The US withdrawal puts an end to a landmark arms control pact that has limited the development of ground-based missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers and is sparking fears of a new arms race.
“Russia is solely responsible for the treaty’s demise,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement Friday announcing the US’ formal withdrawal from the Cold-War era nuclear treaty……..
The new US missile test, which CNN reported Thursday, is expected to take place in the next few weeks …… the Pentagon said in March that this ground launched missile could be ready for deployment within 18 months. The administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2020, released in February, included $96 million for continued research and development on INF range missile systems……..
The end of the INF pact leaves the US and Russia with just one nuclear arms agreement, the New START Treaty, which governs strategic nuclear weapons and delivery systems for each side. If New START isn’t renewed or extended by 2021, the world’s two largest nuclear powers would have no limits on their arsenals for the first time in decades.
President Donald Trump’s ambivalent comments about New START and national security advisor John Bolton’s well-known dislike for arms control treaties have given rise to deep concern about a new nuclear arms race.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told reporters Thursday that the INF Treaty’s expiry means “the world will lose an invaluable brake on nuclear war. This will likely heighten, not reduce, the threat posed by ballistic missiles.”
For downwinders of bomb testing, plans for compensation to redress past harms makes for tricky politics. Aria AlamalhodaeiAug. 2, 2019, The atomic bomb was born in the desert. In the early hours of July 16, 1945, after a spate of bad weather, a 20-kiloton plutonium-based nuke referred to as “the gadget” detonated near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Firsthand testimonies of the test, codenamed Trinity, converge on the uncanny axis of awe and dread. The Manhattan Project’s Chief of Field Operations, General Thomas Farrell, wrote that “the strong, sustained, awesome roar … warned of doomsday and made us feel that we puny things were blasphemous.”
The bomb produced a massive cloud column that drifted in several directions, dusting large swaths of the surrounding region with radioactive snow – fallout that settled on buildings, plants, and animals, and that continued to permeate the air as invisible particulate in the weeks and months that followed. Five years later, the Nevada Test Site was established to continue the work that Trinity set alight.
Although the mushroom cloud became the icon of American nuclear activity in the 20th century, the harms of these bombs did not fade with their dimming fireballs. No group in the U.S. understands this better than the downwinders, communities throughout the American Southwest and beyond who were exposed to the fallout of the military’s domestic nuclear test program.
In 1990, the U.S. government passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which provided financial remuneration to downwinders who had contracted cancer or other illnesses linked to radiation exposure. (The law also provided compensation for certain on-site test participants and uranium miners.) As of April 2018, the program had awarded more than $2.2 billion to some 34,370 claimants.
As the law was written, however, only downwinders in specific counties in Arizona, Utah, and Nevada were eligible for compensation. Even residents of New Mexico, the site of the Trinity test, were excluded. Since the law was passed, studies and fallout reconstructions have suggested that the health impacts of the nuclear tests likely extend to areas as far away as Idaho, Montana and Guam. Residents in those far-flung locales have provided vivid testimonies of glowing dust, strange maladies befalling livestock, and cancer clusters ravaging whole families.
For more than a decade, civic groups have lobbied lawmakers, unsuccessfully, to open RECA to a broader population of downwinders. That Congress has so far balked at those proposals is a testament to many factors; legislative decisions are informed not only by science but by moral and political calculus. But lawmakers’ inability to come to terms on who suffered, and on who deserves reparations for that suffering, points to a little discussed weak spot of modern politics: its uneasy relationship with uncertainty.
RECA’S COMPACT DELIMITATION OF “affected areas” was based on dose estimates produced by the Department of Energy’s Off-Site Radiation Exposure Review Project — a complicated calculation that drew from atmospheric transport models, reconstructions of fallout patterns, and reports of dosimeters and other radiation recorders. The bill was amended once, in 2000, to include a larger population of uranium workers and to expand the time frame, eligible diseases, and geographic locations covered. Two years later, in response to a congressional mandate, the Health Resources and Services Administration commissioned the National Research Council (NRC) to review the RECA program and determine if additional populations should be covered. Their final report was published in 2005. Based in part on mortality and disease-incidence data on atomic bomb survivors in Japan, uranium miners in the U.S., and Utah schoolchildren exposed to fallout from the Nevada Test Site, the committee concluded that in most cases involving downwinders who had been excluded from RECA, “it is unlikely that exposure to radiation from fallout was a substantial cause to developing cancer.”
But radiation epidemiology is a science of uncertainty, and tracing a person’s illness to a single exposure event can be challenging even in seemingly clear-cut cases. Although high doses of radiation are known to lead to disease and death, the effects of lower doses are far less predictable. Moreover, an individual’s radiation dose — the amount of radiation that he or she internalizes — depends on the person’s age, sex, diet, and pre-existing risk factors; weather conditions; and the characteristics of the nuclear event itself. Extrapolating results from one nuclear event to another, as the NRC study did, is bound to introduce some error.
Consider the Trinity test, which has been consistently ignored by lawmakers. According to the Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment (LAHDRA), conducted in 2010 for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, previous efforts to determine exposures from Trinity ignored the specific characteristics that distinguished it from all other subsequent tests. Unlike tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site, the Trinity “gadget” detonated only 100 feet from the ground. At this height, more organic material would’ve been swept into the explosion and returned to the earth as fallout. Another compounding factor was the relative inefficiency of the device. Of the 13 pounds of fissile material contained in the device, only about 2.6 pounds exploded; the rest was dispersed into the environment, where it remained radioactive.
The LAHDRA report also faulted previous studies for failing to adequately account for internal exposure, caused by the inhalation or ingestion of radioactive material. Research shows that internal exposure is significantly more harmful to the human body than the external exposure that occurs, say, when X-rays or other high-energy radiation penetrate the skin. Internal dosages are influenced by occupation, diet, local environment, and other sociodemographic factors. Any assessment that does not account for those factors is incomplete. And, according to the LAHDRA report, no assessment has properly accounted for the internal radiation dosages experienced by residents near the Trinity site.
In the case of the Trinity test, there’s reason to believe that sociodemographic factors would have been significant. During the 1940s, New Mexican communities were largely agrarian; most people were farmers or ranchers who grew their food, hunted and fished, and drank water collected from cisterns or holding ponds. If those sources were contaminated, residents would likely have been at an increased risk for radiation-linked illnesses.
LAST SUMMER, MEMBERS OF THE NEW MEXICO community organization Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium (TBDC), along with representatives from the Navajo Nation, argued in a Senate Judiciary hearing for amending RECA. Stated TBDC co-founder Tina Cordova, “The New Mexico downwinders are the collateral damage that resulted from the development and testing of the first atomic bomb.”
Their appeals appear to have fallen on receptive ears. This March, a bipartisan coalition of U.S. Senators, including New Mexico Senators Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, reintroduced Senate Bill 947 (S. 947), “Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments of 2019.” It is the most recent in a long line of bills that attempt to expand the RECA’s coverage. Among other changes, it seeks coverage for downwinders in New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and Guam. A companion was introduced in the House in July.
Meanwhile, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is currently conducting a three-phase study on the diet and lifestyles of mid-century New Mexicans. The models generated in this study may help scientists draw firmer links between present day cancer cases and the Trinity test. In an email, NCI spokesperson Michael Levin confirmed that the results of the study are anticipated to be published in late 2019.
Like other epidemiological studies of its size, the NCI’s study has been expensive to run and frustratingly time-intensive. And time is precisely what many downwinders feel they don’t have. More than 70 years has passed since the Trinity test. Many downwinders have passed away or are battling cancers and other diseases. Over time, it becomes increasingly difficult to demonstrate that a disease was caused by nuclear fallout rather than, say, cigarettes or bad luck.
The government, meanwhile, plods along at its own pace, unconstrained by the length of a single lifetime or the distressing span between a diagnosis and its terminal conclusion. In response to a news article about S.947 posted to the Idaho Downwinders public Facebook page, one commenter wrote, “The government are just waiting for all of us to die off so they won’t have to be bothered with it.”
In its 2005 review of the RECA law, the National Research Council stated that, although scientific recommendations were meant to inform policy, the “attendant policy decisions must come from the larger body of citizenry” and “applying this new scientific knowledge may require additional societal value-based decisions.” This is particularly true of probability-based information on cancer epidemiology. When there is simply not enough data available to definitively estimate risk, the question of compensating the citizens who live in the long shadow of the nuclear testing era becomes a moral one: How much uncertainty can we stand?
Demise of US-Russian Nuclear Treaty Triggers Warnings, VOA News , By Charles Maynes, July 31, 2019 “……… “Gorbachev and Reagan had the goal of arms reduction and they did not allow themselves to be pushed off track,” Palazhchenko says.
“[It was] definitely a huge step forward. Two great nations, two nuclear superpowers have finally been able to stop the arms race in at least two categories of nuclear weapons.”
With the agreement, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. formally renounced the development and deployment of ground-launched missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.
Both sides were still armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy one another — and the rest of the planet. But George Shultz says the INF’s elimination of short- and medium-range arsenals made the world infinitely safer in one critical regard — time……….
the short-range weapons also magnified the risks of what some called a potential “Euroshima.”
Where once the Cold War threat consisted of missiles lobbed across oceans, the new quick delivery missiles incentivized a first strike and immediate response. There was little time to verify whether an attack was real — or a false alarm.
Fear of the superpowers stumbling into nuclear Armageddon gripped the European public. Thousands marched in opposition to the U.S. missiles — a factor that increasingly influenced Washington’s own decision-making.
“We were negotiating not only with the Soviets but the European public,” recalls Shultz. “Who would want a nuclear missile on their soil? It makes you a target.”
Indeed, public opposition in Europe — and a desire to grab the moral high ground — drove President Reagan to embrace a concept called the “Zero Option.”
The idea? That when it came to negotiating over intermediate and short-range nukes, Reagan wouldn’t just push for the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to limit their arsenals. They’d demand both sides give up everything.
Russian proverb
Critical to selling the idea to skeptics were intensive inspections — with Reagan often citing an old Russian proverb: doverai no proverai. Trust but verify.
“The INF treaty contains in it the most clear verification provisions — onsite inspections!” Schultz says. “People said we could never get that but we did.”
Over the next three years, inspectors observed as both sides destroyed their arsenals — over 800 missiles by the U.S. and nearly double that from the Soviet side.
Viktor Litovkin, a military journalist who covered the events for the the Soviet daily Izvestia newspaper, remembers watching as Soviet engineers carried out the treaty’s provisions — destroying missile after missile with tears in the eyes. ………
INF 1987-2019 (RIP)
Today, the Trump administration argues it is the INF Treaty that has now outlived its use.
Last October, President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, John Bolton, traveled to Moscow to deliver the news: The U.S. would leave the INF agreement amid long-standing U.S. accusations that Russia was violating the treaty………..
Russian President Vladimir Putin soon followed suit — announcing that Russia, too, was leaving the pact.
Barring a last-minute reprieve, the INF treaty expires Aug. 2. Both sides have vowed to develop weapons once banned under the INF.
Warren, Bullock spar over ‘no first use’ nuclear policy, The Hill
BY REBECCA KHEEL – 07/30/19Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D) sparred Tuesday night over her proposed “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons during the Democratic debate.
In defending the proposed policy, Warren argued for diplomatic and economic solutions to conflict, saying “we should not be asking our military to take on jobs that do not have a military solution.”
But Bullock opposed that proposal, saying, “I don’t want to turn around and say, ‘Well, Detroit has to be gone before we would ever use that.’”
Warren is the lead sponsor of the Senate version of a bill that would make it U.S. policy not to use nuclear weapons first.
It has long been the policy of the United States that the country reserves the right to launch a preemptive nuclear strike.
Backers of a no first use policy argue it would improve U.S. national security by reducing the risk of miscalculation while still allowing the United States to launch a nuclear strike in response to an attack.
During the debate, Warren argued such a policy would “make the world safer.”
“The United States is not going to use nuclear weapons preemptively, and we need to say so to the entire world,” she said. “It reduces the likelihood that someone miscalculates, someone misunderstands.”
By William Lambers, July 31, 2019Growing up in Massachusetts, during the Carter and Reagan presidencies, I was one of many little kids worried about nuclear war. In Maine, 10-year old Samantha Smith was also deeply concerned. Her mother encouraged her to write to the Soviet leader Yuri Andropov in 1982.Samantha did, in a hand written letter, telling Andropov: “I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not?…..God made the world for us to share and take care of. Not to fight over or have one group of people own it all. Please lets do what he wanted and have everybody be happy too.”
Samantha mailed her letter, probably not expecting a reply. But months later she got the surprise of her life.
Samantha’s letter was printed in the Soviet newspaper Pravda. Then she got a personal reply from Andropov, inviting her to the Soviet Union. Samantha was on TV too, talking about what she wanted most of all: peace.
Samantha toured the Soviet Union in July of 1983, meeting Russian kids, and became an ambassador for peace and nuclear disarmament. She believed people of rival nations could get along and did not want war. Samantha also visited Japan to reinforce its desire to eliminate the nuclear weapons, which they had suffered in the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Samantha tragically lost her life in a plane crash in 1985. I remember hearing about the shocking news. Samantha’s spirit has never been forgotten.
This is so important because there is a complacency that has set in when it comes to nuclear weapons. Current leaders are dragging their feet in reducing the nuclear threat. There are still about 14,000 nuclear weapons in the world according to the Arms Control Association. The U.S. and Russia have about 90 per cent of the nukes.
Shouldn’t we all be worried about them today, too? There is still the risk of nuclear war, accidental launch or nuclear terrorism. How long do we want to live with this danger?
Billions of dollars are poured into nuclear weapons each year. Wouldn’t we rather spend this money on fighting hunger, poverty, disease and climate change?
The Move the Nuclear Weapons Money Campaign wants to end nuke spending and use it toward the benefit of humanity. The danger of nuclear weapons is shared by every person, every country. Everyone can take part in this goal of nuclear disarmament, much like Samantha encouraged.
I see examples of this idealism today when working with the CTBTO youth group, whose passion is to achieve the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This treaty would end nuclear testing forever, helping pave the road for elimination of all nukes.
Samantha taught us your voice matters and you can make a difference in ridding the world of nuclear weapons and achieving peace for all.
William Lambers is the author of Nuclear Weapons, the Road to Peace, and Ending World Hunger.
Congressional report finds Tom Barrack tried to buy Westinghouse as he sought a related government post
A billionaire friend of Donald Trump pursued a plan to buy Westinghouse Electric Corp – even as he lobbied Trump to become a special envoy and promote the company’s work on nuclear power in Saudi Arabia, a congressional report released on Monday.
While Tom Barrack failed in both efforts, the report provides fresh evidence of the ease with which some corporate and foreign interests have gained access to the US president and other senior members of his administration.
Documents obtained by the Democratic-led House oversight committee raise “serious questions about whether the White House is willing to place the potential profits of the President’s friends above the national security of the American people and the universal objective of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons”, the report said.
The report is the second from the panel’s investigation into the plan to construct 40 nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East. The plan was supported by Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn; Barrack, Trump’s inaugural committee chairman; and a consortium of companies led by retired US military commanders and former White House officials called IP3.
One company was Westinghouse, the only US manufacturer of large reactors, which was bought out of bankruptcy by Brookfield Asset Management last August.
The report comes alongside a number of other investigations into the administration being conducted by the panel chaired by the US representative Elijah Cummings – including into the use of personal texts and emails for official business by Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner.
Monday’s report was based largely on thousands of documents provided by unidentified private companies. The White House, the report said, provided no documents, while other federal agencies submitted some.
The committee may subpoena White House documents, it said.
Documents showed that Barrack negotiated with Trump and other White House officials to seek “powerful positions”, including special Middle East envoy, as he took steps to profit from the civil nuclear scheme he advocated.
A previous committee report, published in February, said efforts to advance the nuclear power scheme began during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump officials have continued meeting with IP3 even though White House lawyers in January 2017 instructed staff to cease work on the plan over concerns that Flynn was breaking conflict of interest laws, according to that report. Flynn, fired by Trump in February 2017, advised IP3 while serving on his campaign and transition team, said both reports.
White House lawyers also worried that promoters of IP3’s so-called “Middle East Marshall Plan” sought to transfer US nuclear know-how to Saudi Arabia even as they pushed back on Riyadh’s behalf against certain safeguards, the reports said. Known as the “Gold Standard”, the safeguards are designed to prevent nuclear weapons development. IP3 called the standard a “total roadblock”, Monday’s report said.
A Barrack spokesman said the billionaire had been cooperating with the oversight committee and had provided it with requested documents. Barrack’s investments and business development in the region were for a “better aligned Middle East”, he said. “This is not political, it is essential.“
The White House and IP3 did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Group Takes First Step Toward Repealing Ohio Nuclear Bailout, WOSU
ByANDY CHOW • JUL 30, 2019Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts has filed its first round of signatures with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office to hold a referendum on the law that bails out nuclear plants and scraps green energy policies.
If their petition language is approved they will start collecting signatures to put the issue on the 2020 ballot in November. Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts would need 265,774 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.
The new law, created through HB6, would create a new 85 cent charge on monthly electric bills for residential ratepayers. Commercial and industrial ratepayers would also see a new fee which will generate $150 million for FirstEnergy Solutions’ two nuclear plants, Davis-Besse and Perry.
FirstEnergy Solutions has been seeking a significant subsidy from Ohio lawmakers for several years, saying it was one of the only ways to avoid shutting down both plants.
That new charge on electric bills creates an additional $20 million for existing solar farms.
The law also props up two struggling coal plants through language that allows utilities to charge customers up to $1.50 a month to subsidize the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation’s two coal plants, Kyger Creek in Gallia County and Clifty Creek in Madison, Indiana.
A bought, gerrymandered Ohio Legislature has just handed a much-hated $150 million/year public bailout to two dinosaur nuke reactors primed to explode.
It also bails out two filthy 50-year-old coal burners and guts programs for increased efficiency.
But a possible repeal referendum could reverse all that—-and have a serious impact on the Trumpsters who pushed it—-in the 2020 election.
Here are some basics:
X The 42-year-old Davis-Besse reactor near Toledo and 33-year-old Perry, east of Cleveland, are both dangerously crumbling.
X Neither can compete with wind, solar, gas or increased efficiency.
X Both would shut immediately in a free market environment.
X Like all nuke reactors, both emit substantial quantities of heat, radiation and carbon.
X Both threaten the entire north coast and Great Lakes region with a radioactive apocalypse.
X Neither can get private disaster insurance.
X Their owner, FirstEnergy (FE) of Akron, is bankrupt.
X The utility stands to gain some $150,000,000/year at the expense of ALL Ohio electric consumers, not just those in its territory. .
X FE’s top seven execs are paid roughly $25,000,000/year; CEO Chuck Jones gets $9,500,000.
X In 2003 FE blacked out 50,000,000 people.
X Davis-Besse’s infamous 2002 “hole-in-the-head” came when boric acid ate nearly all the way through the reactor pressure vessel.
X In 1986 (as the Challenger blew up) Perry became the first US reactor to be damaged by an earthquake; a 4.0 shock recently hit less than 25 miles away.
X A state-mandated 1986-7 study showed northern Ohio cannot be evacuated from a melt-down…and certainly not amidst an earthquake.
X Ohio’s North Coast is flat, blown by constant lake-based winds, criss-crossed with transmission lines and good turbine sites near the cities to be served.
X Local farmers are desperate for the income the turbines would provide.
X Some $4.2 billion in private capital is poised to pour into the region for wind farms creating thousands of jobs and lowering electric rates.
X Turbines in Lake Erie, plus land-based wind and solar farms, enhanced by batteries and efficiency, can provide all Ohio’s electricity far cheaper than from nukes and/or fossil fuels, creating far more jobs.
X But in 2014, with zero basis in health or environmental protection, FE’s bought legislators put in the Ohio Code a setback clause that has killed wind development in the state.
X Ohio now has far less installed wind capacity than neighboring Indiana, Michigan, New York or Pennsylvania, which have comparable wind resources but no such set-back clause.
X Ohio is a national leader in manufacturing wind turbine components, virtually none of which are deployed in Ohio.
X Perry & DB have been repeatedly bailed out dating back at least to 1999, when FE scammed a $9 billion “stranded cost” give-away.
X It was called a “stranded cost” bailout because FE complained even then the reactors could not compete in an open market.
X This latest bailout was directly pushed by Trump, at least one of whose co-conspirators personally lobbied key legislators for it.
X Ohio is roughly 50/50 Republican/Democrat, but the GOP has heavily gerrymandered majorities in both houses of the Legislature.
X In 2018 FE targeted a dozen GOP legislative primaries, buying at least 11 bailout votes.
X This latest bailout bill could not have passed without votes from key corporate Democrats.
X A strong statewide grassroots movement arose to oppose the bailout.
X An overwhelming majority of testifiers before the Legislature were opposed.
X A strong majority of the state’s newspapers was also opposed.
X All were ignored by Democrats and Republicans alike.
X Efforts are now underway to put a referendum on the fall 2020 ballot.
X If filed within 90 days, the bailout will be put on hold until the vote.
X Polls show a strong majority of Ohioans oppose the bailout.
X If the bailout is on the 2020 ballot, it could encourage a strong opposition turnout that could hurt Trump and help tip the election in a key swing state.
X But Trump, FE and the nuke industry will spend unlimited millions to defeat it.
X It’s been widely known since at least 2004 that Ohio’s registration rolls and voting procedures are heavily rigged to favor the GOP and its corporate owners.
X The longer Perry and Davis-Besse operate the higher the odds they’ll obliterate Toledo, Cleveland and the entire Great Lakes region.
X Neither has private disaster insurance.
X FE can’t handle its radioactive wastes, evacuate the region when disaster strikes or credibly maintain the reactors in their current (deteriorating) state.
Should the referendum get on the ballot, it could help take down Trump and save the region from an apocalyptic catastrophe, as well as economic ruin. Should it fail, the odds on a major nuclear catastrophe along the shores of Lake Erie are too high to contemplate.
The stakes could not be higher.
—————
Harvey Wasserman is co-author of KILLING OUR OWN: THE DISASTER OF AMERICA’S EXPERIENCE WITH ATOMIC RADIATION (free on line) and SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH at www.solartopia.org.
An excellent article, explaining Deep Isolation, and thoroughly outlining the global problem of radioactive trash. What a pity, then, that this article, and its title, mindlessly accept the current dogma about nuclear power being the solution to climate change!. To believe this is to ignore nuclear’s serious problems, and especially the fact that the thousands of nuclear reactors required would never be built in time to have any effect on global warming – even if that claim were true – which it isn’t.
WHAT TO DO WITH THE DEADLY RADIOACTIVE WASTE? ensia, 31 July 19
The Deep Isolation Texas demonstration
“………Chernobyl’s reactor No. 4 site will remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years. In July 2019, 33 years after the explosion, 200 metric tons (220 tons) of uranium, plutonium, liquid fuel and irradiated dust was finally encased below an enormous 36,000-metric-ton (40,000-ton), €1.5 billion steel and concrete structure taller than the Statue of Liberty. The new sarcophagus will last about 100 years — after which it will deteriorate and future generations will have to decide how to dismantle and store it permanently.
Skip forward to Cameron, Texas, on January 16, 2019. This was a nerve-wracking day for Liz Muller, co-founder of California startup technology company Deep Isolation and her father, Richard Muller, professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and now chief technology officer at Deep Isolation.
The father-daughter team had invited 40 nuclear scientists, U.S. Department of Energy officials, oil and gas professionals, and environmentalists to witness the first-ever attempt to test whether the latest oil-fracking technology could be used to permanently dispose of the most dangerous nuclear waste.
At 11:30 a.m., the crew of oil workers used a wire cable to lower a 30-inch (80-centimeter)-long, 8-inch (20-centimeter)-wide 140-pound (64-kilogram) canister — filled with steel rather than radioactive waste — down a previously drilled borehole. Then, using a tool called a “tractor” invented by the industry to reach horizontally into mile-deep oil reservoirs, they pushed it 400 feet (120 meters) farther away from the borehole through the rock.
Five hours later, the crew used the tractor to relocate and collect the canister, attach it to the cable and pull it back to the surface — to the cheers of the workers. Until then, few people in the nuclear industry believed this could be done.
By avoiding the need to excavate large, expensive tunnels to store waste below ground, the Deep Isolation team believes it has found a solution to one of the world’s most intractable environmental problems — how to permanently dispose of and potentially retrieve the hundreds of thousands of tons of nuclear waste presently being stored at nuclear power plants and research and military stations around the world.
“We showed it could be done,” Elizabeth Muller says. “Horizontal, directional drilling has come a long way recently. This is now an off-the-shelf technology. Using larger canisters, we think about 300 boreholes with tunnels up to 2 miles (3 kilometers) long would be able to take much of the U.S.’s high-level nuclear waste. We think we can reduce by two-thirds the cost of permanent storage.” ……In 80-odd years of nuclear power, in which more than 450 commercial reactors, many experimental stations and tens of thousands of nuclear warheads have been built, great stockpiles of different levels of waste have accumulated.
Depending on how countries classify waste, only about 0.2–3% by volume is high-level waste, according to the World Nuclear Association, a London-based industry group that promotes nuclear power. Mostly derived from civil reactor fuel, this is some of the most dangerous material known on Earth, remaining radioactive for tens of thousands of years. It requires cooling and shielding indefinitely and contains 95% of the radioactivity related to nuclear power generation.
A further 7% or so by volume, known as intermediate waste, is made up of things like reactor components and graphite from reactor cores. This is also highly dangerous, but it can be stored in special canisters because it does not generate much heat.
The rest is made up of vast quantities of what is called low-level and very low level waste. This comprises scrap metal, paper, plastics, building materials and everything else radioactive involved in the operation and dismantling of nuclear facilities.
The consensus is that around 22,000 cubic meters (29,000 cubic yards) of solid high-level waste has accumulated in temporary storage but not been disposed of (moved to permanent storage) in 14 western countries, along with unknown amounts in China, Russia and at military stations. A further 460,000 cubic meters (600,000 cubic yards) of intermediate waste is being stored, and about 3.5 million cubic meters (4.6 million cubic yards) of low-level waste. Some 34,000 cubic meters (44,000 cubic yards) of new high-level and intermediate waste is generated each year by operating civil reactors, says another nuclear industry group, the World Nuclear Association (WNA).
The U.S., with 59 nuclear power plants comprising 97 working civil reactors each generating at least several tons of high-level waste per year, has around 90,000 metric tons (99,000 tons) of high-level waste awaiting permanent disposal, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Although it’s impossible to come up with a global total because of differences in how quantities are measured and reported, and with some inventories kept secret, other countries harbor significant amounts of waste as well.
Many Ideas
In the early days of nuclear power, waste of any sort was barely considered. British, U.S. and Russian authorities, among others, dumped nuclear waste, including more than 150,000 metric tons (160,000 tons) of low-level waste at sea or in rivers. Since then, billions of dollars have been spent trying to identify how best to reduce the amount produced and then store it for what may be eternity.
Vertical boreholes up to 5,000 meters (16,000 feet) deep have also been proposed, and this option is said by some scientists to be promising. But there have been doubts because it is likely to be near impossible to retrieve waste from vertical boreholes…….
Only Finland is close to completing a deep repository for high-level waste. In May, work started on an “encapsulation” plant where waste will be packed inside copper canisters that will be transferred into 400- to 450-meter (1,300- to 1,500-foot)-deep underground tunnels. But doubt has been cast on the long-term safety of the canisters.
“The problem is intractable,” says Paul Dorfman, founder of the Nuclear Consulting Group, a group of around 120 international academics and independent experts in the fields of radiation waste, nuclear policy and environmental risk. “The bitter reality is that there is no scientifically proven way of disposing of the existential problem of high- and intermediate-level waste. Some countries have built repositories, some plan them. But given the huge technical uncertainties, if disposal does go ahead and anything goes wrong underground in the next millennia, then future generations risk profound widespread pollution.”
The bipartisan bill follows the revelation that a longtime Trump advisor was pushing for lucrative nuclear deals with Riyadh.
BY ROBBIE GRAMER JULY 30, 2019 A bipartisan group of lawmakers is introducing new legislation aimed at restricting the transfer of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, the latest sign of growing congressional backlash to the Trump administration’s close relationship with the wealthy Gulf nation.
The bill, put forward by Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, would bar the U.S. Export-Import Bank from financing the transfer of nuclear technology and equipment to Saudi Arabia, absent nuclear cooperation agreements, and adopting restrictive international standards to safeguard against nuclear proliferation. The Export-Import Bank plays a key role in funding the export of U.S. nuclear energy equipment and technology abroad.
“We should never allow nuclear material to fall into the wrong hands, and certainly the [Saudi] crown prince and this regime have demonstrated they can’t be trusted,” said Van Hollen in a phone interview.
The legislation comes on the heels of a bombshell new report from a House oversight committee that alleges a longtime associate of U.S. President Donald Trump, the wealthy businessman Thomas Barrack, was using his relationships in the White House to advance lucrative business deals on nuclear power in Saudi Arabia and stood to profit from the efforts.
The report, released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Monday, “exposes how corporate and foreign interests are using their unique access to advocate for the transfer of U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia,” Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Democratic chairman of the committee, said in a statement.
Van Hollen and Graham’s bill, according to a draft obtained by Foreign Policy, would bar the Export-Import Bank from funding such transfers to Saudi Arabia unless Riyadh renounces uranium enrichment and reprocessing, establishes a nuclear cooperation agreement in line with the Atomic Energy Act that regulates civilian nuclear energy, and adopts additional safeguard protocols in line with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Republican Sen. Jerry Moran and Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley are also co-sponsoring the bill.
The legislation would also require the bank to report to Congress details of any agreement on nuclear transfers to Saudi Arabia. One such proposal is already underway. The Export-Import Bank in 2018 received an application to finance U.S. exports for a proposed nuclear power plant in Saudi Arabia, according to an email sent by a senior Export-Import Bank official to Senate staff, obtained by Foreign Policy. “The application is in the early stages of review,” the official wrote in the email.
While Saudi Arabia has plans to develop an extensive nuclear power program, its government thus far “has demonstrated little willingness to accept strong non-proliferation measures” the draft legislation reads.
Critics of the Trump administration say it is not requiring Saudi Arabia to use the so-called “gold standard” in a nuclear cooperation agreement, which requires a foreign country to commit to not using transferred nuclear technology to make nuclear weapons.
Van Hollen said the Trump administration has not been transparent with Congress on its push to transfer nuclear technologies to Saudi Arabia. “This administration’s been secretly moving ahead to try to transfer nuclear technology to the Saudis without appropriate oversight and without appropriate conditions,” he said. When Congress asks for more information, “they’ve been totally opaque, they’ve been dragging their feet, they’ve not been providing information,” he said.
The Trump administration has locked horns with Congress for months over the United States’ relationship with Saudi Arabia in the wake of Riyadh’s role in the deadly conflict in Yemen and Saudi officials’ roles in the murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year.
I do love the way that they trivialise the danger and massive tax-payer expense involved in the production and use of plutonium, for Mars travel etc.
The silly headline about bunnies says it all
Move Over, Energizer Bunny! NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover Just Got Its Nuclear Batterym Space.com By Elizabeth Howell 1 August 19
NASA’s Mars 2020 rover is fueling up for the Red Planet. NASA’s next spacecraft on Mars is getting a nuclear battery to do science on the Red Planet.
The Mars 2020 rover will soon be fueled using a multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which is essentially a battery to keep it warm and productive on its mission in search of signs of habitability on Mars.
Mars 2020 isn’t alone in using nuclear power, as a host of other NASA spacecraft — 27 in all — have also used nuclear power. Some examples include the Voyager missions in interstellar space, the New Horizons mission that went past Pluto, and Curiosity — Mars 2020’s predecessor rover on the Red Planet.
Production of plutonium-238 — a radioactive isotope of plutonium that will fuel the Mars 2020 rover — was stopped for awhile in the U.S. in the late 1980s, then restarted in 2011 in a joint effort between NASA and the Department of Energy. The isotope is the main source of energy for spacecraft that cannot rely on solar power, usually because the craft is too far from the sun, or on a world where the sunlight is too weak to generate enough power.
Environmental Groups Call For Unified Voice Against Nuclear Waste In Mountain West, Wyoming Public Media, ByNOAH GLICK 1 AUG 19 Environmental activists are calling for a united voice in protesting the Department of Energy’s recent shipment of nuclear waste through our region.
Earlier this month, the Department of Energy sent a shipment of nuclear waste from Tennessee to southern Nevada. The shipment was incorrectly labeled as low-level waste, but it was actually mixed with waste that needs treatment before disposal. Nevada officials accused the agency of trying to sneak the material into the state illegally.
But is interim storage really interim?……. the communities that give the OK to build an interim storage facility may end up having the waste stuck in their backyards for decades to come.
“Until there is an idea of a long-term repository,” said Maria Korsnick, CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, at a recent Senate hearing, “anybody that raises their hands for that consolidated interim storage [site] is, de facto, the long-term” site.
Finding a repository for San Onofre plant’s nuclear waste is a difficult task L A Times,ROB NIKOLEWSKI
JULY 27, 2019, SAN DIEGO — Earlier this month, Southern California Edison — the operators of the now-shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant — resumed transferring heavy canisters filled with spent fuel assemblies from wet storage pools to a newly constructed dry storage facility on the plant’s premises. Continue reading →
A Dead Man Was Cremated in Arizona Without Anyone Realising He Was Radioactive, Science Alert PETER DOCKRILL, 28 JUL 2019
In 2017, a 69-year-old man with pancreatic cancer went to hospital with abnormally low blood pressure. Sadly, he died only two days later, and his remains were cremated.
What nobody at the hospital or the crematorium knew, was that this hadn’t been the man’s only recent trip to hospital. ust one day earlier, in fact, he had been injected with a radioactive compound at another hospital to treat his tumour – and when his mortal remains were incinerated, this radioactive and potentially dangerous dose of lutetium Lu 177 dotatate was still inside his body.
This alarming case, reported in a research letter published in February this year, illustrates the collateral risks potentially posed by on average 18.6 million nuclear medicine procedures involving radiopharmaceuticals performed in the US every year.
While rules regulate how these drugs are administered to living patients, the picture can become less clear when those patients die, thanks to a patchwork of different laws and standards in each state – not to mention situations like the 69-year-old man, whose radioactive status simply slipped through the cracks.
“Radiopharmaceuticals present a unique and often overlooked postmortem safety challenge,” researchers from the Mayo Clinic explained in a case note.
“Cremating an exposed patient volatilises the radiopharmaceutical, which can then be inhaled by workers (or released into the adjacent community) and result in greater exposure than from a living patient.”……..
Given more than half of all Americans eventually get cremated, postmortem management of individuals who receive radioactive drugs is an area the US health system needs to work on, the researchers say.
This includes better ways of evaluating radioactivity in deceased patients (prior to them being cremated), and also standardising ways of notifying crematoriums about their clients.
After all, nobody really has any idea how often this is happening.
As nuclear scientist Marco Kaltofen from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, who wasn’t involved with the research, told BuzzFeed News: “They only happened to catch this one case because normally they don’t look.”
Editorial: Self-regulation of nuclear power plants? What could go wrong? St Louis Post Dispatch. 28 July 19, The idea of self-policing and minimizing government regulatory oversight worked so well for Boeing and its still-grounded 737 Max 8 jetliner fleet, the Trump administration now wants to expand those same powers to the nation’s aging nuclear power plants. What could possibly go wrong?
The industry insists that self-policing can work and that operators of the 90-plus nuclear plants across the country don’t need the kind of rigorous federal inspections that have been required annually or once every two years under previous administrations. Under plans now being contemplated, inspections would be reduced to as little as once every three years.
A Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff report, recently made public, recommends cutting back on nuclear reactor inspections to improve efficiency and save money. Competition in the energy-generating industry has grown much stiffer with the increased use of cheaper natural gas and renewable sources…….
Rare is the industry that welcomes heavy regulation and rigorous federal inspections. But history is rife with examples of how badly things can go wrong when the government steps back and allows companies in high-risk industries to police themselves.
Boeing faces billions of dollars in losses after two of its 737 Max 8 jetliners crashed. The Federal Aviation Administration’s acting administrator, Daniel Elwell, acknowledged before Congress in May that the agency had cut back on staff inspections and relied on manufacturers like Boeing to conduct their own inspections.
After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Congress imposed heavy regulations on the offshore oil industry to prevent any repeat of the explosion that killed 11 and sent millions of barrels of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. The Trump administration is working to cut those regulations back so the industry can return to policing itself.
Likewise, the administration worked with Republicans in Congress to reverse banking-industry regulations imposed after the 2007-2008 financial-industry meltdown that prompted the Great Recession — again on the premise that the industry is better off self-regulating.
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