Area G, perhaps more than any other place at Los Alamos National Laboratory, represents the challenges that the U.S. Department of Energy faces in cleaning up the hundreds of waste sites at the lab while work continues to produce new or modernized nuclear weapons.
A report released this spring by the Energy Department’s Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office says that out of 2,100 contaminated sites, including Area G, only about half of the cleanup at the lab has been completed after decades of work and billions of dollars spent.
If all goes as planned, it will take Los Alamos almost a century to clean up the remnants of the nation’s first generation of nuclear weapons. All the while, tiny, new nuclear bombs are being made.
Visitors cross the final checkpoint on foot. There is just a metal gate, with stop signs and notifications that crossing this threshold means entering a nuclear facility.
The 63-acre Material Disposal Area G at Los Alamos National Laboratory holds radioactive and other hazardous waste generated by nuclear weapons production during the Manhattan Project of World War II and the Cold War that followed.
Just three feet below the dusty ground, there are nearly 40 pits and 200 shafts, containing somewhere between several hundred thousand and 11 million cubic feet of waste. Large, white structures, like joyless wedding tents, dot the mesa’s surface, holding drums of waste that are intended to be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad and disposed of forever.
Many of these drums are especially volatile. They belong to a waste stream that was improperly packaged, causing one drum to explode at WIPP in 2014, leaking radiation and shutting down the facility for nearly three years at a $2 billion cleanup cost.
Area G, perhaps more than any other place at Los Alamos National Laboratory, represents the challenges that the U.S. Department of Energy faces in cleaning up the hundreds of waste sites at the lab while work continues to produce new or modernized nuclear weapons.
The lab recently gave reporters a rare tour of Area G and other sites contaminated by waste generated before 1999, the year the Energy Department opened WIPP. It is the nation’s only permanent disposal site for transuranic waste, which includes soil, tools, gloves and other materials that have come in contact with highly radioactive elements like plutonium, which is used in weapons production. Before WIPP opened, Area G was where the lab disposed of its transuranic waste.
A report released this spring by the Energy Department’s Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office says that out of 2,100 contaminated sites, including Area G, only about half of the cleanup at the lab has been completed after decades of work and billions of dollars spent.
The report says the initial investigation into the extent of contamination at those sites is 90 percent done, and 93 percent of the above-ground transuranic waste — 4,000 drums — has been removed from the lab since 2011.
But much of the buried waste at Area G is likely to stay there forever.
The lab could dig everything up, but “the federal government and the state don’t require it,” said a senior lab official who took the tour with reporters. Officials on the tour prohibited reporters from quoting them by name.
A volatile collection
The circumstances that led to one of the costliest nuclear accidents in U.S. history began at Area G. A drum of waste improperly packaged with organic — rather than inorganic — kitty litter at Area G in 2013 and shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant overheated and burst underground in February 2014.
At Area G, there are 89 more drums similar to the one that burst. They are kept within the largest tent on the mesa, called the PermaCon.
Inside, the light takes on a yellowish-gray hue and the air is at least 15 degrees cooler than the April day outside. At the center of the space, behind a rope and a sign that reads “combustible restricted area,” the waste drums have been placed inside a refrigerated metal structure, like enormous eggs in an incubator.
They contain some of the most volatile waste at the site, a mix of nitric acids, kerosene, heavy metals, plutonium-239, uranium-238 and nitrate salt.
Sixty of the drums, like the one that burst at WIPP, contain the organic kitty litter. The rest of the 89 drums have the same waste but haven’t yet been mixed with an absorbent.
Before entering the tent, visitors must protect their eyes with plastic glasses and make sure their hands are devoid of wounds. Radiation is more easily absorbed into the body if it can slip through a cut. Visitors are told to avoid touching surfaces and their mouths, and to leave outside anything they don’t want to be surveyed for radioactive contamination.
Area G workers are told to make a habit of wearing gloves at all times, even at home, officials said. “Fight the way you train,” is how one person explained it.
Workers at the PermaCon wore purple gloves and were dressed head to boots in a yellow, plastic material that forms a protective hood and thick goggles.
A sign on a door leading to where the drums are kept informs workers that they will be exposed to 0.1 rem of radiation per hour. The average American receives 0.6 rem per year, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The drums are kept at 57 degrees Fahrenheit and monitored daily to ensure the pressure and heat do not change. If a drum starts to heat, officials can open large vents added to the drums and reduce pressure, but releasing some radiation, too, within the PermaCon.
From Area G it takes just two minutes to walk onto San Ildefonso Pueblo land; The community of White Rock is one mile from the site.
As reporters and officials exited, workers traced radiation detection monitors slowly across palms and the soles of shoes.
A repackaging process
By May, a 3-mile stretch of the road between Area G and a waste repackaging facility will be closed off daily as drums are transported uphill to the Waste Characterization, Reduction and Repackaging Facility, which looks like a series of oversized garages.
As reporters entered the facility, one worker whispered, “Hold your breath.”
Over roughly two months, lab workers will repackage the waste in two-hour shifts using a glove box — a large, sealed container. Inserting their hands into gloves attached to the box, the workers will open the drums.
The waste will be combined with water and zeolite — a fine, gray mineral mined in Western states, including New Mexico, and sold as absorbent cat litter — and stirred in an industrial kitchen mixer within the glove box. Once the waste is mixed, it will be funneled into new “daughter” drums and returned to Area G for later shipment to WIPP, officials said.
An official said zeolite was chosen as an absorbent in part because it eliminates any confusion about the type of kitty litter that can be used.
Tacked to the glove box is a printed sheet of paper with numbered instructions for how to mix the waste. It’s pinned just above the radiation detection panel that workers must press their hands against the moment they are removed from the glove box.
Fire remains a threat
Area G is situated on a mesa between two canyons, and wildfire is a threat to the drums waiting for repackaging and shipment to WIPP.
In 2000, the Cerro Grande Fire burned through both canyons simultaneously, creating extremely high temperatures on the mesa. If this happened again, an official said, the lab would cover the drums with fire blankets but could not move them. They could only hope that the flames subside before the drums overheat and begin a reaction like the one that closed WIPP.
The Los Conchas Fire in 2011 burned within four miles of Area G.
The administrations of Govs. Bill Richardson and Susana Martinez have sought to expedite the removal of vulnerable canisters from lab property. But deadlines for the lab to do so, first by 2010 and then by June 2014, went unmet, in part because waste shipments to WIPP stalled following the radiation leak caused by the Los Alamos drum.
Waste disposal at Area G is expected to stop next year when the last open pit is filled. The lab’s newly constructed Transuranic Waste Facility, an outdoor storage site, will temporarily hold newly generated waste before shipment off-site. The lab also is seeking approval from the New Mexico Environment Department for temporary storage at the plutonium processing facility where pits, the triggers for nuclear weapons, are produced. Pits are similar to small atomic bombs.
But the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent agency, and others have raised concerns about storing radioactive waste at these locations. New waste sites, even those intended to be temporary, increases the potential for dangerous waste to remain on lab property long term.
On the drive to Area G on a winding road within the national laboratory complex, in a lab “taxi” van playing 1980s rock, many buildings appeared more like prison structures than research facilities, with thick, glass windows — or no windows at all — and tall, barbed-wire fences.
One official remarked on the great irony of the work: The first atomic bomb took only 27 months to create, but like the myth of Pandora’s box, it unfurled a seemingly endless stream of deadly waste.
Last September, the Energy Department said the remaining scope of legacy waste cleanup is estimated to cost $3.8 billion, and it will take 24 more years to finish shipping the rest of the waste to permanent storage and decontaminating the land.
If all goes as planned, it will take Los Alamos almost a century to clean up the remnants of the nation’s first generation of nuclear weapons. All the while, tiny, new nuclear bombs are being made.
Kaitlin Martinez, a spokeswoman for the Environmental Management Los Alamos Field Office, said the “biggest priorities right now are the safety of the workers and the public as we execute our mission.”
Last month, the Heartland Institute sent a climate denial booklet to 25,000 teachers around the US. In Episode 8 of the Evidence Squared podcast, we look at the why and how of this book. What is the chief motivation for the book’s misinformation and what are the techniques they employ to cast doubt on climate science?
In an interview on CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” Kelly said a successful strike at a U.S. plane would kill “hundreds and hundreds of people in one fell swoop.” “The … thing that keeps me literally awake at night is the threat against aviation,” he said. “We know that would be the Super Bowl for the terrorists to knock down an air plane in flight, particularly if it was full of Americans.
“There are a number of plots that we’re watching very, very closely— very sophisticated, very threatening, and the number-one thing in my mind is to protect the American people,” he added, calling the “aviation threat… something that is very real.”
On the issue of North Korea’s threat to the nation, Kelly said “as long as they’re on the other side of the world without a missile and a nuclear weapon to deliver against the United States, they’re not much threat right now— except in the world of cyber. They’re pretty aggressive when they want to be in cyber,.”
“The instant they get a missile that can reach the United States, and they have a weaponized atomic device, nuclear device on it, we’re at grave risk as a nation,” he warned.
“We consider it a major victory,” said Karen Hadden of the Sustainable Energy & Economic Development Coalition, an environmental advocacy group that has opposed Waste Control Specialists’ expansion plans.
While the company’s questionable finances were a factor in its request, Hadden suggested that mounting public opposition might also have played a role.
West Texas nuclear waste project on hold — for now Dallas-based Waste Control
Specialists has asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to temporarily suspend a review of its application to store tens of thousands of metric tons of spent nuclear fuel at its West Texas dump. The Texas Tribune BY JIM MALEWITZ AND KIAH COLLIERAPRIL 19, 2017A proposal to bring the nation’s spent nuclear fuel to West Texas appears to be on the ropes.
Waste Control Specialists, which currently stores low-level radioactive waste in Andrews County, has asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to temporarily suspend a review of its application to store tens of thousands of metric tons of spent nuclear fuel currently scattered at reactor sites throughout the country. The Dallas-based company pitched the massive expansion as a solution to a problem that has bedeviled policymakers for decades.
The reason for the requested freeze? The company, which runs the state’s only radioactive waste dump, is bleeding cash and is struggling to find the estimated $7.5 million needed to continue the licensing process. Waste Control Specialists “is faced with a magnitude of financial burdens that currently make pursuit of licensing unsupportable,” Rod Baltzer, the company’s president and CEO, said in a letter to the federal commission dated Tuesday.
The review’s price tag caught the company off guard, Baltzer wrote.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission confirmed Wednesday that it would freeze the review.
“Managers are working with the staff to close out their work to prepare for a future resumption, and to reassign them to other casework,” said Maureen Conley, a commission spokeswoman.
The request comes as EnergySolutions, a Salt Lake-city based waste company, is trying to buy Waste Control Specialists. The U.S. Department of Justice is suing to block the merger, arguing it would essentially create a monopoly on radioactive waste disposal.
“WCS expects to go forward with this project at the earliest possible opportunity after completion of the sale,” Baltzer said in a statement.
“We consider it a major victory,” said Karen Hadden of the Sustainable Energy & Economic Development Coalition, an environmental advocacy group that has opposed Waste Control Specialists’ expansion plans.
While the company’s questionable finances were a factor in its request, Hadden suggested that mounting public opposition might also have played a role. In February, Bexar County commissioners unanimously approved a resolution opposing shipment of high-level nuclear waste through the San Antonio area on its way to the site. Midland-area residents have urged local officials there to back a similar resolution.
And several longtime Andrews residents spoke out against the project in February during a public hearing held by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
“I think WCS is becoming aware that this is a bigger battle than they anticipated,” said Hadden…..
Waste Control Specialists has been the only company in the country officially seeking to build a temporary storage facility while the federal government grapples with finding a permanent disposal site. But this month, a New Mexico group submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a temporary storage facility, just across the state line from Andrews.
In a 2014 letter to his then-fellow state leaders, Rick Perry — who championed the WCS expansion as Texas governor — cited that competition as reason to move ahead with the project. He now heads the U.S. Department of Energy, which plays a major role in advancing and implementing policy on nuclear waste. https://www.texastribune.org/2017/04/19/west-texas-nuclear-waste-project-hold-now/
Nuclear ‘bailout’ debate heats up, http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/nuclear-bailout-debate-heats-up-1.2184204BY ROBERT SWIFT, HARRISBURG BUREAU CHIEF, 23 APR 17, HARRISBURG —Nuclear energy is emerging as a live issue at the statehouse in a way not seen since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in March 1979 — nearly 40 years ago.
The formation of a very diverse coalition to oppose any nuclear “bailouts” following the creation by lawmakers last month of a pro-Nuclear Energy caucus sets the stage for a potential clash over the future of nuclear plants. The nuclear industry has faced plant shutdowns across the nation and problems selling its electricity at competitive rates, with competition from cheaper natural gas in recent years.
New York State has approved a surcharge on customers’ electric bills to provide a subsidy to keep plants open. Other bailout proposals would inflate electricity prices to help the industry.
No actual proposals have surfaced in Harrisburg to have electricity customers pay surcharges to help keep Pennsylvania’s five nuclear plants open. The legislative caucus said its top priority is preserving the jobs of nuclear plant workers, including 1,000 employees at the Susquehanna power plant in Salem Twp. owned by Talen Energy.
But Citizens Against Nuclear Bailouts isn’t waiting for a bill to appear. This coalition of consumer groups, business groups and other power generators wants to stop a bailout in its tracks. Surcharges would hit senior citizens and working families, coalition members said. A bailout would fly in the face of Pennsylvania’s decision to deregulate its electric market nearly 20 years ago, they added.
The statement by the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association is interesting:
“Like every other industry, nuclear power providers should be free to compete for customers in the electricity market, but they shouldn’t benefit from a taxpayer or ratepayer bailout,” said PMA President David Taylor
Donald Trump has ‘dangerous mental illness’, say psychiatry experts at Yale conference Mental health experts say President is ‘paranoid and delusional’, Independent UK, 21 Apr 17 May Bulman@maybulman Donald Trump has a “dangerous mental illness” and is not fit to lead the US, a group of psychiatrists has warned during a conference at Yale University.
Mental health experts claimed the President was “paranoid and delusional”, and said it was their “ethical responsibility” to warn the American public about the “dangers” Mr Trump’s psychological state poses to the country.
Speaking at the conference at Yale’s School of Medicine on Thursday, one of the mental health professionals, Dr John Gartner, a practising psychotherapist who advised psychiatric residents at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, said: “We have an ethical responsibility to warn the public about Donald Trump’s dangerous mental illness.”
Dr Gartner, who is also a founding member of Duty to Warn, an organisation of several dozen mental health professionals who think Mr Trump is mentally unfit to be president, said the President’s statement about having the largest crowd at an inauguration was just one of many that served as warnings of a larger problem.
“Worse than just being a liar or a narcissist, in addition he is paranoid, delusional and grandiose thinking and he proved that to the country the first day he was President. If Donald Trump really believes he had the largest crowd size in history, that’s delusional,” he added.
Chairing the event, Dr Bandy Lee, assistant clinical professor in the Yale Department of Psychiatry, said: “As some prominent psychiatrists have noted, [Trump’s mental health] is the elephant in the room. I think the public is really starting to catch on and widely talk about this now.”……..
James Gilligan, a psychiatrist and professor at New York University, told the conference he had worked some of the “most dangerous people in society”, including murderers and rapists — but that he was convinced by the “dangerousness” of Mr Trump…….
Dr Gartner started an online petition earlier this year on calling for Mr Trump to be removed from office, which claims that he is “psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President”. The petition has so far garnered more than 41,000 signatures.
It states: “We, the undersigned mental health professionals (please state your degree), believe in our professional judgment that Donald Trump manifests a serious mental illness that renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of President of the United States.
“And we respectfully request he be removed from office, according to article 4 of the 25th amendment to the Constitution, which states that the president will be replaced if he is ‘unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office’.” ……..
The doctors have said that even if it is in breach of tradition ethical standards of psychiatry, it was necessary to break their silence on the matter because they feared “too much is at stake”.It is not the first time Mr Trump’s mental health has been called into question. In February, Duty to Warn, which consists of psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers, signed an open letter warning that his mental state “makes him incapable of serving safely as president”.
The greatest threat to the future of mankind? http://www.manilatimes.net/greatest-threat-future-mankind/323418/BY JAIME J.YAMBAOON APRIL 22, 2017UNLESS rebuffed by the US Congress like it did with his repeal of Obamacare, President Trump’s proposal to boost the budget for nuclear weapons production could make him the greatest threat to the future of mankind. Not climate change. Not terrorism.
Already America’s 5,500 strategic nuclear weapons possess enough destructive power to destroy Planet Earth at least five times over; some experts estimate up to 50 times over.
The US and Russia own 95 percent of the world’s nuclear warheads, with Russia slightly ahead. But the two powers have been reducing their stockpiles under the US- Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Obviously not a candidate for the Nobel Peace prize, Trump has announced his wish to renegotiate the new START and be at the top of the nuclear heap, not only numerically but also in lethalness.
Trump’s desire to be absolutely No. 1 could conceivably trigger a new nuclear arms race among the nuclear powers today. This could also encourage new aspirants for the exclusive nuclear circle as the race further accentuates the basic flaw of the Non-Proliferation Treaty: its discriminatory nature. The nuclear powers as of July1968, the time of signing of the NPT, are exempt from the ban the treaty imposes.
Sanctions have not prevented states from violating the NPT. India with an economy large enough to go autarkic considered the sanctions imposed on it after its nuclear tests “meaningless.” Sanctions against Pakistan were dropped as soon as its cooperation was deemed essential by the US in the latter’s Afghan wars. For all the sanctions slapped on it, North Korea has so far conducted nuclear and missile tests at relentlessly short intervals that the risk of a nuclear detonation being made either by the US or North Korea today is considered the highest since the Cold War.
Small wonder that the world has not been too happy and content with the NPT. In accordance with the decision of the majority last year, the UN General Assembly a few days ago launched a conference to negotiate a new legally binding treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in line with previous treaties prohibiting chemical and biological weapons, landmines and cluster munitions.
Customary international law makes no mention of nuclear weapons because they are of a later invention. But as their immediate and longer term effects were demonstrated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons clearly fall under the weapons prohibited by customary international law—weapons which are of a nature to strike at military objectives and civilians without distinction.
It was the monitoring of the effects of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that showed how a single nuclear bomb detonated over a large city could kill millions of people, bring unimaginable suffering to survivors and their future generations, and cause catastrophic and long-term damage to the environment. The use of tens or hundreds of nuclear bombs would be cataclysmic, severely disrupting the global climate and causing widespread famine. The UN conference serves to negotiate a treaty that would for the first time explicitly and universally prohibit nuclear weapons. The ban would include the five permanent members of the Security Council.
For all its defects, the NPT by the number of countries subscribing to it manifests the desire of the vast majority of countries around the world (almost 200) to ban nuclear weapons. One hundred fifteen countries are also part of nuclear weapons-free zones which cover Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the South Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa. While a majority of UN members are participating in the conference. The United States and its allies have boycotted it, calling it an unrealistic exercise. One US ally, the Philippines is not in that boycott. Its own Constitution bans nuclear weapons.
Given Trump’s pledge to make America great again in nuclear weapons and given the ongoing efforts in the United Nations to negotiate a ban, it appears that the world is at a historic juncture. To ban or not to ban.
With the US boycotting the conference, one cannot be sanguine about what any resulting treaty can amount to. The colossal nuclear stockpile of the US will be outside the ban. Would a label or reputation as a rogue leader matter to Trump? Probably not. The United States anyway has a history of not ratifying landmark treaties and not learning any lesson from the disastrous consequences of its non-ratification.
Trump is one damn determined fellow. This is shown by the fact that to make a significant increase in his defense and nuclear weapons budget, he has to make drastic cuts in components of the federal budget that contribute significantly to national security. Trump is also one narrow-minded fool. Said a New York Times
“[T]he armed forces are a vital component of the national security tool kit, but so are diplomacy, economic engagement, and post-conflict reconstruction. The use of military force should always be a last resort, and the balanced application of other, less costly tools of national power helps prevent wars and crises from arising in the first place.”
The reason the US gave for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing millions of civilians, was to stop the war and prevent further US military casualties.
The nuclear bomb has been associated to this day with caring for the lives of America’s soldiers. It has been noted that Trump counts on the customary popularity of defense with legislators to get his budget passed. Trump may get the additional more powerful nuclear bombs that he wants.
What makes people nervous about this prospect is that in the few weeks he has been in the White House, Trump has done little to dispel the notion engendered by the election campaign that his short-fuse temperament may willy-nilly unleash a nuclear cataclysm. His issuance of orders without much consultation with appropriate agencies, his all-bluster-and-wind assaults on mass and social media grounded on “alternative facts” are far from reassuring of a man close to the nuclear button.
It seems that under the protocol concerned, the US President, contrary to the popular imagery, does not actually press his finger on the button. He issues an order to a War Room in the Pentagon where officials are bound by law to execute the order. There is an anecdote related in the Internet of one such top brass fired for asking whether he should follow an order to release nuclear bombs coming from an insane President. The US President has the sole authority to use nuclear weapons. The Pentagon must simply obey his command. Theirs not to question why…
Jaime J. Yambao is a retired Ambassador of the Philippines
Paying Nuclear Losers for ‘Clean’ Power Upends U.S. Markets, Bloomberg by Jim Polson
April 22, 2017,
Labeled emission-free, nuclear plants compete with cheaper gas
States permit higher fees to protect jobs, cut fossil-fuel use
Some U.S. states are trying to save money-losing nuclear plants — and disrupting America’s electricity markets in the process. New York and Illinois have cleared the way for nuclear power to be subsidized with higher fees on buyers — aid normally reserved for renewable energy like solar and wind. One reason policy makers gave was to protect jobs at aging plants teetering on closure. Another was nuclear’s emission-free electricity, because states are trying to address climate change by relying less on fossil fuels like coal and natural gas. Connecticut and Ohio are considering similar moves, and pressure is mounting in New Jersey.
But federal regulators and gas-fueled generators including Dynegy Inc. and Calpine Corp. say the states are fundamentally altering the way wholesale power markets work. Armed with billions of dollars in new clean-energy benefits, higher-cost nuclear generators can now compete with companies that get no aid. The first test comes next month when PJM Interconnection LLC, the biggest grid, takes bids to supply power from Chicago to Washington.
“Markets only work if everyone’s competing evenly,” said Joseph Bowring, president of Monitoring Analytics, the company that oversees PJM’s electricity market. “If some get subsidies, then other people are going to want subsidies. And then pretty soon, we’re going to be competing for subsidies instead of competing in the market.”
While nuclear power has kept its share of U.S. electricity at around 20 percent over the past decade, it’s become a high-cost supplier with the emergence of gas-fired turbines burning cheap shale fuel, as well as more-efficient wind farms and solar panels. The country now gets more electricity from gas than from coal, which has seen its market share plunge.
All that cheap fuel has cut electricity prices, creating financial problems for aging nuclear plants. Five have closed in the past five years and more shutdowns are planned, primarily for economic reasons, according to the Energy Information Administration.
The industry calculus began to change in August when New York handednuclear plants so-called credits for supplying carbon-free power to the state, which means the generators can raise an additional $500 million a year from higher rates. Four months later, Illinois created similar credits to keep money-losing reactors open and 1,500 people employed.
Extra Fee
The way the incentives work is similar to what states have been doing for years to encourage emission-free power. Generators get “credits” for a designated amount of electricity. When that is sold to utilities, the buyers pay the generators an extra fee, which can be recovered in the form of higher bills to customers.
Nuclear incentives saved two plants in Illinois and three in New York, according to Kit Konolige, a senior utilities analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. If subsidies were used to keep open all the nuclear plants in PJM, which doesn’t include New York, electricity supply in the region would be 10 percent higher than otherwise, depressing prices, he said.
On May 10, generators will begin bidding to supply a year of electricity in the PJM region starting June 2020, in return for fixed payments. It’s going to be one of the most closely watched events in the industry this year. Exelon Corp.’s Quad Cities nuclear plant was priced out of last year’s auction. This time, it can expect a subsidy from Illinois customers.
Only the newest and largest nuclear plants can sell power for $25 a megawatt hour, which is the price offered by most gas plants, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. With the help of credits, nuclear power narrows the gap, and generators can offer electricity at close to that price. Wholesale power at a major trading hub within PJM averaged $23.90 a megawatt-hour at 11:28 a.m. Friday in New York, grid data compiled by Genscape show.
Keep Running’
“If you’re getting revenue from one source, you don’t need as much from the auction, so you’re willing to accept less to keep running,” Konolige said.
As a result, prices in this May’s auction for a region covering Chicago may plunge about 16 percent from a year earlier, according to industry consultant Wood Mackenzie Ltd.…….
Operators of cheaper gas-fired power plants, including Dynegy, Calpine and NRG Energy Inc., describe the credits as “bailouts” that threaten to kill competitive markets at the expense of electricity customers. Electricity customers would pay $3.9 billion more if all nuclear plants competing in PJM’s and New England’s wholesale markets were part of programs like New York’s, a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis shows.
“It’s the equivalent of going out to buy a new car and finding out they’re giving them away down the street,” said Abe Silverman, deputy general counsel at Princeton, New Jersey-based NRG. “How are you supposed to compete with that?”
In Connecticut, consumer advocates are fighting the credits and accusing nuclear-plant owners of a money grab.
Mini-nukes: Still a bad choice for the United States, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
James E. Doyle, 21 Apr 17, In December, the Defense Science Board—an independent group of experts and former officials that provides advice to the Defense Department—submitted a report advising the Pentagon to invest in low-yield nuclear weapons that could provide “a rapid, tailored nuclear option for limited use.” This recommendation struck a familiar note. In 2003, the board issued a study entitled “Future Strategic Strike Forces” that suggested building small nuclear weapons with “great precision, deep penetration, [and] greatly reduced” yield and radioactivity. The board’s call led to investments in new warhead designs such as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator—a warhead designed to destroy deeply buried or hardened targets including underground military command centers—and the Reliable Replacement Warhead. Both programs were cancelled in 2008, after millions of dollars had been spent.
Despite the board’s renewed interest in smaller nuclear weapons, and in weapons tailored for limited uses or specific effects, any effort to develop these weapons would encounter the same problem that earlier such efforts have encountered: It is impossible to determine if introducing weapons with these characteristics into the US stockpile, and planning for their use in certain scenarios, would strengthen deterrence or make nuclear war by miscalculation more likely. Building “mini” or tailored nuclear weapons might well lower the threshold to nuclear war; risking that outcome would only make sense if it were absolutely clear that introducing these weapons would remedy some dangerous weakness in deterrence.
Fortunately, no such weakness exists. Any nation using nuclear weapons against the United States or its allies risks a devastating response whose negative consequences would far outweigh any gains delivered by crossing the nuclear threshold. The United States has always possessed the means to employ a small number of nuclear weapons with relatively low yields—between, say, half a kiloton and 50 kilotons. In fact, the inventory of such weapons used to be massive; thousands of weapons with yields under 50 kilotons were deployed as artillery shells, land mines, short-range ballistic missiles, torpedoes, depth charges, anti-aircraft missiles, and even nuclear backpack weapons.
The current US tactical nuclear arsenal is comprised of approximately 500 B61 gravity bombs, which have three tactical versions—the B61-3, -4, and -10—with yields as low as .3 kilotons. The US Air Force deploys 150 to 200 B61s at six NATO air bases in five countries. Additional weapons are stored in the United States for possible overseas deployment. Also available is the W-80-1 warhead, deployed on hundreds of US air-launched cruise missiles, with a variable yield that can be set as low as 5 kilotons.
This list of “smaller” nuclear weapons demonstrates that there are no significant “gaps” in US nuclear capabilities that potential adversaries such as Russia, China, and North Korea could exploit.
That is why, today as in 2003, the Pentagon has no military requirement for the board’s cryptically-named “tailored nuclear option for limited use.” The military understands better than anyone the danger and unpredictability of using nuclear weapons. The military also understands how unlikely it is that any use of nuclear weapons against a nuclear-armed nation would remain “limited.” That is why the vast majority of so-called “tactical” nuclear weapons have been retired from service.
……..Just as in the early 2000s, current proponents of mini-nukes or of vague “limited nuclear options” offer no convincing evidence that new weapons in this category are needed—or more importantly, that they would make nuclear use less likely. Instead, potential nuclear adversaries are likely to see the acquisition of additional weapons in this category as an indication that US opposition to nuclear use has decreased and that Washington may be the first to cross the nuclear threshold. Such an outcome would undermine global stability and increase the risk of nuclear war. Defense resources are better spent on strengthening US conventional forces.http://thebulletin.org/mini-nukes-still-bad-choice-united-states10693
Hawaii’s Renewed Jitters About Nukes, The Atlantic, 21 Apr 17 The state is asking the Department of Defense to help it prepare for a nuclear attack, amid escalating tensions between the United States and North Korea. Memories of the attack have faded, but there are still people in Hawaii who can recall the quiet Sunday morning that descended into chaos more than 75 years ago.
You do not forget the deafening buzz of torpedo bombers, once you have heard them overhead, or what it’s like to see the sky polka-dotted red with the markings of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s aircraft. As tensions between the United States and North Korea escalate, these memories are becoming more vivid………
Now, state lawmakers in Hawaii have formally asked the Department of Defense to help with nuclear disaster preparedness in the state. Such plans haven’t been updated at the local level in decades, since 1985, according to the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency. In the early 1980s, Hawaii’s fallout shelters were still stocked with medical kits and food. But those supplies have long since been thrown out, and funding for such shelters evaporated.
Back then, officials had identified hundreds of additional structures, like parking garages, that could serve as makeshift fallout shelters in Hawaii, Governingreported, but officials today don’t even know which of those structures exist anymore—and whether the remaining structures are in adequate shape to serve as shelters.
Hawaii is a natural target for a couple reasons. For one, it’s geographically closer to North Korea than other parts of the United States. Hawaii is also a key strategic position for the U.S. military, which has an enormous presence on the island of Oahu in particular………
There is uncertainty, however, about how the new presidential administration will react to North Korea. North Korean leadership is perceived as notoriously unpredictable, especially in the Western world. But United States President Donald Trump has his own reputation for being inscrutable and impulsive, qualities which international security experts say he is likely to leverage against North Korea—and as a way to distinguish himself from the Obama administration, which Trump perceives as having been “indecisive and entirely predictable,” Cha said.
The Plutonium Finishing Plant is considered the most hazardous demolition project at the Hanford nuclear reservation.
And the area known as the Plutonium Reclamation Facility was added to one end of the plant and includes a tall section called a canyon, where skinny tanks were hung for use in a process to remove valuable plutonium from scrap material.
Workers are tearing back the building to get to the canyon, which stands 34 feet tall and covers a 30-by-66-foot area.
Because of potential airborne contamination, just a 2-foot-wide slice of the building, top to bottom, will be taken down each day, said Tom Teynor, DOE manager for the Plutonium Finishing Plant.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has fed extensive information from sampling in the canyon into a chemical air dispersion model to determine how much work could be done safely daily.
Larger sections of the canyon could be demolished each day, depending on monitoring results for air contamination during initial work.
The Plutonium Reclamation Facility is expected to be demolished before the end of June.
The plant’s main processing facility and the fan house and ventilation stack must also be demolished to meet a legal deadline at the end of September.
A revised schedule calls for the main processing facility to be cleaned out for demolition by the end of May, with demolition completed in August. The fan house also could be ready for demolition next month. Annette Cary: 509-582-1533, @HanfordNews
Citizens confront Nuclear Fuel Services regulator over environmental, public health concernsJESSICA FULLER 21 Apr 17 jfuller@johnsoncitypress.comERWIN — A biennial safety performance review that concluded Erwin’s Nuclear Fuel Services is continuing to operate safely brought out concerned citizens who questioned the report’s conclusion.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviewed the report which spanned from Jan. 1, 2015, to Dec. 31, 2016, and included several enforcement issues in the presentation, including two instances of failure to treat mixed waste and failure to maintain records of maintenance and inspection testing of the facility’s fire protection systems.
The NRC ruled that NFS doesn’t need to improve any areas in its safety culture based on the two-year investigation period.
“An absence of areas needing improvement does not mean that performance in functional areas that we inspect does not have to be improved or enhanced,” NRC representative Charlie Stancil said. “Early detection with comprehensive corrective actions to address these performance issues are key to sustaining safe and secure operations and performance as we go forward.”……
After the presentations, the public was allowed to speak, and commenters had nothing but concern and distrust to hand to the board of NRC inspectors and company representatives. While some inquirers cited specific events listed in the violation reports for comment, others had other bones to pick with the NRC on issues such as public health and environmental safety. A recurring topic brought up by audience members was the discontinuation of an $8 million cancer study that was canceled in 2015.
Jonesborough citizen Linda Modica was questioned the representatives with documentation in her hands. She asked about the levels of plutonium that showed up in the reports, and NRS representative Kevin Ramey said those trace amounts have a dose limit set at 100 milligrams, which he went on to explain means is the limit that a person could ingest either by air or water for an entire year.
“I understand your concern that there’s stuff there you’d rather not be exposed to,” Ramey said. “The commission has made a decision that the regulations we have are protective of the public, and that’s something that we can’t change, that’s something only the commission can change.”
Modica, a two-time cancer survivor, said it is personal issue to her, and said that wasn’t good enough.
“We need the government to reduce the risk of cancer by eliminating these radioactive toxins that are being put in our air and water,” Modica said. “Those numbers need to be zero.”
An injunctive order that would move plutonium disposition forward in Aiken County will have to wait until at least July.
U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs signed an order giving all parties until July 31 to develop a jointly written statement that will be used to frame the order. The previous deadline was April 21.
Childs previously ruled the U.S. Department of Energy failed to comply with an agreement to dispose of 1 metric ton of weapons grade plutonium by Jan. 1, 2016. South Carolina sued the DOE, the National Nuclear Security Administration, NNSA director Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz and former Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz in February 2016, saying the defendants reneged on their obligations to dispose of plutonium or make $1 million a day “economic assistance payments.”
Childs ruled the federal government failed to dispose of plutonium as agreed, but refused to issue any financial sanctions. Her order asks all parties to develop a joint statement to determine exactly what the injunction will say.
The April 20 order to delay comes at the request of the DOE and its codefendants.
According to court documents, the DOE’s budget is only funded through April 28.
In addition, the DOE cited difficulty in coordinating with a number of program offices and officials, “a process which is complicated by the fact that a number of leadership positions at DOE are not presently filled.”
The motion goes on to say that settlement negotiations will continue. If an agreement can’t be reached by the deadline, then both parties will submit individual statements, court records state.
The DOE missed the Jan. 1, 2016 deadline because the mixed oxide, or MOX, fuel fabrication facility at the Savannah River Site in Aiken County isn’t built yet.
Once operational, MOX will convert plutonium stockpiles into fuel for commercial reactors. It’s presently about 73 percent complete, sources familiar with the project say.
The plutonium disposition is part of a nuclear deal with Russia, both nations agreed to dispose of 34 metric tons of defense plutonium. An NNSA news release from 2011 heralding the MOX deal said that’s enough plutonium to make 17,000 nuclear weapons.
Russia suspended, but didn’t withdraw from, the agreement in 2016. While not citing MOX directly, Russian President Vladimir Putin cited “unfriendly” practices by the U.S.
Both nations were supposed to begin disposition in 2018, the NNSA news release said.
A government source told a South Korean news agency the WC-135 Constant Phoenix made an “emergency sortie” over the East Sea with the mission of detecting nuclear samples to identify if a nuclear explosion had taken place.
It had arrived at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan earlier this month amid fears the rogue state will attempt to carry our further tests in violation of UN sanctions.
The plane had previously been deployed to Europe in February where it landed at a UK air base in Surrey before travelling over Norway. The US military said the aircraft operates on a pre-planned rotation that is scheduled well in advance.
The deployment comes amid a major training exercise held between South Korean and US forces in the region. Operation Max Thunder will see hundreds of troops undertake war games involving aircraft carriers, fighter jets and military drills over 11 days.
The US has stressed such exercises are routine, however it comes after Vice President Mike Pence said the “sword stands ready” if diplomacy fails.
North Korean has also threatened the country is “ready to react” and accused the US of creating a situation in which “a thermonuclear war may break out at any moment.”
US and Korean forces are already taking part in two regional exercises, Foal Eagle and Key Resolve, which involve up to 17,000 troops including the famed special forces team that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011.
Meanwhile the regulatory process to pave the way for the US THAAD antimissile system has been completed. The 300,000 square metre site in the southeastern region of Seongju had already been chosen and was subject to protests with the transfer of land now complete.
“The chief of the joint committee approved it on Thursday, wrapping up the … process,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Rising tensions between North and South Korea have occurred against a backdrop of major political uncertainty after former President Park Geun-Hye was indicted for bribery and abuse of power charges.
The country will face elections on May 9 where the THAAD system could become an issue as presidential frontrunner.Democratic party frontrunner Moon Jai-in has called for a review of the deployment plan of the system that has seen large protests among South Koreans opposed to militarisation on the Korean Peninsula.
The US and South Korea insist the system is purely for defensive reasons. However China says it threatens its security and sovereignty.
Meanwhile Russia has also reportedly been moving troops, helicopters and vehicles to the North Korean border. While it has not been confirmed by the Kremlin, those in the region claim to have witnessed trains loaded with military equipment heading to the short northern border between the two countries.
Risk of ‘Accidental’ Nuclear War Growing, UN Research Group Says, The warning comes as the Pentagon begins an extensive review of its nuclear arsenal. Defense One, BY PATRICK TUCKER, 19 APR 17,
On Sept., 26, 1983, shortly after midnight, the Soviet Oko nuclear early warning system detected five missiles launched from the United States and headed toward Moscow. Stanislav Petrov, a young lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defense Force, was the duty in the Serpukhov-15 bunker that housed the Oko command center. Petrov was the man in charge of alerting the soviets about a nuclear attack, which would trigger a retaliatory strike. He determined that the Oko had likely malfunctioned and the alarm was false. The Americans would not start World War III with a quintet of missiles (risking total annihilation.) It was a daring judgment call. He was, of course, right. As the U.S. prepares to undertake a new nuclear posture review to determine the future direction of the nation’s nuclear weapons, a report from a United Nations research institute warns that the risks of a catastrophic error — like the one that took place that early morning in 1983 — are growing, not shrinking. Next time, there may be no Lt. Col. Petrov in place to avoid a catastrophe.
On Monday, the U.S. Defense Department commenced a new, massive study into its nuclear weapons arsenal, looking at how weapons are kept, how the U.S. would use them in war and whether they present an intimidating enough threat to other countries not to attack us. The review was mandated by President Trump in a Jan 27, memo.
The Pentagon is scheduled to complete the review by the end of the year, an essential step as the military seeks to modernize different aspects of its nuclear deterrent. But a new report from the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, or UNIDR, argues that as the modern battlefield becomes more technologically complex, crowded with more sensors, satellites, drones, and interconnected networks, the risks of another nuclear accident are on the rise.
“A greater reliance on automated systems can lead to misplaced confidence while introducing new points of vulnerability,” says the report. Those new points of vulnerability include so-called “hidden interactions.” That means a sensor or computer program misinterpreting some bit of data and possibly presenting false information in a way that could cause an accident. The 1987 incident provides a good case in point. Oko satellites mistook a very unusual sunspot on top of a high altitude cloud as a missile strike, hence the false alarm.
Take those satellites, combine them with sensors on drones and data from other sources as well, including new, perhaps unproven technologies to detect missile launches and the picture becomes much more crowded and murky.
“The complex interactions and tightly coupled systems linked to nuclear arsenals (like those for early warning, and launch command and control) have made ‘accidental war more likely’” the report’s authors say.
Add to that the fact that the number of states that have access to nuclear weapons is increasing, and the number of platforms that they might be able to use to deliver those weapons is also going up. Consider the controversial U.S. plans for a long-range standoff weapon, orLRSO, basically a big nuclear cruise missile that can be fired off a fighter jet. Reports have surfaced that the U.S. is even considering nuclear-armed drones (that would be remotely operated by human pilots and the degree of seriousness in the considerations is up to debate).
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5 From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
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