Violation notices issued to Nuclear Waste Partnership and Los Alamos National Security
Department of Energy Cites Nuclear Waste Partnership, LLC and Los Alamos National Security, LLC for Violations Related to Worker Safety and Health and Nuclear Safety Energy.Gov 19 Feb 16 WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today issued a Preliminary Notice of Violation (PNOV) to Nuclear Waste Partnership, LLC (NWP) for violations of DOE worker safety and health and nuclear safety requirements. Concurrently, DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) issued a PNOV to Los Alamos National Security, LLC (LANS) for violations of DOE’s nuclear safety requirements. Issuance of these PNOVs marks the completion of DOE’s investigations and enforcement process regarding two events in 2014 at DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP).
NWP is the management and operating contractor for WIPP, located in Carlsbad, New Mexico. LANS is the management and operating contractor for NNSA’s Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), located in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Worker safety and health and nuclear safety are priorities for the Department, and DOE’s enforcement program, implemented by the Office of Enterprise Assessments’ Office of Enforcement on behalf of the Secretary of Energy, supports these priorities by holding contractors accountable for meeting regulatory requirements and maintaining a safe and healthy workplace.
The violations by NWP at WIPP are associated with two events that occurred in February 2014. The first event involved a fire in a salt haul truck in the WIPP underground, and the second event involved a radiological release. The violations by LANS at LANL are associated with processes used by LANS to package and remediate transuranic waste drums, one of which has been linked to the WIPP radiological release.
The NWP PNOV cites four Severity Level I violations and seven Severity Level II violations related to worker safety and health and nuclear safety requirements enforceable under Title 10 C.F.R. § 851, Worker Safety and Health Program; 10 C.F.R. § 820.11, Information requirements; 10 C.F.R. § 830, Nuclear Safety Management, and 10 C.F.R. § 835, Occupational Radiation Protection. The LANS PNOV cites two Severity Level I violations and two Severity Level II violations related to nuclear safety requirements enforceable under 10 C.F.R. § 830.
In FY 2014, actions taken by DOE and NWP’s inability to earn fee resulted in NWP failing to receive 93 percent of the available fee, or approximately $7.6 million. NNSA reduced the total contract fee that was awarded to LANS by more than 90 percent, or approximately $57 million, with most of this reduction due to deficiencies in the processing and handling of transuranic waste and the resultant impact on operations at WIPP. NNSA also reduced the potential length of the LANS contract by a total of 2 years. Due to these significant adverse contract and fee actions taken against NWP and LANS, DOE is proposing no civil penalties for the violations cited in the two PNOVs………..http://energy.gov/articles/department-energy-cites-nuclear-waste-partnership-llc-and-los-alamos-national-security-llc
US Energy Dept cites two companies for violations at Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP)
Two Contractors Cited for Radioactive Release at Nuclear Waste Sites http://sputniknews.com/us/20160219/1035057063/us-nuclear-waste-contactors.html The companies responsible for nuclear waste are Nuclear Waste Partnership (NWP), which operates an Energy Department facility to store nuclear waste and Los Alamos National Security (LANS), the contractor that manages the nearby Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to the US Department of Energy.
“The violations by NWP… are associated with two events that occurred in February 2014. The first event involved a fire in a salt haul truck in the [waste storage facility] underground, and the second event involved a radiological release,” the release explained.
The violations by LANS are associated with the packaging of nuclear waste containers, according to the release.
The two events took place in February 2014 at the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, an underground storage facility at a 600 meter deep salt bed, the release explained. Both companies have already been heavily penalized, losing 90 percent of their fees.
In the second event ten days later, air monitors detected unusually high levels of radiation, later traced to an exploding barrel of nuclear waste from Los Alamos.
The storage facility has been closed for the past two years, but the Energy Department expects to reopen the plant later this year with improved safety measures, according to an earlier posting on the department’s website.
Los Alamos is best known as the site where the United States developed the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II. http://sputniknews.com/us/20160219/1035057063/us-nuclear-waste-contactors.html#ixzz40eL2SilO
Tennessee Valley Authority considers selling its unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Plant
Unfinished TVA nuclear plant may hit the selling block Ty West Managing editor Birmingham Business Journal, 19 Feb 16 An unfinished nuclear power plant in northeast Alabama could soon hit the open market.The Tennessee Valley Authority is considering a sale of its unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Plant, which is located on a 1,600-acre site near Hollywood on the Tennessee River. Work on the plant started in 1974, but it was never completed or used as a nuclear plant.TVA said the site could be used for commercial, industrial or residential developments, but could also be used as a nuclear plant………http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/blog/2016/02/unfinished-alabama-nuclear-plant-may-hit-the.html
St Louis underground fire moves closer to radioactive trash dump
Underground Fire in Mo. Nears Nuclear Waste Dump, Discovery News, FEB 18, 2016 BY PATRICK J. KIGER IN THE ST. LOUIS AREA, A SLOW-BURNING UNDERGROUND FIRE IS CLOSE TO A VAST STORE OF NUCLEAR WASTE BURIED IN A FEDERAL SUPERFUND SITE.
The fire reportedly has been smoldering beneath a nearby landfill since at least 2010. The Washington Post reports that residents are afraid of what may happen if the fire — which is by some accounts as little as 1,500 feet away –reaches the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Mo., a Superfund site filled with decades-old waste from the federal government’s nuclear weapons program. Angry locals also think the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which manages the site, hasn’t done enough to stop the fire.
In December, the EPA announced that it would install a physical barrier in an effort to isolate the nuclear waste. The agency also said that it would put cooling loops and other engineering controls to prevent environmental impacts if the “subsurface smoldering event,” as it’s called, were to reach the waste. An EPA administrator told the Post that the barrier would take a year to build.
But residents aren’t comforted by that timetable, and think the government, despite years of warning, has done too little to stave off a possible environmental disaster. A 2014 St. Louis County Emergency Operations Plan, obtained by a local TV station, reveals that local officials feared a “catastrophic event” with “a potential for radioactive fallout to be released in the smoke plume and spread throughout the region.”……
About 8.700 tons of nuclear waste, mixed with 39,000 tons of contaminated soil was moved to the Superfund site from another dump between July and October 1973, according to a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission report. It was covered by a three-foot-deep layer of uncontaminated soil.
EPA may be running out of time to fix the problem. In early February, the U.S. Senate passed a bill introduced by Sens. Claire McCaskill, (D-Mo.), and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), that would take control over the building remediation measures away from EPA and give it to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The House hasn’t yet taken action on the legislation.
But Congress may bear some responsibility for the agency’s slowness. According to a 2015 Government Accountability Office report , legislators cut EPA’s funding for cleanup of Superfund sites by nearly half since the late 1990s. http://news.discovery.com/earth/underground-fire-in-mo-nears-nuclear-waste-dump-160218.htm
Moapa Band of Paiute Indians fear a nuclear waste dump being imposed at Yucca Mountain
The Battle Continues To Stop Yucca Mountain From Becoming A Nuclear Waste Dump Not far from the site of 40 years of nuclear weapons testing, a proposed long-term nuclear waste dump draws opposition from the Shoshone and Paiute Nations, environmental activists and even Nevada state officials. MintPress News, By Derrick Broze | February 18, 2016 The Moapa River Reservation is downwind of the Nevada Test Site, and locals have long maintained that radiation has harmed the health of the local population.
“We hope that that stuff [radiation] went up in the air and blew over us,” Vernon Lee, a Southern Paiute with the
, who has lived on the Moapa River Reservation since 1973, told MintPress News. “We know that we got some because we are just east of the testing, but we hope we got less.”
Areas around the test site, particularly those located “downwind,” saw increases in cancers, including leukemia, lymphoma, thyroid cancer and brain tumors, throughout the entire span of the nuclear weapons testing. A 1984 study by the Journal of the American Medical Association found increased rates of canceramong Mormon families as far away as southwestern Utah, for example.
For Lee, the decades of environmental degradation and risks to human health reflect a much larger issue. The problem, he believes, is that the U.S. government does not recognize the tribal nations as equals. Officially, the U.S. Department of Interior states that the U.S. government operates under a “federal Indian trust responsibility,” a legal obligation that includes “moral obligations of the highest responsibility and trust” toward Native American tribes.
“To me, that doesn’t exist. It’s a word on paper, but I don’t think I have ever seen it put into practice,” Lee said.
“Trust responsibility, to me, is that government-to-government relationship that they are supposed to have with the tribes. It’s ridiculous the way the U.S. government treats the sovereign tribes. It’s very unfair.”
Native communities have a long history of resources discovered beneath the reservations being exploited by the U.S. government and supported industries. These communities have suffered exposure to dangerous substances through uranium mining and milling. In Nevada, the lives of generations of Western Shoshone and Moapa Paiute have become intertwined with the history of nuclear weapons testing and, more recently, the disposal of nuclear waste from faraway power plants.
“There are multiple problems. Moving the waste is a problem. High risk, unnecessary risk. If the company is ever going to benefit from nuclear power they should process it and store it themselves. Stop shipping it across the country and exposing the population to a potential disaster,” Lee said, alluding to the controversial long-term nuclear waste repository planned for Yucca Mountain, about a three hours’ drive from the reservation……….. http://www.mintpressnews.com/the-battle-continues-to-stop-yucca-mountain-from-becoming-a-nuclear-waste-dump/213976/
The continuing saga of the plan to dump nuclear waste on Yucca Mt – an act of genocide
for Zaparte, the actions taken by the U.S. government so far constitute an act of genocide against the Western Shoshone and other tribal nations who have been subject to the effects of nuclear testing and power. He is determined to fight for his people’s way of life and the land that his ancestors fought for.
“We have a deliberate act by the United States to systematically dismantle my living life ways for the profit of the nuclear industry and the benefit of the United States,” Zaparte said. “At the worst, this is genocide underthe U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide
The battle for Yucca Mountain The Battle Continues To Stop Yucca Mountain From Becoming A Nuclear Waste Dump Not far from the site of 40 years of nuclear weapons testing, a proposed long-term nuclear waste dump draws opposition from the Shoshone and Paiute Nations, environmental activists and even Nevada state officials. MintPress News, By Derrick Broze | February 18, 2016
“…………Commercial nuclear power plants produce spent nuclear fuel, a radioactive byproduct. High-level radioactive waste is also produced as spent nuclear fuel is reprocessed into material for nuclear weapons. Disposing of both of these byproducts is a difficult and dangerous task.
In response to growing concerns over nuclear waste storage, Congress passed the federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, which charged the Department of Energy with finding a place to build and operate a geologic repository, or underground nuclear waste disposal facility. Operating on the notion that the safest way to dispose of the waste is to bury it in rock deep underground, the DOE studied several sites for a possible geologic repository before settling on Yucca Mountain, located 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The plan for the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository had the support of President George W. Bush, but met with opposition from Nevada state officials and environmental and Native activists, who fear that the rock at Yucca Mountain will not be able to contain nuclear waste for long periods of time.
In 2009, environmental and anti-nuclear organizations, including Beyond Nuclear, Greenpeace, Center for Health, Environment & Justice, and the International Society for Ecology, sent a letter to President Barack Obama calling the selection of the Yucca Mountain site “a purely political decision.” They argued that it has been been evident since 1992 that the site “could not meet the EPA’s general radiation protection standard for repositories.”
Obama opted to end funding for the project, setting off an ongoing legal battle. In August 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to approve or reject the DOE application for the proposed waste storage site at Yucca Mountain. The Associated Press reported:
“In a sharply worded opinion, the court said the nuclear agency was ‘simply flouting the law’ when it allowed the Obama administration to continue plans to close the proposed waste site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The action goes against a federal law designating Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear waste repository.”
In January 2015 the NRC concluded that the DOE’s license application for Yucca Mountain satisfies nearly all of the commission’s regulations. The commission must now clear all challenges from the state of Nevada and Native communities, a process which could take several more years.
Then, in August, the NRC released a supplement to the DOE’s 2002 and 2008 environmental impact statements for the planned nuclear waste repository. The NRC’s report evaluates different potential radiological and non-radiological impacts on the environment, soil, and public health, and the potential for disproportionate impacts on minority or low-income populations. The NRC wrote:
“…[T]he NRC staff finds no environmental pathway that would affect minority or low-income populations differently from other segments of the general population. Therefore, the NRC staff concludes that no disproportionately high and adverse health or environmental impacts would occur to minority or low-income segments of the population in the Amargosa Valley area.”
The nonprofit environmental advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council disagreed, stating that the NRC “still adheres to the flawed assumptions the DOE used to frame the foundation of its analysis of potential environmental impacts of the repository.”
As this process drags on, two companies are providing interim storage sites for the country’s nuclear waste. One is located in Andrews County, Texas, and owned by Waste Control Specialists. The other is anunderground storage site in Southeastern New Mexico, operated by Holtec International and the Eddy-Lea Alliance of New Mexico. Waste Control Specialists are hoping to turn the temporary West Texas facility into a long-term waste storage site.
An act of genocide?
About 90 miles from the money and vices of Las Vegas, Ian Zaparte stands at the base of Yucca Mountain, discussing the history of theft of Shoshone land and the threats posed by the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository.
Zaparte represents the Western Shoshone traditional government and has been fighting in defense of his community and the planet for 30 years.
The Western Shoshone are one of 12 Indian nations whose chiefs signed the Treaty of Ruby Valley with the governors of the Nevada and Utah territory in 1863. In addition to recognizing the sovereignty of each of the Indigenous nations, the treaty gave the Indian nations ownership over millions of acres of land in Idaho, Nevada, California and Utah. It also allowed settlers access to the land for gold mining and homesteading, but did not give them title.
However, a history of land grabs through controversial legal means saw that land handed over to various agencies of the U.S. government, including the Bureau of Land Management. In 1979, the U.S. put $26 millionin a fund for the Shoshone for title to 24 million acres, but the tribe declined the money. The Supreme Court ruled six years later that the settlement, whether officially accepted by the tribe or not, extinguished the Shoshones’ claim to the land.
Essentially, the U.S. government has stated that encroachment upon Indian lands by settlers, railroads, telegraphs, ranches and gold mines extinguished the Shoshone claim to the land. In 2006, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found “credible information alleging that the Western Shoshone indigenous people are being denied their traditional rights to land.”
According to a University of Michigan Environmental Justice Case Study:
“The Western Shoshone argue that the basis of this plenary federal power is rooted in the colonial arrogance of the 17th century, and the laws that gave the United States Government control over the Native Americans are ‘extensions of Christian claims to world supremacy.’”
Since the Western Shoshone have lost claims to their traditional lands, the U.S. government is free to use the land for projects, such as nuclear weapons testing and the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository.
Zaparte says the NRC and the DOE are ignoring the possibilities for danger in the area and denying the impact the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository would have on local communities, including the Paiute and the Shoshone.
“There are 26 faults, seven cinder cone volcanoes, 90 percent of the mountain is saturated with 10 percent water,” Zaparte told MintPress. “If you heat the rock, it will release that water. If the water comes up and corrodes the canisters, it will take whatever is in storage and bring it into the water and into the valley.”
The DOE is currently accepting public comment from communities, states, tribes and other stakeholders on how to establish a nuclear waste repository with respect to the community. The DOE says it aims “to establish an integrated waste management system to transport, store, and dispose of commercial spent nuclear fuel and high level defense radioactive waste.” The public comment period ends on June 15, and the DOE and Nuclear Regulatory Commission will likely issue statements shortly after.
Although the Yucca Mountain project has stalled during the Obama administration, a new president, especially a nuclear-friendly president, could theoretically rally for funding of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. The timing of the DOE’s study could potentially make the Yucca Mountain a topic of debate in the 2016 presidential election.
Still, for Zaparte, the actions taken by the U.S. government so far constitute an act of genocide against the Western Shoshone and other tribal nations who have been subject to the effects of nuclear testing and power. He is determined to fight for his people’s way of life and the land that his ancestors fought for.
“We have a deliberate act by the United States to systematically dismantle my living life ways for the profit of the nuclear industry and the benefit of the United States,” Zaparte said. “At the worst, this is genocide underthe U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.”………http://www.mintpressnews.com/the-battle-continues-to-stop-yucca-mountain-from-becoming-a-nuclear-waste-dump/213976/
Nuclear industry funded under the mask of “clean energy”
Obama’s “Clean Energy” budget is propping up nuclear energy, Enformable 12 Feb 2016 “………Cut to page 19 of the Office of Management and Budget’s Fiscal Year 2017 Budget document. Here we find “clean energy,” a phrase no longer to be trusted at face value, having been purloined into meaning at times something quite the reverse. For example, nuclear energy tends to hide beneath the “clean energy” mantel, muddling the message and undermining cause for optimism.
While it may be true that the nuclear power fuel chain does not produce the kind of dirt that can be swept under rugs, the nuclear industry has metaphorically done exactly that by presenting itself as a “clean” energy technology. There is nothing particularly clean about an industry that contaminates the air, land and waterways with heavy metals and with radioactive isotopes that, among other things, give kids living nearby leukemia.
But let’s gerund away anyway and see what lurks beneath the section entitled, “Doubling the Investment in Clean Energy R&D.” Here we learn that the U.S. Government indeed intends to double its current $6.4 billion investment in clean energy for 2016 to arrive at $12.8 billion by 2021. A hefty chunk — $7.7 billion — will be given as discretionary funding to the Department of Energy in 2017 alone for “clean energy R&D.”
But for what, exactly? “About 76 percent of the funding is directed to DOE for critical clean energy development activities, including over $2 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies,” the Budget document reads. Just two billion dollars for energy efficiency and renewable energy combined? That leaves $5.7 billion for something else that the DOE considers “clean energy.” One of those claimants undoubtedly is nuclear power.
More clues to the likely destination of this unassigned mystery money can be found in a later section where the Budget document reveals that the $7.7 billion is actually earmarked as funding for the “first step toward the Mission Innovation doubling goal.”
The White House describes Mission Innovation, which was announced during the Paris climate talks last December, as an “all-in, all-sector approach,” which is basically the same old “all of the above” foolish compromise on energy policy that the Obama administration has held to from the beginning.
Since this strategy is roundly contradicted by what is actually happening across the country — wind and solar energy installation outpacing natural gas while coal fades and nuclear plants close — there is only one logical explanation for this “fair and balanced” energy policy nonsense: corporate captivity.
To oversimplify: Barack Obama, the Senator from Illinois, emerged from Rahm Emanuel’s clamshell, and Emanuel invented Exelon and Exelon is today the country’s leading nuclear behemoth. Exelon’s chief lobbyist in the early days was David Axelrod. Team Obama was born in the country’s nuclear cradle, then. Nevertheless, it’s high time that a U.S. president as committed to renewables as Obama, ceased tossing favors — aka our money— to his corporate nuclear cronies.
And so it goes on. Sitting on that Paris stage last December for the Mission Innovation announcement was Bill Gates, whose only energy agenda is tinkering around with nuclear unicorns, an exercise so devoid of relevance to the urgent battle to address climate change that every dime spent there is a dime wasted. OK they are his dimes, trillions of them. 
But think what he could really do for climate change if he spent his riches wisely.
Let’s follow the trail of budget breadcrumbs a little further. The OMB goes on to say: “Mission Innovation is complemented by the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a separate, private sector-led effort whose purpose is to mobilize substantial levels of private capital to support the most cutting-edge clean energy technologies emerging from the R&D pipeline.”
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition is Bill Gates again, and loaded to the hilt with his fellow billionaires all salivating at the prospect of old nuclear pots to mend. But given the Breakthrough Coalition is entirely “separate” and “private,” what is it doing even being mentioned in a government budget rollout?
What comes out of the Clean Energy R&D pipeline rather depends on what goes into it. It would be good if that turned out to be a true renewable energy revolution and not more deadly radioactive effluent from an obsolete fleet of new nuclear power plants. http://enformable.com/2016/02/obamas-clean-energy-budget-is-propping-up-nuclear-energy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Enformable+%28Enformable%29
Nuclear crooks prosper in USA
13 Feb 16 The article on the criminality of GE/Hitachi suggests that the old adage: “crooks never prosper,” is accurate. However, in December 2015, the double-tongued NRC and DoE > the federally owned Tennessee Valley Authority rewarded GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy with a contract worth more than $70 million to provide outage services for units 1, 2 and 3 of the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/C-GEH-wins-70-million-contract-to-service-Browns-Ferry-4121501.html
In October 2014, corporate felons, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (partnering with ANL) were rewarded with a DoE multi-million dollar grant for “development and modernization of next-generation probabilistic risk assessment methodologies” on the PRISM reactor. http://gehitachiprism.com/ge-hitachi-selected-by-u-s-department-of-energy-to-lead-advanced-reactor-research-and-development-project/
This is despite the fact that in September 2014, GE was hit with a “consent agreement” totalling $24 million to clean up its PCB contamination of the Hudson River. The Hudson River PCB Superfund (hazardous waste site) is located in New York and consists of 200 miles of the river. The Site is one of the largest Superfund Sites in the country thanks to GE.
The EPA estimated that GE dumped approximately 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the river.
GE knew of the deadly health and environmental hazards of PCBs as early as 1937 when employees were sickened – some dying of liver disease yet it continued contaminating the river until the tardy EPA banned PCBs in 1977.
http://malibuunites.com/the-history-of-pcbs/
http://www.epa.gov/enforcement/case-summary-ge-agrees-further-investigate-upper-hudson-river-floodplain-comprehensive
The nuclear behemoth is a magnet for corporate thugs who hide beneath Obama’s “clean energy” mantle muddling the message whilst fouling the biosphere with impunity. The nuclear industry relies on Joe Public’s apathy.
Conclusion: The old adage: “crooks never prosper” incubates in the bowels of mythology.
Native Americans’ water supply contaminated by uranium mining
Native Americans Ask: What About Our Water Supply? http://m.voanews.com/a/native-americans-ask-what-about-our-water-supply/3188737.html Celebrities and politicians have rallied around the city of Flint, Michigan, where thousands of children have been exposed to unsafe levels of lead in drinking water. But Native Americans say they have been facing an even more dangerous water contaminant for decades – uranium – and received far less attentionThe Cold War arms race triggered a boom in uranium mining in the U.S. Between the 1940s and 1980s, uranium mining operations were carried out under a 19th century mining law that did not require them to clean up after themselves.When demand for uranium waned in the 1980s, companies simply walked away, leaving open pits and tunnels – and enormous amounts of radioactive waste. Today more than 15,000 abandoned uranium mines dot the U.S. West. Three-quarters of them are located on federal and tribal lands.
Ray Manygoats grew up near Tuba City, Arizona, near a now-abandoned uranium mine. He is no stranger to the substance the Diné (Navajo) people call “the yellow monster.”
“Yellow stuff was always everywhere,” Manygoats told the House Oversight Committee in 2007. “I saw liquids bubbling and tried to stay away from them…we would play in the yellowcake sand near the mill, jumping and rolling around in it.”
Manygoats has suffered from a variety of health troubles, including growths on his eyes; his father has respiratory problems.
Effects on drinking water
“There is a really large and convincing and definitive literature that shows that for miners working underground, uranium mining is associated with a greatly increased risk of lung cancer,” said Douglas Brugge, Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. “We also know that uranium, radium, radon and arsenic – which is frequently in the ore as well – are toxic. And we know from a fairly large number of studies that people who are drinking water contaminated with uranium have some adverse health effects, mostly kidney damage.”
In 2014, University of New Mexico researchers sampled mine waste at one Arizona site and found uranium concentrations in spring water that was four times the federal drinking-water limit. Thirty percent of Diné lack access to public water and are forced to drink from unregulated wells, springs and livestock ponds, any of which could be contaminated.
Mining ongoing
Today, only a few companies continue to mine for uranium in the U.S. The most common method is in situ leaching: oxygenated water is injected into the earth, where it dissolves uranium. The solution is then brought back up to the surface and shipped off to processing plants.
In situ mining has been going on since 1988 in northwestern Nebraska, not far from the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation that is home to the Oglala Lakota people.
“We are 30 minutes away as the crow flies, fifteen minutes as the wind blows, from the mine site,” said Debra White Plume, executive director ofOwe Aku (“Bring Back the Way”), a grassroots Lakota environmental group.
White Plume and other concerned activists have gone up against one of the world’s largest mining corporations in an attempt to block it from opening up three new mines in the area.
Ninety-eight wells have had to be closed on Pine Ridge because of unusually high rates of cancer, kidney disease and other health problems, said White Plume. She’s convinced that uranium is to blame, and she grows frustrated over suggestions that poor diet or smoking could be a factor.
“Why do the innocent human beings at home have to prove that the big corporation is contaminating them? Why aren’t laws in place that say, ‘OK, if that corporation is going to come into our community, let them show us how they will not harm us, let them show us how they aren’t going to threaten everything we depend on for life: Water, food, air, land?’” she asked.
The US Environmental Protection Agency says it has spent more than $100 million to identify areas at highest risk, part of a multi-year plan to address uranium contamination across the country.
Sunset for Nuclear Power? Nuclear Showdown in California
Why the Current Nuclear Showdown in California Should Matter to You, Sunset for Nuclear Power? CounterPunch, by JAMES HEDDLE FEBRUARY 12, 2016
Does the dream of nuclear power still ‘look bright’ as one enthusiastic investment advisor gushed less than a year ago, or is it the “the dream that failed,” as the Economist asserted as far back as March of 2012?
Approaching 5 years this March 11 after the still on-going Fukushima nuclear disaster, the debate goes on, enveloped in a miasma of mis-, dis-, and conflicting information generated by industry ‘merchants of doubt,’ but rarely leavened by rational analysis of What’s Really What.
The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2015 by Mycle Schneider, Antony Froggatt et al went a long way toward settling the issue with just that – a data-based rational analysis.
Its conclusion: worldwide, despite a few troubled construction starts over budget and behind schedule, “The nuclear industry remains in decline.”
You’d never know it from the pro-nuclear happytalk and proposed subsidy and bailout bills being floated in Congress, but all around the world the global nuclear power industry is fighting for its life.
Nuclear Showdown in California
Nowhere is that battle closer to being decisively lost by the industry than in California, where the Sunshine State’s ‘last nuke standing’ – PG&E’s Diablo Canyon – faces a very uncertain future. A showdown between those who want to shut it down, and those who want to keep it going.
It is a microcosmic drama with all the elements of a movie thriller:
· A corrupt California Public Utilities Commission racked in scandals.
· A compromised Nuclear Regulatory Commission captured by nuclear interests.
· A resurgent peoples’ movement determined to shut Diablo down and responsibly manage the state’s thousands of tons of lethal radioactive waste.
· The growing vision of a nuclear-energy-free West Coast and a solartopian transition.
· A handful of atomic denialists clamoring to ‘save Diablo.’
· All this in the context of deepening climate change and the battle for decentralized, clean, renewable power.A Diablo shutdown in California would be a shot heard in nuclear boardrooms around the world, and would continue this bellwether state’s well-earned reputation as being ‘no country for old nukes.’
A quick look at the history of California’s Nuclear Free Movement tells the tale.
Back last century, then-President Nixon predicted 1000 nuclear reactors in the US by the year 2000.
In the 60’s, PG&E announced plans to build 63 reactors every 25 miles up and down the California coast.
Thanks to informed popular resistance interventions in the courts, in the legislatures, and in the streets, that didn’t happen.
Only 9 of those planned power reactors ever got built: 1 at Humboldt Bay, 1 at Pleasanton, 2 at Rancho Secco, 3 at San Onofre, and 2 at Diablo Canyon.
Today, only 2 are still in operation, those at Diablo Canyon.
From a planned 63 nuclear power plants in the 1960’s, down to 1 in 2015.
Not a bad track record for the effectiveness of informed non-violent, popular resistance…and a demonstration of the non-viability of nuclear energy – vulnerable as it is to public opposition, industry incompetence, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and what renowned energy expert Amory Lovins long ago called ‘a terminal overdose of market forces.’……… http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/12/why-the-current-nuclear-showdown-in-california-should-matter-to-you/
Epidemiology studies needed around nuclear facilities. Why is this ignored by authorities?
Childhood leukemia, low birth weight, compromised neural development are all associated with exposure to radiation during pregnancy and early childhood.
Astonishingly, no official body in the United States is seriously investigating these impacts. In fact, the U. S. federal government appears not to conduct public health impact studies of populations around nuclear power reactor sites.
Who is monitoring the health of populations around nuclear power
plants?, http://enformable.com/2016/02/who-is-monitoring-health-of-populations-around-nuclear-power-plants/ Enformable, Cindy Folkers Author’s note: I wrote this blog post with knowledge of the ongoing tritium leaks plaguing a number of nuclear power reactors in the U.S., but before the latest high levels of tritium released from the Indian Point reactor in New York were reported. These recent unplanned and largely unaccounted for releases bring into stark relief the need to measure in real time the releases we DO initially control; further, it is reasonable to request public access to these data.
This denial of the dangers of radioactivity has carried through to the present day. When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued its first-ever radiation exposure standards in 1977, the US was only 20 years into the atomic energy age, barely long enough to see many of the health impacts radioactivity may have had. Man-made radioactivity had been around for about 40 years with the building of the bomb, well before EPA was established, but well after some very nasty health effects from larger doses were recognized. Now, in 2015, EPA is considering revising its radiation standards – the first major revision since 1977.
EPA is responsible for regulating radioactive emissions that migrate off of a site that releases such material. These off site releases can expose members of the public and their environment. Revision of these nearly 40-year old standards should be a good thing; adding protection for women who are 50 % more sensitive to radioactivity than men; and providing proper protection for pregnancy and childhood development —life stages that are particularly, in some cases uniquely, sensitive to exposure to radioactivity. But old habits, and nuclear industry interference, die hard. Continue reading
USA Government quietly funding billionaires’ nuclear folly
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition is Bill Gates again, and loaded to the hilt with his fellow billionaires all salivating at the prospect of old nuclear pots to mend.
But given the Breakthrough Coalition is entirely “separate” and “private,” what is it doing even being mentioned in a government budget rollout?
Radioactive Handouts: the Nuclear Subsidies Buried Inside Obama’s “Clean” Energy Budget CounterPunch, by LINDA PENTZ GUNTER FEBRUARY 12, 2016 “……..Cut to page 19 of the Office of Management and Budget’s Fiscal Year 2017 Budget document. Here we find “clean energy,” a phrase no longer to be trusted at face value, having been purloined into meaning at times something quite the reverse. For example, nuclear energy tends to hide beneath the “clean energy” mantel, muddling the message and undermining cause for optimism.
…….. let’s gerund away anyway and see what lurks beneath the section entitled, “Doubling the Investment in Clean Energy R&D.” Here we learn that the U.S. Government indeed intends to double its current $6.4 billion investment in clean energy for 2016 to arrive at $12.8 billion by 2021. A hefty chunk — $7.7 billion — will be given as discretionary funding to the Department of Energy in 2017 alone for “clean energy R&D.”
But for what, exactly? “About 76 percent of the funding is directed to DOE for critical clean energy development activities, including over $2 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies,” the Budget document reads. Just two billion dollars for energy efficiency and renewable energy combined? That leaves $5.7 billion for something else that the DOE considers “clean energy.” One of those claimants undoubtedly is nuclear power.
More clues to the likely destination of this unassigned mystery money can be found in a later section where the Budget document reveals that the $7.7 billion is actually earmarked as funding for the “first step toward the Mission Innovation doubling goal.”…….
there is only one logical explanation for this “fair and balanced” energy policy nonsense: corporate captivity.
To oversimplify: Barack Obama, the Senator from Illinois, emerged from Rahm Emanuel’s clamshell, and Emanuel invented Exelon and Exelon is today the country’s leading nuclear behemoth. Exelon’s chief lobbyist in the early days was David Axelrod. Team Obama was born in the country’s nuclear cradle, then. Nevertheless, it’s high time that a U.S. president as committed to renewables as Obama, ceased tossing favors — aka our money— to his corporate nuclear cronies.
And so it goes on. Sitting on that Paris stage last December for the Mission Innovation announcement was Bill Gates, whose only energy agenda is tinkering around with nuclear unicorns, an exercise so devoid of relevance to the urgent battle to address climate change that every dime spent there is a dime wasted. OK they are his dimes, trillions of them. But think what he could really do for climate change if he spent his riches wisely.
Let’s follow the trail of budget breadcrumbs a little further. The OMB goes on to say: “Mission Innovation is complemented by the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a separate, private sector-led effort whose purpose is to mobilize substantial levels of private capital to support the most cutting-edge clean energy technologies emerging from the R&D pipeline.”
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition is Bill Gates again, and loaded to the hilt with his fellow billionaires all salivating at the prospect of old nuclear pots to mend. But given the Breakthrough Coalition is entirely “separate” and “private,” what is it doing even being mentioned in a government budget rollout?
What comes out of the Clean Energy R&D pipeline rather depends on what goes into it. It would be good if that turned out to be a true renewable energy revolution and not more deadly radioactive effluent from an obsolete fleet of new nuclear power plants.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear. She also serves as director of media and development. http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/12/radioactive-handouts-the-nuclear-subsidies-buried-inside-obamas-clean-energy-budget/
87 US Senators blithely voted for more spending on nuclear energy
Renouncing nuclear, then, is the ultimate act of patriotism. Love of country (or “cournty”as the typo-loving Ted Cruz campaign would say) should mean making decisions that protect it, not letting it turn into a radioactive wasteland.
Which makes it so hard to understand why any US political leader on the Left or Right – but especially those Freedom Fries-loving, jingoistic wall-building, Make-America-Great-Again saber rattlers – would continue to support, promote and secure funds for an industry that could kill tens of thousands of people and exile even more.
With very little fanfare, 87 senators were happy to endorse the squandering of likely billions more taxpayer dollars on yet another nuclear snipe hunt, dreaming of fusion and fast reactors, when solar and wind would do very nicely instead.
Fukushima PM Naoto Kan: ‘if you love your country, let nuclear go!’, Ecologist Linda Pentz Gunter 12th February 2016 Nuclear power is a uniquely hazardous technology that can destroy entire nations, Japan’s prime minister at the time of the Fukushima nuclear disaster has warned British MPs. The lessons of from such catastrophes must be heeded in other countries that believe that nuclear fission can be harnessed safely, writes Linda Pentz Gunter – or they, and the world, will reap the whirlwind…….
no coincidence that the leaders at the time of the two countries that have experienced the world’s most catastrophic nuclear disasters, are fervent campaigners against any further use of nuclear energy.
They see the choice to continue with nuclear power, knowing the risk to the nation they swear an oath to protect, as tantamount to declaring war on your own country.
Former leaders during nuclear meltdowns, now oppose nuclear power
Former Soviet Premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, who led the then USSR during the April 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion in Ukraine; and Naoto Kan who was prime minister of Japan when the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster began, both now travel the speakers’ circuit extolling the need to abolish nuclear power.
Kan, now 69, who resigned the premiership in August 2011, has become a ubiquitous and compelling voice for the global anti-nuclear movement. Gorbachev is equally on board but, due to age and infirmity (he turns 85 on March 2nd) is less often in evidence.
Kan made his case in January during a presentation at the UK’s House of Commons co-organized by Nuclear Free Local Authorities, Green Cross International (the group Gorbachev founded) and Nuclear Consulting Group. Gorbachev was scheduled but had to cancel.
Kan compared the potential worst-case devastation that could be caused by a nuclear power plant meltdown as tantamount only to “a great world war. Nothing else has the same impact.”
Japan escaped such a dire fate during the Fukushima disaster, said Kan only “due to luck”. But he is clearly haunted by the map his advisors showed him in the early days of the still unfolding triple meltdowns, one he screened for his London audience:
“I was shown this map with a 250km radius around Fukushima. An area home to 50 million people. One quarter of the country’s population would have had to flee if all the fuel had escaped at Fukushima. We came that close. If 50 million people had had to evacuate Japan, as a state our very survival would have been questioned.”
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few Continue reading
Native Americans sound the alarm on radioactive pollution
Native Americans: ‘We Are The Miner’s Canary’ Indigenous Delegation Sounds Alarm on Homegrown Radioactive Pollution Crisis By Klee Benally, www.cleanupthemines.org, Popular Resistance January 23rd, 2016Washington, DC — From January 25-28, 2016 Indigenous representatives from the Northern Great Plains & Southwest were in the District of Columbia (DC) to raise awareness about radioactive pollution, an invisible national crisis. Millions of people in the United States are being exposed as Nuclear Radiation Victims on a daily basis. Exposure to radioactive pollution has been linked to cancer, genetic defects, Navajo Neuropathy, and increases in mortality. The delegation will speak about the impacts they are experiencing in their communities, which are also affecting other communities throughout the US.
“Native American nations of North America are the miners’ canaries for the United States trying to awaken the people of the world to the dangers of radioactive pollution”, states Charmaine White Face from the South Dakota based organization Defenders of the Black Hills.
South Dakota has 272 Abandoned Uranium Mines (AUMs) which are contaminating waterways such as the Cheyenne River, and desecrating sacred and ceremonial sites. An estimated 169 AUMs are located within 50 miles of Mt. Rushmore where millions of tourists risk exposure to radioactive pollution each year.
The delegation is warning of the toxic legacy caused by more than 15,000 AUMs nationwide, extreme water contamination, surface strip coal mining and power plants burning coal-laced with radioactive particles, radioactive waste from oil well drilling in the Bakken Oil Range, mill tailings, waste storage, and renewed mining threats to sacred places such as Mt. Taylor in New Mexico and Red Butte in Arizona.
Indigenous communities have been disproportionately impacted as approximately 75% of AUMs are located on federal and Tribal lands………https://www.popularresistance.org/native-americans-we-are-the-miners-canary/
At Pilgrim nuclear power plant, security officer skipped more than 200 fire watches
NRC: Nuclear plant employee skipped assigned fire watches http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2016/02/nrc_nuclear_plant_employee_skipped_assigned_fire_watches Associated Press Thursday, February 11, 2016 PLYMOUTH, Mass. — The owner of the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth faces possible punishment from federal regulators because a former security officer admitted to skipping his hourly fire watches then falsifying records to make it appear as if they been completed.
In a letter to Entergy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said its investigators found the security officer skipped more than 200 fire watches from 2012 to 2014.
An NRC spokesman tells the Cape Cod Times (http://bit.ly/1KHRoIV ) that Entergy could be assessed a civil fine of up to $140,000 per day per violation, but at this point a civil penalty will likely not be assessed.
Entergy says its own investigation reached a similar conclusion. The employee was fired. Entergy is still considering how it will respond.
Pilgrim has been scheduled to close by 2019.
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