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The foul legacy of mounting radioactive nuclear trash

The nuclear option still dogged by waste disposal problems http://www.independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/the-nuclear-option-still-dogged-by-waste-disposal-problems,6675  Climate News Network 16 July 2014 Nuclear power is seen as one of the possible solutions to climate change, but the recent closure of five U.S. power stations is forcing the industry to face up at last to the damaging legacy of how to deal with radioactive waste. Paul Brown fromClimate News Network reports.  

LONG-TERM employment is hard to find these days, but one career that can be guaranteed to last a lifetime is dealing with nuclear waste.

The problem and how to solve it is becoming critical. Dozens of nuclear power stations in the U.S., Russia, Japan, and across Europe and Central Asia are nearing the end of their lives.

And when these stations close, the spent fuel has to be taken out, safely stored or disposed of, and then the pressure vessels and the mountains of concrete that make up the reactors have to be dismantled. This can take between 30 and 100 years, depending on the policies adopted.

In the rush to build stations in the last century, little thought was given to how to take them apart 40 years later. It was an age of optimism that science would always find a solution when one was needed, but the reality is that little effort was put into dealing with the waste problem. It is now coming back to haunt the industry.

Profitable business

Not that everyone sees it as a problem. A lot of companies view nuclear waste as a welcome and highly profitable business opportunity.

money-in-wastes-2

Either way, because of the dangers of radioactivity, it is not a problem that can be ignored. The sums of money that governments will have to find to deal with keeping the old stations safe are eye-wateringly large. They will run into many billions of dollars — an assured income for companies in the nuclear waste business, stretching to the end of this century and beyond.

The U.S. is a prime example of a country where the nuclear waste issue is becoming rapidly more urgent.

The problem has been brought to the fore in the U.S. because five stations have closed in the last two years. The Crystal River plant in Florida and San Onofre 1 and 2 in California have closed down because they were judged too costly to bring up to modern standards. Two more –  Kewaunee in Wisconsin and the  Vermont Yankee plant –  could no longer compete on cost with the current price of natural gas and increased subsidies for renewables.

Nuclear Energy Insider, which keeps a forensic watch on the industry, predicts that several other nuclear power stations in the U.S. will also succumb to premature closure because they can no longer compete.

The dilemma for the industry is that the U.S. government has not solved the problem of what to do with the spent fuel and the highly radioactive nuclear waste that these stations have generated over the last 40 years. They have collected a levy –  kept in a separate fund that now amounts to $31 billion – to pay for solving the problem, but still have not come up with a plan.

Legal action

Since it costs an estimated $10 million dollars a year to keep spent fuel safe at closed stations, electricity utilities saddled with these losses, and without any form of income, are taking legal action against the government.

The U.S. government has voted another $205 million to continue exploring the idea of sending the waste to the remote Yucca Mountain in Nevada —  an idea fought over since 1987 and still no nearer solution. Even if this plan went through, the facility would not be built and accepting waste until 2048.

The big problem for the U.S., the utility companies and the consumers who will ultimately pay the bill is what to do in the meantime with the old stations, the spent fuel, and the sites. Much of the fuel will be moved from wet storage to easier-to-manage dry storage, but it will still be a costly process. What happens after that, and who will pay for it, is anyone’s guess.

The industry is having a Nuclear Decommissioning and Used Fuel Strategy Summit  in October in Charlotte, North Carolina, to try to sort out some of these issues.

But America is not alone. The U.K. has already closed a dozen reactors. Most of the rest are due to be retired by 2024, but it is likely that the French company EDF, which owns the plants, will try to keep them open longer.

The bill for dealing with existing nuclear waste in Britain is constantly rising and currently stands at £74 billion, even without any other reactors being decommissioned.

The government is already spending £2 billion each year trying to clear up the legacy of past nuclear activities, but has as yet found no solution to dealing with the thousands of fuel rods still in permanent store at power stations.

As with the U.S., even if a solution is found, it would be at least 2050 before a facility to deal with this highly dangerous waste could be found. By that time, billions of pounds will have been expended just to keep the used fuel from igniting and causing a nuclear meltdown.

It is hard to know how the industry’s finances could stand such a drain on its resources without going bankrupt.

Similar problems are faced by Germany, which is already closing its industry permanently in favour of renewables, and France, with more than 50 ageing reactors.

Japan, still dealing with the aftermath of the Fukushima accident in 2011, is composed of crowded islands where few people will welcome a nuclear waste depository.

Many countries in the former Soviet bloc with ageing reactors look to Russia – which provided them – to solve their problems. But this may be a false hope, as Russia has an enormous unsolved waste problem of its own.

Dramatic rise

In all these countries, the issue of nuclear waste and what to do with it is a problem that has been put off – both by the industry and politicians – as an issue to be dealt with sometime in the future. But the problem is becoming more urgent as the costs and the volume of waste rises dramatically.

Unlike any other form of generation, even dirty coal plants, getting rid of nuclear stations is no simple matter. To cleanse a nuclear site so that it can be used for another industrial use is difficult. Radioactivity lasts for centuries, and all contamination has to be physically removed.

For many critics of the industry, the nuclear waste issue has always been a moral issue – as well as a financial one – that should not be left to future generations to solve. The industry itself has always relied on its continuous expansion, and developing science, to deal what it calls “back end costs” at some time in the distant future.

But as more stations close, and fewer new ones are planned to raise revenue, putting off the problem no longer seems an option, either for the industry or for the governments that ultimately will have to pick up the bill.

July 19, 2014 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Reference, wastes | 1 Comment

Freezing ducts very slowly built for Fukushima’s ice wall 90 built. 1460 more to go

TEPCO: 90 out of 1,550 freezing ducts built so far http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001411769 The Yomiuri Shimbun 10 July 14  Tokyo Electric Power Co. unveiled on Tuesday the construction site of the ice wall at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant for the first time since work began last month.

As a measure to halt the increase of contaminated water, the ice walls are aimed at freezing the ground around the Nos. 1 to 4 reactor buildings of the plant to block groundwater from flowing into reactor buildings and becoming contaminated.

Contaminated water at the nuclear plant currently amounts to about 500,000 tons. The government and TEPCO have been working on the construction in the hope of completing it early next fiscal year.

On Tuesday evening, about 30 workers drilled small holes about 30 meters deep around the No. 4 reactor building. Ducts to freeze underground soil are to be installed in the holes.

A total of 1,550 freezing ducts must be installed to surround the Nos. 1 to 4 reactor building area, measuring about 1.5 kilometers. However, TEPCO said only about 90 freezing ducts have been installed so far.

Fukushima-ice-wall-construc

Due to heat exhaustion concerns during summer, workers at the construction site wear vests containing blue ice.

Meanwhile, the task of freezing tunnels filled with contaminated water using the same method involving the construction of an ice wall has been facing difficulties. The Nuclear Regulation Authority has therefore been calling on TEPCO to fundamentally revise construction plans.

Akira Ono, the chief of Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, said: “We’ve already confirmed the effectiveness of ice walls through an on-site experiment. We will push ahead with the construction work forward as fast as we can.”

July 10, 2014 Posted by | Fukushima 2014, Japan, Reference, technology | Leave a comment

Internal radiation emitters causing cancers, birth deformities: depleted uranium’s legacy in Iraq

Fallujah-babyDepleted Uranium And The Iraq War’s Legacy Of Cancer, Mint Press News,  Depleted uranium was used in Iraq warzone weaponry, and now kids are playing in contaminated fields and the spent weapons are being sold as scrap metal. By   @FrederickReese | July 2, 2014 As instability in Iraq is forcing the United States to consider a third invasion of the Middle Eastern nation, the consequences of the first two invasions are coming into focus. For large sectors of the Iraqi population, American intervention has led to sharp spikes in the rates of congenital birth defects, premature births, miscarriages and leukemia cases.

According to Iraqi government statistics, the rate of cancer in the country has skyrocketed from 40 per 100,000 people prior to the First Gulf War in 1991, to 800 per 100,000 in 1995, to at least 1,600 per 100,000 in 2005.

The culprit behind all of these health issues is depleted uranium, a byproduct of uranium enrichment. With a mass fraction a third of what fissile uranium would have, depleted uranium emits less alpha radiation — up to 60 percent less than natural uranium, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. This “relative” safety offered a rationale for many nations — particularly, the U.S. — to put the waste material to use.

As depleted uranium is 1.67 times denser than lead, a depleted uranium projectile can be smaller than an equivalent lead projectile but produce similar results. This smaller size means a smaller diameter, less aerodynamic drag and a smaller area of impact, meaning that depleted uranium bullets can travel faster and inflict more pressure on impact, causing deeper penetration. Additionally, depleted uranium is incendiary and self-sharpening, making depleted uranium ideal for anti-tank ammunition. It is also used as armor plating for much of America’s tank fleet.

The problem with using depleted uranium, however, lies in the fact that depleted uranium is mostly de-energized. In practical terms, depleted uranium can have — at a minimum — 40 percent the radioactivity of natural uranium with a half-life that can be measured in millennia (between 703 million to 4.468 billion years). While the depleted uranium presents little to no risk to health via radiation due to its relatively weak radioactivity, direct internal contact with the heavy metal can have chemical toxicity effects on the nervous system, liver, heart and kidneys, with DNA mutations and RNA transcription errors being reported in the case of depleted uranium dust being absorbed in vitro.

While depleted uranium is not as toxic as other heavy metals, such as mercury or lead, pronounced toxicity is still possible through repeated or chronic exposure………http://www.mintpressnews.com/depleted-uranium-iraq-wars-legacy-cancer/193338/

July 9, 2014 Posted by | depleted uranium, health, Iraq, Reference | Leave a comment

Unanswered questions about OSMRs (Offshore Small Modular Reactors)

reactors-floatingAndrew Topf writes in Oil Price 06 July 2014“there are some unanswered questions. One is what would happen to the surrounding marine life should an uncontained nuclear meltdown occur at sea. Who can forget the Google Earth map depicting a yellow-green plume of radiation stretching half-way across the Pacific? While the authenticity of the map was later questioned, scientists have discovered trace amounts of radiation on the North American West Coast, a full three years after the event.

Another is the threat of terrorism. The MIT researchers claim that offshore nukes would be harder to attack, but on the other hand, they would also be tough to defend. Todd Woody, writing for The Atlantic, observed that defending these “nuclear islands” from terrorist assault, by ships and submarines, “would require some James Bond-like machinations,” including early detection systems, barriers to vital access points, and the use of automatic weaponry”

July 7, 2014 Posted by | Reference, technology | Leave a comment

Anti Lynas Rare Earths protest in Malaysia: arrest and release of activists

Crikey Clarifier: what’s all the fuss about rare earths? http://www.crikey.com.au/2014/07/01/crikey-clarifier-whats-all-the-fuss-about-rare-earths/ by Crikey Intern Bondi resident Natalie Lowrey was suddenly released without charge on Friday night after five days’ detention in a Malaysian prison. Lowrey, who was born in New Zealand, was arrested last week in Kuantan, Malaysia, for protesting against the processing of rare earths by Australian minerals giant Lynas Corp. We delve into some of the issues surrounding the case.

What are rare earths?

Rare earths are chemical elements found in the earth’s crust that are vital to many modern technologies, including electronics such as speakers, computers, hybrid cars and wind turbines. Rare earths have unique magnetic, luminescent, and electrochemical properties that help technologies perform more efficiently. They are particularly valuable for use in smartphones, and are in high demand.

What is Lynas Corp, and what is it doing in Malaysia?

Lynas Corporation Ltd is an ASX 100 listed company based in Sydney, Australia. It is currently constructing the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP), a rare earth processing plant at Gebeng, near Kuantan, Malaysia.

Lynas’ rare earth project has sparked protests in Australia and Malaysia over fears about possible negative health, environmental and economic impacts once the plant begins its operation, as it will produce radioactive material as a waste product. Although the rare earths are extracted in Western Australia, the potentially hazardous processing will take place in Malaysia.

Is there any evidence processing rare earths is dangerous?

Mitsubishi Chemicals Asian Rare Earths, a plant in Bukit Merah, Malaysia, was shut down in the 1992 after at least eight cases of leukaemia and a sudden surge in birth defects and miscarriages in the area. The plant was finally closed after an eight-year battle and is currently undergoing the largest clean-up in the rare earth industry at a cost of US$100 million. Cleaning up requires digging up the entire area of contamination and entombing it inside a mountain.

A spokesperson from Lynas told Crikey: “The Asian Rare Earth plant used the waste from tin mining as its raw material. Lynas raw material contains naturally low levels of thorium, which are 30-40 times lower than rare earth concentrates from tin mine tailings. By all international standards, the Lynas raw material is classified as safe, non-toxic and non-hazardous.”

But Dr David KL Quek, former president of the Malaysia Medical Association, has said:

“Thorium is an acknowledged waste product from the planned Lynas refinery of rare earth ores. Due to the various refining processes thorium will be enriched and concentrated to levels which could reach quantities that are difficult to contain or be safely sequestrated.

“Based on the preliminary Environmental Impact Agency report, thorium residues would lead to a sizeable radioactivity dose of some 62 Becquerel per gram. For 106 tonnes this would be an enormous quantity of radioactive residual thorium.”

Wastes from production will include radioactive thorium and uranium and their radioactive decay products such as radium and radon. Australian authorities have explicitly refused to allow the wastes to be shipped back to Australia for safe disposal.

Why Malaysia?

The Malaysian government has been more open to rare earths processing than the Australian government.

Phua Kai Lit, an associate professor of the Jeffery Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences at Monash University in Malaysia, told Crikey: “The Prime Minister, as well as the Chief Minister of the state of Pahang, are both strong supporters of the project. Similarly, political appointees such as the various ministers from ministries involved with the project echo the government’s line. The head of the main regulatory body, the Atomic Energy Licensing Board, also echoes the government’s line.

“The government has been criticised for granting a two-year TOL [temporary operating licence] in spite of no detailed environmental impact assessment or health impact assessment. Only a preliminary environmental impact assessment was carried out,” he said.

A spokesperson told Crikey Lynas plans to recycle the waste from the LAMP refining process into co-products such as plaster boards and cement. Two out of three of these products have been certified as non-radioactive by the Malaysian Atomic Energy Licensing Board.

The AELB is in charge of approving and monitoring radioactive industries and received an undisclosed sum by Lynas Corp in 2011. However the AELB denied the sum was a requirement.

July 2, 2014 Posted by | Malaysia, RARE EARTHS, Reference | Leave a comment

They’e touting thorium nuclear energy, but it’s a weapons proliferation risk

Thorium-dreamThorium: Proliferation warnings on nuclear ‘wonder-fuel’ Phys Org,  Thorium is being touted as an ideal fuel for a new generation of nuclear power plants, but in a piece in this week’s Nature, researchers suggest it may not be as benign as portrayed.

The element thorium, which many regard as a potential nuclear “wonder-fuel”, could be a greater proliferation threat than previously thought, scientists have warned.

Writing in a Comment piece in the new issue of the journal, Nature, nuclear energy specialists from four British universities suggest that, although thorium has been promoted as a superior fuel for future nuclear energy generation, it should not be regarded as inherently proliferation resistant. The piece highlights ways in which small quantities of -233, a material useable in , could be produced covertly from thorium, by chemically separating another isotope, protactinium-233, during its formation.

The chemical processes that are needed for protactinium separation could possibly be undertaken using standard lab equipment, potentially allowing it to happen in secret, and beyond the oversight of organisations such as the  (IAEA), the paper says.

The authors note that, from previous experiments to separate protactinium-233, it is feasible that just 1.6 tonnes of thorium metal would be enough to produce 8kg of uranium-233 which is the minimum amount required for a nuclear weapon. Using the process identified in their paper, they add that this could be done “in less than a year.”

……….”Small-scale chemical reprocessing of irradiated thorium can create an isotope of uranium – uranium-233 – that could be used in nuclear weapons. If nothing else, this raises a serious proliferation concern…….. Continue reading →

June 30, 2014 Posted by | Reference, Uranium | Leave a comment

Looks like Thorium Nuclear Energy has no future in USA

Thorium-pie-in-skyG. Bothun · University of Oregon Researcj gaste ( apro nuke forum) 27 June 14
While in general I think that all future sources of energy need to involve ambient (renewable energy) from the system that we live in, the use of “fuels” (nuclear, natural gas, biomass to some extent) can serve as practical bridges to this ambient energy future; nuclear fire electricity is part of this bridge. However, I think there are 2 practical problems in the US that effectively thwart a thorium reactor future.

1) Currently the timescale to go from permit to actual turning ON line any nuclear power plant is about 15 years (I think currently there are only 2 recently (2012) approved plans coming on line in Georgia and that will take likely another 8–10 years) – meaning that this really isn’t a “bridge fuel” (especially compared to fracked natural gas – which is being rapidly depleted)

2) The whole US nuclear infrastructure is based on handling Uranium. Thorium has much more stringent handling requirements and I just don’t think the US will ramp up an infrastructure to deal with this. Its probably not even wise to do so as those investments are better made in renewable energy and/or carbon capture and storage projects (like the one in Michigan)

 

June 28, 2014 Posted by | Reference, Uranium | Leave a comment

USA coastal communiities monitoring sea-borne Fukushima radiation plume

Fukushima radiation concerns coastal communities Tracy Loew, Statesman Journal 25 June 14, Talk in the Oregon coast town of Bandon often turns to the approaching plume of sea-borne radiation from Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.

“We’ve been worried about it and worried about it,” said Zac Adams, owner of Bandon Designsconstruction company. “We’re really concerned about it affecting the fisheries, the wildlife, the tourism, and most importantly our health.”…….

The radiation is expected to hit the U.S. this year at very low levels that wouldn’t harm humans or the environment. But no federal agency is monitoring it.

So Adams joined a citizen-science project, crowd-sourcing funds in his community to test a sample of seawater that he will soon collect.

Four hours north, the Tillamook Estuaries Partnership has funded two collection sites, in Tillamook and Pacific City.

“Over the last year-and-a-half, it’s been an issue that’s been raising in prominence along the coastline,” said Lisa Phipps, executive director of the partnership. “In our area, there have been groups that have been coming together to talk about what is happening in the ocean.”

And fund-raising is underway for two more sites, in Newport and Winchester Bay.

Altogether about 30 sites, from Alaska to Baja, Calif., have been funded, said Ken Buesseler, a chemical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who put together the project, called “How Radioactive is Our Ocean?”

It uses crowd-sourced money and volunteers to collect water samples along the Pacific Coast, then ship them to Buesseler in Massachusetts to be analyzed on an $80,000 instrument………

Buesseler is looking for increased levels of Cesium-137, which already is in all oceans from previous nuclear testing and accidents; and for Cesium-134, a “fingerprint” of Fukushima.

Because of its short, two-year half-life, any Cesium-134 could only have come from the plant, he said.

So far, Buesseler said, no samples have indicated that the plume has reached the West Coast.

Buesseler posts results on the project’s website. They show Cesium-134 and increased levels of Cesium-137 off the coast of Japan and across the ocean.

“We know it’s out there,” Buesseler said. “We’ve seen it more than halfway across the Pacific.”

Northwest of Hawaii, for example, Buesseler has found Cesium-134 at concentrations as high as 3.8 becquerels per cubic meter.

But to put that in context, he said, the U.S. drinking water limit is 7,400 of those units.

“Every additional radiation exposure causes additional risks for cancer,” he said. “But when the numbers are in the one to 10 range, that’s a very small additional risk.”

That’s the range that is expected to hit our shores, with lower levels coming first.

“As the contamination arrives, we expect the concentrations to go up over the next two years,” Buesseler said……..http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/tech/science/environment/2014/06/25/fukushima-radiation-concerns-coastal-communities/11377463/

June 26, 2014 Posted by | oceans, Reference, USA | 1 Comment

USA planning a nuclear attack on Russia?

Atomic-Bomb-SmFlag-USAIndications that the U.S. Is Planning a Nuclear Attack Against Russia By  (about the author)  OpEdNews Op Eds 6/14/2014  On Wednesday, June 11th, CNN headlined “U.S. Sends B-2 Stealth Bombers to Europe,” and reported that “they arrived in Europe this week for training.” Wikipedia notes that B-2s were “originally designed primarily as a nuclear bomber,” and that “The B-2 is the only aircraft that can carry large air-to-surface standoff weapons in a stealth configuration.”

In other words, the primary advantage of the newer, “Stealth,” version of B-2, is its first-strike (or surprise-attack) nuclear capability. That’s the upgrade: the weapon’s ability to sneak upon the target-country and destroy it before it has a chance to fire off any of its own nuclear weapons in response to that “first-strike” attack. The advantage of Stealth is creating and stationing a nuclear arsenal for the purpose of winning a nuclear war, instead of for the goal of having continued peace via “Mutually Assured Destruction,” or MAD.………

That old system — “Mutually Assured Destruction” or MAD, but actually very rational from the public’s perspective on both sides — is gone. The U.S. increasingly is getting nuclear primacy. Russia, surrounded by NATO nations and U.S. nuclear weapons, would be able to be wiped out before its rusty and comparatively puny military force could be mustered to respond. Whereas we are not surrounded by their weapons, they are surrounded by ours. Whereas they don’t have the ability to wipe us out before we can respond, we have the ability to wipe them out before they’ll be able to respond. This is the reason why America’s aristocracy argue that MAD is dead. An article, “Environmental Consequences of Nuclear War” was published in the December 2008 Physics Today, and it concluded that, “the indirect effects [‘nuclear winter’] would likely eliminate the majority of the human population.” (It would be even worse, and far faster, than the expected harms from global warming.) However, aristocrats separate themselves from the public, and so their perspective is not necessarily the same as the public’s. The perspective that J.P. Morgan and Co. had in 1915 wasn’t the perspective that the U.S. public had back then, and it also wasn’t the perspective that our President, Woodrow Wilson, did back then, when we were a democracy. But it’s even less clear today that we are a democracy than it was in 1915. In that regard, things have only gotten worse in America……..

Obama isn’t only beefing up our first-strike nuclear capability, but is also building something new, called “Prompt Global Strike,” to supplement that nuclear force, by means of “a precision conventional weapon strike” that, if launched against Russia from next-door Ukraine, could wipe out Russia’s nuclear weapons within just a minute or so……..

Certainly, Obama means business here, but the big question is whether he’ll be able to get the leaders of other “democratic” nations to go along with his first-strike plan.

The two likeliest things that can stop him, at this stage, would be either NATO’s breaking up, or else Putin’s deciding to take a political beating among his own public for simply not responding to our increasing provocations. Perhaps Putin will decide that a temporary embarrassment for him at home (for being “wimpy”) will be better, even for just himself, than the annihilation of his entire country would be. And maybe, if Obama pushes his indubitable Superpower card too hard, he’ll be even more embarrassed by this conflict than Putin will be. After all, things like this and this aren’t going to burnish Obama’s reputation in the history books, if he cares about that. But maybe he’s satisfied to be considered to have been George W. Bush II, just a far better-spoken version: a more charming liar than the original. However, if things come to a nuclear invasion, even a U.S. “victory” won’t do much more for Obama’s reputation than Bush’s “victory” in Iraq did for his. In fact, perhaps Americans will then come to feel that George W. Bush wasn’t America’s worst President, after all. Maybe the second half of the Bush-Obama Presidency will be even worse than the first. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Indications-that-the-U-S–by-Eric-Zuesse-Nuclear-Weapons_Obama-Administration_PNAC-Neocon-Project-For-A-New-American-C_President-Barack-Obama-POTUS-140614-352.html?show=votes

June 16, 2014 Posted by | Reference, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Effects on the brain from nuclear radiation – reports from Hanford

radiation-warningNBC stations reveal nuclear workers suffering severe brain damage, dementia — Toxic waste raining down from sky, wore baseball caps for protection — Brains being eaten away, teeth falling out — Workers raising safety issues framed using false evidence, fired — Gov’t not allowed in to investigate (VIDEO) http://enenews.com/nbc-stations-reveal-nuclear-workers-suffering-severe-brain-damage-dementia-toxic-waste-raining-down-from-sky-wore-baseball-caps-for-protection-brains-being-eaten-away-workers-raising-safety NBC Right Now,Apr. 30, 2014: Former Hanford Worker Sick from Nuclear Waste

  • Jane Sander, reporter: A nuclear waste spill happened hours before at the tank farm.
  • Lonnie Poteet, Hanford worker: I was already burning from my glove line to my t-shirt line and… starting to lose a little bit of vision in my right eye… Why didn’t they say something?
  • Sander: Poteet describes living his life now as recluse… sharp pains in his head, they cause him to often twitch. He says medication prevents him from collapsing in pain due to severe nerve damage in his brain.
  • Poteet: [More Hanford workers] are going to be exposed to the same situation… Nobody is going to do anything to stop it… As long as there’s profit… and they get their bonuses on a decent time, that’s all they care about… Most of the workers onsite right now are running scared. They will not bring up any safety concerns because as soon as you do, you’re going to be labeled and thrown off the site, just as fast as they can go. They’ll either create stuff that never happened, or they’ll find ways to get you.

NBC Right Now, June 5, 2014: Sick Former Hanford Worker Speaks Out

  • Jane Sander, reporter: He sadly lives his life with a deadly disease…
  • Lawrence Rouse, Hanford worker:  I have toxic encephalopathy… it eats your brain away.
  • Sander: Near the end of his almost 20 years at Hanford… he began to develop severe symptoms. Stuttering, memory loss, losing teeth…emotionally unstable…violent outbursts.
  • Rouse: [My son] wrote this letter, this little poem, and said that his dad is gone… It would rain the chemicals on you from the stack. That’s why we wore the baseball caps.
  • Sander: The Washington Dept. of Labor and DOE denied [compensation]… Since the [EEOICPA] program began in 2001, they’ve paid more than $1 billion in compensation and medical bills to [6,936 Hanford] workers…
  • Rouse: DOE has always denied everything. And that’s not going to change.
  • Sander: More Hanford workers continue to file claims for their illnesses.
  • Watch the broadcast here

KING 5 Seattle (NBC), June 4, 2014: It’s an unprecedented series of workplace accidents in the state. Since mid-March the number Hanford workers seeking medical help after breathing in chemical vapors has risen to 34.

  • Susannah Frame, reporter: Vapors causing serious illnesses at Hanford is not new… at the most contaminated workplace in the nation, OSHA can’t get past the gates to investigate.
  • Diana Gegg, Hanford worker: It’s turned my life upside down.
  • Frame: Brain damage, sudden tremors, vision loss, dementia – Illnesses the gov’t admits were caused by exposure… she can’t go out without a wheelchair, cook, or drive.

Watch the broadcast here

June 7, 2014 Posted by | health, psychology - mental health, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

America’s MOX nuclear waste recycling boondoggle

any-fool-would-know

 

 

they must stop making this radioactive trash

Failed Nuclear Weapons Recycling Program Could Put Us All in Danger io9, Mark Strauss, 7 June 14, Some government screw-ups are so epic that they require decades of effort. Such was the case for the recently cancelled plan to convert surplus weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear fuel. Not only did the U.S. waste $4 billion dollars, it increased the likelihood that terrorists could obtain bomb-making materials.

It sounded like a good idea at the beginning. Let’s turn megatons into megawatts!

In 2000, the United States and Russia signed the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA). Each country pledged to dispose of at least 34 metric tons of plutonium from their nuclear weapons programs. U.S. nuclear weapons contain less than four kilograms of plutonium, so the combined total of 68 metric tons is enough for some 17,000 nuclear weapons. Disposing of this plutonium would make it more difficult to reverse U.S.-Russian nuclear weapons reductions and would prevent terrorists from gaining access to the material.

The United States settled on a plan to convert most of its surplus plutonium into fuel for nuclear reactors. A massive reprocessing plant would be built at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which, during the Cold War, had refined nuclear material for deployment in warheads. Now, the site would have a new mission: creating nuclear fuel from a mixture of plutonium and uranium oxide, otherwise known as mixed oxide fuel, or MOX. Although nuclear power plants in the U.S. use fuel made from low-enriched uranium (LEU), other countries had demonstrated that MOX was a viable alternative.

Savannah-River-MOX-plant1

Instead, the final outcome was a mothballed facility and a still-increasing supply of surplus plutonium. Like I said, this isn’t your typical government boondoggle. It was twenty years in the making………. Continue reading →

June 7, 2014 Posted by | Reference, reprocessing, USA, wastes | 1 Comment

Management Problems in USA’s failed Nuclear Weapons Recycling Program

MOXFailed Nuclear Weapons Recycling Program Could Put Us All in Danger io9, Mark Strauss, 7 June 14  “…….In 2004, the National Nuclear Security Administration estimated that the Savannah River MOX facility would cost $1.6 billion. Three years later, that estimate jumped to $4.9 billion. In 2012, the forecasted expenditure increased again, to $7.7 billion. By this time, $4 billion had already been spent and the project employed more than 1,800 construction workers, designers and engineers. Then, in April 2013, an internal review conducted by the Department of Energy revealed that the total lifetime operating cost of the facility—including construction, maintenance and disposal of all the plutonium—would be $24.2 billion.

TJust one example of the poor management that led to cost overruns: NNSA and its primary contractor underestimated the number of safety systems required to meet Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requirements, which further increased equipment installation costs. More specifically, they were unaware of the costs associated with building a facility that could withstand an earthquake. The source of their confusion? The MOX facility’s design is based on a similar facility in France, but the NRC regulatory requirements differ from those in France.

The Department of Energy was also at fault, because it approved the initial cost and schedule estimate, when the overall design of the MOX facility was only about 58% complete.

A report published two weeks ago by the Department’s Inspector General noted:

In a separate July 2006 memorandum to the NNSA Administrator, NNSA’s Associate Administrator for Infrastructure and Environment expressed his concern regarding the MOX Facility project. He expressed the belief that incomplete project planning could lead to an unintended “design-build-design” process similar to that experienced by other major Departmental projects including the Waste Treatment Plant and the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility. The Waste Treatment Plant at the Hanford Site was given the approval to start construction when the design was only about 45 percent complete. Since then, total project costs for that facility have increased significantly and the project is considerably behind schedule. He pointed out that, similarly, a comprehensive design review had not been conducted on the complete MOX Facility project and that the project had high-risk potential for increasing downstream costs and schedule.

The White House did its part, as well. In 2010, President Obama announced a loan guarantee of $8.3 billion to help the Southern Company build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia. As a result, workers with nuclear engineering design and manufacturing experience were suddenly in very high demand. The MOX construction site had an employee turnover of 20% per year because, after workers completed additional training at the Savannah River Site, they quit to take higher paying jobs in Georgia. The U.S. government was subsidizing its own labor shortfall.

Finally, in March 2014, the White House announced that it would put the whole project on “cold standby”—essentially, preparing it for shutdown—while the administration evaluated “alternative plutonium disposition technologies to MOX that will achieve a safe and secure solution more quickly and cost effectively.”

Adding up the losses

MOX may be mothballed, but the problem of what to do with our surplus weapons-grade plutonium remains. And, despite cool relations between Washington and Moscow, the disposal agreement still stands.

The Department of Energy has established a Plutonium Disposition Working Group that will spend the next 12 to 18 months trying to come up with a plan. You can see an initial working paper here. The options are depressingly similar to the ones suggested by the National Academy of Sciences, 20 years ago.he sticker shock prompted the Department of Energy to note in its Fiscal Year 2014 budget request that, “This current plutonium disposition approach may be unaffordable…due to cost growth and fiscal pressure.”

Any lingering doubts that the MOX program was on its last legs were dispelled when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report in February 2014. Even by GAO standards, the assessment was scathing.

One of the biggest mistakes, according to the GAO, was entrusting this project to the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy:

NNSA has not analyzed the underlying, or root, causes of the Plutonium Disposition program construction cost increases to help identify lessons learned and help address the agency’s difficulty in completing projects within cost and schedule, which has led to NNSA’s management of major projects remaining on GAO’s list of areas at high risk of fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.

………Even if we got this facility up and working, nobody wants what it’s making. The companies that run commercial nuclear reactors have lost confidence in the program. They can’t be certain that it would provide a reliable, steady supply of fuel, or keep enough surplus fuel on hand in case it was needed. And why would commercial nuclear reactors purchase MOX when low-enriched uranium is cheaper, easier to transport and doesn’t present a security risk? Adding to the climate of skepticism: a MOX fuel irradiation test in a commercial reactor had to be prematurely terminated in 2008 because of unanticipated problems.

The loss to the United States can be measured in more than the $4 billion to build the facility and the hundreds of millions of dollars sent to Russia to subsidize their program. The greater loss is that the U.S. could have spent those funds to shore up other nonproliferation programs…….. http://io9.com/failed-nuclear-weapons-recycling-program-could-put-us-a-1586851270

June 7, 2014 Posted by | Reference, USA, wastes, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Doom and gloom now permanent for the uranium industry

We are heading for a uranium crisis , Investor Intel,  June 2, 2014 by “……Welcome to the “perma-gloom” with spot uranium now at $28.25/lb. But it really does portend a very troubling situation. We could be on the brink of a real uranium crisis, one that could have serious ramifications down the road. This is because, on top of all the doubts about nuclear post-Fukushima and the slowness of Japan to get reactors back on line, uranium is caught up in the general malaise affecting the mining industry ……….the uranium price has fallen by 30% over the past year. If it keeps falling, and it well might, more and more companies will either go into hibernation mode or quit the sector all together ……..

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A surer sign that all is not well can be evidenced from an ominous trend — exploration companies quitting the sector. Others are making cuts: Cameco closed its Cheyenne office, while BHP Billiton has deferred its expansion at the world’s biggest uranium deposit, Olympic Dam in South Australia. Australia’s Paladin Energy (ASX:PDN) has put one of its mines, Kayelekera in Malawi, on care and maintenance.

Back in 2007-8, after spot uranium hit $137/lb, this was the place to be. Suddenly every mining explorer was keen to be in the uranium hunt. At one stage, more than 260 companies listed on the Australian Securities claimed to have uranium projects (many of them in what the Canadian miners call “moose pasture”).

Now, it seems, those small number remaining can’t wait to get out. FYI Resources (ASX:FYI), which got into uranium after quitting the eye care business (it’s previous name was Freedom Eye) in 2009, is now concentrating on potash in Thailand. Uranex (ASX:UNX)  is staying in Tanzania, but has put its uranium on the back-burner in order to pursue graphite.

But possibly the most startling change was reported today. Junior United Uranium (ASX:UUL) which has six projects in Western Australia [and A$3.41 million in the bank as at March 31] is getting out of uranium and into — wait for it — property development.You can’t exactly blame the directors. The shares are trading at a discount to the company assets (the market capitalisation being just A$2 million), all its projects are early-stage ones that will require considerable sums to explore and may not turn out to be viable, no one is investing in the sector, the uranium price is depressed as is the resource sector generally.

Just two weeks ago another uranium explorer working in Western Australia, Prime Minerals (ASX:PIM), signalled it was changing direction. It is merging with Cocoon Data Holdings which has data security software. The news lifted Prime’s stock from A0.9c to A2.2c.

Back in 2007, announcing you were getting into uranium could see your stock price double. Now announcing you’re switching focus away from uranium does the trick. This is not a good trend. http://investor

June 3, 2014 Posted by | 2 WORLD, business and costs, Reference, Uranium | Leave a comment

Questioning the economics of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs)

Christian Science Monitor, Small-scale nuclear plants can be strung together and might save utilities on capital costs. But critics question the efficiency and operating costs of small-scale nuclear plants. By ,  June 1, 2014 The Obama administration wants to seed the United States with pint-size nuclear reactors, and this week it backed a new developer to do it. The US Department of Energy (DOE) said it would provide $217 million in matching funds over five years to NuScale, which builds small, ready-made reactors that can be strung together.SMRs-mirage

But NuScale only gets the federal funds if it can match them with money from private investors, who so far have been leery of the technology. In April, Babcock & Wilcox said it would scale back its DOE-backed plans to build modular reactors for the Tennessee Valley Authority because it failed to secure venture capital. Will NuScale do any better?

NuScale says its advantage is that 12 of its modular reactors can be combined to form a 540 megawatt unit. When one of the modules goes down, it could easily be maintained while the rest of the reactors continue to operate, so that whole facilities are not knocked off the grid. Each individual module could be refueled in relatively short order.

The cost of a 540 megawatt unit would be between $2.2 billion and $2.5 billion. That’s marginally less expensive per unit of output than a traditional nuclear plant. And at that price, utilities would not be taking the kind of financial risks they might otherwise have to if they built a $15 billion to $20 billion central nuclear facility.

As a first step, Oregon-based NuScale is opening a manufacturing plant in Charlotte, N.C., where it will hire 70 employees.

“This expansion … is critical to completing NuScale’s design and submitting our design certification application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” writes Mike McGough, chief commercial officer of NuScale, in an e-mail. The company hopes to submit its design certification in the latter half of 2016. And it plans to begin signing commercial contracts by 2023.

That’s a long and arduous process – just as it is for a larger nuclear plant. Typically, investors don’t want to tie up their money for that long. The Department of Energy’s involvement is aimed at trying to create some legal and financial certainties so they can invest with more confidence. While NuScale says that its units are more affordable than larger centrally located nuclear facilities and that they can replace retiring coal plants, its critics say that the technology lacks efficiencies and cannot compete against combined-cycled natural gas facilities.

“I wish them luck but the economics don’t make sense,” says Mike Keller, president of Kansas-based Hybrid Power Technologies, in an interview regarding both NuScale and Babcock & Wilcox. He adds that the smaller units are inefficient, which means that they produce more nuclear waste than their larger nuclear cousins while they would generate power at three times the current cost of a combined cycle natural gas plant.

“Having a big chunk of money [from the government] does not equal commercial success,” adds Mr. Keller. “The US government should do more due diligence.”………http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2014/0601/Pint-size-nuclear-plants-get-a-boost-from-Obama-administration

June 2, 2014 Posted by | Reference, technology, USA | Leave a comment

Countering the misinformation promoting Thorium Nuclear Reactors

Thorium Nuclear Information Resources  http://kevinmeyerson.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/thorium-nuclear-information-resources/    There is a rash of misinformation on the net about the supposed merits of the ‘new’ nuclear energy source on the block, thorium. I am sure that in a perfect world where nobody lies, thorium would be the perfect answer to the world’s energy needs as is claimed. This is unfortunately not the case.

Apparently, every time there is a new nuclear catastrophe, the thorium ‘miracle’ is promoted again as the ‘savior’ for the world. The Fukushima nuclear radiation catastrophe was not unique and the thorium misinformation artists have come out in droves. It’s the nuclear industry’s defense mechanism – create a new ‘safety myth’ that regular people can latch onto.

In reality, the thorium nuclear fuel cycle has been under development since the very early days of the nuclear industry. India, for example, has spent decades trying to commercialize it, and has failed. The US, Russia, Germany, and many others tried and failed as well. At best, thorium based nuclear power generation may be commercialized in a few decades.

I doubt it.

Fortunately, there are a number of independent trustworthy and expert sources of information on the internet regarding thorium nuclear. Here they are: Continue reading →

June 1, 2014 Posted by | Reference, technology, Uranium | 1 Comment

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