The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday it’s considering a request from the U.S. Department of Energy to renew a license to store the radioactive debris from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.
The core of a reactor south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, partially melted in 1979. The commission says continuing to store the debris at the Energy Department’s 890-square-mile site in eastern Idaho that includes the Idaho National Laboratory will have no significant impact.
The license would be good through 2039, four years past an agreement the Energy Department has with Idaho to remove the high-level radio
Nuclear power pack: 3 Can’t miss STEM resources on nuclear energy, USA Office of Nuclear Energy SEPTEMBER 17, 2019 “………. DOE recently partnered with the American Nuclear Society and Discovery Education to develop high school and elementary curriculum.
Navigating Nuclear: Energizing Our Free World is packed with FREE K-12 resources to support educators who want to incorporate nuclear into their lesson plans. All activities and lesson plans are Next Generation Science Standard-aligned.
The middle school curriculum is ready for teachers to use. High school and elementary resources are under development and will be rolled out over the next two years, so stay tuned!
The DOE-sponsored curriculum will include new perspectives on computer science, computational thinking and culturally-responsive curriculum……..
Inspiring future generations of leaders, scientists, and engineers is what we’re all about at DOE. Our Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) supports students’ passion for nuclear by funding nuclear energy research and infrastructure projects at colleges and universities across the nation. …….. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-pack-3-can-t-miss-stem-resources-nuclear-energy
Panel is concerned that problems might reflect fundamental oversight shortcomings that have broader implications. The panel is concerned that recent glitches in atomic weapons may have broader implications, and senators want to get to the bottom of the issue. Separately, a congressional aide familiar with the issue said the problems will add hundreds of millions of dollars to the atomic weapons budget.
“The Committee is concerned that a recent technical challenge demonstrates a lack of systems engineering and highlights a lack of coordination and leadership focus, which in turn jeopardizes successful program execution,” the report says.
The document does not mention any particular programs or provide details on the nature of the technical challenges. But experts on nuclear weapons said the panel is almost certainly referring to problems with two new weapons: a bomb called the B61-12 and a modified submarine-launched warhead called the W-88.
In both those programs, problems with commercially manufactured electrical components have caused months of delays, U.S. government officials have publicly acknowledged.
In another sign of intensifying congressional concern over the programs, the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces plans to hold a hearing Sept. 25 on those two programs.
Senate appropriators suggested in their report that they are worried the delays in these programs may reflect fundamental oversight shortcomings and could cause ripple effects in other nuclear initiatives, such as keeping nuclear weapons out of terrorists’ hands, updating warship reactors and modernizing facilities.
On October 17, experts from NASA, Congress, and reactor companies will gather in the nation’s capital to discuss ongoing development of nuclear reactors for space missions and the potential security risks.
The program will feature Jeffrey A. Sheehy, NASA’s Chief Engineer in the Space Technology Mission Directorate. The keynote address will be delivered by Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL), the only physicist in Congress and a member of the House Science Committee.
Controversy centers on NASA’s choice of fuel for the reactor it tested in 2018 for use on a planetary surface: weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium. NASA scientists believe such uranium would enable smaller reactors, reducing launch costs. However, critics argue it could undermine decades of U.S. progress in reducing worldwide civilian commerce in this dangerous material, create a precedent that could help rogue countries obtain nuclear weapons, sharply increase security costs, impede NASA’s cost-saving collaboration with commercial partners who lack licenses for such uranium, and potentially disperse nuclear weapons material to adversaries in the event of a launch failure. They say that an alternative reactor fuel – low-enriched uranium, which is unsuitable for nuclear weapons – could reduce the security, economic, and political risks.
Last month, President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum on the launch of space nuclear systems, which highlighted the security risk: “Due to potential national security considerations associated with nuclear nonproliferation . . . The President’s authorization shall be required for Federal Government launches . . . when such systems utilize any nuclear fuel other than low-enriched uranium.” In June 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an appropriations bill that included an amendment by Rep. Foster, directing NASA to “work towards the development of a low enriched uranium (LEU) space power reactor.”
Trump’s Acting National Security Adviser Said Nuclear War With USSR Was Winnable
Questioning “mutual assured destruction,” Charles Kupperman called nuclear conflict “in large part a physics problem.” Huffington Post, By Nick Robins-Early , 16 Sept 19, President Donald Trump’s acting national security adviser, former Reagan administration official Charles Kupperman, made an extraordinary and controversial claim in the early 1980s: nuclear conflict with the USSR was winnable and that “nuclear war is a destructive thing but still in large part a physics problem.”Kupperman’s suggestion that the U.S. could triumph in a nuclear war went against dominant theories of mutually assured destruction and ignored the long-term destabilizing effects that such hostilities would have on the planet’s health and global politics.
Kupperman, appointed to his new post on Tuesday after Trump fired his John Bolton from the job, argued it was possible to win a nuclear war “in the classical sense,” and that the notion of total destruction stemming from such a superpower conflict was inaccurate. He said that in a scenario in which 20 million people died in the U.S. as opposed to 150 million, the nation could then emerge as the stronger side and prevail in its objectives.
His argument was that with enough planning and civil defense measures, such as “a certain layer of dirt and some reinforced construction materials,” the effects of a nuclear war could be limited and that U.S. would be able to fairly quickly rebuild itself after an all-out conflict with the then-Soviet Union.
“It may take 15 years, but geez, look how long it took Europe to recover after the Second World War,” Kupperman said. Referring to the Japanese city on which the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb in 1945, he also claimed that “Hiroshima, after it was bombed, was back and operating three days later.”
At the time,Kupperman was executive director of President Ronald Reagan’s General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. He made the comments during an interview with Robert Scheer for the journalist’s 1982 book, “With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush, and Nuclear War.”
The National Security Council did not immediately respond to questions on whether Kupperman, 68, still holds the same views of nuclear conflict as he did in the early 1980s. Kupperman’s seemingly cavalier attitude toward the potential death of millions of people was criticized at the time both by Democratic politicians and arms control experts.
It seems reasonable to suggest the crazies are in charge of the nukes,” Jeremy Stone, president of the Federation of American Scientists, wrote about Kupperman and his colleagues in 1984.
Contemporary nuclear experts similarly criticize Kupperman’s beliefs as wrongheaded and dangerous.
“Kupperman’s comments might as well have come straight from the script of (the film) ‘Dr. Strangelove.’ He was part of a group of defense analysts at the time who weren’t shy about sharing such views,” said Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, who first noted Kupperman’s views in a Twitter post in January when Kupperman was hired as the deputy national security adviser.
“The simple fact is that a nuclear war can’t be won and must never be fought,” Reif said.
But rather than being sidelined as a relic of Cold War hubris, Kupperman now holds one of the most powerful positions in the White House. Although his role is temporary, civil rights groups have also already called on him resign over his extensive ties to the Center for Security Policy, an anti-Muslim think tank founded by conspiracy theorist Frank Gaffney.
Gaffney is a prominent anti-Muslim activist who repeatedly promoted the conspiracy theories that members of President Barack Obama’s administration were working to enforce Islamic law in the U.S., that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated top levels of government and that Obama was secretly Muslim himself. Kupperman served on the board of directors for Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy between 2001-2010.
“CSP has continuously promoted Islamophobic conspiracy theories, and anyone, like Mr. Kupperman, who has so closely associated with them for so long is ― at the very least ― complicit in their brand of anti-Muslim bigotry and should not be entrusted with one of the highest-ranking security roles in the United States,” Council on American-Islamic Relations Executive Director Nihad Awad said Tuesday.
Before joining the NSA, Kupperman served as an informal adviser to Bolton and worked as a defense industry executive at Boeing and Lockheed Martin. He was a critic of the Iranian nuclear deal and in 2017 co-signed a letter to Trump backing Bolton’s plan to withdraw from the agreement.
Inside the US military’s $223 million ‘doomsday plane,’ capable of surviving a nuclear blast, Business Insider ABBY NARISHKIN, STEVE CAMERON,16 Sept 19,
If there ever were a nuclear war and all US military ground communication was destroyed, the US Air Force keeps a E-4B “Nightwatch,” nicknamed the “doomsday plane,” on alert 24/7.
The $US223 million militarised Boeing 747 is designed to survive a nuclear blast and would become the command and control centre for the US military’s most senior officials, including the US President, Secretary of Defence and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Originally designed in 1973, the E-4 series planes were thought to be the best way a president during the Cold War might survive a nuclear explosion.
Following is a transcription of the video:
Narrator: If there ever were a nuclear war and all US military ground communication was destroyed, this $US223 million plane would become the command and control centre for the US military’s most senior officials. This is the E-4B “Nightwatch.” It’s basically a flying war room designed to withstand a nuclear blast……. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/us-air-force-doomsday-plane-survive-nuclear-blast-2019-9?r=US&IR=T
By Associated Press, Wire Service ContentSept. 15, 2019, COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A former South Carolina chief justice will oversee all court cases around the pair of nuclear reactors abandoned during construction in South Carolina.
An order from the state Supreme Court says former Chief Justice Jean Toal will take over all lawsuits about the V.C. Summer nuclear project that lost billions of dollars
Circuit Judge John Hayes had been handling the cases and approved a settlement to a lawsuit by South Carolina Electric & Gas ratepayers that led to rebate checks for less than $100.
The order does not say why Toal is taking over.
Cases still pending include South Carolina’s electric cooperatives lawsuit against the minority partner in the project, state-owned Santee Cooper.
Toal was South Carolina’s first woman elected as Chief Justice, holding the office from 2000 to 2015.
[in 1992] Baverstock and his colleagues published a letter on their findings in the scientific journal Nature, in which they concluded, “the consequences to the human thyroid, especially in fetuses and young children, of the carcinogenic effects of radioactive fallout is much greater than previously thought.”
Now, after more than 30 years, U.N.-sponsored researchers have backed away from the 1992 UNSCEAR study by concluding that “studies of clean-up workers/liquidators suggest dose-related increases of thyroid cancer and hematological malignancies in adults,” as well as “increases in cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. If confirmed, these would have significant public health and radiation protection implications.”
The United States’ involvement with the Chernobyl aftermath was shaped largely, and shamefully, by the desire to avoid potential legal liabilities associated with the 166 U.S. open-air nuclear weapons tests in Nevada and the Marshall Islands. At the time of the Chernobyl accident, compensation radiation claims for injuries and deaths from bomb testing were looked upon by the nuclear weapons program as a dagger aimed at the heart of U.S. national security.
Much has been written about the strengths and flaws of Chernobyl—the HBO miniseries nominated for 19 Emmys that chronicles the catastrophe at the eponymous Russian nuclear power plant in 1986. In the mind of this reviewer, it’s a riveting if sobering television gem, and highly recommended. And to this newly enlivened debate over nuclear power we can now add Kate Brown’s book, Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future, a tour de force about the radiological aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. A science historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown peels away the layers of long-held mythologies—that in the end, the accident only killed 54 people, and that “radiation phobia” among the people who sustained heavy radioactive fallout was a bigger problem than any of the other health outcomes.
Brown, who is conversant in Russian, devoted years to extensive archival research (much of which was scattered and hidden from official attempts at confiscation). She conducted interviews with villagers, military officials, factory workers, medical doctors, Soviet nuclear experts, emergency responders, KGB operatives (who assumed control over much of the data from the accident), and international nuclear safety and radiation health experts. The result is a rich and deeply disturbing picture of the environmental perils of extensive and lasting nuclear contamination.
She digs prodigiously, much to the disfavor of defenders of nuclear power, into the widespread practice of secrecy and deception regarding the radiological harm from elevated, long-term, chronic exposures. Continue reading →
Nuclear sharing deal with kingdom could help U.S. companies
Perry indicates no change in Iran, Venezuela policies
Energy Secretary Rick Perry said he plans to meet with Saudi Arabia’s new energy minister Monday as the U.S. remains in talks with the kingdom for a deal to construct nuclear reactors there that could help the flagging U.S. domestic nuclear industry.
Nuclear Bailout Group Paying People To Follow Referendum Petitioners Radio WOSU
ByANDY CHOW 13 Sept 19,Generation Now, one of the well-funded groups in the fight over Ohio’s nuclear power plant bailout, is monitoring the referendum petition workers by putting their own people on the ground.
Generation Now was behind the pro-HB6 ads that would play around the state before the legislation was approved and signed into law. Now, they’re shifting their focus to fighting a potential referendum have workers follow petitioners to educate the voters. …..
Harold Chung, a referendum petition worker for Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts, called Dublin Police on September 10 to report that he was assaulted by one of Generation Now’s workers. Chung told police he tried to take a picture of the person who was following him, that person then slapped the phone out of his hand and shoved him.
ON THURSDAY, PRESIDENT Donald Trump did something truly shocking: He told the truth.
When asked why he fired John Bolton, his former national security adviser, Trump said:
He made some very big mistakes. When he talked about the Libyan model for Kim Jong Un, that was not a good statement to make. You just take a look at what happened with Gaddafi.
Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, said that Trump “is not ‘siding with Kim Jong Un’ when he points out, correctly, that Bolton’s surrender model of negotiations is a complete nonstarter for North Korea.” Trump’s statement has a deep significance, one that the Americans should consider carefully.
U.S. Department of Energy Awards $15.2 Million for Advanced Nuclear Technology,WASHINGTON, D.C. SEPTEMBER 10, 2019 – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced funding selectees for multiple domestic advanced nuclear technology projects. Three projects in three states will receive varying amounts for a total of approximately $15 million in funding. The projects are cost-shared and will allow industry-led teams, including participants from federal agencies, public and private laboratories, institutions of higher education, and other domestic entities, to advance the state of U.S. commercial nuclear capability.
As reported by the Las Vegas Sun, a coalition of Nevadans — from Western Shoshone Indians, to environmentalists, to local, state, and federal officials — have come together yet again to express their adamant opposition to the scheme to dump 70,000 metric tons or more of highly radioactive wastes at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. This continues 32 years of resistance, ever since the 1987 “Screw Nevada” amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 singled out Western Shoshone land as the only site in the country to be further considered for an irradiated nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste permanent geological repository. In that time, more than a thousand environmental, and environmental justice, organizations have fought the dump at every twist and turn (see 750 of them listed here). Native Community Action Council secretary Ian Zabarte has achieved hard won, official intervening party status in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Yucca dump licensing proceeding, in his effort to defend Western Shoshone treaty rights. (The photo shows NCAC’s Zabarte at right, and Beyond Nuclear’s Kevin Kamps at left, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during a youth climate rally in 2018.)
As the Nevada Current reported about the recent forum, calls are growing for Democratic candidates for president to be bold and clear in their opposition to the Yucca dump. Nevada has the first Western presidential campaign caucus, coming just after the earliest contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. The Current reports: “At least five current Democratic presidential candidates — Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and [Kamala] Harris — have signed on to [U.S.] Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s [Democrat-Nevada] bill to force the federal government to request Nevada’s consent before storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. Julian Castro, Beto O’Rourke, and Pete Buttigieg have also expressed their opposition to the federal government’s proposal, while Andrew Yang has said he supports it.” The Trump administration is seeking to restart the Yucca Mountain dump project, which the Obama administration wisely cancelled as “unworkable” in 2010 (not to mention scientifically unsuitable, environmentally unjust, non-consent based, inter-generationally unjust, regionally inequitable, etc.!)
Sen. Elizabeth Warren pledges not to invest in nuclear energy and focus on renewables instead, MassLive, By Douglas Hook | dhook@masslive.com, 8 Sept 19, Sen. Elizabeth Warren made clear in a Sept. 4 climate town hall meeting that if she is successful in taking office as president, she will not invest in nuclear energy.
The Democratic presidential hopeful pledged to not only prevent the building of new power plants, but also said she would phase out all nuclear power by 2035 and replace it with renewables. After 52 years of producing energy, Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station closed its doors on May 31.
Warren was asked what her opinion on nuclear energy replacing fossil fuels are during the Climate Town Hall.
“[Nuclear energy] is not carbon based, but it has a lot of risks associated with it,” said Warren. “Particularly the risks associated with spent fuel rods.”
When toxic waste piles — either solid rock or liquid confined behind earthen dams — are left unaddressed, the potential increases for “catastrophic failure
WHILE ‘ZOMBIE’ MINES IDLE, CLEANUP AND WORKERS SUFFER IN LIMBO As the governor of West Virginia and other mine owners warehouse their operations and avoid cleanup, the Trump administration stifles attempts to write rules that could restrict the practice. Center for Public Integrity, 8 Sept 19
……….RADIOACTIVE LEGACY
Remnants of America’s nuclear past litter the Grants Mining District in northwest New Mexico: signs warning of radioactivity, a spiked drill bit outside the New Mexico Mining Museum in Grants, businesses offering to help retired miners get U.S. Department of Labor health benefits.
Mount Taylor — “Tsoodzil” to the Navajo Nation — towers over the landscape. At the base of the 11,305-foot-tall inactive volcano sits the Mount Taylor Mine, idled in 1990 and allowed to flood.
The heyday of Southwestern uranium mining lasted just 30 years. Much of the industry, including this mine, has since remained in standby.
The country’s last operational underground uranium mine shut in 2015, and open-pit mines haven’t produced in decades. Only one mill in Utah and four in-situ-leach operations, in which ore is dissolved belowground and pumped up, are still active. Two other mills and 15 in-situ-leach sites are either officially in standby or not producing. The American uranium industry employed only 372 people last year, down from 1,120 two decades earlier. Production from U.S. uranium mines fell 85 percent during that period, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
At current prices, mining uranium in the Four Corners remains untenable.
But now the Mount Taylor Mine is reopening, at least on paper.
…… the Jackpile-Paguate Uranium Mine, once the world’s largest open-pit uranium mine, is now a Superfund site. In the broader Four Corners region, the U.S. Department of Energy is supposed to clean up more than 20 such Cold War relics, from former mills to waste piles. Some leak arsenic, lead, uranium and other toxic substances into groundwater. Recently, hoofprints were found leading from an unfenced pollution control pond near Slick Rock, Colorado, indicating that cattle likely drink from it.
Just inside the southeastern corner of the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, an unsettling sign hangs from barbed wire: “DANGER. ABANDONED URANIUM MINE,” a pile of mine waste looming behind it. Residents here in the Red Water Pond Road Community are surrounded by two abandoned uranium mines and a mill…….
Living around or working in uranium mines can worsen, or even trigger, autoimmune disorders, kidney disease, respiratory issues, hypertension and cancer. A study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the University of New Mexico and Navajo agencies found that Navajo Nation citizens, including infants, had elevated levels of uranium in their bodies.
Paul Robinson, Southwest Research and Information Center’s research director, has tracked the industry for more than 40 years. While the New Mexico Mining Act mandates that waste rock and other infrastructure be stabilized before entering standby status, it allows operators to delay reclamation while mining is paused, he said.
“Leaving the wastes that are generated at a mine uncovered is one of the ways to ensure airborne or waterborne release,” Robinson said.
Thompson Bell, a member of the Navajo Nation who spent five years as a mechanic in a uranium mine, grew up here and returned for the study. He said many of his mining coworkers died from lung cancer. The sheep and cattle that used to graze here have all but disappeared, the flocks given up for fear of contamination.
“The thing about uranium, we found out: It destroys humans and land,” Bell said.
Opinion remains split locally about whether the return of relatively high-paying mining jobs — if that ever happened — would be worth the human and environmental consequences. Christine Lowery, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and a commissioner for the county where the Mount Taylor Mine is located, said she welcomes a cleaner economy.
“Those mines were open for one generation,” she said. “The legacy lasts forever…….
The federal government leaves it to the states to impose limits on uranium-mine idling. The resulting patchwork of state rules are largely anchored on a 147-year-old federal law aimed more at promoting mining than managing it.
Over time, uranium production has dropped, stockpiles remained large, nuclear power’s share of the country’s electricity production fell, and power plants bought more uranium from overseas. Still, mine owners hope for a revival…….
Modern surface mining in Central Appalachia has been linked to health problems ranging from cancer to birth defects. And in a 2012 study, Bernhardt estimated that surface mining impaired about one in three miles of southern West Virginia’s rivers.
But idling poses other risks, Bernhardt said. When toxic waste piles — either solid rock or liquid confined behind earthen dams — are left unaddressed, the potential increases for “catastrophic failure,” she said, even as opportunities to use the land for new purposes are delayed…..
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