Nuclear power plant at Fort Greely to be decommissioned Daily News- Miner , By Sam Friedman sfriedman@newsminer.com, May 15, 2018
May 16, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
decommission reactor, USA |
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A nuclear deal with the Saudis is a good thing, says former GOP leader Eric Cantor
- Saudi Arabia has been in negotiations with the U.S. and other countries for several years in pursuit of a nuclear energy partnership, with the stated aim of diversifying its energy base.
- Riyadh has found a willing partner in the Trump administration, which has signaled far greater support for a deal than its predecessors.
- Months of escalating tensions between the kingdom and its regional arch-rival Iran have raised the stakes for any future nuclear plans.
Natasha Turak | ………For around five years now, the Saudis have been in informal negotiations with the U.S. and other countries that could sell it nuclear reactors, with the stated aim of diversifying its energy base. In February, the kingdom
recruited an American lobbying firm as an advisor on the legal issues surrounding developing a commercial nuclear program.
But what’s made many observers nervous is Riyadh’s refusal to accept a deal that would forbid it from enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium — the mechanisms necessary not for nuclear energy, but for developing a weapon.
Saudis find support from Trump
Opposition from U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle has historically impeded the kingdom’s aims — Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act of 1954 mandates that Congress review any sharing of nuclear technology with a foreign country.
Now, however, the Saudis have found a friendlier partner in the Trump administration, which has signaled far greater willingness to strike a deal than its predecessors.
A U.S. trade delegation visited the kingdom in April, led by the Washington-based Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) and in partnership with the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Energy, and State. It brought with it 20 companies from across the U.S. nuclear supply chain, to promote “the strong interest of U.S. industry to partner in Saudi Arabia’s ambitious nuclear energy program,” according to the delegation’s press release.
……..Months of escalating tensions between Iran and its arch-rival Saudi Arabia raise the stakes for any future nuclear plans. In March, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told CNBC news that if Tehran was to build a nuclear bomb, so would Riyadh.
U.S. lawmakers and non-proliferation experts have expressed their concern over dual-use technology, and Bin Salman’s unpredictable and aggressive foreign policy has not helped his country’s case……https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/13/former-gop-leader-eric-cantor-supports-nuclear-deal-with-saudi-arabia.html
May 14, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, politics, USA |
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Trump administration axes project to generate power from plutonium, Timothy Gardner, WASHINGTON (Reuters) 13 May 18 – The Trump administration plans to kill a project it says would have cost tens of billions of dollars to convert plutonium from Cold War-era nuclear bombs and burn it to generate electricity, according to a document it sent to Congress last week.
The Department of Energy submitted a document on May 10 to Senate and House of Representative committees saying that the Mixed Oxide (MOX) project at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina would cost about $48 billion more than $7.6 billion already spent on it. The United States has never built a MOX plant.
Instead of completing MOX, the administration, like the Obama administration before it, wants to blend the 34 tonnes of deadly plutonium – enough to make about 8,000 nuclear weapons – with an inert substance and bury it underground in a New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). Burying the plutonium would cost about $19.9 billion, according to the document, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.
“We are currently processing plutonium in South Carolina for shipment (to WIPP) … and intend to continue to do so,” Energy Secretary Rick Perry said in a letter sent to committee leaders.
Legislation passed in February allows the Energy Department to advance burying the plutonium if it showed that the cost would be less than half of completing MOX……..
Edwin Lyman, a physicist at science advisory group the Union of Concerned Scientists concerned about plutonium getting into the wrong hands, said Perry had made a sensible decision. “MOX was a slow-motion train wreck, and throwing good money after bad simply wasn’t an option.”
Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Lisa Shumaker https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-plutonium-mox/trump-administration-axes-project-to-generate-power-from-plutonium-idUSKCN1IE0LH
May 14, 2018
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- plutonium, politics, reprocessing, USA |
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Trump adviser says US could sanction European allies if they continue nuclear deal with Iran, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser said the U.S. could impose sanctions on its European allies if they continue to deal with Iran under the nuclear deal. By ABC NEWS, May 13, 2018 National Security Adviser John Bolton also commented on “This Week” Sunday on the U.S.’s imminent move of its Israeli embassy, saying that relocating the embassy to Jerusalem will make peace “easier” because it recognizes the “reality” that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel……..https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/iran-shifting-balance-power-middle-east-cover-nuclear/story?id=55110286
May 14, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics international, USA |
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Dallas, Midland and San Antonio city councils have already made resolutions prohibiting railcars from coming through their towns and exposing the citizens of their towns to this deadly radioactive waste.
The site can be seen from the air and is a beautiful target for terrorists during transit and after arrival at the site.
Nukes are no good for this area http://www.oaoa.com/editorial/letters_to_editor/article_d3427d86-5637-11e8-aca7-6712110b6bed.html, May 13, 2018 Karen Howard-Winters Odessa Online,
I believe our livelihood is in great danger of becoming destroyed by a company named Holtec International. They have applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a 40-year license for an interim High-Level Radioactive Nuclear Waste Facility to be built between Carlsbad and Hobbs, New Mexico.
This is not the facility in Andrews. Although, now that Holtec has applied for their license, Waste Management Specialists (WCS) had placed their license request for the High-Level Radioactive Nuclear Waste on hold due to issues regarding the pending sale of their facility to Orano. However, now that the sale is complete and things have settled down, and they are watching what is going on with Holtec. Then, we fear, Orano is going to revise and reapply for a license requesting for the same as Holtec – high-level radioactive nuclear waste to be disposed of in the Andrews site, claiming it to be interim as well.
Why are we concerned and people in Midland and Odessa should be, too?
1. This is the first time anything of this gravity has ever been attempted in this country!
a. Radioactive waste has been moved around, but nothing remotely on this level of danger, nothing on this scope of magnitude and nothing on this level or for this interim duration.
b. Our deep concern is that no permanent site has even been discussed yet!!
c. By the time a “permanent” repository is found (which will probably be never) the canisters/casks will be too fragile to be moved due to deterioration from sun exposure/weathering or just time in general and the site will become a de facto permanent disposal site and another Super Fund site that New Mexico will have to try to maintain forever.
2. The Holtec site is on top of our Permian Basin oil reserves sitting directly on top of the Delaware Basin and our Olgalla Aquifer and don’t let any tell you they’re not as the old maps tell you they are.
3. This deadly waste is responsible for cancers, genetic birth defects and deaths as witnessed in the Tulrosa Basin Downwinders Claims after the atomic bomb experiments at the Los Alamos experimental site prior to the dropping of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended WWII. The town of Trinity was never advised of these trials and the fallout affected the towns’ people with all kinds of different cancers that no one had ever had before.
4. This radioactive waste (even though they tell you it is in solid form and is more easily handled), is to be sent here by rail coming through Odessa. If that train wrecks on Faudree and Hwy 80 would have contained nuclear waste, it would have taken out the Odessa Country Club Golf Course and some of the richest real estate in Odessa as the land will become unusable for 25,000 years or more.
5. What’s going to happen if an accident leaves the land unable to be used for drilling for oil? The Fasken Oil Company came to Roswell to testify in front of the NRC to say that this is a bad idea and vowed to do everything they can to round up all the people in the Permian Basin Oil Industry to fight this licensing.
6. One of the Midland commissioners flew in to Roswell and brought not only Fasken Oil, but a rancher from one of the big area ranches who have been in Midland County for over 102 years who has vowed to fight this with fellow ranchers.
7. One railcar contains the same amount of plutonium as was dropped on Nagasaki.
8. The land on which they have proposed to build this site is geologically unstable and there is a study out by Southern Methodist University (SMU) that, like Winkler County, has a danger of the random occurrence sinkholes at anytime, anywhere. http://blog.smu.edu/research/2018/03/20/radar-images-show-large-swath-of-texas-oil-patch-is-heaving-and-sinking-at-alarming-rates/
9. Holtec wants to bring 100,000 metric tons of this high-level radioactive nuclear waste through Odessa over 20 years after they are licensed. Dallas, Midland and San Antonio city councils have already made resolutions prohibiting railcars from coming through their towns and exposing the citizens of their towns to this deadly radioactive waste. Every time a railcar passes by an area, it releases radiation. Cumulative effects could result in birth defects to a fetus as a pregnant woman is exposed to this waste by sitting on a railcar platform waiting to go to work every day as these railcars pass by.
10. The site can be seen from the air and is a beautiful target for terrorists during transit and after arrival at the site. All it would take is a suicide plane to hit this site and it would be worse than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Holtec is talking about bringing 100,000 metric tons of spent plutonium to the site for a total of 10,000 partially buried canisters of spent fuel rods.
11. If radiation sullies our water or our oil, we might as well, just throw in the towel and move out as our property will have no value at all.
If we lose our oil or water, we lose our city.
If you do not consent to NRC licensing Holtec for this project, please voice your dissent!
The NRC Scoping Period for this Project ends May 29! You may request, no, demand that they extend the Scoping Period to more cities so more people may voice their opinions. The people along the train routes, Midland, Odessa, Albuquerque, El Paso, Dallas, etc. You may demand they extend the Scoping Period time for an additional three to six months.
This is too important for only two months of scoping and only three public hearings in only three towns!
Moving High-Level Nuclear radioactive waste across the nation to a temporary site when no permanent site has been found is unnecessary and irresponsible. The only winner in this is a private company named Holtec. The people of Eddy and Lea Counties who want this project and are being paid a pittance are not winners as they will be stuck with a Super Fund site forever.
If you would like to voice your opinion, you have until May 29 to write to the NRC at:
May Ma Office of Administration , Mail Stop: TWNF-7-A60M , U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 2055-0001
May 14, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, wastes |
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Japan Times, KYODO , 12 May 18 HIROSHIMA – A U.S. national park commemorating facilities related to the Manhattan Project, the secret U.S. wartime atomic bomb program, will include exhibits showing the inhumane nature of nuclear weapons, a park official said.
The plan to display the damage caused by the U.S. atomic bombings on Japan during World War II is welcome news for atomic bomb survivors who have worked to convey the horror of the weapons.
“We intend to address this issue thoroughly and respectfully,” said Kris Kirby, superintendent of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, referring to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons.
In November 2015, the U.S. government officially designated as a national park the facilities related to the Manhattan Project located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford in Washington State.
The work to craft the exhibition plan for the facilities may start in 2019, and officials hope to complete it within two years.
It is not yet decided where the exhibits to highlight the inhumane aspects of the weapons will be placed, but Kirby said they would be “incredibly important elements” of the story surrounding the Manhattan Project.
…… An official of the Hiroshima Municipal Government welcomed the latest development and said, “We hope the exhibition … will be based on objective facts, and does not glorify the atomic bomb development.”
….. many people died in the bomb blasts and flames and even those who survived continued to suffer due to the increased risks of cancer and leukemia throughout their lives as well as the loss of family members……https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/05/13/national/u-s-manhattan-project-national-park-include-exhibits-noting-inhumane-nature-atomic-weapons/#.Wvi08O-FPGg
May 14, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, weapons and war |
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What’s Not in NNSA’s Plutonium Pit Production Decision, Santa Fe, NM –May 10, 2018 Contact Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch NM, 505.989.7342, c. 505.470.3154, jay@nukewatch.org Scott Kovac, Nuclear Watch NM, 505.989.7342, scott@nukewatch.org
Today the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced: To achieve DoD’s [the Defense Department] 80 pits per year requirement by 2030, NNSA’s recommended alternative repurposes the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to produce plutonium pits while also maximizing pit production activities at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. This two-prong approach – with at least 50 pits per year produced at Savannah River and at least 30 pits per year at Los Alamos – is the best way to manage the cost, schedule, and risk of such a vital undertaking.
First, in Nuclear Watch’s view, this decision is in large part a political decision, designed to keep the congressional delegations of both New Mexico and South Carolina happy. New Mexico Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich are adamantly against relocating plutonium pit production to South Carolina. On the other hand, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham was keeping the boondoggle Mixed Oxide (MOX) program on life support, and this pit production decision may help to mollify him. This could also perhaps help assuage the State of South Carolina, which is suing the Department of Energy for failing to remove plutonium from the Savannah River Site as promised.
But as important is what is NOT in NNSA’s plutonium pit production decision:
: • There is no explanation why the Department of Defense requires at least 80 pits per year, and no justification to the American taxpayer why the enormous expense of expanded production is necessary.
• NNSA avoided pointing out that expanded plutonium pit production is NOT needed to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile. In fact, no production of plutonium pits for the existing stockpile has been scheduled since 2011, and none is scheduled for the future.
• NNSA did not mention that in 2006 independent experts found that pits last a least a century. Plutonium pits in the existing stockpile now average around 40 years old. The independent expert study did not find any end date for reliable pit lifetimes, indicating that plutonium pits could last far beyond just a century.
• NNSA did not mention that up to 15,000 “excess” pits are already stored at the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, TX, with up to another 5,000 in “strategic reserve.” The agency did not explain why new production is needed given that immense inventory of already existing plutonium pits.
• Related, NNSA did not explain how to dispose of all of that plutonium, given that the MOX program is an abysmal failure. Nor is it made clear where future plutonium wastes from expanded pit production will go since operations at the troubled Waste Isolation Pilot Plant are already constrained from a ruptured radioactive waste barrel, and its capacity is already overcommitted to existing radioactive wastes.
• NNSA did not make clear that expanded plutonium pit production is for a series of speculative future “Interoperable Warheads.” The first IW is meant to replace nuclear warheads for both the Air Force’s land-based and the Navy’s sub-launched ballistic missiles. The Obama Administration delayed “IW-1” because the Navy does not support it. However, the Trump Administration is restarting it, with annual funding ballooning to $448 million by 2023, and “IW-2” starting in that same year. Altogether the three planned Interoperable Warheads will cost at least $40 billion, despite the fact that the Navy doesn’t support them. 1
• NNSA’s expanded plutonium pit production decision did not mention that exact replicas of existing pits will NOT be produced. The agency has selected the W87 pit for the Interoperable Warhead, but its FY 2019 budget request repeatedly states that the pits will actually be “W87- like.” This could have serious potential consequences because any major modifications to plutonium pits cannot be full-scale tested, or alternatively could prompt the U.S. to return to nuclear weapons testing, which would have severe international proliferation consequences.
• The State of South Carolina is already suing the Department of Energy for its failure to begin removing the many tons of plutonium at the Savannah River Site (SRS). NNSA’s pit production decision will not solve that problem, even as it will likely bring more plutonium to SRS.
• The independent Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has expressed strong concerns about the safety of plutonium operations at both the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) LANL and SRS, particularly regarding potential nuclear criticality incidents. 2 NNSA did not address those safety concerns in its plutonium pit production decision.
• Politicians in both New Mexico and South Carolina trumpet how many jobs expanded plutonium pit production will create. Yet NNSA’s expanded plutonium pit production decision does not have any solid data on jobs produced. One indicator that job creation will be limited is that the environmental impact statement for a canceled $6 billion plutonium facility at LANL stated that it would not produce a single new Lab job because it would merely relocate existing jobs. Concerning SRS, it is doubtful that pit production could fully replace the jobs lost as the MOX program dies a slow death. In any event, there certainly won’t be any data on the greater job creation that cleanup and renewable energy programs would create. Funding for those programs is being cut or held flat, in part to help pay for nuclear weapons programs.
• Finally, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires that major federal proposals be subject to public review and comment before a formal decision is made. NNSA’s decision does not mention its NEPA obligations at all. In 1996 plutonium pit production was capped at 20 pits per year in a nation-wide Stockpile Stewardship and Management Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). NNSA failed to raise that production limit in any subsequent NEPA process, despite repeated attempts. Arguably a decision to produce 80 pits or more per year requires a new or supplemental nation-wide programmatic environmental impact statement to raise the production limit, which the new dual-site decision would strongly augment. This then should be followed by whatever site-specific NEPA documents might be necessary.
Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch Director, commented, “NNSA has already tried four times to expand plutonium pit production, only to be defeated by citizen opposition and its own cost overruns and incompetence. But we realize that this fifth attempt is the most serious. However, we remain confident it too will fall apart, because of its enormous financial and environmental costs and the fact that expanded plutonium pit production is simply not needed for the existing nuclear weapons stockpile. We think the American public will reject new-design nuclear weapons, which is what this expanded pit production decision is really all about.
” # # #
May 12, 2018
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- plutonium, politics, USA, weapons and war |
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NNSA announces decision on pit production, L A Monitor, May 11, 2018, Los Alamos National Laboratory will share production of plutonium pits with the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Nuclear Weapons Council and National Nuclear Security Administration announced Thursday.
LANL will maintain production of 30 plutonium pits per year, while the Savannah River Site will produce 50 pits per year.
“To achieve DoD’s 80 pits per year requirement by 2030, NNSA’s recommended alternative repurposes the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to produce plutonium pits while also maximizing pit production activities at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico,” according to Thursday’s release.
……. Plutonium pits are the size of a softball and are used as trigger mechanisms for nuclear weapons…..
The NNSA was given a mandate by Congress to manufacture 80 plutonium pits per year by 2030 as part of a nuclear weapons modernization plan. The NNSA has been studying which site would best be able to accommodate the manufacture of plutonium pits. ……
Nuclear Watch New Mexico criticized the decision as purely political.
“First, in Nuclear Watch’s view, this decision is in large part a political decision, designed to keep the congressional delegations of both New Mexico and South Carolina happy,” said Nuclear Watch Executive Director Jay Coghlan. “New Mexico Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich are adamantly against relocating plutonium pit production to South Carolina. On the other hand, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham was keeping the boondoggle Mixed Oxide (MOX) program on life support, and this pit production decision may help to mollify him.
Coghlan said he believes the split plan will ultimately fail.
“NNSA has already tried four times to expand plutonium pit production, only to be defeated by citizen opposition and its own cost overruns and incompetence,” Coghlan said. “But we realize that this fifth attempt is the most serious.
“However, we remain confident it too will fall apart, because of its enormous financial and environmental costs and the fact that expanded plutonium pit production is simply not needed for the existing nuclear weapons stockpile. We think the American public will reject new-design nuclear weapons, which is what this expanded pit production decision is really all about.”
Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, took a more pragmatic view. ……
“Pit production isn’t needed for decades, even for a large arsenal, but Congress has demanded it, so the bulk of the work will leave LANL. The R and D (research and development) work will stay behind. This transition is many years down the road. Pit production will always be difficult, expensive and dangerous wherever it’s done.”
A fact sheet about the decision can be found here. http://www.lamonitor.com/content/nnsa-announces-decision-pit-production
May 12, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
- plutonium, USA, weapons and war |
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One of the six toes, on one of the feet, of the Yucca Dump Mutant Zombie (see image, right on original), twitched yesterday. By a lopsided vote of 340 to 72, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of “Screw Nevada 2.0,” a reprise of the 1987 “Screw Nevada” bill, that singled out Yucca Mountain for the country’s highly radioactive waste dump-site in the first place
This was the biggest vote on nuclear waste in the U.S. House in 16 years, and seeks to overturn the Obama administration’s wise 2010 cancellation of the unsuitable Yucca Mountain Project. In addition to approving H.R. 3053, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2018, the House, “in its wisdom” (or lack thereof!), similarly voted down an amendment offered by Dina Titus (Democrat-NV), that would have required consent-based siting for a dump like Yucca, per the 2012 recommendations by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future.
Thank you to everyone who contacted their U.S. Rep. urging opposition to H.R. 3053. Please
check this link for more info., including to see how your U.S. Rep. voted on the Titus amendment, and the overall bill. Then
please thank or “spank” (express your disappointment to) your U.S. Rep., accordingly, and point out:
the high-risk “Mobile Chernobyl” impacts of shipping 110,000 metric tons (an increase from the current legal limit of 70,000) of highly radioactive waste, by truck, train, and/or barge, through
44 states, dozens of major cities, and 330 of 435 U.S. congressional districts, if H.R. 3053 becomes law. In addition to expediting the opening of the Yucca dump, by gutting due process and environmental and safety regulations, H.R. 3053 would authorize centralized interim storage facilities (CISFs, or de facto permanent, surface storage, “parking lot dumps”), as targeted at Holtec/ELEA, NM and WCS, TX. Re: Holtec/ELEA
please continue submitting environmental scoping public comments to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the
May 29th deadline —
see how, and for more info., at this link. And please also contact both your U.S. Senators, urging them to oppose bad, dangerous nuke waste dumps targeted at NM, NV, and/or TX, and the inevitable Mobile Chernobyls they would launch:
call your U.S. Senators via the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121, and fill out and submit Food & Water Watch’s webform! To learn more about the
Yucca dump scheme,
CISF proposals, and
nuclear waste transport risks, please see the corresponding Beyond Nuclear website sub-sections.
May 12, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, USA, wastes |
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“No follow up” from Trump over staying in climate pact-UN by Reuters, 9 May 2018 The rules of the Paris Agreement mean that Trump cannot formally pull out before November 2020, around the time of the next U.S. presidential election
* UN’s Espinosa asked Washington for conditions for staying
* Says still hopes U.S. may stay in Paris pact
* Nearly 200 nations working on ‘rule book’ for 2015 pact
By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle BONN, Germany, May 9 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump has yet to outline what changes he wants in a 2015 global climate agreement as the price for dropping his plan to quit, the United Nations’ climate chief said on Wednesday.
Patricia Espinosa said she had asked Washington for its demands after Trump announced last June that he planned to quit the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, which aims to end the fossil fuel era this century with a shift to cleaner energies.
“There has not been a follow-up” from Washington, she told Reuters during negotiations in Bonn among almost 200 nations on a “rule book” for the 2015 agreement.
Espinosa, a former Mexican foreign minister who leads the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, said she had stressed that the pact was flexible, allowing all countries to set their own targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“I would not like to see the U.S. leaving. I certainly hope there is a reconsideration of this decision,” she said of Trump’s plan to pull out.
Trump doubts the view of mainstream science that man-made greenhouse gases are raising global temperatures.
The rules of the Paris Agreement mean that Trump cannot formally pull out before November 2020, around the time of the next U.S. presidential election.
In announcing the U.S. withdrawal, Trump said Paris was a bad deal that would harm the U.S. economy, but added: “We will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great. And if we can’t, that’s fine.”……..
The Bonn meeting, which ends on Thursday, is working on rules for the Paris Agreement due to be in place by the end of the year, such as how to measure and account for greenhouse gas emissions and climate finance for developing nations that is meant to reach $100 billion a year by 2020.
“A good set of rules … should be a way to give comfort and confidence to the concerns they (the United States) could have,” said Espinosa.
Asked if she would be happy for the United States to stay, while watering down deep cuts in emissions promised by former President Barack Obama, Espinosa said: “I think we should not choose between those two scenarios.” (Reporting By Alister Doyle Editing by Gareth Jones) http://news.trust.org/item/20180509154353-w3u79/
May 12, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
climate change, politics international, USA |
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Zion’s effort to shed lakefront nuclear waste backed by U.S. House vote, Chicago Tribune, Frank Abderholden Contact Reporter, News-Sun , 10 May 18
A bill on nuclear waste policy that would restart the Yucca Mountain depository in Nevada was approved by the the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday, including an amendment introduced by U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider that also calls for a task force to be created to help communities like Zion that have stranded nuclear waste.
The 10th District Democrat said the amendment requires the secretary of energy to assemble a stranded nuclear waste task force that would identify existing resources and funding opportunities throughout the federal government to assist communities in the decommissioning process.
“For too long, communities like Zion have been saddled with housing our nation’s stranded nuclear waste while the federal government has failed to meet its legal obligation to find a permanent repository,” Schneider said in a statement following Thursday morning’s vote on Capitol Hill.
His amendment calls for the Department of Energy to complete the study in 180 days and report back to Congress with its findings.
“The project will be physically completed with (deactivation and decommissioning) in 2018,” Walker said last year. Although the federal government designated decades ago that the waste would go to Yucca Mountain in Nevada for permanent storage, the facility has not yet opened, and Zion is stuck with the waste until a solution can be found.
“I am very pleased this amendment passed the House, appreciate the bipartisan support from my colleagues and urge the Senate to take up this matter urgently,” Schneider said.
H.R. 3053, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2018, was described by Schneider as “an important step forward,” but he added that more needs to be done for communities forced to store nuclear waste.
“I will continue to work with Mayor Al Hill, the city of Zion and my colleagues in Congress to get communities shouldering this burden the federal help they are owed,” Schneider said.
He added that the spent fuel stored in dry casks along the lakefront — an amount estimated last year at 1,025 metric tons — presents both “an extreme environmental hazard, and a severe burden on the quality of life of the residents of Zion — deterring economic investment, depressing home values and driving up property taxes to fill the local revenue void.”
……… “We just want them to get (the waste) out of here,” Hill said. “We are pleased with any program that will give us an opportunity to get the spent fuel rods out of our community.”
Adding that “we are pushing a large stone up a steep hill,” Hill said he believes “the federal government has not lived up to its contract with the utilities” on having a place to put the spent fuel rods.
“We lived up to our end of the contract,” he said.
While the power plant operated, ratepayers paid into a trust fund set up for the plant’s decommissioning. The $820 million fund was turned over to EnergySolutions when it took over the work in Zion following the plant’s 1998 deactivation. At the end of the project, any remaining funds are designed to be turned back over to Exelon.
According to the Associated Press, the House voted 340-72 Thursday morning to revive the mothballed nuclear waste dump at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain despite opposition from home-state lawmakers…… http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/news/ct-lns-zion-nuclear-waste-yucca-mountain-st-0511-story.html
May 12, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
USA, wastes |
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House hands off nuclear waste storage bill to Senate, https://www.utilitydive.com/news/house-hands-off-nuclear-waste-storage-bill-to-senate/523291/, Iulia Gheorghiu, 11 May 18
Dive Brief:
- The House of Representatives on Thursday passed 340-72 H.R. 3053, sponsored by Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., which seeks to restart the process to build a permanent repository for commercial nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
- The bill would also allow the Department of Energy (DOE) to consolidate and store nuclear waste temporarily, as the agency is currently unable to consider interim storage before the development of a permanent repository.
- The legislation has been strongly opposed by the Nevada delegation — Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., once referred to the policy to permanently store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain as the “Screw Nevada bill.” Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., called H.R. 3053 “dead on arrival in the Senate” in a statement last June.
Dive Insight:
Opposition in the House came mainly from states that would be most impacted by the transportation of nuclear waste to the permanent storage site, led by Nevada representatives. Earlier this month, Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., called the bill “Screw Nevada 2.0” when speaking on the House floor.
On Tuesday, the Rules Committee arranged for only one of the amendments from Nevada’s representatives to be considered on the floor, from Titus. Her substitute amendment, which was rejected 80-332, sought to establish a consent-based siting process to determine a permanent repository. Consent-based siting would have placed an almost-insurmountable barrier to selecting Yucca Mountain as a permanent storage site.
The House bill had bipartisan backing and supported the buildout of interim nuclear storage, a policy that the Obama administration had also supported. Legislative efforts to reach a conclusion on permanent storage at Yucca Mountain have been stalled time and time again. But the bill has also gained momentum as more nuclear reactors near retirement and commercial nuclear waste accumulates.
The biggest challenge for the bill will be Sen. Heller’s block, confirmed Matthew Wald, senior communications adviser for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group. Heller is currently blocking consideration of two Nuclear Regulatory Commission nominees who support Yucca Mountain as a permanent waste repository, according to Roll Call.
As it stands, the DOE is on the hook for a solution to permanent nuclear waste storage. The agency was supposed to begin collecting spent nuclear fuel rods in 1998 and remains responsible for storing them. Nuclear companies had been paying the agency through the Nuclear Waste Fund for the development of a permanent storage site, but the legislative stalls regarding Yucca Mountain have immobilized the DOE.
As a result, the agency is an easy legal target for the nuclear waste storing duties it has failed to perform under contract. Taxpayers pay about $800 million in damages to nuclear companies every year the government does not act, according to an estimate of legal judgments done by NEI.
When looking for the smartest, easiest, most productive solutions, there are better answers than what DOE is currently doing with nuclear waste: “babysitting this stuff in more than 100 different locations,” as NEI’s Wald put it.
A preferable alternative, according to NEI, would be centralizing interim storage for the spent nuclear fuel, much of which is housed on-site at retired nuclear plants. Interest exists among corporate groups to reprocess the spent nuclear fuel or store it temporarily.
The NRC issued a license in 2006 to Private Fuel Storage, LLC, a nuclear power utility consortium, to build temporary above-ground storage for spent nuclear fuel rods in Utah. The consortium needed approval from additional agencies and the operation never took off, although the NRC license is valid until 2026. Utah regulations ultimately made it very difficult to get fuel to the interim storage site, Wald told Utility Dive.
NRC has received other similar licensing requests, including a 2017 proposal for temporary storage in New Mexico from Holtec International.
Holtec sees the passage of H.R. 3050 as a good step towards interim and long-term solutions for nuclear waste storage.
“We believe this is a critical step for the future of nuclear power, including for innovative new reactors such as our SMR-160,” Joy Russell, Holtec’s vice president of corporate business development, wrote Utility Dive in an email.
May 12, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, USA, wastes |
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DOE looking ‘very closely’ at Cold War-era law to boost coal, nuclear production, The Hill, BY MIRANDA GREEN – 05/09/18
Energy Secretary Rick Perry confirmed that the Trump administration is looking into using a Cold War-era law to prop up struggling U.S. coal and nuclear power plants.
Speaking to the House committee on Science, Space and Technology Wednesday, Perry named the Defense Production Act as something the Department of Energy (DOE) is “looking very closely at” as a way to secure the nation’s energy grid.
It was reported in April that the Trump administration was considering utilizing the 68-year-old law, which was passed by Congress in the midst of the Korean War, as a way to nationalize the energy industry.
Bloomberg reported that White House aides were looking into how to best implement the policy, which gives the government broad latitude to nationalize private industry in the name of security.
The law could allow the administration to provide help to the industries in the form of loans and loan guarantees or purchase commitments. It could also be used to help specific regions or plants.
Perry’s announcement was the first confirmation that the act is strongly being considered as the administration seeks to help the coal and nuclear industries…….http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/386891-doe-looking-very-closely-at-using-cold-war-era-law-to-boost-coal
May 12, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
politics, USA |
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On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters the United States is ready to announce an additional set of sanctions against Iran as early as next week in response to its alleged development of nuclear weapons.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced that the United States was withdrawing from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed by the P5+1 and EU, which ensures Iran’s nuclear program remains peaceful in exchange for sanctions relief. In addition, the US Treasury said it would reimpose the highest-level economic sanctions possible on Iran.
In the week prior to Trump’s decision Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an internationally-broadcast address presented old intelligence and tried to claim that Tehran was continuing to develop nuclear weapons.
In fact, Iran has remained compliant under the conditions of the JCPOA as verified by the IAEA in 11 reports since January 2016 — a reality US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo even admitted during his confirmation hearings.
Israeli, Saudi Victory
Retired US Army Major and historian Todd Pierce told Sputnik that Trump’s announcement was a triumph for the leaders of Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of whom want the United States to confront Iran.
“Trump has placed US foreign policy in the hands of the coalition of Israel under Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia under [Crown Prince] Mohammad bin Salman, which his son in law Jared Kushner helped bring together to collectively wage war against Iran and Syria,” he said.
Trump’s statement on why he was pulling out of the international nuclear agreement with Iran was expressed in terms that made it sound like Trump was determined to go to war, Pierce observed.”Constructively, in effect, Trump’s talk sounded like a declaration of war against Iran, with the first step being to tighten up the ‘blockade’ of Iran, meaning in the 21st century version of that, US sanctions,” Pierce said.
Trump’s address was also notable for how closely it followed the arguments made eight days earlier by Netanyahu in his efforts to persuade the US government and Congress to scrap the agreement, Pierce pointed out.
Trump, like his ally and friend Netanyahu had shown scant regard for factual accuracy in his presentation.Trump was not an extremist or aberration in setting such policies but was fulfilling goals that had been followed for decades, Pierce pointed out.
Tehran Undaunted
Global peace activist and expert on the medical dangers of nuclear energy, Dr. Helen Caldicott, told Sputnik that she expected Tehran to continue honoring its commitmentsunder the 2015 nuclear accord.
“I think there will not be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East despite the fact that Israel was vehemently opposed to the treaty and surreptitiously lobbied against it with the powers that be in the US,” Caldicott said.
Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the organization that was the co-winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, noted that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had pledged to remain in the accord.
“Rouhani says that Iran will abide by the JCPOA, a stand which I intuitively had predicted,” she said. “It also seems clear that the European nations will definitely not abide by Trump’s terms of increased sanctions, after begging him to comply.”
The United States still needed to realize that Russia was not an ideological enemy of the West any more the way the Soviet Union had been throughout the Cold War, Caldicott maintained.
“If America could come to its senses and decide that all nuclear weapons are useless symbols of annihilation and have absolutely nothing to do with ‘defense’ it could lead the world to sanity, survival and nuclear disarmament,” she said.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Jubeir said on Wednesday that the country may start development of nuclear weapons if Iran continues its nuclear program.
Caldicott is the author of many books, including “The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military Industrial Complex” and “War in Heaven:” The Arms Race in Outer Space.” The Smithsonian Institution has named her one of the most influential women of the 20th century.
May 11, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
Iran, Israel, politics international, Saudi Arabia, USA |
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US engineering giant sees ‘tremendous opportunity’ in Saudi nuclear energy plans https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/10/bechtel-executive-us-firms-should-be-involved-in-
saudi-nuclear-plans.html –Saheli Roy Choudhury
- A senior executive at engineering giant Bechtel told CNBC on Thursday that U.S. businesses should be involved in Saudi Arabia’s civilian nuclear energy ambitions.
- The presence of American firms would likely be welcomed by the Saudis and should also be welcomed by the U.S. government, according to Stuart Jones, regional president for Europe and Middle East at Bechtel.
- Saudi Arabia has plans to construct 16 nuclear power reactors over the next 20 to 25 years, costing more than $80 billion.
May 11, 2018
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, marketing, Saudi Arabia, USA |
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