Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 24th April 2018 , During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union manufactured
enormous quantities of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. When that era
ended, the United States and the newly formed Russian Federation began to
reduce their nuclear arsenals. Both nations possessed large stockpiles of
plutonium—a problem that posed both a sustained threat to the environment
and a risk of future nuclear weapons proliferation.
In 2000, the United States and Russia pledged to dispose of their excess plutonium in order to
mitigate the security concerns, safety risks, and storage costs. They
signed the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, which requires
each country to dispose of at least 34 metric tons of weapons plutonium.
Unfortunately, the agreement failed to solve the excess plutonium problem. Eighteen years later, the United States has been unable to develop a
successful strategy to safely, affordably, and permanently dispose of
plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons, despite a high degree of
industrial capability and technical expertise. Why has the United States
been unable to either implement its obligations under the disposition
agreement or execute its own policy? And how can the Plutonium Disposition
Program finally become effective? https://thebulletin.org/what-went-wrong-us-plutonium-disposition11733
IN 1961, AS JOHN F. Kennedy was inaugurated, Cold War tensions were running high, and the military had planes armed with nuclear weapons in the air constantly. These planes were supposed to be ready to respond to a nuclear attack at any moment. If the planes were already in the air, the thinking went, they would survive a nuclear bomb hitting the United States.
But one of the closest calls came when an America B-52 bomber dropped two nuclear bombs on North Carolina.
In January, a jet carrying two 12-foot-long Mark 39 hydrogen bombs met up with a refueling plane, whose pilot noticed a problem. Fuel was leaking from the plane’s right wing. The wing was failing and the plane needed to make an emergency landing, soon. But before it could, its wing broke off, followed by part of the tail. The plane crash-landed, killing three of its crew. (Five other men made it safely out.)
In the plane’s flailing descent, the bomb bays opened, and the two bombs it was carrying fell to the ground.
As it fell, one bomb deployed its parachute: a bad sign, as it meant the bomb was acting as if it had been deployed deliberately. It started flying through the seven-step sequence that would end in detonation. The last step involved a simple safety switch. When a military crew found the bomb, it was nose-up in the dirt, with its parachute caught in the tree, still whole. As the Orange County Register writes, that last switch was still turned to SAFE.
The second bomb had disappeared into a tobacco field. Only “a small dent in the earth,” the Register reports, revealed its location.
It took a week for a crew to dig out the bomb; soon they had to start pumping water out of the site. Though the bomb had not exploded, it had broken up on impact, and the clean-up crew had to search the muddy ground for its parts. When they found that key switch, it had been turned to ARM. To this day, it’s unclear why the bomb did not go off.
The crew didn’t find every part of the bomb, though. The secondary core, made of uranium, never turned up. Today, the site where the bomb fell is safe enough to farm—but the military has made sure, using an easement, that no one will dig or erect a building on that site.
LA Times 23rd April 2018,As crews demolished a shuttered nuclear weapons plant during 2017 in
central Washington, specks of plutonium were swept up in high gusts and
blown miles across a desert plateau above the Columbia River.
The releases at the Department of Energy cleanup site spewed unknown amounts of
plutonium dust into the environment, coated private automobiles with the
toxic heavy metal and dispensed lifetime internal radioactive doses to 42
workers.
The contamination events went on for nearly 12 months, getting
progressively worse before the project was halted in mid-December. Now,
state health and environmental regulators, Department of Energy officials
and federal safety investigators are trying to figure out what went wrong
and who is responsible. http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2018/04/why_was_plutonium_dust_left_to.html
Feds bash Hanford nuclear waste plant troubles, question DOE priorities, Tri City Herald, BY ANNETTE CARY, acary@tricityherald.com 2018RICHLAND, WA 26 Apr 18
Problems first identified six years ago continue the plague the multi-billion-dollar Hanford vitrification plant, according to federal investigators with the Government Accountability Office.
The Department of Energy and its contractor have not shown that the plant has the quality needed to operate safely when it starts treating some of the nation’s deadliest nuclear waste.
The contractor, Bechtel National, has not fully completed planned corrections, and the corrections it has made have not prevented continuing quality assurance problems, the GAO said.
The $17 billion plant has been under construction since 2002 to turn up to 56 million gallons of radioactive waste into a stable glass form for disposal. The waste is left from the past production of plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons program.
Its quality assurance program is intended to make sure that equipment, materials, workmanship and systems have the high quality — and quality that is verified through stringent recordkeeping — to make certain the plant will operate safely.
The GAO said that the Hanford DOE office responsible for the plant, the Office of River Protection (ORP), is under pressure to get part of the plant operating.
If serious quality assurance problems are identified, they could threaten the ability of ORP to meet cost and schedule targets, the report said.
Two ORP quality assurance experts said that both local DOE management and Bechtel place cost and schedule performance above identifying and resolving quality tracking issues.
“One quality assurance expert specified that ORP’s culture does not encourage staff to identify quality assurance problems or ineffective corrective measures,” the GAO report said.
“This expert said that people who discover problems are not rewarded,” it said. “Rather, their findings are met with resistance, which has created a culture where quality assurance staff are hesitant to identify quality assurance problems or problems with corrective measures.”
The expert compared the plant to the Zimmer Power Plant, a plant in Ohio that was never licensed because of unresolved quality assurance problems and a focus on schedule over construction quality, the report said.
The GAO recommended that ORP should revise its organizational structure so the quality assurance function is independent of its upper management.
In a written response to the GAO, Anne White, the new DOE assistant secretary for environmental management, said that the current ORP quality assurance reporting relationship meets all established requirements.
But White did concede that the report identifies some instances in which independence of quality assurance could be strengthened.
Stop-work orders recommended
In another of the three recommendations in the report, the GAO said the energy secretary should direct ORP to use its authority to stop work in areas in which quality assurance problems are recurring.
Work should not restart until the office’s experts can verify the problems are corrected and will not recur, the report said.
In December 2012 the ORP vitrification plant engineering division recommended that all activities affecting engineering design, construction, and installation of components be stopped because it could not be verified that completed work met quality and safety requirements for handling nuclear waste, the GAO report said.
Stopping work would help DOE avoid future nuclear safety and quality compromises and substantial rework, according to the engineering division.
Instead of stopping all work, ORP management halted only the work on facilities with the most significant technical challenges.
……DOE now is required to start operating part of the plant to start turning some low-activity radioactive waste into a stable glass form for disposal in 2023. Construction on parts of the plant that will handle high-level radioactive waste have been stopped since 2012.
There have been problems related to the delay in construction with components stored outside and affected by water, sand or animals. There also was a significant water leak at one of the large processing buildings in 2016, the GAO report said. http://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article209749064.html
Trump, Macron call for ‘new’ nuclear deal with Iran US President Donald Trump and French counterpart Emmanuel Macron called for a “new” deal with Iran Tuesday, looking beyond divisions over a landmark nuclear accord that now hangs in the balance. SBS News 25 Apr 18 Trump pilloried a three-year old agreement designed to curb Iran’s nuclear program as “insane” and “ridiculous”, despite European pleas for him not to walk away from the accord.
Instead, Trump eyed a “grand bargain” that would also limit Iran’s ballistic missile program and support for militant groups across the Middle East.
“I think we will have a great shot at doing a much bigger, maybe, deal,” said Trump, stressing that any new accord would have to be built on “solid foundations.”………
Macron, visiting Washington on a landmark state visit, admitted after meeting Trump that he did not know whether the US president would walk away from the nuclear deal when a May 12 decision deadline comes up.
“I can say that we have had very frank discussions on that, just the two of us,” Macron told a joint press conference with Trump at his side.
Putting on a brave face, he said he wished “for now to work on a new deal with Iran” of which the nuclear accord could be one part.
Trump — true to his background in reality TV — teased his looming decision.
…… Neither Trump nor Macron indicated what Iran would get in return for concessions on its ballistic programs or activities in the Middle East.Iran, meanwhile, has warned it will ramp up enrichment activities if Trump walks away from the accord, prompting Trump to issue a blunt warning.
Trump considers adding a military branch – for space, News Target , 04/21/2018 / By David Williams “……..President Trump himself has declared that creating an entirely new branch of the military, one that’s dedicated solely for matters of defense and war in space – is now in the cards.
Indeed, the POTUS said in a speech recently that the U.S. could benefit from the creation of a so-called Space Force, which would be built with a focus on preparing the country for space-related war efforts. Its existence would be in line with the idea that space is the “ultimate high ground” that needs to be protected at all costs.
According to the POTUS, space really is just like all the other areas that the current branches of the military are meant to protect. “My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air and sea,” he said during a speech to service members in San Diego. “We may even have a Space Force.”
The President shared the details of how the idea for this new military branch came to be. He said that he had been musing recently about the possibility of adding such a division to the military, in addition to the ones that already exist – Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, Marines, and Navy. “I said, ‘Maybe we need a new force. We’ll call it the Space Force,’” he said. “And I was not really serious. And then I said, ‘What a great idea. Maybe we’ll have to do that. That could happen.’”
It might seem like a joke or something that’s going to be impossible to do for now, but there are certainly those who support this idea in the military itself. It is said that the idea aligns quite well with the renewed focus of the military forces on maintaining U.S. space dominance.
….. According to Navy Vice Adm. Charles A. Richard, the deputy commander of U.S. Strategic Command, having a working space force could be beneficial in the same way that nuclear weapons are, by serving as deterrents. “Just as nuclear assets deter aggression by convincing potential adversaries there’s just no benefit to the attack, we have to maintain a space posture that communicates the same strategic message,” he explained. “I submit [that] the best way to prevent war is to be prepared for war, and we’re going to make sure that everyone knows we’re going to be prepared to fight and win wars in all domains, to include space.”…… https://www.newstarget.com/2018-04-21-trump-considers-adding-a-military-branch-for-space.html
Today is the day that net neutrality’s “slow and insidious” death at the hands of the Republican-controlled FCC officially begins, and Congress is facing urgent pressure to save the open internet before it’s too late.
With Monday marking 60 days after the FCC’s net neutrality repeal entered the Federal Register, parts of the GOP-crafted plan — spearheaded by agency chair and former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai — will now slowly begin taking effect, while some still need to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget.
Net neutrality backers in Congress, meanwhile, are still struggling to compile enough votes to repeal Pai’s new rules, despite the fact that they are deeply unpopular among the American public.
The Senate needs just one more vote to pass a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to restore net neutrality protections before it can move to the House, where it would face an uphill battle. An official vote in the Senate has yet to be scheduled, but could come in the next few weeks.
In a recent Twitter thread, the advocacy group Fight for the Future warned against sensationalistic headlines proclaiming that net neutrality will immediately be gone on Monday, noting that large telecom companies will ensure that the open internet’s death is as quiet and subtle as possible in order to minimize public backlash.
“The ISPs aren’t going to immediately start blocking content or rolling out paid prioritization scams. They know Congress and the public are watching them,” the group noted. “And that’s the worst part. What will happen is over time ISP scams and abuses will become more commonplace and more accepted. They’ll roll out new schemes that appear good on their face but undermine the free market of ideas by allowing ISPs to pick winners and losers.”
Westinghouse CEO opens up about collapse of 2000s ‘nuclear renaissance’, (Mainichi Japan) WASHINGTON— The CEO of the U.S. nuclear power firm Westinghouse Electric Co. — which used to be under the Toshiba Corp. umbrella and which filed for bankruptcy in March 2017 — has told the Mainichi Shimbun that the “nuclear renaissance” in the 2000s “was not realistic.”……..
Westinghouse Electric was acquired by Toshiba in 2006. At the time, nuclear power was gaining attention as a countermeasure to tackle global warming, with a spate of power plant construction projects emerging across the world, particularly in the U.S.
However, after a drop in demand for electricity caused by the global financial crisis triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, as well as the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant disaster in 2011, demand for new nuclear power plants has plunged worldwide.
Looking back at this time, Gutierrez acknowledges that the nuclear renaissance, whereby firms would build plants, never actually happened, and says that Westinghouse Electric senior management’s bold plans to build dozens of new plants across the world was not realistic…….
Since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, the world has been in a state of readiness for nuclear combat. In this secretive domain, mistakes and mishaps are often hidden: This week we’re telling the stories of five nuclear accidents that burst into public view. THE WAR WAS OVER—JAPAN HAD surrendered. The third plutonium core created by the United States, which scientists at Los Alamos National Lab had been preparing for another attack, was no longer needed as a weapon. For the moment, the lab’s nuclear scientists were allowed to keep the sphere, an alloy of plutonium and gallium that would become known as the demon core.
In a nuclear explosion, a bomb’s radioactive core goes critical: A nuclear chain reaction starts and continues with no additional intervention. When nuclear material goes supercritical, that reaction speeds up. American scientists knew enough about the radioactive materials they were working with to be able to set off these reactions in a bomb, but they wanted a better understanding of the edge where subcritical material tipped into the dangerous, intensely radioactive critical state.
One way to push the core towards criticality involved turning the neutrons it shedback onto the core, to destabilize it further. The “Critical Assembly Group” at Los Alamos was working on a series of experiments in which they surrounded the core with materials that reflected neutrons and monitored the core’s state.
The first time someone died performing one of these experiments, Japan had yet to formally sign the terms of surrender. On the evening of August 21, 1945, the physicist Harry Daghlian was alone in the lab, building a shield of tungsten carbide bricks around the core. Ping-ponging neutrons back the core, the bricks had brought the plutonium close to the threshold of criticality, when Daghlian dropped a brick on top. Instantly, the core reacted, going supercritical and Daghlian was doused in a lethal dose of radiation. He died 25 days later.
His death did not dissuade his colleagues, though. Nine months later, they had developed another way to bring the core close to that critical edge, by lowering a dome of beryllium over the core. Louis Slotin, another physicist, had performed this move in many previous experiments: He would hold the dome with one hand, and with the other use a screwdriver to keep a small gap open, just barely limiting the flow of neutrons back to the bomb. On a May day in 1946, his hand slipped, and the gap closed. Again, the core went supercritical and dosed Slotin, along with seven other scientists in the room, with gamma radiation.
In each instance, when the core slipped over that threshold and started spewing radiation, a bright blue light flashed in the room—the result of highly energized particles hitting air molecules, which released that bolt of energy as streams of light.
The other scientists survived their radiation bath, but Slotin, closest to the core, died of radiation sickness nine days later. The experiments stopped. After a cooling-off period, the demon core was recast into a different weapon, eventually destroyed in a nuclear test.
As state help fades for 2 nuclear plants, will Trump attempt rescue? Lancaster Online, 24 Apr 18, AD CRABLE | Staff Writer
With two nuclear plants in Pennsylvania now inching closer to the point of no return, it appears there is little political will for a financial life preserver on the legislative level.
“A bailout, subsidy-type approach that we’ve seen in New York, Illinois, now New Jersey — I’ve not been satisfied that is politically viable here in Pennsylvania,” state Sen. Ryan Aument said last Tuesday.
Aument spoke after a hearing with beleaguered utility leaders called by the House-Senate Nuclear Energy Caucus that the Landisville Republican helped form to come to the aid of nuclear plants. He was not available for additional comment Monday.
……..Exelon has said that without federal or state help, its Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Dauphin County will close in September 2019, idling more than 600 workers.
FirstEnergy Corp, which recently filed for bankruptcy, recently announced that without relief it would close its Beaver Valley nuclear plant near Pittsburgh in 2021, as well as two nuclear plants in Ohio.
……. Appeals to feds
FirstEnergy Corp. has taken the drastic step of asking the U.S. Department of Energy to declare an energy emergency to ensure profits for nuclear and coal plants.
DOE has indicated it is cool to such a move.
In January, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected a DOE proposal to approve rules to subsidize nuclear and coal plants to keep the nation’s power supply “reliable and resilient.”
But the Trump administration reportedly is considering a new initiative to make good on the president’s campaign pledge to protect the coal and nuclear power industries.
Bloomberg is reporting that President Trump is considering coming to the aid of struggling coal and nuclear by invoking a Cold War-era federal law that gives a president sweeping authority to nationalize the energy sector to make sure it is available in times of war or after a disaster.
The Defense Production Act was passed under the Truman administration and was used then to cap wages and impose price controls on the steel industry.
The White House Press Office did not respond to a request for comment.
At the Nuclear Caucus hearing in Harrisburg last week, representatives from Exelon, FirstEnergy and Talen Energy said that the federal government is not likely to act in time to save the nuclear plants, and they appealed for Pennsylvania legislators to act as several other states have.
Since the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, the world has been in a state of readiness for nuclear combat. In this secretive domain, mistakes and mishaps are often hidden: This week we’re telling the stories of five nuclear accidents that burst into public view. THERE ARE OBJECTS THAT WILL inevitably get lost: socks, hats, cheap headphones, attachments to households appliances. But some things you try harder to keep hold of: your wallet, your keys, America’s nuclear warheads.
It doesn’t always work out.
In 1956, for instance, a B-47 bomber was flying from Florida to an overseas base, with two nuclear cores on board. After meeting up with another plane to refuel, it disappeared. The U.S. military never found any trace of the plane, its crew, or the nuclear materials.
When the military does lose nuclear weapons, it’s rare that their location is so mysterious. More often, planes have jettisoned weapons during in-flight emergencies, for the safety of the crew, and the high explosives built into the bombs have gone off. (Conventional explosives set off a bomb’s nuclear reaction; in early designs, the radioactive cores of nuclear bombs were often kept separate, as a safety measure.) But on occasion the weapons do disappear.
Two years after the bomber went missing over the ocean, another B-47 was flying a simulated combat mission on the coast of Georgia, when a fighter plane collided with it. Both planes were damaged; the fighter pilot bailed out of his plane and landed in a nearby swamp. Before landing their busted plane, the crew of the B-47 dropped the nuclear weapon they were carrying into the water.
There was no explosion. But when the military searched the three-mile area around where the bomb was thought to land, they could find no trace of it. It’s thought that the weapon dove through about 15 or 20 feet of water and landed, nose-first, in the sandy bottom of the Wassaw Sound, near Georgia’s Tybee Island, a popular vacation spot.
It’s presumed to be there still, buried in the silt and sand. While a Congressional document from the 1960s indicates that the lost weapon had its plutonium core with it, the military says that it’s only a partial weapon. Even in that case, though, the lost warhead contains radioactive material: By the late 1950s, some weapons included a “secondary stage” of highly enriched uranium, meant to be set off by the initial reaction in the bomb’s core. The amount of uranium in this type of bomb isn’t publicly known.
Early in the 2000s, in response to local interest and Congressional prodding, a group of military agencies looked again for the bomb’s remains and considered what to do if they found it. The conclusion: Best to leave it in place. Unmoved, it should remain harmless; an attempt to remove it would put the clean-up crew in danger. If it did happen to go off by accident, “Even boats going over it would not even notice. They might see some bubbles coming out around them,” an Air Force representation told the Los Angeles Times.
An earlier US DOE funded site study of the site states that: “Mineral extraction in the area consists of underground potash mining and oil/gas extraction. Both industries support major facilities on the surface, although mining surface facilities are confined to a fairly small area…. Intrepid has rights to potash beneath the Site as shown in Appendix 2A, Map 9 and Figure 2.1.2-3. Mining has not progressed as far as Site….” https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1024/ML102440738.pdfWhile the dry salt lakes and potash mines suggest higher than normal corrosion rate for the 1/2 inch thick Holtec canisters, the location suggests sinkhole risk. The limited DOE funded study, which Holtec uses, denies the existence of karst, but this is hard to believe. Risk is exacerbated by the oil and gas wells and potash mining. The original DOE funded study states that “A producing gas and distillate well with associated tank battery is located near the communications tower…”
If “the requested CIS Facility license is issued by the NRC, Holtec subsequently anticipates requesting an amendment to the license to request authorization to possess and store an additional 500 canisters for each of 19 subsequent expansion phases to be completed over the course of years. Ultimately, Holtec anticipates that approximately 10,000 SNF canisters would be stored at the CIS Facility upon completion of all 20 phases…Phase 1 of the CIS Facility will include two HI-STORM UMAX pads that will allow storage of 500 canisters of SNF and GTCC waste from commercial nuclear reactors as well as a small quantity of spent mixed-oxide fuel..” https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/03/19/2018-05438/holtec-internationals-hi-store-consolidated-interim-storage-facility-for-interim-storage-of-spent
As explained by Donna Gilmore of San Onofre Safety:
“Holtec HI-STORM UMAX canister storage systems and all other thin-wall nuclear waste canister storage systems are vulnerable to short-term radioactive leaks and potential explosions and criticalities. Each canister has roughly as much highly radioactive Cesium-137 as was released from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
These thin-wall “Chernobyl” cans have the following design flaws:
* Vulnerable to short-term cracking and major radioactive leaks * Cannot be inspected inside or out * Cannot be repaired
HOLTEC IS PRIVATELY OWNED, APPARENTLY BY KRIS PAL SINGH, THOUGH REALLY NO ONE KNOWS. IN THE US THIS MEANS THAT IT IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO GET INFORMATION ON THE COMPANY. IN THE PAST, SINGH HAS REFUSED TO GIVE INFORMATION ABOUT THE SPENT FUEL CASK SYSTEMS TO THE US GOVERNMENT WHEN IT WAS NEEDED BY THEM TO ESTIMATE COSTS DURING A LAWSUIT. HOLTEC HAS BEEN FINED FOR BRIBING THE TVA. HOLTEC HAS REQUESTED AND GOTTEN WHAT SEEMS LIKE ENDLESS REQUESTS FOR EXEMPTIONS TO THE AGREED STANDARDS FOR PRODUCTION AND PACKING THE SPENT FUEL CASK SYSTEMS. AN UNKNOWN NUMBER OF THE SPENT FUEL CASKS ARE NOT EVEN CORRECTLY PACKED AND RECEIVED “EXEMPTIONS”. ON AT LEAST ONE NUCLEAR REACTOR SITE ALMOST ALL ARE IMPROPERLY PACKED. NOTE THAT HOLTEC EVEN TRIES TO CLAIM COPYRIGHT ON INFORMATION WHICH HOLTEC TOOK FROM AN EARLIER US GOVERNMENT FUNDED DOCUMENT. THIS GIVES A TINY IDEA OF WHAT JERKS THEY ARE.
Special vehicles are required to move the casks, as are specially built roads that can handle the immense weight.
“We don’t know if this highly dangerous material will be there for another 100 years or a thousand years.
if the casks are not moved in the coming decades, or even centuries, they worry about who would ultimately be responsible for protecting the nuclear waste. It’s unlikely, for example, that Entergy will still own the property, they say.
On a concrete pad about 25 feet above Plymouth Bay, eight massive steel-reinforced concrete cylinders hold the remains of the radioactive fuel that has kept the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station running since the 1970s.
When the plant begins decommissioning next year, Pilgrim officials expect to fill another 54 of the so-called dry casks, which are 18 feet tall, weigh 360,000 pounds, and emit small amounts of radiation. The concrete pad is a little more than 200 feet from the shoreline.
The problem is where to store the nuclear waste — especially since its current location won’t stay 25 feet above Plymouth Bay for long.
As sea levels rise at an accelerating rate, increasing the threat that an extreme storm surge could flood the coastal facility, Pilgrim officials are considering whether to move the spent fuel to higher ground.
Plant officials and federal regulators maintain that the current location is safe, at least for the foreseeable future, noting that the containers are designed to withstand flooding. But local activists are urging Pilgrim to take action, worried that the daunting political obstacles to moving the casks to a federal repository could force them to remain in Plymouth permanently.
“Not moving them would be irresponsible,” said Pine duBois, executive director of the Jones River Watershed Association in Kingston, which is about 8 miles from Pilgrim. “We don’t know if this highly dangerous material will be there for another 100 years or a thousand years. It has to be moved.”
Environmental advocates are calling on the state to require Entergy Corp., the Louisiana-based conglomerate that owns Pilgrim, to move the casks to its helipad or parking lot, which are three times higher than the existing storage site and set further back from the water.
Plant officials and federal regulators maintain that the current location is safe, at least for the foreseeable future, noting that the containers are designed to withstand flooding. But local activists are urging Pilgrim to take action, worried that the daunting political obstacles to moving the casks to a federal repository could force them to remain in Plymouth permanently.
“Not moving them would be irresponsible,” said Pine duBois, executive director of the Jones River Watershed Association in Kingston, which is about 8 miles from Pilgrim. “We don’t know if this highly dangerous material will be there for another 100 years or a thousand years. It has to be moved.”
Environmental advocates are calling on the state to require Entergy Corp., the Louisiana-based conglomerate that owns Pilgrim, to move the casks to its helipad or parking lot, which are three times higher than the existing storage site and set further back from the water.
Despite the concerns, plant officials say the casks are secure……….
Under recent worst-case projections, tides could rise as much as 10 feet by the end of the century and as much as 37 feet by 2200. That’s not accounting for storm surges, such as the 15-foot high tides that battered the Massachusetts coast during two nor’easters this winter, causing widespread flooding. …….
Under recent worst-case projections, tides could rise as much as 10 feet by the end of the century and as much as 37 feet by 2200. That’s not accounting for storm surges, such as the 15-foot high tides that battered the Massachusetts coast during two nor’easters this winter, causing widespread flooding………
The decision about where to store the casks comes as the 46-year-old plant faces a host of maintenance challenges. Entergy announced three years ago that it would close Pilgrim in June 2019, after a litany of economic woes and safety issues. In 2015, the NRC designated Pilgrim as one of the nation’s three least-safe reactors.
Those problems have persisted. Until Thursday, the plant had been offline for 43 days — one of its longest unplanned outages — after crews discovered a significant issue with a transformer that provides power for Pilgrim to operate. It was the second unplanned shutdown this year.
Plant officials must also weigh a range of other issues in deciding whether to move the waste, including security, radiation, and the impact on decommissioning the plant.
Cost is another factor.
Special vehicles are required to move the casks, as are specially built roads that can handle the immense weight. For example, at Vermont Yankee, which began the decommissioning process several years ago, it cost $143 million to fill and move their remaining casks to a new storage site.
Moving the casks uphill would add to the expense, and plant officials have not ruled out building a new storage pad adjacent to the existing one, which is only about 100 feet from the reactor building.
Storing nuclear waste has long been a thorny political issue, one that has become increasingly urgent as more aging plants are shuttered………
For local activists who have long raised concerns about the dangers of nuclear power, the assurances of Pilgrim and the NRC provide little comfort.
While the casks may not leak from being submerged for a brief period, they could be subject to corrosion from exposure to saltwater, which could create cracks and eventually lead to leaks, they said.
And if the casks are not moved in the coming decades, or even centuries, they worry about who would ultimately be responsible for protecting the nuclear waste. It’s unlikely, for example, that Entergy will still own the property, they say.
“We need a plan for the next 100 to 300 years,” said Mary Lampert, director of Pilgrim Watch, a civic watchdog group. “I don’t see that happening.”
Reuters 20th April 2018, In a sprawling plant near Amarillo, Texas, rows of workers perform by hand
one of the most dangerous jobs in American industry. Contract workers at
the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pantex facility gingerly remove the
plutonium cores from retired nuclear warheads. Although many safety rules
are in place, a slip of the hand could mean disaster.
nuclear-news 