response to Fukushima because the majority did not require plants to prepare for Fukushima-level disasters based on the most recent evaluations of the earthquake and extreme weather threats posed to individual plants……….  https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuclear-has-another-friend-in-biden-but-changes-at-the-nrc-could-mean-more/593609/

February 4, 2021 Posted by | politics, safety, USA | Leave a comment

Rapacious nuclear company Holtec: its dodgy record on safety, finance and lack of transparency

New Mexico’s nuclear rush.  A massive nuclear waste site near Carlsbad is seemingly on a fast track. Can the company behind it be trusted? Searchlight, By Sammy Feldblum and Tovah Strong|February 3, 2021

-” ………………There really is no fixed date on a repository,” said Rod McCullum of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group. In the absence of a permanent storage place, the conversation has turned to interim storage sites that could save companies money until a final destination is established.Enter Holtec. The company was formed in the 1980s to design spent-fuel storage technology for nuclear plants. By the early 2000s, Holtec had secured contracts to provide specialized dry storage casks for a never-built interim facility on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation in Utah and the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Sequoyah Nuclear and Browns Ferry Nuclear plants. By 2018, Holtec operated branches in seven countries, including Ukraine and Spain.

In 2019, Holtec began acquiring decommissioned nuclear power plants. (Such plants can bring large profits, including whatever decommissioning funds are left over after they’ve been cleaned up.) Holtec purchased New Jersey’s Oyster Creek Generating Station; Massachusetts’ Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station; New York’s Indian Point Energy Center; and Michigan’s Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, as well as spent fuel from the former Big Rock Point Nuclear Power Plant.

But the company’s record was not without concern. Holtec has received an estimated nine violation notices since 2001 for failing to follow NRC quality assurance procedures, including rules meant to ensure that the company’s storage casks — the kind it would be using in New Mexico — consistently met safety standards.

The most recent violation occurred in 2018 when Holtec modified its casks without notifying the NRC, as mandated. The change was only discovered when workers preparing to load a cask at San Onofre Generating Station in California noticed a four-inch pin, meant to hold the fuel basket, loose at the bottom of the cask — an obvious manufacturing flaw. When asked for comment on the incidents, a Holtec spokesman told Searchlight that the company is an industry leader in quality assurance.

Holtec has run into other problems as well. An investigation conducted in 2010 by the Tennessee Valley Authority into suspected overbilling revealed that the company had bribed a TVA employee in order to secure a contract. In 2007, the employee pleaded guilty to concealing more than $54,000 received from Holtec. In the wake of the investigation, the TVA ordered the company to pay a $2 million fine, open its operations to outside monitors and face a largely symbolic 60-day ban from doing federal business — the first debarment in TVA history.

In 2014, Holtec failed to mention that debarment on tax credit application forms. The misrepresentation initially went unnoticed, allowing the company to receive $260 million in tax credits from the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA), a story first reported by ProPublica and WNYC.

In 2019, the NJEDA announced it would investigate Holtec’s use of tax credits, prompting the company to sue the agency for withholding money. (The NJEDA declined to answer questions about the investigation’s status, saying it did not comment on matters related to pending litigation.)

Holtec’s use of offshore banking has also come under scrutiny. According to leaked records called the Paradise Papers, Holtec has operated at least one shell corporation in Bermuda between 2005 and 2007. The records, which were obtained by the German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, listed Krishna P. Singh II as an officer: He is the son of Holtec CEO Krishna P. Singh. Several of the CEO’s other family members were also listed as officers, as was Niraj Chaudhary, director of the executive committee for Holtec Asia. An additional offshore company in Bermuda that operated during the same time period, Southampton Technologies Ltd., included nearly identical officers and was listed at the same address.

Holtec did not respond to questions from Searchlight about why the accounts were used and whether the company still keeps bank accounts in tax havens. The leaked records don’t reveal this information, either. But tax havens like Bermuda can allow companies to avoid paying taxes.

“There’s nothing inherently nefarious about [the accounts],” said Jack Blum, a national authority on international tax evasion and money laundering whose anti-corruption work contributed to the establishment of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. However, Blum told Searchlight, Holtec “is a closely held company that has a history of being controlled by its founders, and wherever it goes, it wants to keep its finances as secret as it can and its taxes as low as it can.”

In general, Blum said: “Companies that are dealing in nuclear materials are in a world where there’s very little transparency.” 

Holtec did not respond to questions from Searchlight about why the accounts were used and whether the company still keeps bank accounts in tax havens.  ……. https://searchlightnm.org/new-mexicos-nuclear-rush/

February 4, 2021 Posted by | Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

USA and Russia extend The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START Treaty) to 2026

February 4, 2021 Posted by | politics international, Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Radiation illnesses and COVID-19 in the Navajo Nation

Radiation illnesses and COVID-19 in the Navajo Nation, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, By Jayita Sarkar, Caitlin Meyer, February 3, 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic is wiping out Indigenous elders and with them the cultural identity of Indigenous communities in the United States. But on lands that sprawl across a vast area of the American West, the Navajo (or Diné) are dealing not just with the pandemic, but also with another, related public health crisis. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says COVID-19 is killing Native Americans at nearly three times the rate of whites, and on the Navajo Nation itself, about 30,000 people have tested positive for the coronavirus and roughly 1,000 have died. But among the Diné, the coronavirus is also spreading through a population that decades of unsafe uranium mining and contaminated groundwater has left sick and vulnerable.

In Indigenous lands where nuclear weapons testing took place during the Cold War and the legacy of uranium mining persists, Indigenous people are suffering from a double whammy of long-term illnesses from radiation exposure and the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, we have not witnessed in the mainstream media and policy outlets a frank discussion of how the two public health crises have created an intractable situation for Indigenous communities. The Diné are drinking poisoned water, putting them at risk for more severe coronavirus infections.

From 1944 until 1986, 30 million tons of uranium ore was extracted on Navajo lands. At present, there are more than 520 abandoned uranium mines, which for the Diné represents both their nuclear past as well as their radioactive present in the form of elevated levels of radiation in nearby homes and water sources. Due to over four decades of uranium mining that supplied the US government and industry for nuclear weapons and energy, radiation illnesses characterize everyday Diné life.

The water crisis Continue reading →

February 4, 2021 Posted by | health, indigenous issues, Uranium, USA, wastes | Leave a comment

How the nuclear industry will try to avoid decommissioning costs

They want to renew reactor licenses.  It’s not just for their immediate survival –   it’s also to take attention away from the astronomic costs of decommissioning nuclear reactors, and to avoid those cosrs during their lifetime (the lifetime of the companies, not the reactors).

Nuclear has another friend in Biden, but changes at the NRC could mean more scrutiny ahead, Utility Dive . 1 Feb 21,  Matthew Bandyk ”’……………Subsequent license renewal

A top priority of the nuclear industry continues to be extending the lifetime of existing nuclear plants, a necessary step to maintain nuclear power’s position as a major source of electricity generation. Many reactors have retired for economic reasons, with several more expected to close in 2021, and the construction of new reactors to replace them remains a herculean task.

Over the past several years the NRC started accepting applications from nuclear plants to remain open for 80 years. The commission is also considering whether it should begin developing a framework for licensing plants to run for up to 100 years, holding the first public meeting on that topic on Jan. 21.

No U.S. nuclear plant had ever been licensed to operate beyond 60 years until Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point reactors received a second license renewal from the NRC at the end of 2019, allowing operation for 80 years. Exelon’s Peach Bottom plant in Pennsylvania got permission to operate up to 80 years a few months later. These approvals came despite objections from environmental groups that the NRC was failing to do its duty by not requiring these plants to undergo more extensive reviews of the potential environmental and safety risks from 80 years of operation.

The NRC rejected a challenge to the Turkey Point relicensing process filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Friends of the Earth. Baran dissented, saying the commission should evaluate the groups’ position that Turkey Point cannot rely on a review of the environmental impacts of relicensing the reactors that was from 2013 and not specific to the site, and that the plant must instead perform a new review.

NRDC and Friends of the Earth have appealed the NRC’s decision on Turkey Point, and that challenge is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The nuclear watchdog group Beyond Nuclear brought a similar challenge against the Peach Bottom relicensing, and Baran once again dissented when the NRC released its order in November 2020 rejecting the group’s claim, but this time, he was joined by Hanson, who had been appointed to the commission after the Turkey Point decision.

The dissent of Baran and Hanson “conveys that a Democratically-led commission is at least more open to taking the hard looks at these license extensions that [the National Environmental Policy Act] demands,” said Paul Gunter, reactor oversight project director at Beyond Nuclear. A “hard look” would mean performing new environmental assessments of issues related to the aging of a nuclear plant, such as whether components of the plant have been embrittled by exposure to radiation over the course of decades, according to Gunter.

Dominion’s North Anna and Surry reactors in Virginia are next in line to potentially receive 80-year licenses. In addition, last November, NextEra Energy applied for license extensions up to 80 years for both of its reactors at the Point Beach plant in Wisconsin, and Duke Energy has told the NRC it intends to apply for similar extensions for the three reactors at its Oconee plant in South Carolina later this year. ……………..  https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuclear-has-another-friend-in-biden-but-changes-at-the-nrc-could-mean-more/593609/

February 2, 2021 Posted by | business and costs, politics, USA | 1 Comment

Fears that a USA ”interim” nuclear waste dump may become permanent

February 1, 2021 Posted by | USA, wastes | 2 Comments

USA preparing for war in space

SPACECOM’s New Vision Targets ‘Space Superiority’

“We must have fully integrated offensive and defensive operations across all of our services, as well as our partners,” says Army Gen. James Dickinson, SPACECOM commander.

Breaking Defense, By   THERESAHITCHENSon January 28, 2021 “……… “The intended audience is both internal and external,” Army Gen. James Dickinson told me in an interview yesterday. “Internally, the objective is to set the stage for SPACECOM personnel to develop and sustain a warfighting mindset necessary for our mission challenges in this new warfighting domain.”………

Space Superiority and Warfighting

Dickinson’s eight-page manifesto, “Never A Day Without Space: Commander’s Vision” — provided to Breaking D — was briefed to SPACECOM today. It will be the “baseline” for future development of subordinate SPACECOM planning guidance, campaign plans, operational plans and other organizational documents required to running the 18-month-old Combatant Command, Dickinson explained.

The general’s stress on the need for both ‘offensive and defensive’ operations to achieve space superiority is not new, even if it makes some US security experts — including some Democrats in Congress — a bit queasy. It is one of the first things his predecessor, Air Force Gen. Jay Raymond who now heads the Space Force, made clear when SPACECOM was stood up in August 2019……..

Unified Command Plan and Missions

As Breaking D readers were first to learn, the revised UCP sent by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley to President Trump included a number of changes designed to delineate the role of SPACECOM — designated as a new geographic command with an area of responsibility (AOR) from 100 kilometers above the Earth to, well, infinity and beyond in theory —  vice the 10 other Combatant Commands. These include giving SPACECOM the lead in deciding who gets priority use of communications satellites during combat, and what targets missile warning and space surveillance sensors are tasked to monitor. Trump signed the revised 2020 UCP Jan. 13, a spokesperson for the Joint Staff confirmed……..

Dickison elaborated during his conversation with Mitchell Institute Dean Dave Deptula that SPACECOM now has three primary missions: “One, our enduring, no-fail mission to enable warfighting operations in other domains. Two, our future mission as global SATCOM manager and global sensor manager. And three, our current new mission set compelling us to fight and win in the space domain in order to protect and defend our interests there.

“Additionally, this warfighting domain is growing, and this AOR is by far the biggest and is getting bigger, each day,” he added………

The ‘protect and defend’ mission, which would include any offensive action in a conflict, is carried out by the Joint Task Force Space Defense, commanded by Brig.  Gen. Tom James. ………

Despite the new UCP, however, Dickinson was coy with me about how exactly the decisions about who supports whom when are actually made, and at what level of the US military hierarchy. “Command decisions reside with the Combatant Commander,” he said, although “many of those decisions may be made well above us depending on the situation.”

Some of this, he said, is because such details remain classified. However, a number of sources intimately familiar with these issues tell me that a big problem is that there simply hasn’t yet been any agreements codified on how those decisions will be made. The hope is that the impending Joint Warfighting Concept, in which space plays a central role, will go some ways toward clarifying those questions…………   https://breakingdefense.com/2021/01/spacecoms-new-vision-targets-space-superiority/

February 1, 2021 Posted by | space travel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Biden’s nominee as Energy Secretary opposes Yucca Mountain as nuclear waste site

World Nuclear News 29th Jan 2021, The Biden Administration opposes the use of Yucca Mountain for the storage of used nuclear fuel and is committed to developing “safe and workable” alternatives, US President Joe Biden’s nominee for the position of energy
secretary has said. Jennifer Granholm made her remarks at a Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources hearing to consider her nomination, which was held on 27 January.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Biden-nominee-confirms-opposition-to-Yucca-Mountai

February 1, 2021 Posted by | USA, wastes | 1 Comment

Off to a good START — Beyond Nuclear International

Nuclear weapons will be limited, but they need to go away altogeth

Off to a good START — Beyond Nuclear International  

The US and Russia have extended the treaty, but it’s not about disarmament

   This story was prepared by Linda Pentz Gunter largely derived from information provided by ICAN 

The United States and Russia have agreed on extending New START for another five years.

Extending New START is an important action by these two countries after four years that saw both countries undermining arms control agreements. However, it is important to remember that it is not a disarmament step, but rather an extension of the current levels of nuclear arsenals. 

Nevertheless, it is a welcome development to see the new US administration and Russia return to where they left off four years ago rather than escalate. It also comes at an auspicious time, as the world has just witnessed the entry into force on January 22, 2021 of the first global treaty to ban nuclear weapons, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

The United States and the Russian Federation agreed on January 26, 2021 to extend the bilateral cap on U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) for five additional years. …………

New START is important for a number of reasons:

  • The extension of New START prevents backsliding on nuclear disarmament. However, additional steps will now be needed to make progress on disarmament. 
  • Since the United States and Russia first agreed to this current cap on nuclear arsenals in 2010, the international community has negotiated, adopted and brought into force a treaty banning nuclear weapons: nuclear weapons are illegal under international law.  So, even as the US and Russia may cap nuclear weapons expansion, they remain outlaw pariah states in the eyes of the world as long as they continue to hold onto nuclear weapons.
  • Throughout the time the New START agreement has been in place, Russia and the United States have spent billions each year to build new nuclear weapons systems. This is now banned under international law (although non-parties to the TPNW are not bound by it). Under current global pandemic conditions, this kind of spending is even more immoral and obscene.
  • With the New START quickly extended and the TPNW in force, the groundwork has been laid for significant disarmament advances in the coming four years. The nine nuclear armed states have no excuses not to walk that path. Nuclear disarmament need not seem daring but simply adherence to international law.

    • Simply staying at the current nuclear weapon levels will not be enough to protect the world from this catastrophic threat. One nuclear missile is one weapon too many. As studies have shown, even unleashing just 100 nuclear weapons (as India and Pakistan could do against each other) would result in global devastation, suffering and famine. Therefore, New START must be seen as just that; a start. But not enough until all nuclear weapons are abolished.
    • With the TPNW in force, there is a new international standard. Russia, the United States and all nuclear-armed nations must take active steps to move towards compliance with this international treaty and join it. 

  • To read more about the implications of the extension of the New START Treaty, please visit this page on the ICAN website.    https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2021/01/31/off-to-a-good-start/

February 1, 2021 Posted by | politics international, Russia, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Biden’s hawkish foreign policy could derail funds meant for health and the public good

February 1, 2021 Posted by | politics, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

A new USA administration, but the same threat of nuclear war

New administration but same threat of nuclear winter, By Matt Hoffmann News-Pres, JAN 30, 2021  

Even though we have a new presidential administration, the risk of nuclear and climate destruction is the same as it was last year, according to an organization that tracks threats to the survival of humanity.

A “Doomsday Clock” has been used by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists since 1947 to signal how close we are to nuclear war. The closer to midnight, the closer to nuclear winter. The clock also symbolizes other threats, like climate change.

“The hands of the Doomsday Clock remain at 100 seconds to midnight, as close to midnight as ever,” Dr. Rachel Bronson, president and CEO, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said this week. “The lethal and fear-inspiring COVID-19 pandemic serves as a historic ‘wake-up call,’ a vivid illustration that national governments and international organizations are unprepared to manage the truly civilization-ending threats of nuclear weapons and climate change.”

Brian Hesse, a professor of political science at Northwest Missouri State University, said the clock represents the threat of grave disaster. While the clock itself is theoretical, the threats have real-world consequences.

“For example, from an American standpoint the Department of Defense is already seeing rising sea levels are affecting the infrastructure of the largest naval base,” Hesse said. “What they thought they could spend on defending America now has to be diverted to dealing with infrastructure.”

Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, said the United States and Russia must stop “shouting at” each other.

President Joe Biden recently spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin, where the two discussed extending an arms reduction treaty, according to a summary of the call provided by the White House………..https://www.newspressnow.com/news/local_news/new-administration-but-same-threat-of-nuclear-winter/article_40db5254-60cc-11eb-9551-176bee34bb41.html

February 1, 2021 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Options for USA nuclear radioactive trash policy

Forging a Path Forward on U.S. Nuclear Waste Management: Options for Policy Makers, Columbia University,  BY MATT BOWEN |JANUARY 28, 2021

“……..A new report, part of wider work on nuclear energy at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, explains how the United States reached its current stalemate over nuclear waste disposal. It then examines productive approaches in other countries and a few domestic ones that could guide U.S. policy makers through options for improving the prospects of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste disposal going forward, including the following:

  • Create a new organization whose sole mission is nuclear waste management (and whose approach is consent-based). Since the 1970s, reports have noted that a single-purpose organization would have a number of advantages over a program residing within Department of Energy, which has multiple missions and competing priorities. Accordingly, Congress could pass legislation to create a separate nuclear waste management organization that has full access to needed funding and employs a consent-based approach to achieve greater support from state and local communities for the siting of facilities.


    • Improve the funding structure of the U.S. nuclear waste program.       The program was supposed to be self-financing, with owners of nuclear power plants paying into a Nuclear Waste Fund that would cover the costs of management and disposal. However, due in part to budget laws enacted in the 1980s and 1990s, a lack of access to needed funding has arisen. If the first option of creating a new organization is not achievable in the near-term, Congress could at least improve the waste program’s funding structure.

    • Pursue disposal of U.S. defense waste first. There could be greater public acceptance for the disposal of defense-related waste over commercial waste due to the national security missions involved and patriotic sensibilities. Momentum in one area of waste management could lead to the overall program’s advancement, as a successful endeavor for defense waste disposal would inform and encourage commercial waste efforts. Nuclear waste from the defense sector also has some technical characteristics — the inventory being bounded, smaller, cooler, and with less potential for reuse — that may argue for its disposal ahead of power plant spent nuclear fuel.

      • Prepare for a large-scale transportation program. To date, the transportation of nuclear waste has been very safe. However, there are additional steps the federal government could take to prepare for the eventual larger-scale transportation campaign of spent nuclear fuel to either a consolidated interim storage site or a geologic repository. Such options include amending the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to allow states to recover the full costs of planning and operations for transportation across their borders and ensuring an independent regulator has authority over the transportation regime to strengthen public confidence in the program.

      • Update generic regulatory standards for future geologic repositories. There are two sets of U.S. regulatory standards for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste disposal: one for Yucca Mountain and one for all other sites. The Environmental Protection Agency, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Department of Energy could resolve inconsistencies between regulations and ensure that new generic regulations for future disposal facilities are flexible enough to cover novel approaches (e.g., deep boreholes).

        • Negotiate an agreement with Nevada on Yucca Mountain. The U.S. government could pursue, concurrent with new siting efforts, negotiating an agreement with Nevada to investigate, for example, the disposal of a more limited waste inventory at Yucca Mountain. Nye County, which is where the site is located, sees a disposal facility there as potentially safe and is interested in the associated economic development. Nevada’s long-standing concerns regarding the project would have to be addressed to gain broader public support within the state.

        Read the full report here. https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2021/01/28/nuclear-waste-management-report/

January 29, 2021 Posted by | USA, wastes | Leave a comment

Biden to name Obama’s former adviser, Robert Malley, as envoy for Iran

Guardian 29th Jan 2021, The Biden administration is expected name Robert Malley, a former top adviser in the Obama administration, as special envoy for Iran, according
to multiple sources. Malley was a key member of former Barack Obama’s
team that negotiated the nuclear accord with Iran and world powers, an
agreement that Donald Trump abandoned in 2018 in the face of strong
opposition from Washington’s European allies.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/29/iran-deal-architect-robert-malley-biden-appoint

January 29, 2021 Posted by | politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Let’s not forget that President Biden is just as pro nuclear as Trump was

Progressive misgivings over nuclear unlikely to derail US strategy, Paul Day , ReutersEvents, Jan 26, 2021
The new U.S. Democratic leadership is making positive noises for the continuation, and possible expansion, of the previous administration’s own beefed up nuclear strategy despite the left’s traditional aversion to the technology, say those in the industry.  

 
In a last-ditch attempt to cement Donald Trump’s administration’s advances in the nuclear power industry, the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy put out its own ‘Strategic Vision’ on Jan.

The ambitious roadmap pushes for a continuation of technological advances and investigations for existing reactors, advanced reactors and advanced nuclear fuel cycles while rebuilding U.S. global leadership in nuclear energy technology.

The strategy, which some have said will likely be instantly dropped by the new administration for its own objectives, will probably be followed closely by President Joe Biden’s DOE, say others………
Part of the enthusiasm for the document, which came shortly after Trump signed an executive order that called for a revitalization of the U.S. nuclear energy sector and on the day the DOE’s Assistant Secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy Dr. Rita Baranwal stepped down from her post, is that it doesn’t stray far from previously agreed positions………

Five Goals 

The ‘blueprint’ lays out five goals, breaks down each into explicit objectives and lists timelines for performance indicators.

The first, ‘Enable continued operation of existing U.S. nuclear reactors’, calls to demonstrate a scalable hydrogen generation pilot plant by 2022 and begin replacing existing fuel in U.S. commercial reactors with accident tolerant fuel by 2025.

Meanwhile, the goal to ‘Enable deployment of advanced nuclear reactors’ sticks to plans laid out in the Advanced Reactors Demonstration Program (ARDP) including to demonstrate two U.S. advanced reactor designs through cost-shared partnerships with industry by 2028..  …… https://www.reutersevents.com/nuclear/progressive-misgivings-over-nuclear-unlikely-derail-us-strategy

January 28, 2021 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

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