Officials At Odds Over Storing Nuclear Waste WLTX19 Eric Connor, Greenville News March 17, 2014 Plans to ship decades-old weapons waste from South Carolina’s Savannah River Site are on hold still as the underground nuclear waste dump in New Mexico that was to be its home remains shuttered indefinitely a month after a mysterious radioactive leak stopped shipments from sites nationwide.
The leak at New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant raises new questions over another multibillion-dollar disposal site shut down in the American desert: Yucca Mountain……..
For environmentalists skeptical of nuclear energy, the incident in New Mexico stands as evidence that geologic disposal akin to the Yucca Mountain project is too risky. Continue reading
Los Alamos’ huge nuclear waste problem, with New Mexico facility shut
New Mexico nuclear repository mishap leaves Los Alamos waste quandary KFGO, Thursday, March 13, 2014 By Joseph J. Kolb ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (Reuters) – The Los Alamos National Laboratory is evaluating how to meet a June deadline to permanently discard plutonium-tainted junk in light of a prolonged shutdown of a New Mexico nuclear waste dump after an accident there last month, a lab official said.
Los Alamos, one of the leading U.S. nuclear weapons labs, has been forced to halt shipments of its radioactive refuse some 300 miles across the state to the nation’s only underground nuclear repository, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, according to lab spokesman Matt Nerzig.
The repository has remained closed while the U.S. Department of Energy investigates the origins of a radiation leak that occurred there on February 14, exposing at least 17 workers at the facility to radioactive contamination. It was the first such mishap since the facility opened in 1999.
Nerzig said about 1,000 temporary storage drums of the waste remain at the Los Alamos National Laboratory awaiting shipment to the repository near Carlsbad. The lab faces a strict June 30 deadline to permanently discard of the waste…….
“We intend to hold LANL (Los Alamos National Laboratory) to the deadline,” said Jim Winchester, communications director, for the New Mexico Environment Department………
Established during World War Two as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the world’s first atomic bomb, the complex remains one of the leading nuclear weapons manufacturing facilities in the United States.
A massive wildfire that raged at the edge of the complex in 2011 burned to within a few miles of a collection of radioactive waste drums temporarily stored at the site. Since then, Energy Department and state officials have made the removal of transuranic waste from the lab to the repository a top environmental priority. http://kfgo.com/news/articles/2014/mar/13/new-mexico-nuclear-repository-mishap-leaves-los-alamos-waste-quandary/
California moves toward efficiency and clean energy to replace San Onofre nuclear power
It’s Official: Efficiency, Clean Energy to Help Fill California’s Nuclear Generation Gap Switchboard, Switchboard 13 Mar 14 Sierra Martinez, California took another major and symbolic step today with its decision to rely significantly on energy efficiency and other clean energy resources to help replace electricity once generated by the San Onofre Nuclear Generation Station (SONGS) serving San Diego and the greater Los Angeles area.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) today made official its strategy to address the loss of the huge nuclear plant, which had been offline since January 2012 and was officially retired last year. Fortunately, it closely resembles its proposal released last month.
The final plan uses efficiency and other “preferred resources”—those resources with lower environmental impacts—like demand response (ways customers can consume less energy at key times during the day) and renewable energy such as wind and solar, as well as some upgrades to the electric system, to replace the vast majority of the lost SONGS generation. Continue reading
Economics, not health or safety. is killing nuclear power
Missing from the entire debate about nuclear is the most important fact of all: Nuclear is dying due to poor economics, and the debate is already over as far as the market is concerned.
The Breakthrough Institute elects to ignore all of this real-world complexity and offer its own extremely distorted way of comparing power generation costs……
…….In short: Cost estimates for new nuclear plants are not credible. I have yet to find a single one that stood up to close scrutiny. And as far as I am aware, no nuclear plant has ever been built for close to its original cost estimate.
The real reason to fight nuclear power has nothing to do with health risks, Quartz 9 Mar 4 By Chris Nelder June 17, 2013 Chris Nelder is an energy analyst, consultant and speaker who has written about energy and investing for more than a decade. Nuclear proponents are launching a full-court press for fresh investment in the technology. The release of the new film Pandora’s Promise, another editorialfrom ardent nuclear champions Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute, and Paul Blustein’s recent piece in Quartz, “Everything you thought you knew about the risks of nuclear energy is wrong,” are part of an effort to put a new shine on a technology that once offered, but failed to deliver, electricity “too cheap to meter.”
Inconsistency in Nuclear Plant Safety Enforcement
Report: Inconsistent Nuclear Plant Safety Enforcement WLTX 19, Eric Connor, Greenville News, 10 Mar 14, Inconsistent enforcement by federal regulators stands in the way of protecting the public from the dangers of nuclear energy, across the country and at the Upstate’s Oconee Nuclear Station where concerns over fire and flood have hovered for decades, a nuclear watchdog group says in a new report………..The report — “The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2013: More Jekyll, Less Hyde” — lists 10 instances of what the group considers “near miss” events that required special inspections and posed higher-than-acceptable risks……..
The report’s author — Dave Lochbaum, a nuclear safety expert who once trained NRC inspectors — wrote that the NRC has been complicit in allowing utilities like Duke to ignore deadlines for years.
“What’s protecting the people around Oconee from fire risk? Luck,” Lochbaum wrote. “What’s protecting Oconee’s owner from the cost and bother of legally managing the fire risk? The NRC.”…….
Last year, The Greenville News reported on an NRC whistleblower’s analysis detailing dam concerns that spanned decades.
The NRC had held the analysis from public view on grounds that it contained security-related information, but the document has since been released in largely unedited form.
The News also reported on hundreds of internal emails that show NRC staffers expressing frustration over superiors they said were cowing to the industry instead of holding it accountable for the threat of a dam failure.
ust one month after the Fukushima meltdown, Lochbaum wrote, the NRC met with the public but didn’t mention the long-held concerns.
“The exact same flooding hazard that exists today at the Oconee nuclear plant was not mentioned by the NRC — so the public was actually misled into believing no such problems existed,” Lochbaum wrote………http://www.wltx.com/story/news/2014/03/10/safety-enforcement-at-nuclear-plants-inconsistent/6251227/
Senator Markey introduces Bill to cut $100 billion in nuclear weapons spending
Markey Files Bill to Cut $100 Billion in Nuclear Arms Fundshttp://www.nationaljournal.com/global-security-newswire/markey-files-bill-to-cut-100-billion-in-nuclear-arms-funds-20140228 By Rachel Oswald February 28, 2014
A high-profile U.S. Senate critic of nuclear-weapons spending on Friday introduced a bill that would cut $100 billion over the next decade in arsenal outlays.
The Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures — or “SANE” — Act, filed by Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.), is co-sponsored by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). Companion legislation has been introduced in the House by Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.).
“America faces a real choice: spend billions on nuclear weapons we no longer need or fund programs that educate our children and help find cures to deadly diseases,” Markey said in provided comments. Continue reading
USA Veterans’ Affairs finally admit nuclear veteran’s radiation-caused cancer
WWII vet exposed to radiation wins fight with VA http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/WWII-vet-exposed-to-radiation-wins-fight-with-VA-5173107.php Kevin Fagan , January 24, 2014 MILLBRAE – John Brenan rolled his Jeep into freshly bombed Hiroshima in 1945 on a reconnaissance mission to see if there was any enemy left to fight. The only enemy the Army sergeant found in the miles of rubble pulverized by America’s atomic attack was the one he couldn’t see – radiation.
The fallout surrounded his body, and that is almost surely why he got colon cancer four decades later, his doctors told him. Brenan managed to beat the disease, but then came the follow-up battle – filing a disability claim with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
It took until last week for him to win that battle. And victory only came with the help of a member of Congress. Continue reading
USA Defense Dept calls to ramp up spying
“The report’s big technical conclusion centers on the importance of overhauling the monitoring framework used to find groups that represent a nuclear threat before they act ”
I wonder if they are thinking of people like Sr Megan Rice
Defense Dept. Calls For Expanded Nuclear Monitoring, Information Week, 22 Jan 14 US must ramp up surveillance and big data analytics tools to meet challenge of global nuclear proliferation monitoring, warns DOD Defense Science Board report. The world’s nuclear future looks a lot different than its past. As access to nuclear knowledge widens, so does the need to monitor nuclear proliferation globally. But that’s not something that the US government is fully equipped to address, according to a report released by the Defense Department’s Defense Science Board this month.
The report, “Assessment of Nuclear Monitoring and Verification Technologies,” argues that the lines between intelligence and traditional monitoring are blurring, therefore technologies for battling terrorism should also be used to address the threat of proliferation.
The report lists two types of proliferation of equal concern: “vertical,” the increase in capabilities of existing nuclear states; and “horizontal,” the increase in the number of states and non-state players owning or attempting to own nuclear weapons.
Future “monitoring will need to be continuous, adaptive, and continuously tested for its effectiveness against an array of differing, creative, and adaptive proliferators,” Dr. Paul Kaminski, chairman of the Defense Science Board, said in a memo included in the report.
The report argues that the standard for monitoring nuclear activity should happen as early in the planning and acquisition process as possible.
“New intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) technologies, demonstrated in recent conflicts, offer significant promise for monitoring undesirable nuclear activity throughout the world,” the report said. However, the “advances in persistent surveillance, automated tracking, rapid analyses of large and multi-source data sets, and open source analyses to support conventional warfighting and counterterrorism have not yet been exploited by the nuclear monitoring community.”…..
The report’s big technical conclusion centers on the importance of overhauling the monitoring framework used to find groups that represent a nuclear threat before they act……http://www.informationweek.com/defense-dept-calls-for-expanded-nuclear-monitoring/d/d-id/1113521
NSA’s surreptitious infiltration of 1000s of computers
Global Nuclear Insecurity http://majiasblog.blogspot.jp/2014/01/global-nuclear-insecurity.html 20 Jan 14
A story reported in The New York Times stopped me cold:
N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway Into Computershttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/15/us/nsa-effort-pries-open-computers-not-connected-to-internet.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20140115&_r=0
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks. While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.
The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.
Majia here: Holy Cow! Computers now can be hacked by radio waves that are miles from the target!I’m sure the technology must not be new since its being reported in the mainstream press.
What it does explain is why cybersecurity is now such a pressing issue. Remember when Richard Clark was warning about cyber-security threats? See here.
Think about it. Anyone with this technology could hack NUCLEAR PLANTS and CHEMICAL PLANTS and cause them to explode entirely remotely.
Both the Chinese and the Americans have the technology so no doubt Russia and Israel also have it.
We think we are so smart with our toys but all we’ve done is feed our most base and anti-social instincts.
Atomic pork politics : USA locked into foolish expense on nuclear weapons
Nuclear Death, Warmed Over, HUFFINGTON POST, Jon Wolfsthal Deputy Director, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies 01/08/2014 “……….The Nuclear Song Remains the 
Same The cold war is over is long gone, but the nuclear triad remains……..Atomic Pork Politics Elected officials are the ones pushing these expensive and unnecessary programs. The six senators from states where long-range missiles are deployed — Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota — are all pushing for the U.S. to build a new long-range missile. Congressional representatives from Georgia, Connecticut and Washington, where submarines are built and deployed — guess what — all support a new submarine. Same with the new bomber. They all want to ensure their slice of the nuclear pie stays the same, even without someone to point the weapons at.
Yet it appears no elected officials are aware that the full cost of replacing the nuclear arsenal will cost this much money. The Bomber will cost upwards of $100 Billion, not including the bombs and cruise missiles to go with it. The Submarine about as much, the missiles could cost even more. And the nuclear weapons that go on top — build and maintained in California, New Mexico, South Carolina and Nevada, will cost over 350 Billion over 30 years. U.S. budgets are prepared annually and the defense department only provides formal budget projections five years out. Yet these systems take 30 years to build and deploy. The situation is similar to the balloon mortgages that almost sank the U.S. economy, where it looks like we can afford the house but in year ten the monthly payments skyrocket.
For those who support maintaining a large nuclear arsenal, the fact that this number is not known or understood in Congress or the White House is a major danger……..http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-wolfsthal/nuclear-death-warmed-over_b_4560521.html
USA REPUBLICAN group leading the push for clean renewable energy
Conservatives Form Group Favoring Renewable Energy http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/01/01/conservatives-form-group-favoring-renewable-energy/January 1, 2014 LANSING (AP) – Conservative leaders and activists in Michigan have formed a group to support basing energy policy on the use of renewable resources and energy-efficiency programs.
The recent launch of the Michigan Conservative Energy Forum comes as Gov. Rick Snyder and legislators consider updating Michigan’s electricity law in 2014 or 2015.
Group executive director Larry Ward says the organization supports an “all-of-the-above” energy policy. He says it’s time for Republicans to lead on energy policy.
Michigan law sets a 10 percent renewable power standard that must be met by the end of 2015. A recent report to Snyder says 15 percent renewable electricity in 2020 and 30 percent in 2035 are achievable.
The forum says Michigan gets more than half its electricity from other states’ coal.
Israel still cracking down on Mordechai Vanunu
30 years on || Israel claims nuclear whistle-blower Vanunu still a security threat Mordechai Vanunu’s attorney admits his client is a ‘provocateur’ but has no intention of revealing state secrets. Haaretz,By Revital Hovel | Dec. 26, 2013
Twenty-eight years after he left his job at the nuclear reactor in Dimona, the state still maintains the information that whistle-blower Mordechai Vanunu possesses is still relevant, and that its revelation would endanger Israel’s security.
On Wednesday, the High Court of Justice discussed the seventh petition to be filed by Vanunu against the court order prohibiting his exit from Israel, even to the occupied territories. Vanunu is also forbidden to talk to foreigners, even in Israel, without receiving advance permission…..
Vanunu was convicted in March 1988 of treason and espionage, and sentenced to 18 years in jail. He served 11 and a half years in isolation for fear that he would disclose information to unauthorized sources. In April 2004, he was released but forbidden to leave the country…..
“We are talking about information gathered about the nuclear reactor in Dimona,” Vanunu’s attorney, Avigdor Feldman, said during the proceedings Wednesday. “The work ended in 1985 – in other words, [nearly] 29 years ago. This is information which has expired. To come and say today, ‘This man cannot leave the country’ – that doesn’t want him and that he doesn’t want – ‘and live in another country and complete his life’ – although he isn’t old, he has a partner and wants to marry her – ‘because we are afraid that he will disseminate secrets’? What proof is there of that?
“The state is presenting us,” Feldman continued, “with the fact that Mordechai Vanunu writes online that he is willing to speak to any foreigner who will talk to him, referring to the other restriction – namely the fact that Mordechai Vanunu is not permitted to speak on any subject in the world, not necessarily about nuclear weapons, with foreigners. This is Vanunu’s way of fighting against this prohibition. Perhaps this way is not acceptable to us, and in effect constitutes a violation, but it’s his way of fighting back.”
Feldman added that although Vanunu is being provocative, “he doesn’t cross the red line.
“There isn’t a single case in the course of all the years of his release where it was claimed that he revealed some secret, or that he harmed state security,” Feldman told the court. “It’s true that he’s a provocateur and he behaves cynically. But he is still committed to his promise not to harm state security.
“….. If he violated the court orders, why isn’t he put on trial?
“He says he’s willing to be tried, but they aren’t doing that. I don’t know why. Maybe there’s a negative impact if he’s returned to prison again.
“You should be aware that interest in him in Israel is very limited. There’s an organized group that thinks he’s a serious person, that he’s a person who should be hea..rd. They see him as someone who expresses opposition to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the State of Israel also supports that position.”….
Part of the proceedings took place only in the presence of the judges and state representatives, with Vanunu and the public asked to leave the courtroom. The petition continues. http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.565612
Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s study on nuclear waste storage is inadequate
Watchdogs criticize nuclear storage study; A.G. says NRC didn’t focus on Indian Point lohud.com, 26 Dec 13, State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and his counterparts in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont have given a thumbs-down to the federal government’s draft study on the long-term storage
of used nuclear fuel.
A 143-page document filed late last week detailed their concerns, along with those of a Minnesota Native American tribe.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s review, they maintain, was incorrectly focused at the industry level and not individual plants.A federal court in 2012 found the NRC didn’t fully consider the hazards of on-site storage of old fuel at the nation’s nuclear plants, including Indian Point in Buchanan. The court ordered the commission to evaluate the environmental effects of such storage.
Old fuel at Indian Point is kept in spent-fuel pools and dry casks. Both are reinforced against attacks or other calamities but critics have called for moving more old fuel at a faster pace into the casks.The draft study “fails(s) to address these core issues as required by (federal law) and the Court,” the attorneys general and the general counsel for the Prairie Island Indian Community wrote. The study also fails to provide the states, the tribe and the public with plant-by-plant reviews and wrongly relies on a generic approach, they wrote.
The tribe’s reservation is next to the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant, which was the subject of litigation in the 1970s that lead to how the NRC regulates the storage of old nuclear fuel……..http://www.lohud.com/article/20131225/NEWS/312250023/Watchdogs-criticize-nuclear-storage-study-A-G-says-NRC-didn-t-focus-on-India
Spread of nuclear weapons – a danger posed by SILEX laser uranium enrichment technology
US uranium laser enrichment technology threatens Nuclear Non-Proliferation TreatyVoice of Russia, 26 Dec 13, The uranium laser enrichment technology that has been given a new impetus in the US is capable of knocking the bottom out of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The technology consists in uranium isotope separation with laser stimulation (SILEX). Optimists put a great deal of trust in this and pessimists warn about negative consequences……..
IMPROPER LOBBYING IN SAN ONOFRE PROBE? ONOFRE LOBBYING RAISES QUESTIONS UT San Diego, By Morgan Lee DEC. 25, 2013 The operator of the recently retired San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station may have engaged in lobbying the California Public Utilities Commission without proper public notice as the agency weighs multimillion-dollar customer refunds in the plant breakdown, an administrative judge overseeing the investigation said…….
The utilities commission is currently considering a proposed $94 million refund to Southern California utility customers of charges related to the San Onofre plant, which broke down in January 2012 and was retired in June. Further and potentially larger refunds are still under review.
“It has come to my attention that SCE (Southern California Edison) and possibly other parties may have engaged in ex parte communications with Commissioners and/or their staff which have not been reported,” wrote Melanie Darling, an administrative law judge overseeing the San Onofre investigation, in an email to the utility Monday. “It is improper and unfair for parties to have such communications without disclosure to other parties in a rate-setting proceeding.”…… http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/dec/25/tp-improper-lobbying-in-san-onofre-probe-onofre/
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