Yucca – Mountain of Doubt
Mountain of Doubt Will the country’s only planned nuclear waste dump survive Obama? BY JUDITH LEWIS/HIGH COUNTRY NEWS FEBRUARY 25, 2009- “……………As of December 2006, $13.5 billion from utility bills and taxes has gone into researching the site, and utilities have accumulated some 55,000 metric tons of waste. By 2010, the waste will exceed Yucca Mountain’s limit of 70,000 metric tons………………
Doubts about Yucca Mountain’s geologic suitability have piled up as well.
Six hundred earthquakes have rumbled under Yucca Mountain in the last 20 years, one as great as magnitude 5.6. A panel of scientists put the chances of “igneous disruption” in the ridgeline’s ancient field of volcanoes at one in 6,250 over the next 10,000 years—which seems low until you consider that, in most of the United States, the probability of a volcano erupting is zero.
Even the site’s chief meteorological selling point—the dryness of the Nevada desert—may no longer play in its favor. For one thing, climates can change: In the winter of 2004 to 2005, enough rain fell in Death Valley, 20 miles to the West, to revive seedbeds that had lain dormant for a century.
For another, the absence of water may not be as significant as the presence of air. “Yucca Mountain is an oxidizing environment,” said Allison Macfarlane, an associate professor at George Mason University and editor of a book on Yucca Mountain, “and spent nuclear fuel is not stable in the presence of water and oxygen.”
Obama To Congress: Economic Recovery ‘Begins’ With Clean Energy
Obama To Congress: Economic Recovery ‘Begins’ With Clean Energy WASHINGTON, DC, February 25, 2009 (ENS) – In his first address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, President Barack Obama earned repeated standing ovations from both Democrats and Republicans……………………….”It begins with energy.”
“We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet, it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient,” the President said. “We invented solar technology, but we’ve fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea.”…………………… “Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years,” he said…………………
“We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills,” Obama said.
“But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy,” he said.
“So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest $15 billion a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America,” said President Obama.
With Democrats in control of both the House and the Senate, the President is likely to get the kind of climate change legislation he asked for.
Obama To Congress: Economic Recovery ‘Begins’ With Clean Energy
What the coming dialogue between US-Iran holds
What the coming dialogue between US-Iran holds Saudi Gazette Patrick Seale 26 February 2009 A WASHINGTON consensus is emerging about the necessity of talking to Iran – sooner rather than later. President Barack Obama has spoken of reaching out to the Islamic Republic, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has responded by expressing a readiness to talk. He has even written a letter to Obama congratulating him on his election. This must surely be taken as a signal of a coming thaw.Both sides recognize that, after 30 years of stubborn mutual hostility, the time for dialogue has arrived. It may still be premature to expect an early restoration of diplomatic relations, but the opening of a US-staffed interests section in Tehran seems a likely prospect…………………..Several developments seem to be driving the US and Iran to the negotiating table. Of these, probably the most important is Iran’s progress in enriching uranium. Although it denies any intention to manufacture nuclear weapons, Iran’s scientific and technological achievement suggests that it is on the ‘threshold’ of becoming a nuclear power. But it is by no means certain that it will choose to take that extra step.
America’s interest lies in persuading Iran to go no further, while Iran’s interest is to go just far enough to deter any would-be attacker, but not so far as to arouse the fears of its neighbors, and incur the problems and responsibilities of actually becoming a nuclear power.
Saudi Gazette – What the coming dialogue between US-Iran holds
Defence in the realm of fear
Defence in the realm of fear The Canberra Times 26 Feb 09 Although it is only early days for the Obama Administration, the President and his team have been conspicuously silent about whether they will persist with the Bush administration’s controversial doctrine of pre-emptive self-defence. Developed in response to the September 11 attacks, the Bush Doctrine, as it is known, asserts a right to use military force against perceived terrorist threats before those threats can materialise into actual armed attacks.Asked recently about the future of the doctrine, President-elect Barack Obama, as he was then, responded, ”We have to view our security in terms of a common security and a common prosperity with other peoples and other countries.” While this is by no means a repudiation of the doctrine, we can be hopeful that President Obama’s broader foreign policy objectives, which emphasise engagement and multilateralism, may signal a shift back to a pre-Bush position of adherence to the international rule of law.
The Bush Doctrine is a significant departure from accepted norms of international law. After World War II, the international community vowed to end the scourge of war and promote international peace and security through proper adherence to principles of justice and international law.
The UN Charter embodies that commitment. Article 2 (4) of the charter prohibits the use of force by one state against others and is considered such a fundamental principle of law that no nation has the right to depart from it.
Military force is allowed only if the Security Council authorises its use or a country acts in self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter…….
Launching pre-emptive strikes against Iran would also reinforce a dangerous precedent, established by the invasion of Iraq, that would enable other countries to act in the same way.
Countries such as Pakistan, India, China, North Korea and indeed Iran would be given the green light to advance similar claims and act pre-emptively if they believed they were threatened by another country.
……….The potential to misuse the doctrine of pre-emption is too great to make it an acceptable approach to maintaining global and regional security.
Australia has also given equivocal support for the doctrine of pre-emption. Although it has never been a stated policy objective, in an interview in 2004 John Howard insisted it was open to Australia to take pre-emptive action against terrorists, particularly in South-East Asia. This generated deep suspicion among our neighbours.
The Howard government also supported the invasion of Iraq, thereby endorsing the doctrine used by the US to justify the allied intervention.
The Rudd Government has always been critical of the Bush Doctrine but has not unequivocally disavowed it.
As one of its election commitments, the Government is commissioning a Defence white paper which, among other things, will set out Australia’s strategic defence and national security objectives. The Government should make clear in the white paper that the doctrine of pre-emption forms no part of Australia’s defence or foreign policy options.
This would not only honour Australia’s commitment to promoting the international rule of law but demonstrate the kind of global leadership that would be required of Australia if it is to gain a seat on the UN Security Council in 2013.
Defence in the realm of fear – Opinion – Editorial – General – The Canberra Times
Chu favors licensing Yucca Mountain dump, but Obama isn’t in favor of construction
Chu favors licensing Yucca Mountain dump, but Obama isn’t in favor of construction THE ELY TIMES STEVE TETREAULTS tephens Washington Bureau February 25, 2009 WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a group of state officials last Wednesday he favors moving toward licensing a nuclear waste repository in Nevada, although whether it would ever be built is another thing altogether………………………But several people who were at the 20-minute session said Chu stressed that President Barack
Obama doesn’t want the Yucca repository, “and I work for the president.”
: Bill would put uranium mining under microscope
Bill would put uranium mining under microscope 25 Feb 2009 Gallup Independent By Bill Donovan — The New Mexico House barely passed a bill Monday that calls for the creation of a task force to look into uranium mining in the state…………………….
State Rep. Patty Lundstrom, D-McKinley County, said the bill calls for the task force to prepare a report by October on the feasibility of bringing uranium mining back to the state. All of the Gallup area representatives, with the exception of Sandra Jeff, voted in favor of the bill, said Lundstrom.
The task force would also look into existing state laws, she said, to make sure that they are adequate in handling the problems that could arise out of uranium mining.
“The uranium industry fought to keep this resolution from passing,” Lundstrom said. “They don’t want this kind of scrutiny.”
Independent – February 24, 2009: Bill would put uranium mining under microscope
Environmentalists fight planned nuclear plant
San Antonio Business Journal Feb 23
Environmental groups throughout Texas are lining up to oppose the South Texas Nuclear Operating Co.’s plans to build two additional reactors at its plant near Bay City, Texas.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has filed notice in the Federal Register giving citizens the ability to challenge the proposed reactors. Groups have 60 days to oppose the proposed expansion of the nuclear power plant. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must still grant a license to build the new reactors.
Environmental groups planning to formally oppose the project include the newly formed Bay City-based South Texas Association for Responsible Energy (STARE), the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition, and Public Citizen………………………..
“New reactors would saddle homeowners and taxpayers with additional debt for infrastructure, more radioactive waste that would sit in our community, and more risk of nuclear accidents, health impacts and radioactive exposure,” contends Susan Dancer, executive director of STARE. “These are among the many reasons we will intervene in opposition to more nuclear reactors.”
“There are cleaner, more affordable ways to generate electricity,” says Cindy Wheeler of the Consumers’ Energy Coalition in San Antonio. “With the economic downturn, we shouldn’t generate power that’s not needed. San Antonio has reduced energy use by 16 percent over the past two years.”
Nuclear power: The next bailout
Nuclear power: The next bailout
Central Penn Business Journal By Eric Epstein
2/23/2009 – “……………………
Jim Rubens, former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, observed, “My party, the Republican party, is too deep in bed with the coal, oil and electric utility industries to remember its free market principles.”
Turns out politicians from both parties know what’s best after all. Welcome to this century’s version of corporate socialism.
Since Wall Street deferred, Congress and former President Bush approved nuclear loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. In December 2007, $18.5 billion was set aside in federal loan guarantees. An additional $2 billion was allocated for new uranium enrichment. And nuclear power companies were guaranteed $2 billion in federal insurance to cover construction delays caused by court challenges or any other distraction outside “normal business risks.”
The Department of Energy actually admitted that $18.5 billion would build just two new reactors. The program is over subscribed with $75 billion in requests.
Is there exposure for Joe Q. Taxpayer?
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) considers the risk of default on government nuclear plant loan guarantees “to be very high – well above 50 percent.” In a report issued on May 7, the CBO concluded the risk of default by private companies comes from the expectation that a new nuclear plant “would be uneconomic to operate because of high construction costs, relative to other electricity generation sources.”
Florida trying to undo nuclear plant financing
Florida trying to undo nuclear plant financing Georgia lawmakers weigh similar bill this week
AJC February 23, 2009By MARGARET NEWKIRK The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Monday, February 23, 2009 As Georgia lawmakers push forward with a nuclear financing bill this week, their counterparts in Florida are scrambling to undo a similar measure approved three years ago. In the past two weeks, Florida Republicans, including the state Senate president pro tem, drafted two bills aimed at a 2006 law requiring power customers to pay early for new nuclear reactors………………..
SB 31 would let the utility begin collecting $1.6 billion in project financing charges six years earlier, when construction begins.
The charges include about $600,000 in debt interest and $1 billion in “return on equity” — roughly, profit — for Georgia Power shareholders.
Florida Green Party Files Petition Opposing New Nuclear Power Plant
Florida Green Party Files Petition Opposing New Nuclear Power PlantF Green Party Watch February 20th, 2009 by Ronald Hardy “……………………..
Gainesville, FL — On February 6, 2009 the Green Party of Florida (GPF, http://www.floridagreens.org) joined with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS, http://www.nirs.org) and the Ecology Party to file a legal challenge to a new nuclear power plant proposed by Progress Energy Florida (PEF) for a site in Levy County, near Inglis, Florida.
The filing is a formal Petition to Intervene in the NRC’s licensing process for nuclear power plants, the latest in a series of such actions taken by NIRS and other groups nationwide to protect the health and safety of the public and the natural resources that are placed at risk by this industry. The interventions by parties with standing, which must follow rules established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), are intended to stop these nuclear boondoggles before construction work starts and millions of dollars are wasted.
Florida Green Party Files Petition Opposing New Nuclear Power Plant
Dirty deal
Dirty deal Salt Lake tribune Lee Badger 02/22/2009 “……………The name EnergySolutions is a misnomer for a company that would make Utah the dumping ground for the world’s nuclear waste. With its ads, scholarships and Jazz arena name, it wants to endear the company to Utahns, hoping that we’ll allow it to bring in more waste. Now it even claims that it might share it profits to help solve Utah’s budget problems — a billion dollars! With that, and its substantial political contributions, clearly it’s trying to buy legislative permission to import hotter and foreign waste.
Of course, if something goes wrong with nuclear waste transportation or storage — well, then, the entire Wasatch Front will be downwinders. Profit sharing ? Why share with EnergySolutions when we’ll be taking all the risk?
Kill Yucca, then get going on the rest of our problems
Kill Yucca, then get going on the rest of our problemsBy Brian Greenspun Las Vegas Sun, Feb 22, 2009 (2 a.m.)President Barack Obama says the Yucca Mountain project is dead.Nevada’s senior U.S. senator, Majority Leader Harry Reid, says the high-level nuclear waste dump is dead.
The nation’s nuclear power players — the folks who want to bury their problems in our back yard — aren’t saying it is dead, but they are acting as if it is in a coma and on its last legs.
And the majority of voters in Nevada — the people who put their trust in the president’s promise to kill their worst nightmare and helped elect him in November — believe the nation’s proposed high-level waste dump won’t happen.
So, given all that, why are Gov. Jim Gibbons and his champion, Nevada GOP Chairman Sue Lowden, doing all they can to breathe life into the moribund dump, thereby threatening countless thousands of Nevadans, their kids and those not yet born?……………………. the people of Nevada say they oppose the dump but remain oblivious to the subterfuge and incompetence that surround them.
What does all that mean? It means Yucca is not dead. Not even close. As long as we tolerate our own politicians sending mixed signals at best and clear signals of capitulation at worst, we will get that dump.
We are in the second generation of Nevadans fighting against the Goliath of the federal government and its multibillion-dollar friends in the power companies who care not about us but only about the almighty dollars they can make by turning us into a glowing, radiating, deadly dump. We are closer to winning than we have ever been. Now is not the time to let the little minds among us prevail.
Now is the time to do something. What we should not do, though, is tolerate for one moment longer those among us who would sell us out.
Kill Yucca, then get going on the rest of our problems – Las Vegas Sun
The Solution to the United States Ageing Nuclear Arsenal
The Solution to the United States Ageing Nuclear Arsenal
Cleantech 23 Feb 09The United States’ thousands of nuclear warheads have the explosive equivalent of over 1 gigaton of TNT. It’s an amount of energy that could literally move mountains, reroute rivers, alter climate, and result in the deaths of hundreds of millions or even billions of people, through fire, radiation, and starvation………..
…………….In the March 2009 issue of IEEE Spectrum, Francis Slakey and Benn Tannenbaum argue that the current program of “stockpile stewardship,” with some modifications, will be sufficient to preserve the U.S. arsenal for the foreseeable future. It isn’t necessary, and may even be counterproductive, they say, for the United States to pursue new warheads.
NRC adopts 1 million year rule for Yucca Mountain |
NRC adopts 1 million year rule for Yucca Mountain
LOS ANGELES, Feb 17 (Reuters) – The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a rule for allowable radiation levels at the proposed nuclear waste site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada for up to 1 million years, the NRC announced on Tuesday.
The NRC is now accepting the radiation standards from Yucca Mountain as determined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The NRC kept the EPA’s rule of limiting the dose of radiation to 15 millirem for the first 10,000 years after disposal. Now, the NRC has adopted the EPA’s limit of 100 millirem from 10,001 years to 1 million years…………
Last year, the DOE estimated that the cost of Yucca Mountain would be more than $96 billion, up from a 2001 estimate of $57.5 billion.
The DOE last June filed an application with the NRC for Yucca Mountain’s operation.
…………….
Handling nuclear waste is a key issue for those considering a possible renaissance for nuclear power in the upcoming decade.
No new nuclear power plants have been approved since the 1970s after an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. (Reporting by Bernie Woodall; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
NRC adopts 1 million year rule for Yucca Mountain | Markets | US Markets | Reuters
Cancer questions grow around Fermi nuclear plant
This extract has been reduced in accordance with the request from THE MICHIGAM MESSENGER
State health report shows 31 percent increase in cancer rate among young people in Monroe County since 1996 THE MICHIGAN MESSENGER By Eartha Jane Melzer 17 Feb 09 The cancer rate among people under the age of 25 in Monroe County rose at more than three times the rate of the rest of the state between 1996 and 2005, according to a report generated by the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH). …………Monroe is home to DTE Energy’s Fermi II nuclear power plant, which became fully operational in 1988………………………….
Dr. Janette Sherman, adjunct professor at Western Michigan University’s Environmental Institute …….. said that her analysis of leukemia statistics in the United States indicates that kids living near power plants are more likely to get the disease.
Sherman said that the rise in cancer rates around Fermi is significant……………………
Michigan Messenger » Cancer questions grow around Fermi nuclear plant
1 This Month
19 November – Webinar – The Reality of Reprocessing
Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada) / 2:00 PM Eastern / 7:00 PM UK / 8:00 PM CET
Register for the Zoom Event Here
Shut down the radiation-damaged Heysham nuclear reactors now
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
Say No to NASA’s Reckless Nuclear Reactor on the Moon
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