EPA orders cleanup at St. Louis nuclear waste site. What does it mean for the nation’s other toxic messes? WP, By Brady DennisFebruary 1 18, The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday ordered a long-awaited cleanup of a Superfund site northwest of St. Louis, saying residents living near the landfill contaminated with World War II-era nuclear waste deserve action after waiting 27 years for federal regulators to issue a decision.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s decision to partially excavate tons of radioactive material from the West Lake Landfill over the next five years — at an expected cost of $236 million to the liable companies — goes beyond a 2008 solution proposed by the George W. Bush administration to cover and monitor the waste…….
Thursday’s announcement also was intended to be Exhibit A in demonstrating Pruitt’s commitment to revitalizing the agency’s Superfund program, which includes the nation’s most polluted sites, by streamlining and accelerating cleanups. But it underscored how few Superfund sites have simple answers, though nearly all of them generate intense emotions.
“We were hoping for full, 100 percent excavation. But we know that would be difficult to accomplish,” said Dawn Chapman, a founder of Just Moms STL, an activist group that has long pushed for an extensive excavation with relocation of families near the landfill.
Chapman said her group views the outcome as a hard-fought victory but one that is far from guaranteed, given the public comment and cleanup process likely to unfold over years. “We have to stay here and watch it and see it through,” she said. “I look ahead, and I see these other big battles coming. We’re not going to blink, because you can’t. … We will continue to fight to get even more [radioactive waste] removed.”
……..While the $236 million price tag of the EPA plan is significantly higher than what the firms hoped to spend, it is well below the cost, projected at nearly $700 million, of a full excavation.In a statement, Republic Services said it was “pleased that the EPA has finally ended decades of study and again is issuing a proposed plan for the site.” But the company cautioned that a final decision could take years.
What remains to be seen is whether the decision on West Lake represents how Pruitt is likely to approach other Superfund sites. In recent months, Pruitt has promised aggressive Superfund cleanups and made a public show of butting heads with corporate interests — something he has rarely done on other issues during his first year at the EPA. Yet aside from creating a list of 21 targets needing “immediate and intense” attention, as well as forming a special task force to recommend ways to expedite cleanups and “reduce the burden” on companies involved, Pruitt has explained very little about how he intends to deal with the hundreds of other toxic waste sites around the country……….
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has proposed cutting the Superfund program’s budget by 30 percent, or about $330 million annually. And while there are responsible companies that the EPA can legally force to pay for cleanups at many of the locations Pruitt has mentioned, many others are “orphan” sites where the polluters have gone bankrupt or are no longer legally liable for remedying the problem. At those, the federal government still shoulders most of the tab — and the pot of available dollars keeps shrinking. ………
North Korea: Trump administration’s ‘sloppy work’ in Nuclear Posture Review AT FIRST glance you might not see what’s wrong with this map used in Donald Trump’s nuclear review. But it has left some experts baffled. news.com.au , Debra Killalea, 1 Feb 18,
A DRAFT report of the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) has been slammed as embarrassing after featuring a graphic showing Debra Killaleaa very different looking North Korea.
The draft report, leaked two weeks ago, omits South Korea and instead shows the whole peninsula represented by the North’s flag.
Experts slammed the “sloppy work” in the report and said they hoped it would be corrected ahead of its final release tomorrow, US time.
Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, raised concerns about the map, tweeting the authors actually want to strengthen tailored deterrence.
The concerns over the graphic were echoed by Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress, who said the Pentagon could not release a policy document that failed to recognise South Korea.
He also slammed it as embarrassing and unforgivable, adding it was the latest in a series of “avoidable offences”.
South Korea is a major US ally with the two countries forging strong military and economic ties.
Two weeks ago, Mr Mount said the leaked review translates Mr Trump’s impulses into an order for new, more usable nuclear options. He also called it “strategically risky”.
The NPR is used to determine the role of nuclear weapons in the security strategy of the US.
‘EMBARRASSING’ ERROR
John Blaxland, Professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies and director of ANU’s Southeast Asia Institute, said the mistake was embarrassing but wasn’t worth reading too much into………
“There is a growing consensus among academic institutions and civil society organisations that the efficacy of nuclear weapons as a deterrent of state-on-state war has waned, if it ever worked effectively in the first place,” he said.
Prof Blaxland said some people argued it wasn’t the atomic weapons dropped on Japan in 1945 that led to Japan’s surrender but rather Russia’s declaration of war.
He also said the steps being proposed by the US today are likely to be extremely expensive and of dubious additional benefit…….
NO GOOD NUKE’
Critics are already warning the NPR could trigger another arms race and raise the risk of miscalculations that might spark an atomic conflict.
Beatrice Fihn, executive director of International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), said the Trump review raised some serious concerns.
“The risk of use for nuclear weapons has always been unacceptably high,” she said.
“The new Trump nuclear doctrine is to deliberately increase that risk. It is an all-out attempt to take nuclear weapons out of the silos and onto the battlefield.
“This policy is a shift from one where the use of nuclear weapons is possible to one where the use of nuclear weapons is likely.”
She also said there was no such thing as a good nuclear weapon.
CONCERNS GROW
The Union of Concerned Scientists has also raised some concerns about the review and has said the gap between China and the US is too wide to argue Washington is lagging behind in a significant way.
While acknowledging Beijing has made significant advances in its nuclear capabilities, it said China’s arsenal is smaller than the US had in 1950.
In a White Paper released last month, they also argue there’s little evidence China is pursuing “entirely new” nuclear capabilities.
The People for Nuclear Disarmament said the leaked NPR made global thermonuclear war more, not less, likely and global nuclear arms racing more probable.
Nuclear disarmament campaigner John Hallam said Mr Trump was looking for ways in which he could differentiate himself from, and take credit for, the immense expansion of US nuclear infrastructure initiated by former president Obama.
Mr Hallam said there is considerable continuity between the Obama and the Trump approach but there was a key difference.
“The only important difference — and it certainly is important — is that while under Obama, the direction of the US nuclear arsenal was officially down it is not officially up,” he said.
“Trump makes no bones about wanting to expand US nuclear capabilities. Never mind if they don’t need them. Never mind if it initiates an arms race or never mind if it makes an apocalypse more likely.
More radioactive contamination triggers management change at Hanford, BY ANNETTE CARY, acary@tricityherald.comJanuary 29, 2018
The Department of Energy is replacing the managers of a critical radioactive clean-up project after the continued spread of contamination on the Hanford site.
The move is intended to rebuild confidence with workers and the public and show the project is being safely managed.
on the future of the West Lake Landfill — a decision that could free the St. Louis area of the seven-decade environmental burden it has borne in America’s quest for nuclear superiority.
For Pruitt, the right decision would be costly and complicated. The wrong decision, though far cheaper and most expedient, would leave in place a radioactive nightmare that would haunt the region for generations to come. The right decision is the only decision.
At issue are thousands of tons of radioactive waste left over from secret uranium refinement carried out in St. Louis during the Manhattan Project, the 1940s effort to produce America’s first nuclear bomb. Although officials at the time were well aware of the radioactive dangers, they paid little heed to where they dumped the wastes from years of uranium processing. An uncovered, unlined pit at the West Lake landfill became the dumpsite of choice, two miles northwest of St. Louis Lambert International Airport
The landfill, uphill and less than two miles from the Missouri River, was never designed for radioactive waste and never would have met today’s federal safety guidelines. Various radioactive hot zones have been discovered in downstream watersheds, as have large cancer clusters among residents. For years, a slow-moving underground fire at an adjacent landfill is believed to be advancing toward the buried nuclear waste.
In tests conducted from 2012 to 2014, groundwater at West Lake contained unsafe levels of radioactive uranium, radium and thorium-230, along with arsenic, manganese, barium and benzene.
An exhaustive, 814-page EPA study, updated on Jan. 10, outlines the dangers and costs associated with six options Pruitt can choose from for West Lake. One option, doing nothing, is laughable. Three cheaper proposals call for partial excavation of the site at varying depths and capping the site but leaving many toxins behind. The two best options involve full excavation — one would store the waste on-site in a modern, secure containment cell, and the other would transport it offsite to a remote, federally approved storage facility.
Full excavation and removal would keep the region safest over the long term. But it’s also the most expensive option at $695 million. Capping the site would cost about $75 million but also would pose the greatest future cancer risks to farmers and residents downstream.
Pruitt has the comfort of making this decision from Washington, D.C., far from the exposure zone. We urge him to consider all who have suffered so far because of the irresponsible, lazy solutions imposed on St. Louis decades ago. If Pruitt would regard it as unacceptable for his own family to be exposed to such risks, then he must conclude that St. Louisans deserve the same consideration. This radioactive time bomb must go.
Jan 30, 2018 , COLUMBIA — A compromise being considered by state lawmakers would temporarily halt nuclear-related payments to SCANA until regulators and the state’s courts decide who should pay for the cancelled reactors at V.C. Summer.
The South Carolina House is set to amend legislation that would roll back the 2007 law that put in motion the eventual $9 billion construction failure in Fairfield County, according to three sources familiar with the amendment.
But communities around the uranium mines and test sites needed for the production of nuclear weapons — places which are often socio-economically disadvantaged already — have been especially impacted by the health and environmental costs of nuclear weapons production.
The Navajo Nation is just one example — where cancer rates doubled from the 1970s to the 1990s due to the impacts of testing, mining and milling in the southwestern US. Mining companies extracted millions of tons of uranium between 1944 and 1986. At the time, Navajo children played in mine debris piles and pools, and livestock drank contaminated water. Some homes were even built with materials from uranium mines and mills.
But communities around the uranium mines and test sites needed for the production of nuclear weapons — places which are often socio-economically disadvantaged already — have been especially impacted by the health and environmental costs of nuclear weapons production.
The Navajo Nation is just one example — where cancer rates doubled from the 1970s to the 1990s due to the impacts of testing, mining and milling in the southwestern US. Mining companies extracted millions of tons of uranium between 1944 and 1986. At the time, Navajo children played in mine debris piles and pools, and livestock drank contaminated water. Some homes were even built with materials from uranium mines and mills.
Runit Dome, on Enewetak Atoll, serves as a living reminder of US nuclear testing that continues to threaten the islands today. The 18-inch concrete cap covers 111,000 cubic yards of radioactive debris left behind after 12 years of nuclear tests. Today, scientists fear the effects of climate change could damage the dome, releasing its contents into the ocean.
The lands of some indigenous communities still house nuclear waste today. Tribes play host to this waste because their reservations are not subject to the same environmental and health standards as US land.
“In the quest to dispose of nuclear waste, the government and private companies have disregarded and broken treaties, blurred the definition of Native American sovereignty, and directly engaged in a form of economic racism akin to bribery,” Bayley Lopez of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation told Scientific American, citing examples of companies taking advantage of the “overwhelming poverty on native reservations by offering them millions of dollars to host nuclear waste storage sites.”
Whether this characterization and those like it are fair, it’s an unfortunate fact that the people who live near the hallmarks of the US nuclear industrial complex — like test sites in Nevada and the Marshall Islands, mines in the western half of the US, and the indigenous communities that still house nuclear waste today — have been disproportionately affected by the cost of what it takes to keep the rest of us safe.
Pentagon Wins as Trump Readies a $716 Billion Budget Request,Bloomberg, By
Anthony Capaccio and Erik Wasson
Big increase for Pentagon would deepen the U.S. deficit
Mattis has raised alarm over U.S. ‘competitive edge’ eroding
President Donald Trump will propose $716 billion in defense spending in his fiscal 2019 budget request, a 7.2 percent from his request for this year that backs the Pentagon’s push for a major buildup, a U.S. official said.
The funding would include $597 billion for the Defense Department’s base budget, with the rest going for its war-fighting account and to other government programs such as the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons program, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the release of Trump’s second proposed budget next month.
The amount is a sharp increase from the $668 billion total Trump proposed last year for fiscal 2018 and also offered as a placeholder for fiscal 2019. Currently, the Pentagon is operating under stopgap funding at fiscal 2017 levels, which totaled $634 billion. The plan, reported earlier Friday by the Washington Post, represents a victory of defense hawks over those trying to constrain deficit spending.
The U.S. official confirmed Trump’s next proposed budget will include major increases on procurement spending over the $124 billion sought this year.
Mattis’s Push
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has pushed for a jump in defense spending to match the breadth of the new National Defense Strategy he released this month……….
Ultimately, Trump’s proposal will be measured by the amount it exceeds the caps in the Budget Control Act of 2011.Unless Congress waives the budget limits, as it’s done three times in the past, the cap for fiscal 2019, which begins Oct. 1, is $563 billion for defense-related spending, including $534 billion for the base defense budget.
War-Fighting Fund
The official said more than $90 billion of Trump’s budget proposal would come from the war-fighting fund — known as Overseas Contingency Operations — that’s exempt from caps. While the fund is supposedly for pressing war needs, it’s often used as a tool to bulk up overall defense funding. Trump’s war-fighting budget for the current year includes $10 billion for weapons acquisition……..https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-26/trump-is-said-to-seek-716-billion-for-defense-in-2019-budget
Reading the summary is illuminating, to say the least, and somewhat disturbing, as it focuses very little on actual defense of the realm and relates much more to offensive military action that might be employed to further certain debatable national interests. Occasionally, it is actually delusional, as when it refers to consolidating “gains we have made in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.”
At times Mattis’ supplementary “remarks” were more bombastic than reassuring, as when he warned
“…those who would threaten America’s experiment in democracy: if you challenge us, it will be your longest and worst day.”
He did not exactly go into what the military response to hacking a politician’s emails might be and one can only speculate, which is precisely the problem.
One of the most bizarre aspects of the report is its breathtaking assumption that “competitors” should be subjected to a potential military response if it is determined that they are in conflict with the strategic goals of the U.S. government. It is far removed from the old-fashioned Constitutional concept that one has armed forces to defend the country against an actual threat involving an attack by hostile forces and instead embraces preventive war, which is clearly an excuse for serial interventions overseas.
Some of the remarks by Mattis relate to China and Russia. He said that
“We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia, nations that seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models – pursuing veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic and security decisions.”
There is, however, no evidence that either country is exporting “authoritarian models,” nor are they vetoing anything that they do not perceive as direct and immediate threats frequently orchestrated by Washington, which is intervening in local quarrels thousands of miles away from the U.S. borders. And when it comes to exporting models, who does it more persistently than Washington?
The report goes on to state that Russia and China and rogue regimes like Iran have “…increased efforts short of armed conflict by expanding coercion to new fronts, violating principle of sovereignty, exploiting ambiguity, and deliberately blurring the lines between civil and military goals.” As confusing civil and military is what the United States itself has been doing in Libya, Iraq and, currently, Syria, the allegation might be considered ironic.
he scariest assertion in the summary is the following:
“Nuclear forces – Modernization of the nuclear force includes developing options to counter competitors’ coercive strategies, predicated on the threatened use of nuclear or strategic non-nuclear attacks.”
That means that the White House and Pentagon are reserving the option to use nuclear weapons even when there is no imminent or existential threat as long as there is a “strategic” reason for doing so. Strategic would be defined by the president and Mattis, while the War Powers Act allows Donald Trump to legally initiate a nuclear attack.
What might that mean in practice? Back in 2005,Vice President Dick Cheney had requested “a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States… [including] a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons … not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States.”
Possible employment of “weapons of mass destruction” responded to intelligence suggesting that conventional weapons would be unable to penetrate the underground hardened sites where Iran’s presumed nuclear weapons facilities were reportedly located. But as it turned out, Iran had no nuclear weapons program and attacking it would have been totally gratuitous. Some other neocon inspired plans to attack Iran also included a nuclear option if Iran actually had the temerity to resist American force majeure.
Pentagon planners clearly anticipate another year of playing at defense by keeping the offense on the field. An impetuous and poorly informed president is a danger to all of us, particularly as he is surrounded by general-advisers who see a military solution to every problem. Hopefully wiser counsel will prevail.
Philip Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.
US-South Korean war games will go on after Olympics, Pentagon says , By KIM GAMEL | STARS AND STRIPES, January 26, 2018SEOUL, South Korea — U.S. military exercises with South Korea will be held after the Olympics as planned despite a demand for a complete suspension from the North, the Pentagon said.
The planned war games cast a shadow over hopes that the recent détente between the two Koreas may lead to a broader dialogue with the United States after months of saber rattling over the North’s nuclear weapons program.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reiterated that military options remain at the ready to make sure diplomats have leverage in pressuring Pyongyang to denuclearize…….
Washington agreed to delay them until after the Olympics, which will be held on Feb. 9-25 in the South Korean alpine town of Pyeongchang. Mattis has said they would resume after the March 8-18 Paralympics.
But North Korea, which agreed to participate in the Winter Games as part of rare talks with the South, demanded a complete suspension……..
North Korea has frequently responded to the exercises — and similar drills held by the allies in the fall — with missile tests and a stream of bellicose rhetoric…….
The recent false alarm in Hawaii underscores the threat from nuclear devices. While there has been media attention placed on how the United States is taking military and diplomatic action against North Korea from launching a nuclear strike, there is little media attention given to how well the United States is medically prepared for a nuclear attack. According to a recent report in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, U.S. cities are not medically prepared for a nuclear detonation. This report, written by Dr. Jerome Hauer, who was the former assistant secretary for the Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, asserts that the United States is completely unprepared to manage the aftermath of a nuclear detonation. We are at a moment in history where nuclear terrorism is an unfortunate reality. North Korea and Iran have established nuclear capabilities, and Pakistan has stockpiles of highly enriched uranium.
These countries have a history of supporting terrorist groups. It has been acknowledged by our government that highly enriched uranium can be smuggled into this country to build a 10-kiliton improvised nuclear bomb, like that dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. A nuclear threat would even include a dirty bomb that combines a conventional explosive with radioactive isotopes, which could contaminate an area and leave a residual radioactive “hot zone” that is too dangerous for even first responders to enter. Also, radioactive particles can disperse into the air and create a “plume” that could extend hundreds of miles away from ground zero and create a contamination area that would last for years.
A nuclear blast would instantly release a massive pressure wave and heat that would incinerate everything within half a mile and kill an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 people. Another 100,000 to 200,000 would suffer complexed radiation burns, while others would be exposed to high doses of radiation that would cause acute radiation syndrome that is characterized by bone marrow failure and gastrointestinal, cardiac, neurological and pulmonary toxicity. The starkest fact about a nuclear bomb attack is that it destroys the capacity to respond from a medical and civil service perspective. There will be a loss of local government services from firefighters, police and hospitals, along with loss of water, sewage and utilities. There will be a loss of communication systems to direct survivors where to evacuate for treatment.
The management of mass casualties from nuclear detonation is far more complex than for natural disasters. Hot zones are too dangerous for first responders to enter to render medical assistance to casualties. Yet, victims would still need to be evacuated somehow. According to the report, most U.S. cities lack medical preparedness to manage the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. FEMA has not devoted enough attention to address this issue. This makes it important for cities and states to develop plans for the worse case scenarios. Each state should have a plan of preparedness that includes special medical triage centers; coordinated schemes from state military and local police to provide mobile communication assets and protection against civil unrest; and specialized trained hospitals that can medical manage the injuries associated with a nuclear bomb. There needs to be a statewide plan from the governor’s office from each state, along with each state’s department of public health, to ensure there is sufficient medical preparedness.
Several government officials stated they were unable to take steps forward out of being accused of inciting fearmongering. However, developing a comprehensive preparedness program against nuclear threats should not just stop with military action but should include a medical preparation program regardless of how politically undesirable the subject may be. Preparedness should be mandated at every local and state government level.
• Alan Moy is CEO of Cellular Engineering Technologies and scientific director of the John Paul II Medical Research Institute.
Early victory for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater in battle over upstate nuke plant bailout,Thomas C. Zambito, tzambito@lohud.com Jan. 26, 2018 Environmental groups scored an early-round victory in the legal battle over the state’s plan to bail out three upstate nuclear power plants with billions of dollars in subsidies backed by ratepayers….
A state Supreme Court judge in Albany on Tuesday turned back the Public Service Commission’s effort to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and Goshen Green in Rockland County, among others.
At issue is the commission’s decision to hand over an estimated $7.6 billion in subsidies over 12 years so that three upstate nuclear power plants – R.E. Ginna near Rochester and the James A. FitzPatrick and Nine Mile Point in Oswego County – can continue operating………
Manna Jo Greene, the environmental director of Clearwater, called Acting Judge Roger McDonough’s decision a “David vs. Goliath victory.”
“It doesn’t serve the public interest or even follow the law that New York’s ratepayers are required to pay to keep these nuclear plants open, when they are no longer economically viable without a subsidy,” Greene said.
Georgia Senate bill aims to protect consumers’ pocketbooks from Vogtle, Savannah Now, January 27, 2018, By Mary Landersmary.landers@savannahnow.com Legislation co-sponsored by state Sen. Lester Jackson, D-Savannah, seeks to limit the money paid by ratepayers — particularly schools — for Georgia Power’s expansion of Plant Vogtle.
If enacted as written, it would immediately reduce monthly residential power bills. And it could provide big rebates if the project isn’t completed.
The troubled expansion is five years behind schedule and its price tag has nearly doubled to $27 billion. Despite a staff recommendation that the project is uneconomic and a finding that the company will make $5 billion in profits from the delays, the Georgia Public Service Commission in December gave the green light to complete the expansion with few added consumer safeguards.
Senate Bill 355, sponsored by Rome Republican Chuck Hufstetler and introduced Wednesday, would amend the Georgia Nuclear Energy Financing Act to limit in several ways the ongoing collection of a nuclear fee while these reactors are being built and prevent the utility from automatically collecting the same nuclear fee on future projects. It would also provide for a refund if the reactors never become operational…….. http://savannahnow.com/news/2018-01-26/georgia-senate-bill-aims-protect-consumers-pocketbooks-vogtle
£100m cost of advice on renewing nuclear arsenal, Mark Hookham, Defence Correspondent, The Sunday TimesMore than £100m has been spent helping ministers decide whether to overhaul or replace Britain’s arsenal of nuclear warheads.
Campaigners said the “vast” sum of taxpayers’ money was spent without proper parliamentary scrutiny.
The UK has a stockpile of more than 200 nuclear warheads, which can be fitted onto the Trident ballistic missiles that arm the Royal Navy’s deterrent submarines. One of the four submarines is always on patrol.
In 2016, MPs approved plans for four replacement submarines — at an estimated cost of £31bn — the first of which will be deployed in the early 2030s and have a lifespan of at least 30 years. Ministers will decide before 2022 whether to build new warheads for the submarines or whether the lifespan of the existing weapons… (subscribers only)
Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. has been pushing for the financial rescue that it says is needed to keep the Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Toledo and the Perry plant near Cleveland operating.
The legislation would give FirstEnergy’s plants an extra $180 million a year.
Republican Sen. Bill Beagle leads the Senate’s Public Utilities Committee. He says he doesn’t anticipate taking up a vote on the plan.
A FirstEnergy executive said earlier this week that the plants will likely close without a financial rescue.
The company has been saying the plants can’t compete with cheaper natural gas plants in the current market.
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