More than 60 studies have shown increases of childhood leukemia around nuclear facilities worldwide. Despite this finding, there has never been independent analysis in the US examining connections between childhood cancer and nuclear facilities. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) had tasked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to conduct such a study, but then withdrew funding, claiming publicly that it would be too expensive.
n fact, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) process reveal that NRC employees had already determined the study would show no impact. Internal emails indicate that staff was presupposing a conclusion for which they had no evidence, demonstrated by statements like “even if you found something that looked like a relationship [between cancer and radiation], you wouldn’t know what to attribute it to,” and “[m]ost people realize that all the evidence shows you’re not going to find anything.” The evidence, however, had not yet been fully collected and examined.
Not protective and unaccountable
While the NRC claims it protects public health, its radiation exposure standards fail to account fully for:
impacts on the placenta
impacts on fetal blood forming cells
impacts on fetal and embryonic organs
estrogenic impacts
disproportionate impacts on women
genetic impacts past the second generation
cumulative damage of repeated radiation exposure
NRC exposure data and modeling is designed to demonstrate compliance with the NRC’s regulations but not to assess health impacts. The NRC has already stated numerous times that it believes low doses of radiation, the kind NRC claims its licensees are allowed to release, pose risks so low that health impacts may not be discernible. We don’t know if NRC’s claims of no discernible or attributable public health impact from nuclear power are actually true since no one has ever looked properly.
Studies in other countries show association between nuclear facilities and childhood cancer. However, given the demonstrable bias of the US NRC toward low doses having no health impact, it is essential that a US study go forward under the auspices of outside, independent experts, in order to examine what is happening in the US.
Ground-breaking study plans were threat to current health assumptions
Under the original and now canceled study, the NRC had tasked the NAS to use the most advanced methods in order to update the study the NRC currently uses to claim its reactors are safe. That study, published in 1990, had several shortcomings including the way the authors define and examine disease, assumptions about doses, location of cases, and who is examined.
The NAS was considering two study designs, one examining specifically children. This study type, dubbed by one expert as a case-control nested in a cohort, is very similar in basic design to studies conducted in France and Germany, which show increases in childhood leukemia around nuclear power facilities.
The NRC scuttled the NAS study in 2015, dubiously claiming it would have cost too much and taken too long. Upon examination, however, it is clear that the NAS study would have challenged the fundamentals of the NRC’s health assessment regime.
To date, most radiation studies have routinely suffered from a host of improper methodologies, making it impossible to discern health impacts. The NAS was considering using new ways of examining the issue by implementing a more detailed, more thorough, publicly shared research protocol. The protocol included:
Making the study process and underlying assumptions public while the study was being conducted
Allowing public comment during the study process
Standardizing raw health data and making it available to researchers and the public
Standardizing and verifying pollutant data
Integrating independently collected pollutant and meteorological data
Examining and redoing the current health models
Tailoring health studies to local conditions
Creating new health models, specifically for the radionuclide carbon
14, which concentrates in fetal tissue more than maternal tissue.
This detailed and accessible protocol could have opened the NRC’s regulatory regime to exhaustive scrutiny, revealing just how inadequate it is for examining health impacts in the first place, never mind protecting public health. Further, with such careful research, NRC could have feared that the NAS study would point to an association between environmental radiation and cancer, as other studies have, although FOIA documents consisting mostly of internal emails did not specifically demonstrate this fear.
Moribund study could be revived, made better
While the NAS child study design and protocol had much to recommend it, it is unclear whether it would have been free of all of the flaws that have historically plagued radiation health assessments. At the point of study cancellation, independent experts still had concerns.
Historically, industry and radiation regulators have insisted that a causal link must be absolutely established between radiation and disease. For protection of the public, however, experts claim the standard should be a lower bar of association with disease. If this study moves forward under the NAS, it needs to relinquish concepts and methods that favor causation.
To date, researchers have started radiation health studies by presuming that there will be no impact because doses are too low — a contention that, in reality, remains scientifically unproven. Many studies reveal the opposite. Any new such research needs to ensure that the basis for health assessments is a focus on health outcomes, not dose models that are fraught with uncertainties.
While NRC licensees attempt to monitor environmental contamination, the NRC has never incorporated biological monitoring, which might prove useful after spike releases from various facility outages. There are several techniques that have been used in other health studies, which a revived cancer study could weave into any child or adult health assessment.
A truly independent and scientifically robust study would attempt to address these issues in addition to using the other enlightened protocols the NAS was considering. With the public process and protocol review suggested by the NAS for this now moribund study, perhaps these remaining shortcomings would finally have been addressed as well. The NRC made sure that did not happen. However, according to Ourania Kosti, NAS researcher coordinating the study, the NAS has left the door open to completing it. “I think it is important to update the findings of the 1990 study using better methodologies and information,” Kosti said. “This is the reason the Academies agreed to carry out the update. The Academies remain willing to do the study, if asked to.”
Cindy Folkers is the radiation and health specialist at Beyond Nuclear.
Nobody seems keen to buy the partially built V.C. Summer nuclear plant in South Carolina, so now the state’s biggest power provider is trying to sell off the equipment.
“No other utilities have shown interest in purchasing part or all of the Summer construction project,” Jim Brogdon, interim chief executive officer of Santee Cooper, said in an emailed statement Monday. The board declared the equipment as “surplus property” and authorized the state-owned utility to pursue a sale.
Santee Cooper and its partner Scana Corp. pulled the plugon the project about a year ago after costs ballooned to more than $20 billion and put the two half-done reactors on the block.
Feds push for low-cost commercial treatment of Hanford waste. State has concerns, BY ANNETTE CARY, acary@tricityherald.com, RICHLAND, WA
The Department of Energy is making plans to encase 2,000 gallons of waste now held in Hanford’s underground tanks in concrete-like grout, part of a continuing demonstration project.
DOE recently released a fact sheet that indicated its interest in continuing the demonstration project and listing what it sees as the benefits of the project, called the test bed initiative.
The project is a departure from plans to turn radioactive and hazardous chemical waste into a stable glass form at the $17 billion vitrification plant under construction at the nuclear reservation.
But DOE still needs to get other parties on board.
The Washington Department of Ecology, a Hanford regulator, has sent DOE a list of questions about the project. The state would need to issue permits and approvals for some aspects of the demonstration project.
“Current core work at the Hanford Site is already being deferred and delayed due to a lack of funds,” said Maia Bellon, Ecology director, in the letter to DOE. “We are concerned about (Department of) Energy pursuing a new initiative that could divert even more funding away from existing priorities that are tied to consent decree deadlines.”
The project also faces a congressional hurdle.
Language included in the Senate’s fiscal 2019 Hanford budget recommends no money be spent on the test bed initiative.
The Senate budget language must be reconciled with the House budget language for the same year, which was bullish on the project. It directed $15 million be spent on the next phase of the demonstration.
The first phase of the demonstration project, grouting three gallons of the 56 million gallons of waste held in Hanford’s underground tanks, was successfully completed in December.
………The state of Washington and the Hanford Advisory Board have advocated for more double-shell tanks to be built to provide more space for waste to be emptied from single-shell tanks. DOE has been opposed to building more storage tanks, saying it would rather spend money on treating waste………https://www.tri-cityherald.com/latest-news/article215368935.html
Congress drops bid to loosen supervision of nuclear agency abc By MATTHEW DALY, ASSOCIATED PRESS, WASHINGTON — Jul 23, 2018,
Congress is abandoning an effort to loosen Cabinet control over an agency responsible for securing the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
A provision in a defense policy bill would have removed the National Nuclear Security Administration from direct control of the Energy Department, where it’s been housed since its creation in 2000.
The provision was dropped as House and Senate lawmakers negotiated a compromise defense bill, aides said Monday. The defense bill could come up for a vote in the House this week.
The Trump administration and senior lawmakers from both parties opposed the nuclear provision, but it was included in a defense bill passed by the Senate in June.
The measure would have empowered the NNSA to act nearly on its own, freed from what a report by the Senate Armed Services Committee calls a “flawed DOE organizational process” that has led to “weak accountability, … insufficient program and budget expertise and poor contract management.”
That report cites a series of delays and cost overruns at the agency, including a contentious project to reprocess weapons-grade plutonium and uranium into fuel for commercial reactors at a site in South Carolina.
The White House and Energy Secretary Rick Perry oppose the reorganization, saying it would usurp Perry’s authority to set policy in crucial areas. The bill also would make the nuclear agency’s general counsel independent of the Energy Department’s legal division……….
Criticism of the nuclear agency isn’t new.
A congressional commission led by a former Army undersecretary and retired Navy admiral concluded in 2014 that it had failed in its mission and relied too heavily on private contractors that had turned it into a massive jobs program with duplicative functions and a “dysfunctional management and operations relationship.”
The commission, however, did support the current oversight arrangement.
Perry told Congress this year that there have been “historically questionable expenditures of dollars” by the NNSA, including at the South Carolina nuclear project, but he said officials were working to ensure taxpayers “are getting a good return on our investment.”
(Transport dangers) Any mainline rail can be used. The condition of the rails in the U.S. is not good. Think of recent train derailments – as NIRS has often asked, “What if nuclear waste had been aboard?” The irradiated nuclear fuel casks aboard trains bound for Holtec/ELEA, NM, combined with the rail cars, would weigh around 180 tons. These would be among the heaviest loads on the rails, and would risk further damaging them.
(Waste container contamination) sometimes the exterior of shipping casks are contaminated, sometimes severely so. Above, 49 such incidents of external contamination were documented in the U.S. from 1949-1996. As revealed by Mycle Schneider of WISE-Paris in the mid- to late 1990s, Areva (now called Orano in the U.S., as at the WCS, TX CISF) experienced a very large number of externally contaminated HLRW shipments.
Because pools are outside radiological containment structures that surround reactors (which can themselves fail, as shown at Fukushima Daiichi), the first step in the direction of Hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS) is to “expedite transfer” of irradiated nuclear fuel from indoor “wet” pools to outdoor dry storage. However, there must be significant upgrades to safety, security, health- and environmental protection associated with dry cask storage – that is, Hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS).
Ken Raskin , 22 July 18 Trump has whole heartedly opened up the radioactive nightmare in America again. Uranium Mining in the Grand canyon. Into water that supplies much of the western United States.
The Lost Creek uranium mine north of Rawlins shut down operations Wednesday just weeks after reporting one of the largest spills of uranium injection fluid ever recorded in the U.S.
The spill was contained on site and is not a human health hazard, according to federal regulators. The spilled fluid had not yet been pumped into the uranium ore beneath the surface. Radioactive metal contained in the fluid was naturally occurring.
The mine, owned by Littleton, Colorado-based Ur-Energy, reported an Aug. 19 spill of 188,000 gallons of pre-injection fluid at Lost Creek. Another spill of 10,000 gallons of pre-injection fluid at Lost Creek on Tuesday was reported to federal regulators.
See how the article trivializes impact by stating that the radioactive metal contained in the spilled fluid was “naturally occurring.”
Uranium mining rapes the earth and processing and utilization poison the population as well as the eco-systems upon which we depend.
We don’t need nuclear power – its inefficient, costly, dangerous, and no solution exists for waste – and we don’t need nuclear weapons.
We don’t need any more uranium. Its antithetical to security when thought in relation to the preservation of life.””””
Start from Ship Rock NM, where a 90 million gallons of highly radioactive sludge, was released illegally into the environment and, san Juan River. The san Juan River Drains into the Colorado River.
Shiprock is also close to where underground nukes were detonated in New Mexico for project gasbuggy
Shiprock is on the navajo nation.
From there, moving West on the Navajo Nation.
Moving west to the grand canyon and the Uranium Mines there! Also downwind from Nevada nuke testing in the 50s and 60s.
GO NORTH TO Halchita IN DEEP SOUTH UTAH, BY the sacred Monument Valley.
Halchita, is where there was a uranium Mill and where there were mines, on the navajo Nation. Halchita is also downwind, from where the American Military nuke bombed its own citizens with a thousand bombs.
HALCHITA IS NAVAJO land, where half the residents in the area died from cancer.
Move norteast to Blanding, Utah, where energy Fuels is now located. By Bears ears, where Trump just opened unlimited uranium mining, even open pit uranium mining.
BLANDING IS Also downwinder. So many young people dead in mine accidents, prematurely from lung cancer, pacreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, lymphomas, leukemias. MANY PEOPLE THERE HATE URANIUM AND NUCLEAR.
A leader of the sagebrush rebellion, Cal Black, WAS a county commissioner of that county, San Juan County in the 60s and 70s.
Cal Black died with painful tumors, all over his body, at a young age. He regretted his involvement with Uranium, in the end.
The principal of Monticello High School, had a young son, who died of the same leukemia, that cursed so many kids in southern utah. All of those kids were downwinders and uranium babies. Monticello is just 20 miles north of the Energy Fuels genocide factory.
There was a Uranium Mill, right in the middle of monticello. It has not cleaned up all the way, to this day.
The mill and tailings of energy fuels in blanding blows radioactive shit all over s utah to colorado and arizona.
Blanding and energy fuels, are 20 miles s of Monticello Utah.
The heavily contaminated dust from that abomination, blows radioactive shit, to the Ute reservation in colorado 50 miles away, to Bluff Utah by Monument valley and has heavily contaminated the Bears Ears.
There were the numerous nuclear bombs, detonated at the headwaters of and under the Colorado River in the 60s and 70s. There are the towns north of energy fuels along the Colorado river in Utah and colarado, that had to sue the government and corporate polluters for 20 years, to get something done about the radioactive shit in their towns.
And now Trump is back to start it up all over again and make it worse.
The Commander-in-Chief, President Donald Trump, has announced a new mission into the realm of martial excess. It is one is that will surely enrich the aerospace industry while spreading the global battlefield to a new dimension.
Trump is calling for the creation of a new Space Force as a sixth branch of the U.S. military, to militarize the heavens.
“It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space,” Trump told a meeting of the National Space Council in mid-June. “We must have American dominance in space.”
To this end, the President has taken a page from Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars playbook. Reagan’s scheme, according to a recent article by Karl Grossman, was built around “nuclear reactors and plutonium systems on orbiting battle platforms providing the power for hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons.”
Grossman, a journalism professor at State University of New York/College of New York and author of the book The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, has been reporting on the militarization of space for decades, says the move will likely spur a new international competition to weaponize space.
In an interview, Grossman told me that “the Russians and Chinese are hesitant because of the high cost. But if the Americans proceed with this, all bets are off. They’re not going to sit for it. They’re going to get up there before you know it.”
“It will all be nuclear,” Grossman adds. “It’s the ultimate nightmare.”
Trump’s move contradicts the letter and spirit of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which was won after years of epic negotiations, mostly during the Vietnam War. The landmark United Nations accord brought the Soviet Union, China, the United States, and 120 other nations together in a monumental agreement to designate space as a global commons, reserved for peaceful purposes.
“States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner,” the treaty states.
“The Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military maneuvers on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.”
Now Trump has instructed the Pentagon “to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces; that is a big statement. We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have the Space Force, separate but equal, it is going to be something.”
The proposal for a Space Corps as part of the Air Force could likely pass in the House but faces tougher going in the Senate.
“There’s a lot of resistance to this,” says Grossman, “because a lot of the current work is located in Colorado Springs, and in Huntsville, Alabama. So there’s geographical lobbying from the Pentagon because they thought a new Space Corps might be competition to some of the vested interest in those towns.”
“It’s hard to know how much this would cost,” says Grossman. An article in Roll Call has estimated “$500 billion or more in the coming decade.”
“The real cost will depend on how greedy the aerospace companies are,” Grossman says. “So much of space is now private business, with Elon Musk and Bezos and all kind of companies talking about making a buck out there.”
Representative Trent Franks, Republican of Arizona, seems to agree, tellingRoll Call that “a big payday is coming for programs aimed at developing weapons that can be deployed in space.”
According to Franks, “It was a Democrat mindset that caused us to step back from space-based defense assets to ostensibly not ‘weaponize space,’ while our enemies proceeded to do just that, and now, we find ourselves in a grave deficit. In every area of warfare, within the Geneva Conventions, America should be second to none. That includes satellite warfare, if it’s necessary. We cannot be victims of our own decency here.”
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty was the result of worldwide recognition that war is incredibly costly in terms of lives and resources—and that more needed to be done.
“The U.S. led the effort to de-weaponize space in the wake of Sputnik,” says Grossman. “I was told by Craig Eisendrath of the State Department that the U.S. feared the Soviet presence in space. As a model they used the Antarctic Treaty, which banned weapons down there.”
Since the mid-1980s, key players at the United Nations have tried to expand the ‘67 accord. The Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space Treaty, proposed in 1985, would have banned from space all weapons, nuclear and otherwise. Canada, Russia, and China pushed hard for its ratification. But no American president has been willing to sign it. The United Nations committee working on it was dissolved in 1994. In 2008, China and Russia submitted an updated draft to the U.N. General Assembly which the United States alone has continued to oppose (Israel has abstained). Even Putin, at their infamous Helsinki presser, chided Trump about it.
Now Trump is heading where no President since Reagan has gone before. “My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a warfighting domain, just like the land, air, and sea,” he says.
“Trump’s plan, like Reagan’s, involves laser beams, particle beams and hypervelocity guns, all of which will have to involve nuclear power,” says Grossman. “If there’s a shooting war it will be Chernobyls and Fukushimas in the sky. Some of it will come down, which will be catastrophic. And some will take millennia to fall, which means the heavens are going to be littered with radioactive debris.”
As Grossman sees it, “Of all the many, many terrible things the Trump Administration is doing, opening space to war will be the most destructive.”
Decommissioning nuclear power stations need an “autopsy” to verify and validate safety margins projected for operating reactor license extensions
Summary
The Issue
The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the lead organization for the U.S. commercial nuclear power industry, envisions the industry’s “Bridge to the Future” through a series of reactor license renewals from the original 40-year operating license; first by a 40 to 60-year extension and then a subsequent 60 to 80-year extension. Most U.S. reactors are already operating in their first 20-year license extension and the first application for the second 20-year extension (known as the “Subsequent License Renewal”) is before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for review and approval. NEI claims that there are no technical “show stoppers” to these license extensions. However, as aging nuclear power stations seek to extend their operations longer and longer, there are still many identified knowledge gaps for at least 16 known age-related material degradation mechanisms (embrittlement, cracking, corrosion, fatigue, etc.) attacking irreplaceable safety-related systems including miles of electrical cable, structures such as the concrete containment and components like the reactor pressure vessel. For example, the national labs have identified that it is not known how radiation damage will interact with thermal aging. Material deterioration has already been responsible for near miss nuclear accidents. As such, permanently closed and decommissioning nuclear power stations have a unique and increasingly vital role to play in providing access to still missing data on the impacts and potential hazards of aging for the future safety of dramatic operating license extensions.
The NRC and national laboratories document that a post-shutdown autopsy of sorts to harvest, archive and test actual aged material samples (metal, concrete, electrical insulation and jacketing, etc.) during decommissioning provides unique and critical access to obtain the scientific data for safety reviews of the requested license extensions. A Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) 2017 report concludes, post-shutdown autopsies are necessary for “reasonable assurance that systems, structures, and components (SSCs) are able to meet their safety functions. Many of the remaining questions regarding degradation of materials will likely require[emphasis added]a combination of laboratory studies as well as other research conducted on materials sampled from plants (decommissioned or operating).” PNNL reiterates, “Where available, benchmarking can be performed using surveillance specimens. In most cases, however, benchmarking of laboratory tests will require(emphasis added)harvesting materials from reactors.” In the absence of “reasonable assurance,” it is premature for licensees to complete applications without adequate verification and validation of projected safety margins for the 60 to 80-year extension period.
Decommissioning is not just the process for dismantling nuclear reactors and remediating radioactive contamination for site restoration. Decommissioning has an increasingly important role at the end-of-reactor-life-cycle for the scientific scrutiny of projected safety margins and potential hazards at operating reactors seeking longer and longer license extensions.
The Problem
After decades of commercial power operation,the nuclear industry and the NRC have done surprisingly little to strategically harvest, archive and scientifically analyze actual aged materials. Relatively few samples of real time aged materials have been shared with the NRC. The NRC attributes the present dearth of real time aged samples to “harvesting opportunities have been limited due to few decommissioning plants.” However, ten U.S. reactors have completed decommissioning operations to date and 20 units are in the decommissioning process. More closures are scheduled to begin in Fall 2018. A closer look raises significant concern that the nuclear industry is reluctant to provide access to decommissioning units for sampling or collectively share this cost of doing business to extend their operating licenses.Key components including severely embrittled reactor pressure vessels were promptly dismantled by utilities and buried whole without autopsy. Many permanently closed reactors have been placed in “SAFSTOR,” defueled and mothballed “cold and dark” for up to 50 years without the material sampling to determine their extent of condition and the impacts of aging. Moreover, the NRC is shying away from taking reasonable regulatory and enforcement action to acquire the requested samples for laboratory analysis after prioritizing the need for a viable license extension safety review prior to approval. Meanwhile, the nuclear industry license extension process is pressing forward.
David Lochbaum, a recognized nuclear safety engineer in the public interest with the Union of Concerned Scientists, identifies that nuclear research on the impacts and hazards of age degradation in nuclear power stations presently relies heavily on laboratory accelerated aging—often of fresh materials—and computer simulation to predict future aging performance and potential consequences during license extension. Lochbaum explains that “Nuclear autopsies yield insights that cannot be obtained by other means.” Researchers need to compare the results from their time-compression studies with results from tests on materials actually aged for various time periods to calibrate their analytical models.According to Lochbaum, “Predicting aging effects is like a connect-the-dots drawing. Insights from materials harvested during reactor decommissioning provide many additional dots to the dots provided from accelerated aging studies. As the number of dots increases, the clearer the true picture can be seen. The fewer the dots, the harder it is to see the true picture.”
The Path Forward
1) Congress, the Department of Energy (DOE) and the NRC need to determine the nuclear industry’s fair share of autopsy costs levied through collective licensing fees for strategic harvesting during decommissioning and laboratory analysis of real time aged material samples as intended to benefit the material performance and safety margins of operating reactors seeking license extensions, and;
2) As NRC and the national laboratories define the autopsy’s stated goal as providing “reasonable assurance that systems, structures, and components (SSCs) are able to meet their safety functions” for the relicensing of other reactors, the NRC approval process for Subsequent License Renewal extensions should be held in abeyance pending completion of comprehensive strategic harvesting and conclusive analysis as requested by the agency and national laboratories, and;
3) Civil society can play a more active role in the independent oversight and public transparency of autopsies at decommissioning reactor sites such as through state legislated and authorized nuclear decommissioning citizen advisory panels.
U.S. to probe whether imports are threat to national security
Tariffs on imports ‘would drive up the price of uranium’
The Trump administration’s decision to consider tariffs on uranium imports may raise the cost of fuel for nuclear reactors and undermine a separate initiative to shore up struggling electricity generators.
The Commerce Department said Wednesday it will probe whether uranium imports “threaten to impair” national security. U.S. miners Energy Fuels Inc. and Ur-Energy Inc., which requested the probe in January, want 25 percent of the domestic market reserved for U.S. producers. Domestic companies supply less than 5 percent of U.S. consumption and would need about three years to ramp up production to meet that target.
The prospect of trade barriers comes after President Donald Trump last month ordered his energy secretary to take action to extend the life of money-losing coal and nuclear power plants that face competition from cheap natural gas and renewable energy. Those efforts may be hindered as the prospect of tariffs threatens to deal another blow to financially strapped reactor operators……..https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-19/uranium-tariffs-threaten-nuclear-plants-trump-is-trying-to-save
The analysis, by Massachussetts-based research firm The Brattle Group, looked at the costs associated with keeping the U.S. coal and nuclear fleets operating as is for the next two years.
“Arresting the retirement of uneconomic generating assets in the current market environment will likely prove quite costly,” the report reads.
The study was commissioned by groups including American Petroleum Institute, Advanced Energy Economy and American Wind Energy Association, after the leak of a memorandum from the Department of Energy calling for the White House to use national security powers to save coal and nuclear plants.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry has been championing such actions since last year, arguing the shutdowns theater the stability of the nation’s power grid.
“Further, bailouts of coal and nuclear plants around the country could raise costs on American consumers and fundamentally hurt the administration’s goal of American energy dominance throughout the world,” said Todd Snitchler, market development director at the American Petroleum Institute.
NORTHAMPTON — On the steps of City Hall, U.S. Rep. James McGovern became the first voting member of Congress to officially pledge his support for the abolition of nuclear weapons across the world.
On Saturday afternoon, candidates running for the state Legislature joined the congressman in calling on the United States government to sign, ratify and implement the 2017 International Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The United Nations adopted the treaty last July and so far 59 countries have signed it. U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington, D.C., also signed the pledge in May, but she does not have voting power in the House.
“This treaty to put an end to nuclear weapons once and for all was not started by the great powers, but by grassroots organizations and the leadership of small and medium-sized nations,” McGovern said before a crowd of 70. “I believe it takes hard work, hard organizing, to get people and nations to recognize that nuclear weapons remain one of the greatest threats to all humankind, to the environment, to the planet — and they must be eliminated.”
The Resistance Center for Peace and Justice, formerly the American Friends Service Committee of Western Massachusetts, partnered with NuclearBan.US, a national campaign founded by
Northampton residents Vicki Elson and Dr. Timmon Wallis, to host an event that saw numerous prospective lawmakers voice their support for the dismantling of the country’s nuclear arsenal. Both groups are official partners of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for its work on the treaty.
The treaty prohibits signatories from the development, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons under international law.
Since the treaty was adopted last year, 59 countries have signed it and 11 parliaments have ratified it, according to Wallis. The United States has not signed it, nor has any other nation that possesses nuclear weapons.
Grassroots effort
In order for the treaty to go into effect, 50 countries have to ratify it, which Wallis said he expects to happen at the end of next year. In September, there will be another signing ceremony at the United Nations in New York, where he expects nine countries to sign on.
Local statehouse office-seekers who signed the ICAN Candidate Pledge for a Nuclear Weapons Free Future included Chelsea Kline, Jo Comerford and Steven Connor for state Senate; Marie McCourt, Eric Nakajima, Lindsay Sabadosa and Mindy Domb for the Hampshire House seat; Natalie Blais, Jonathan Edwards, Casey Pease, Christine Doktor, Kate Albright-Hanna and Nathaniel Waring for the 1st Franklin District seat; Tanya Neslusan for the Hampden House seat; Amaad Rivera for the Hampden Senate seat; and Jamie Guerin for state treasurer.
“It’s precisely because our national leadership is failing us that we need a grassroots movement to change things,” McGovern said. “If we are going to abolish nuclear weapons, it’s going to have to be a worldwide grassroots movement.”
The world cannot count on the leadership of President Donald Trump or President Vladimir Putin of Russia, he said, so change must come from regular people around the globe. McGovern said taking the pledge was an easy decision to make and he credited the event organizers for focusing his attention on the need to take action against the threat of nuclear weapons.
“Being in Washington right now is like drinking water from a fire hose, and there are a thousand horrible things happening all the time,” McGovern said. “But if nuclear weapons were ever used, that may be the end of the Earth. This is an incredibly important issue and I am very proud of this movement.”
Lining up support
Elson and Wallis said they are currently working with mayors from Northampton, Easthampton and Holyoke for their cities to become treaty-compliant. As part of their work for NuclearBan.US, they urge people to hold accountable the 26 companies known to help make nuclear weapons, many of which are based in the U.S., by boycotting and divesting from these companies.
With President Trump reversing course on a lot of former President Barack Obama’s efforts at disarmament, Wallis said the campaign faces an uphill battle.
“Of course, the U.S. government is putting pressure on all these countries not to sign and not to ratify, so that is part of what we are up against,” Wallis said.
Elson said, “The citizens are rising up, that is what we are all about.
“The treaty is the tool we can use to solve this problem once and for all,” she said. “Then we won’t be worried about this leader or that leader, or this country or that country. If these weapons don’t exist we would be a whole lot safer, and then we can go on to solve other problems.”
Takoma Park, Md., and Berkeley, Calif., are the first two cities in the nation to declare themselves treaty-compliant through the efforts of NuclearBan.US. In western Massachusetts, the Northampton Quaker Meeting, Broadside Books, Elements Spa, Arcadia Herbs, and Paradise Copy are now treaty-aligned.
NuclearBan.US has a goal of gaining the support of individuals, faith organizations, schools, towns, and cities to demand the attention of the U.S. government.
“Now is the time that we must come together to demand nuclear weapons be abolished, and fortunately we have the tool to do so,” Lydia Wood of NuclearBan.US said. “Now that we have this tool, it is up to us to make it successful … It is unacceptable to make money off the most destructive and potentially apocalyptic weapon ever created. We can make it politically unacceptable by publicly shaming and stigmatizing the companies making billions off of these weapons.”
Pompeo accused North Korea of hiding nuclear facilities, enriching uranium: Report , Straits Times, 17 July 18 TOKYO (THE YOMIURI SHIMBUN/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused North Korea of operating secret facilities for the enrichment of uranium when he met senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol during his July 6-7 visit to the country, the Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
The US top diplomat’s move appears to underscore Washington’s increasing suspicion that Pyongyang is covertly proceeding with activities that are contrary to denuclearisation, despite its declared commitment to the goal.
It also raises the possibility that even if North Korea starts the process of denuclearisation, the alleged existence of secret facilities will become an issue during the declaration and verification phases.
According to sources knowledgeable about Japan-US-South Korea trilateral talks, Pompeo said at his meeting Kim Yong Chol that Pyongyang was enhancing the production of enriched uranium and also concealing nuclear-related facilities and nuclear warheads.
Citing information that construction activities are under way at a missile plant at Hamhung in the north-eastern province of South Hamgyong to expand the facility, Pompeo stressed that this was not beneficial to US-North Korean relations.
Kim Yong Chol, a top North Korean party official and former spy agency chief with whom Pompeo played a key role in arranging an unprecedented summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12, flatly denied Pompeo’s claim, according to the sources.
Pyongyang has never hidden or operated a secret uranium enrichment site, the North Korean official was quoted as saying.
Kim also reportedly argued that activities at the Hamhung missile plant were part of construction work in preparation for the rainy season, not expansion work.
Ken Raskin, 16 July 18 People forget about the Green run From Hanford. The Green Run occurred, when the government purposely let loose one of the largest plumes, of radionuclide poison in history, into South East Washington, using everyone there as test rats. A whole graveyard of miscarried and hopelessly deformed babies, from the aftermath of the radionuclide genocide, can be found in Walla Walla, Washington.
Since then, tons and tons more of radioactive waste have accumulated at Hanford, to be stored, or await the bogus vitiriolization-gaslighting lie. A lie that has gone on for 50 years, that will mever happen. Untold amounts of the the most toxic crud known to man, lethal at billionths of a gram, have leaked into the surrounding areas and the Columbia River.
More of the worst radionuclide waste known :cesium 137, plutonium, uranium poisons, and many more radionuclide wastes have accumutalted at hanford from the HOKEY PROMISE OF vitrification.
If one considers atrocities, like the green run, at Hanford, Hanford is far worse than Mayak.
Our ethnocentric , evil monkey nucleoapes, will not admit it. It is always Russia or chernobyl etc . That is the worst nuclear abomination on the planet. That is in spite of the fact, that the US military and govt detonated more than a thousand nuclear bombs in mureica, on its own citizens.
There is so much old highly radioactive waste, from the cold war and nuclear waste, from the reactors by Hanford, as well as the new shit constantly pouring in. There is a major radiation incident at Hanford, every few months now.
From Wikipedea The “Green Run” was a secret U.S. Government release of radioactive fission products on December 2–3, 1949, at the Hanford Site plutonium production facility, located in Eastern Washington. Radioisotopes released at that time were supposed to be detected by U.S. Air Force reconnaissance. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the U.S. Government have revealed some of the details of the experiment.[1] Sources cite 5,500 to 12,000 curies (200 to 440 TBq) of iodine-131 released,[1][2][3] and an even greater amount of xenon-133. The radiation was distributed over populated areas, and caused the cessation of intentional radioactive releases at Hanford until 1962 when more experiments commenced.[3]
There are some indications contained in the documents released by the FOIA requests that many other tests were conducted in the 1940s prior to the Green Run, although the Green Run was a particularly large test. Evidence suggests that filters to remove the iodine were disabled during the Green Run.[3][4]
The project gets its name from the processing of uranium at Hanford, WA in an open loop/water cooled nuclear reactor for the sole purpose of irradiating the Uranium-238 producing the fissile Plutonium-239. Due to other unwanted highly radioactive decay products being formed, normal batch processing would take place 83 to 101 days after reactor extraction to allow the radioactive isotopes to decay before extracting the fissile Plutonium-239 in a safe manner for the 30,000 nuclear weapons amassed and now MOX fuel during the cold war by the United States. For the Green Run test, a batch was fresh from the reactor with only a scheduled 16-day decay period and then was vented into the atmosphere prematurely. The unfiltered exhaust from the production facility was therefore much more radioactive than during a normal batch.
Oral history
Leland Fox says that his father was in the military and was bivouacked on the banks of the Wenatchee River during the Green Run:
…and people with radiation suits walked around and moved the little colored flags as the radiation was detected. The cooking was done outdoors and they slept near the beach. The Officers did not stay long except to give orders and drive away. Almost everyone that my father knew was there has died of cancer. My father had chronic lymphocytic leukemia and died from the complications of lung cancer. The Feds said that the leukemia can not be caused by iodine-131 but his doctor, Dr. Bonnie Takasugi of Burien WA, said that it most probably was.[citation needed]
Health Physicist Carl C. Gamertsfelder, Ph.D. described his recollections as to the reasons for the Green Run by attributing it to the intentions of the Air Force to be able to track Soviet releases.
Herb Parker called me to request that I, and the groups that I supervised, cooperate with the Air Force in the conduct of an experiment which became known as the Green Run… And we didn’t recommend, we wouldn’t have recommended, that they operate it. We told them that. They wanted to run anyway, and they did run.”
The Department of Energy wants to start stabilizing a Hanford tunnel filled with highly radioactive waste that is at risk of collapse without waiting for more public comments.
Work needs to start in a few weeks to finish before winter, the department said.
DOE has asked the Washington Department of Ecology, a Hanford nuclear reservation regulator, if it can proceed with filling the nearly 1,700-foot-long storage tunnel with concrete-like grout in August.
DOE held a public comment period on the plan, but the state planned its own 45-day comment period and public meetings starting next month.
Ecology officials will review DOE’s request made Thursday, but still plans to go on with its own public process, said spokesman Randy Bradbury.
The older of the two waste storage tunnels at the PUREX processing plant partially collapsed in May 2017, causing thousands of workers across the Hanford site to take cover.
The concern was that radioactive contamination could have spread from the open tunnel roof. No radioactive material is believed to have escaped but DOE is trying to prevent further collapses of the aging tunnels.
DOE wants to start filling the longer tunnel in August to get some, if not all, of the tunnel stabilized with grout before ice and snow make roads slippery this winter.
Dozens of daily truckloads will be needed to bring supplies to a batch plant near the tunnel to mix the grout. Trucks then will deliver the grout to spots along the length of the tunnel, where it will be inserted.
In addition, video shot of the inside of the tunnel in April raised concerns about the condition of the tunnel. The videos found corrosion of bolts and weld plates.
