This Father-Daughter Team Says It Has a Cheaper, Safer Way to Bury Nuclear Waste, Startup Deep Isolation wants to use fracking tech to drill horizontal disposal tunnels a mile below the Earth’s surface. Bloomberg By Ashlee Vance, 20 March 18Richard and Elizabeth Muller have come up with one of the more unusual father-daughter businesses in recent memory. On March 20 they announced a startup called Deep Isolation that aims to store nuclear waste much more safely and cheaply than existing methods. The key to the technology, according to the Mullers, is to take advantage of fracking techniques to place nuclear waste in 2-mile-long tunnels, much deeper than they’ve been before—a mile below the Earth’s surface, where they’ll be surrounded by shale. “We’re using a technique that’s been made cheap over the last 20 years,” says Richard, a famed physicist and climate change expert. “We could begin putting this waste underground right away.”
…….. The U.S. has about 80,000 tons of nuclear waste, mostly sitting at about 70 sites, in aboveground water pools.
……….With each passing year, the U.S. produces an additional 2,000 tons of nuclear waste, and the total is already more than Yucca Mountain was meant to hold. While President Trump has sought a modest $120 million to restart the program, Congress has made clear it’s not going to broach the subject in an election year. “It’s quite a serious problem,” says Rodney Ewing, a Stanford professor of geological sciences who specializes in nuclear security. “As a country, we seem to not be paying attention to the obvious difficulties we have with the waste.”
Nuclear waste experts have contemplated deep-drilling for half a century, mostly by proposing to bore straight down into granite and crystalline rock. But tests of these techniques haven’t gotten very far, being blocked, on occasion, by the public. These approaches have been deemed costly and possibly unsafe, because stacking containers on top of one another puts so much weight on the bottom drums. The Mullers say it’s much cheaper and safer to drill horizontal tunnels, and to do so in shale. They can fit the typical waste canisters (each 1 foot in diameter and 14 feet long) quickly and safely into shale tunnels, they say, given advances in fracking equipment. “Drilling the holes takes a couple weeks at most,” says Elizabeth.
…….. It’d be best to keep the tunnels close to existing nuclear waste sites, the Mullers say. The U.S. is so shale-rich that the waste disposal tunnels could be placed near nuclear production sites, so no hauling of waste would be required. The boreholes would also be much deeper than something like Yucca, vastly reducing the chance of radioactive waste leaking into the water supply. “The goal is to get this stuff out of the biosphere, and the farther down you go, the less things change,” Elizabeth says. “The waste will have 1 billion tons of rock on top of it and be in shale that has held methane gas and other volatiles for tens to hundreds of millions of years. Things don’t leak out.” Also, unlike at Yucca, machines could handle all the tunnel work, says Richard: “We’re cheaper because we remove a lot less dirt and don’t put people underground.”
The elder Muller first made his name dealing with radiation much farther away. As a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Richard did that pioneering research on dark energy and cosmic radiation, including work on projects that eventually earned Nobel Prizes. After he and Elizabeth co-founded Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit that measures global temperature and climate change, he went from being one of the most prominent global warming doubters to one of the loudest voices confirming that climate change is real and caused by humans.
…….. Before the Mullers can drill any holes in shale, they have massive challenges to overcome. Stanford’s Ewing says Deep Isolation will likely struggle to persuade dozens of communities to accept having a long-term nuclear waste site nearby and to persuade the government to let commercial companies tackle the problem. The two have drafted federal legislation that could lead to private nuclear waste disposal. “The government might allow this,” says Allison Macfarlane, former chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “The real question is whether such a small startup company would have the resources to go through the licensing over such a long time period.”……..https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-20/this-father-daughter-team-says-it-has-a-cheaper-safer-way-to-bury-nuclear-waste
Pipe-crawling robot will help decommission DOE nuclear facility, Radiation-measuring robots go where humans cannot Science Daily
Date:
March 20, 2018
Source:
Carnegie Mellon University
Summary:
A pair of autonomous robots will soon be driving through miles of pipes at the US Department of Energy’s former uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio, to identify uranium deposits on pipe walls.
A pair of autonomous robots developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute will soon be driving through miles of pipes at the U.S. Department of Energy’s former uranium enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio, to identify uranium deposits on pipe walls.
The CMU robot has demonstrated it can measure radiation levels more accurately from inside the pipe than is possible with external techniques. In addition to savings in labor costs, its use significantly reduces hazards to workers who otherwise must perform external measurements by hand, garbed in protective gear and using lifts or scaffolding to reach elevated pipes.
DOE officials estimate the robots could save tens of millions of dollars in completing the characterization of uranium deposits at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, and save perhaps $50 million at a similar uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, Kentucky.
…….. Shuttered since 2000, the plant began operations in 1954 and produced enriched uranium, including weapons-grade uranium. With 10.6 million square feet of floor space, it is DOE’s largest facility under roof, with three large buildings containing enrichment process equipment that span the size of 158 football fields. The process buildings contain more than 75 miles of process pipe.Finding the uranium deposits, necessary before DOE decontaminates, decommissions and demolishes the facility, is a herculean task. In the first process building, human crews over the past three years have performed more than 1.4 million measurements of process piping and components manually and are close to declaring the building “cold and dark.”
“With more than 15 miles of piping to be characterized in the next process building, there is a need to seek a smarter method,” said Rodrigo V. Rimando, Jr., director of technology development for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management……….https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180320084315.htm
Cortez Masto seeks details on Yucca spending since Trump’s election, The Nevada Independent, Humberto Sanchez , March 19th, 2018 , Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has called on Energy Secretary Rick Perry to provide details on how the White House would spend funds requested for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, as well as how money has been spent since President Donald Trump was elected.
In a letter to Perry dated Monday, Cortez Masto, an opponent of the controversial project, noted that while the president has requested $120 million in both of his fiscal year (FY) 2018 and 2019 budget blueprints, with regard to the Department of Energy (DOE), neither of the budget documents provides a detailed account of how funding will be, or has been, spent.
“The FY 2019 Budget Justification, like the FY 2018 Budget Justification, provides little meaningful information on how DOE would actually spend these funds to participate in U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing activities for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository,” the letter said. “Moreover, neither of these budget documents provide any information on DOE expenditures from the Nuclear Waste Fund for Yucca Mountain activities during FY 2017 and FY2018.”
Cortez Masto wants Perry to disclose what the unobligated balances were in DOE’s Defense Nuclear Waste Disposal and Nuclear Waste Disposal accounts at the beginning of FY 2017, which started on Oct. 1, 2016, as well as for FY 2018.
She also wants to know how much was spent from these accounts during FY 2017 and 2018 for Yucca licensing activities; pension fund and related obligations for retired Yucca Mountain workers; administration of the Nuclear Waste Fund, financial audits; investment guidance; maintenance of records and technical and scientific information, including preservation and security of geologic samples. ……..https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/cortez-masto-seeks-details-on-yucca-spending-since-trumps-election
American Foreign Policy Has A Masculinity Problem, Huffington Post, Lauren Sandler, Columnist 15 Mar 18
Foreign policy has always had a masculinity issue: gender shapes war, gender shapes intervention and gender shapes peacekeeping. In regard to military foreign policy, women and men are divided “always and everywhere,” according to a 2013 Pew Research Center study. Not only are women rarely part of diplomatic negotiations, but a statistical chasm exists where global security is concerned. From drone strikes to nuclear armament, women tend to disagree with men’s support of offensive strategies.
With few exceptions, foreign policy, especially in its highest echelons, is a man’s territory. But even in a realm governed by a formal rotation of masculine superegos, American foreign policy has never been in the hands of such a male id. Last week’s surprise announcement of a meeting by May between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un highlights, yet again, the perils of letting fragile male egos run the world. The prospect of the summit would be comic ― a Trey Parker and Matt Stone musical number ― were millions of lives, and perhaps ultimately the planet itself, not on the line………..
Diplomacy’s masculinity problem is nothing new, though every new Republican leader seems to inject it with fresh testosterone. Consider the Bush Doctrine, which arrived under cover of so much World Trade Center smoke. It sold two wars packaged in unequivocally masculine rhetoric, using the language of strength and dominance to distract from ― in the case of the Iraq War ― a lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction or of Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attacks. As analysts at the Brookings Institution described Bush’s aggressive “revolution” in foreign policy, “other countries will either follow or get out of the way.” But such rhetoric, and indeed a defense of American manhood itself, led us as surely into the Spanish American War more than a century earlier, according to historian Kristin Hoganson. Stunningly little has changed since that war began, in 1898. ……..
Of course, what makes our situation even more dangerous is that it’s not just Trump who is operating from a place of defensive masculinity. “From the outside, it is easy to underestimate how much of North Korea’s threats and bizarre expressions of aggression reflect its sense of vulnerability and wounded pride,” Evan Osnos wrote in The New Yorker this week. It’s essentially a therapist’s diagnosis of the pain underlying toxic manhood.
We now find ourselves at the mercy of two insecure grown-up boys pretending to be men, who might deploy defensive machismo by any nuclear means necessary. Each is led baldly by fear of failing to be the alpha male. And it’s a zero sum game: There’s only one alpha allowed. Who is going to rule the locker room? And who, when hazed, will punish the world for it? https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-sandler-foreign-policy-trump
Reuters 16th March 2018, A science advocacy group urged the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on
Friday to reject a longstanding industry request to limit cyber attack protections at nuclear plants, a day after the Trump administration publicly blamed Moscow for hacking into nuclear power and other energy infrastructure.
The Nuclear Energy Institute industry group petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in June 2014 to limit the scope of the agency’s cyber-protection safeguards to only systems with a direct impact on safety. The institute said in the petition that such limits would be “less burdensome” for operators of nuclear power plants while being “adequately protective” of public health and safety.
Union of Concerned Scientists 16th March 2018,Yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation officially confirmed that Russian hackers have been targeting US nuclear power plants and other critical facilities since at least 2016.
Regardless, the US nuclear industry has been pressuring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to relax its cyber security standards. Below is a statement by Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“The Department of Homeland Security alert is a stark
reminder that nuclear power plants are tempting targets for cyber
attackers. Although the systems that control the most critical safety
equipment at US nuclear plants are analog-based and largely immune to cyber
attacks, many other plant systems with important safety and security
functions are digital and could be compromised. For instance, electronic
locks, alarms, closed-circuit television cameras, and communications
equipment essential for plant security could be disabled or reprogrammed.
And some plants have equipment, such as cranes that move highly radioactive
spent fuel, that utilize computer-based control systems that could be
manipulated to cause an accident.” https://www.ucsusa.org/press/2018/russian-cyber-attacks-call-stringent-security-standards-us-nuclear-plants-plant-owners
GOP governor hopeful says his rivals are tainted by nuclear cash, BY JAMIE SELF, jself@thestate.com, March 15, 2018
A Republican running for governor says his rivals have something he lacks: a tie to the utilities responsible for a failed multi billion-dollar effort to build two nuclear reactors in Fairfield County.
Greenville real-estate lender John Warren is calling on his rivals to return campaign contributions they have received from the utilities, Cayce-based SCANA and officials tied to state-owned Santee Cooper.
“Their judgment is clouded by special interests, but I have a plan to address the V.C. Summer crisis that starts with cleaning house,” said Warren on Tuesday in a statement.
Warren’s main targets in the attack are Republican Catherine Templeton, who has received $15,000 in contributions from board members of Santee Cooper, and S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster, who received at least $115,000 in contributions from SCANA, its employees and leaders before the utility’s announcement last July that it was abandoning efforts to build two nuclear reactors at its V.C. Summer Nuclear Station.
After that announcement, McMaster became a vocal critic of SCANA, saying its customers either should get the two nuclear reactors they were promised or their money back. The governor also has called for the sale of Santee Cooper, SCANA’s junior partner in the deal, and forced the release of a damning report about the nuclear project.
……. Templeton has received at least $15,000 in campaign donations from Santee Cooper board members and their families, including $3,500 from former Santee Cooper board chairman Leighton Lord……On Day 1 as governor, Warren says he will fire the entire Santee Cooper board and push legislation to stop utilities involved in the nuclear project from continuing to charge their customers for it. He also says he would call for a forensic audit and valuation of Santee Cooper, push for the preservation of the two unfinished V.C. Summer reactors and encourage the sale of equipment on the site. Reporter Avery G. Wilks contributed.; Jamie Self: 803-771-8658, @jamiemself http://www.thestate.com/news/politics-government/article204896769.html
An independent government agency saved Americans from a massive de facto tax hike.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry had proposed a multibillion-dollar bailout of failing coal and nuclear power plants. He wanted to give these plants taxpayer-funded subsidies to keep them afloat. Luckily, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) made the right call and quashed the plan.
Sec. Perry’s proposal — commonly called the notice of proposed rulemaking, or NOPR — would have granted government subsidies to any power plants capable of storing 90 days’ worth of fuel supply on-site. The only electricity generators that fit this description are coal and nuclear plants. Natural gas and renewables plants don’t store their fuels on site.
The secretary’s goal was to keep nearly bankrupt coal and nuclear plants operating, so they can produce electricity in case natural disasters or cyberattacks disrupt America’s energy grid.
Fears of an electricity shortage are overblown — the power grid is already resilient. According to Sec. Perry’s own department, America’s energy grid reliability is “adequate today despite the retirement of 11 percent of the generating capacity available in 2002.”
Natural gas plants, in particular, are dependable. A recent Brattle Group study found natural gas “relatively advantageous” compared to other energy sources in terms of power grid reliability. It’s relatively easy for these plants to ramp up or slow down electricity generation in response to changing demand or emergency situations.
A DOE report released in August concluded as much. It did not find that the closure of failing coal and nuclear plants would lead to electricity shortages — even though Sec. Perry hoped for such a conclusion to justify a coal and nuclear bailout.
Extending a financial lifeline to failing coal and nuclear plants wouldn’t have been cheap. Sec. Perry’s bailout would have cost taxpayers $10.6 billion a year.
These subsidies would have helped just a handful of lucky corporations. Ninety percent of NOPR funds dedicated to nuclear energy would have been divvied up between five or fewer companies.
Regular Americans oppose this crony capitalism. Seventy-seven percent of voters in Pennsylvania, where lawmakers are trying to bail out nuclear company Exelon, agree that regulators shouldn’t offer special treatment to specific corporations.
Sec. Perry tried to strangle free-market innovation by picking winners and losers. Such cronyism would thwart the continued rise of natural gas, which is now abundant thanks to the advent of hydraulic fracturing and other drilling technologies. In 2016, America generated more electricity from natural gas than from coal for the first time.
That’s good news for the environment. Replacing coal with natural gas has helped reduced greenhouse emissions to levels not seen since 1988. It has also resulted in lower electricity prices for consumers.
The proposed coal and nuclear bailout was a terrible deal for taxpayers. FERC should be commended for refusing to funnel billions of our hard-earned dollars to prop up dying industries.
David Williams is president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
The State 16th March 2018, Once ignored, small band of protesters proven right about bungled nuclear
project. Through the years, the activists’ message was simple: the nuclear
project’s costs would spiral out of control; electricity customers would
face higher bills; the reactors would produce power the state did not need;
and the untested nuclear design could slow down completion of the project.
Instead, the groups wanted utilities, including SCE&G, to spend money
making homes more energy efficient, and developing solar and wind power,
which, they say, are cheaper and better for the environment http://www.thestate.com/news/local/article205512869.html
Feds: Russian Hackers Are Attacking U.S. Power Plants, TIME By NASH JENKINS 16 Mar 18 Officials in Washington say that Russian hackers are in the midst of a widespread attack on crucial components of U.S. infrastructure, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report released Thursday.
The targets of these attacks include the country’s electric grid, including its nuclear power system, as well as “commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors,” the statement said.
The report is damning confirmation of what has for months been suspected: that hackers in Russia are capable of infiltrating and compromising vital systems relied on by millions of Americans. According to the new report, the attacks began at least as early as March 2016, thriving on vulnerabilities in these systems’ online operations.
………..The report cites a widely circulated investigation from Symantec released in October 2017 that linked the hacking group Dragonfly, suspected to be Russian, to a series of attacks on energy systems in the U.S. and Europe.
Bloomberg reports that victims of the attacks included a nuclear power plant located in Kansas.
New US nuclear submarines come with $128b price tag, 9 news, By Richard Wood
The total cost of the US navy’s new ballistic missile submarine fleet will be an “eye-watering” $US100 billion ($128b).
Earlier this week, Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer said deep under the ocean remains the best best place to hide a nuclear deterrent – but it comes at a price.
The US Navy is seeking to build a fleet of 12 Colombia-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), reports The Diplomat.
“All of sudden you’re talking about the submarines and there is a number that will make your eyes water. Columbia will be a $100 billion program for its lifetime.
“We have to do it. I think we have to have big discussions about it,” Spencer added.
Underwater has proved to date the most elusive environment for detecting an SSBN, he explained.
However, “it comes at a price,” the Navy secretary added.
Construction of the first Columbia-class sub is scheduled to start in 2021, with the US navy taking delivery from 2028.
Australian maritime warfare expert James Goldrick told nine.com.au the US is determined to keep its edge in submarine technology.
Despite recent developments in underwater detection, submarines remain difficult to pinpoint, he said.
“The sea is a very complex medium. It remains the most impenetrable environment, and I think the US is banking on this continuing.”
And Rear Admiral Goldrick said despite Russia and China unveiling new planned nuclear weapons, the US maintains an advantage in submarine technology.
Putin claims new weapons could strike ‘anywhere in the world’
“The Americans are well ahead of the Chinese. The Russians, however, have become well advanced in modernising their submarine fleet.”
The Columbia-class vessels are due to replace the US navy’s current Ohio-class SSBN fleet.
Technical details of the new vessels remain sketchy, but they are set to be the biggest sub the US navy has ever commissioned, The Diplomat reports.
Designed by General Dynamics Electric Boat, they measure 171m and have a beam of 13m.
Paul Waldon Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA, 15 Mar 18Today the 15th of March is another red letter day in the nuclear arena with the 56th anniversary of the death of Arthur Holly Compton, surprisingly (very surprisingly) the only one of the “Big Four” with the Manhattan project who did NOT die of cancer due to his reported time exposed to radioactivity.
However the other three Robert J Oppenheimer, Ernest Orlando Lawrence, and Enrico Fermi went to their graves, victims of cancer fueled by their exposure to radiation in a nuclear industry despite all precautions taken. The commonality of nuclear death doesn’t discriminate between engineers, scientists, physicists and the grunts at the front line, though its the grunts that fall short of compensation, acknowledgement, or appreciation of their service.
We have all heard of the death of Marie Curie, physicist and her lead lined coffin and radioactive grave site, Harry K Daghnian Jr, and Louis Slotin who both died of acute radiation sickness from exposure while serving on the Manhattan project, the death of Los Alamos chemical operator Cecil Kelley, and seven engineering crew aboard the K-19 sub from radioactive exposure, only to name but a few, however the nuclear industry spends time and money debunking the rights of people afflicted by hard to prove nuclear contamination in this dangerous industry. Nuclear fueled brigandage of the planet does NOT have a conscience.https://www.facebook.com/groups/344452605899556/
Russia Hacks U.S. Nuclear Plants, Infrastructure ‘Hundreds Of Thousands Of Times A Day’ Investors Business Daily MICHAEL LARKIN-16 Mar 18,Russian hackers are attacking critical U.S. infrastructure, including the energy grid, nuclear power plants, and airports, according to U.S. government officials.
Water processing plants are among the other targets being repeatedly tested by rolling attacks. Last year, more than a dozen power plants in seven states were breached due to Russia’s ongoing campaign of cyberattacks.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry told the House Appropriations Subcommittee Thursday cyberattacks are “literally happening hundreds of thousands of times a day. … The warfare that goes on in the cyberspace is real, it’s serious, and we must lead the world.”
Such attacks were cited as being one of the reasons the Trump administration imposed sanctions on a series of Russian organizations and individuals Thursday. In a doomsday scenario, such attacks could leave millions without water and electricity……..
An alert issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI Thursday laid out in more detail what the Russians have been targeting, and how they are going about it.
“Since at least March 2016, Russian government cyber actors … targeted government entities and multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, including the energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors,” the alert said.
The techniques being employed include sending spear-phishing emails from compromised legitimate accounts, host-based exploitation and the targeting of industrial control system infrastructure………
While information theft was one of the goals, a key prize would have been gaining control of systems used by infrastructure. They could then launch attacks that could leave millions without water and power.
An even more worrying prospect would be hackers gaining control of a nuclear power plant. A sudden shutdown can trigger safety systems designed to disperse excess heat and prevent a meltdown, though safety systems themselves may be vulnerable to attack. However, the operating systems used at such plants are usually decades-old legacy controls that cannot be exploited by hackers. …….https://www.investors.com/news/russia-hackers-attacking-u-s-power-plants-infrastructure-water-plants/
The federal government is demanding that the company building a giant nuclear waste treatment plant in Washington state provide records proving that the steel used in the nearly $17 billion project meets safety standards.
The U.S. Department of Energy says in a letter obtained by the Associated Press that records needed to ensure that the structural steel used in the project is safe are either missing or of “indeterminate quality.”
“This condition is a potentially unrecoverable quality issue,” said the letter sent March 6 from the agency’s Office of River Protection in Richland to Bechtel National Inc., which is building the long-delayed plant to dispose of wastes created in the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons.
The agency gave Bechtel National 14 days to provide proof that work on the project should continue.
The plant is located on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation near Richland, which for decades made most of the plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal. The resulting 56 million gallons of radioactive and hazardous wastes are stored in 177 underground tanks, many of which are leaking.
The waste treatment plant is designed to turn much of that waste into glass-like logs for burial, a technically demanding process.
But construction of the giant plant, which began in 2002, has long been slowed by safety and technical issues.
Bechtel National is working on providing the records, spokeswoman Stasi West said. “We have documentation that demonstrates the nuclear-grade structural steel meets project requirements,” West said. “The safety and quality of the structural steel was never in question.”
The letter from the Office of River Protection, which is named for the Columbia River that flows through the Hanford site, did not contend that the structural steel in the Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant was defective. Rather it says that records proving the steel can perform its safety function were missing or of poor quality.
The agency directed Bechtel “to promptly investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding the procurement, receipt and acceptance of materials installed … to justify the continuation of work,” the letter said.
In a statement, the Department of Energy said it was committed to the safety of workers, the public and the environment.
“The department directed Bechtel National Inc. to gather the necessary documentation and provide it to the department,” the DOE said Friday. “When received, DOE will determine whether the documentation meets applicable quality assurance standards for the steel being used in the (plant).”
The watchdog group Hanford Challenge contended the issue was potentially a “showstopper.”
“If the structural steel and other components cannot meet rigorous safety standards for nuclear operations, the plant cannot be allowed to operate,” said Tom Carpenter, executive director of Hanford Challenge. “The contractor failed and needs to be held accountable.”
About 40,000 tons of structural steel is needed for the plant, to help prevent the release of radioactive and hazardous wastes into the environment.
“Structural steel, in conjunction with reinforced concrete structures, is integral to performing functions relied on in safety basis accident analyses,” the letter said.
The plant will use state-of-the-art vitrification technology, which involves blending the nuclear waste with glass-forming materials and heating it to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit. The molten mixture is poured into stainless steel canisters to cool and solidify. In the glass form, the waste is stable and its radioactivity will safely dissipate over hundreds to thousands of years.
The construction site spans 65 acres and plant buildings are up to 12 stories tall. The plant is expected to be completed early in the next decade.
A team of six experts in the nuclear energy sector has been assembled to find a way to move the 3.55 million pounds of nuclear waste at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.
The group includes a former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the independent agency in charge of all safety-related matters surrounding nuclear energy in the U.S., and a former director of policy at the U.S. Department of Energy.
The panel was put together as part of an out-of-court settlement negotiated last summer between Southern California Edison — the utility that operates SONGS — and attorneys for two San Diego-area plaintiffs who opposed a permit granted by the California Coastal Commission allowing waste to be stored on the plant’s premises.
One of the terms in the settlement called for creating a team of authorities in engineering, radiation detection and nuclear waste siting and transportation to learn if any alternative sites exist to store SONGS’ spent fuel.
“This is a very significant step; this hasn’t been done before,” Aguirre said. “There hasn’t been an owner of nuclear waste that has brought together a panel working with the community that’s focused on figuring out how to move (the waste) to a safer location.”
SONGS sits between the Pacific Ocean and one of the busiest freeways in the country — Interstate 5. About 8.4 million people live in a 50-mile radius of the plant in an area with a history of seismic activity.
Among the members of the panel is Allison Macfarlane, who chaired the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2012 to 2014, and Thomas Issacs, whose time at the Department of Energy included policymaking regarding waste management and security.
Speaking in general terms about nuclear waste, Macfarlane told the audience, “It is our ethical responsibility to deal with this material and not leave it for future generations.”
The other members of the panel are:
Kristopher W. Cummings, a fuel storage expert and engineer with Curtis-Wright Nuclear Division.
Gary Lanthrum, the former director of the National Transportation Program for Yucca Mountain.
Richard C. Moore, a consultant specializing in transportation of radiological materials who works for the Western Interstate Energy Board.
Josephine Piccone, a health physics and radiation control expert with regulatory compliance experience
“We believe this distinguished panel of experts will make significant contributions to a growing industry-wide effort to achieve off-site storage of nuclear fuel,” Tom Palmisano, vice president of decommissioning and chief nuclear officer at SONGS said in a letter to members of the facility’s Community Engagement Panel.
“We have a long road ahead as we undertake this difficult task but selection of these experts is an important step,” Palmisano said, adding that the panel will begin its work “in the coming weeks.”
The team of experts was assembled with input from the attorneys involved in the settlement and from Edison officials.
About 80,000 metric tons of spent fuel has accumulated at nuclear reactor sites across the country.
The Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada was supposed to accept large amounts of waste, but Nevada lawmakers, especially then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, were firmly against opening the site. The Obama administration cut off funding for Yucca Mountain in 2010.
nuclear-news 