Nuclear solution comes with a huge price tag
Nuclear solution comes with a huge price tag
North County Times By MARK WILLIAMS – AP Energy Writer | Saturday, May 2, 2009
COLUMBUS, Ohio —- A ghost from the nuclear industry’s early years has reappeared.
It is not public apprehension about safety or disposal issues this time, but the staggering cost of building nuclear reactors.
A wave of new reactors now in the works is intended to solve at least part of the nation’s energy problems as it attempts to shift away from fossil fuels. But cost is likely to plague every upcoming nuclear project.
This month in Missouri, the first of the next-generation reactors was put on hold because of the $6 billion price tag.
Whether or not AmerenUE’s Missouri reactor was a casualty of the current economic climate, the legal fight in several states shows how big the cost hurdle will be.
Some states have altered laws so that consumers begin footing the bill now, even before construction begins. Missouri did not.
“A large plant would be difficult to finance under the best of conditions, but in today’s credit-constrained markets, without supportive state energy policies, we believe getting financial backing for these projects is impossible,” said Thomas Voss, AmerenUE’s president and chief executive.
Reactors were expensive even 40 years ago at around $1 billion. The cost of AmerenUE’s Missouri project dwarfed even the market value of its parent company………………….. “It is so phenomenally costly that it crowds out capital needed for energy-efficiency and renewable energy,” said Mark Haim of Missourians for Safe Energy, a group that has been fighting Ameren’s plans.
Yet Republican lawmakers in Washington want more government funding for nuclear power…………….
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/05/02/business/z6edbd99928ffa519882575a6006f16a6.txt
Project to move 15 million tons of radioactive waste begins
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/05/02/business/z6edbd99928ffa519882575a6006f16a6.txt
Project to move 15 million tons of radioactive waste begins KSLTV 4 May 09 “…………………..They’re finally moving 16 million tons of radioactive dirt away from the town of Moab.
The radioactive dirt is going into big boxes, the boxes onto rail cars: a project that will cost about $1 billion. “You cannot put a price on the image and reputation of the state,” said Gov. Jon Huntsman. “The fact that 50 years ago, during the height of the Cold War, the decision was to make this dump 3 miles out of town, nobody would have thought twice about it. And today, it seems absolutely ludicrous that ever would have been done.”
Moab has been trying to get rid of it almost ever since the uranium mill that produced it shut down 25 years ago. “It’s sitting in the flood plain of the Colorado River and draining into the river,” explained Bill Hedden, executive director of Grand County Trust.
Nuclear power foes not stilled in N.E.
Nuclear power foes not stilled in N.E.
Boston.com 4 May 09 “………………….A march in Montpelier last week was only the latest reminder of ongoing opposition to Vermont Yankee’s bid to extend its operating license 20 more years.
The Vermont Public Interest Research Group wants the Vermont Yankee plant shut down, and assurances that its owner, Entergy Corp., will pay the full cost of decommissioning it. “There are millions of people that live within a dangerous distance of this facility,” said James Moore, clean energy advocate for the group, known as VPIRG…………………… A cadre of activists who oppose Vermont Yankee have built a statewide coalition to oppose the 20-year renewal of the plant’s current license, which expires in 2012. The issue will be subject to a vote by the Vermont Legislature in the coming year.
At last week’s demonstration, activists marched from Montpelier’s City Hall to the State House to urge lawmakers to back development of clean sources of energy such as wind and solar. The marchers also announced they had gathered 12,000 signatures in support of closing Vermont Yankee……………………. Environmentalists and others remain concerned that there is no national plan for long-term storage of nuclear waste.
Safety issues revealed at nuclear facility
Safety issues revealed at nuclear facility
Contractors used substandard materials
The State 3 May 09 By James Rosen WASHINGTON — Contractors at the Savannah River Site — one of the country’s major nuclear-weapons complexes — repeatedly procured dangerous construction materials and components that failed to meet federal safety standards, according to a recently completed internal government probe.
One of the substandard materials revealed at the Savannah River Site on the South Carolina-Georgia border “could have resulted in a spill of up to 15,000 gallons of high-level radioactive waste,” the inspector general of the U.S. Energy Department found.
The five-month investigation also disclosed the purchase of 9,500 tons of substandard reinforcing steel at the SRS site near Aiken……………………. Many employees are engaged in a huge environmental cleanup effort to mediate decades of toxic nuclear waste production……………………. Some environmentalists and other critics cast the NRC as a weak regulator plagued by cozy relationships with the power utilities that own and operate the civilian nuclear reactors it is charged with licensing and overseeing.
Heads of the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management, in charge of waste cleanup at SRS and other nuclear complexes, didn’t dispute the inspector general’s findings. http://www.thestate.com/local/story/772791.html
Russia To Ring The Arctic With Floating Nuclear Power Stations
GIZMODO
Jack Loftus (information from The Guardian) May 4, 2009
Mr. Polar Bear and his brethren will be sharing real estate with a ring of floating, self-sustained nuclear power stations. It’s all part of Russia’s—and the world’s—ongoing thirst for energy.Environmentalists are understandably outraged over the impact said stations could have on an already endangered area of the globe, and if polar bears could talk, I imagine they’d be outraged too.
Said a rep from Bellona, a Scandinavian environmental watchdog group, “[The plan] is highly risky. The risk of a nuclear accident on a floating power plant is increased. The plants’ potential impact on the fragile Arctic environment through emissions of radioactivity and heat remains a major concern. If there is an accident, it would be impossible to handle.
“Oh, and there’s this fear that Russia will simply dump the radioactive waste into the Arctic Sea anyway, which they’ve done before on several occasions. To date at least 12 nuclear reactors from decommissioned Russian submarines have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid waste.Pretty soon the ocean will be like a 24/7 aurora borealis up there. A wonderful, cancer-causing aurora borealis.
Russia To Ring The Arctic With Floating Nuclear Power Stations – Gizmodo Australia
Olympic Dam EIS: Impact of the world’s biggest mine
Incomparable and unimaginable are not synonymous, but Olympic Dam is both. It will be the world’s biggest hole-in-the-ground, the largest copper and uranium quarry on the planet, the highest artificial mountain range on Earth and the richest mine since King Solomon………………….
The company will ultimately dig a hole 7.5 kilometres long, five kilometres wide and more than a kilometre deep.
Stacked up, the 44 billion tonnes or so of overburden would effectively create a new mountain range. Depending on its shape, it might be 20 kilometres wide in each direction and almost as high as Mt Lofty’s 720 metres………………………BHP has said it will not comment on the EIS after the weekend even though reporters can’t possibly read all the documents in the time available………..
………….The Independent Weekly understands that the Federal Government is planning much tougher safeguards relating to uranium sales to China, even if it’s gift-wrapped in copper concentrate. BHP does not yet have export permits for that uranium. In May next year nuclear non-proliferation nations, Australia included, will meet in New York. Australia may want a new international treaty to make sure Olympic Dam uranium does not end up in Chinese bombs………….
…………….here’s a prediction. Tomorrow’s EIS will say the project can go ahead on environmental grounds. The company will start moving to begin expansion and hope for a global economic recovery to coincide with increased production. BHP will pass the break-even point on its multi-billion investment within the first two decades, and after that it’s money in the bank all the way down to the year 2100.
But first, there’ll be new legislation presented in State Parliament to legalise the process. It will be a new form of the 1982 Roxby Downs Indenture Ratification Act. It will, once again, over-ride every other Act of Parliament passed up to now and into the future. The first that South Australians see of that legislation will be after the state election.
And BHP Billiton’s Olympic Dam will have an economic and environmental impact that is synonymous with mining on this scale: incomparable and unimaginable.
A cautionary history of the nuclear age | Cautionary tales
The nuclear age Cautionary tales
Apr 30th 2009 The Economist …………….The expectation of electricity “too cheap to meter” brought hopes in some quarters of an end to world poverty. Yet nuclear power proved costly and far from risk-free. Some presumed that by the turn of the 20th century there could be more than 500 fast-breeder reactors, fuelled by expanding stockpiles of plutonium.
By the millennium’s end not a single fast-breeder was in commercial operation (the necessary experimental forerunners produce plutonium in quantities useful for bomb-making). The Bush administration’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership sought to revive the breeder idea (renaming it a fast-burner), but plans had to be shrunk due to cost, technological complexity and the danger of proliferation.
Whatever the nuclear technology used, the by-products thus far have been accidents (Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were among the worst but there have been plenty of others), pollution and piles of nuclear waste. Meanwhile technologies and materials acquired to keep the lights on can be misused in weapons.
Spread around generously in the 1950s and 1960s, “atoms for peace” helped get Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel, Pakistan, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan and others started in the bomb business. (Other secretive programmes—in Iran, Libya, North Korea—thrived mostly on black-market connections.)
Now, once again, nuclear suppliers are signing up governments with nuclear ambitions, arguing that co-operation will help ensure the technology is put to proper use. But history suggests that no one can be sure where all this will lead.
A cautionary history of the nuclear age | Cautionary tales | The Economist
Ukraine Honors the Memory of the Victims of Chernobyl
Ukraine Honors the Memory of the Victims of Chernobyl
Epoch Times By Ekaterina Popova 29 April 09 23 years after the incident with the nuclear plant, the concrete slabs which buried 25 000 Ukrainians are crannied and radiation again threatens lives –
“………………On April 27, 1986, workers in Sweden in the nuclear plant Forsmark—about 680 miles from Chernobyl—were found to have radioactive particles on their clothes. Swedish authorities began investigating the case and established that there was no leakage or emissions from their reactor. Then it became clear that there was a serious problem in the western part of the Soviet Union. At that time, Finland had reported an increase in the level of radiation in the atmosphere.
Soviet authorities and the leaders of most countries in Eastern Europe continued to hide the truth from the public until the situation became out of control………….
……….According to scientific research, Belarus has absorbed 60 percent of the pollution. The radioactive cloud reached Bulgaria on May 1, coinciding with the celebration of Labor Day, with thousands of people out in the open.
Twenty-five thousand Ukrainians, known as “liquidators,” died in the early days while trying to keep the situation under control, trying to construct a concrete slab over the remains of the reactor.
In Ukraine alone, 2.3 million people are officially registered as victims of the tragedy. Immediately after the incident over 4,000 Ukrainians—children and adults—were operated on for cancer of the thyroid gland, the most common consequence of radiation exposure.
The nuclear plant was finally closed in 2000. Until then one of the reactors continued to produce electricity.
The facility continues to be dangerous, as the concrete cover, which was laid over 200 tons of radioactive fuel, has started to crack. To prevent further problems, a steel sarcophagus is planned to be built, which will cover the concrete.
Epoch Times – Ukraine Honors the Memory of the Victims of Chernobyl
Study examines radiation dose estimates for pregnant women undergoing therapeutic ERCP
Study examines radiation dose estimates for pregnant women undergoing therapeutic ERCP
Eureka Alert Anne Brownsey 29 April 09 – ” …………………. – Pregnant women with gallstone disease may require immediate endoscopic intervention because of potentially life-threatening cholangitis (infection in the bile ducts) or gallstone pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas).
The radiation exposure in endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), which is used to treat these conditions, is a concern because fetal tissues are more susceptible to radiation injury.
Researchers from Greece found that the radiation risks associated with ERCP procedures are not trivial and that accurate fetal dose estimation is now available regardless of patient body size, operating parameters, equipment used and gestational stage.
The study appears in the April issue of GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE).
Study examines radiation dose estimates for pregnant women undergoing therapeutic ERCP
Cabinet to charge for creation and storage of radioactive waste
Cabinet to charge for creation and storage of radioactive waste Kyiv Post 30 April 09 Interfax
-Ukraine National Nuclear Energy Generating Company Energoatom is to pay charges for creating and storing radioactive waste, according to a new cabinet resolution.
The company is obliged to pay UAH 0.0063 per 1 kWh of produced energy plus extra fees depending on the storage costs and the amount of waste material.
The Cabinet of Ministers on April 24 approved the respective resolution, No. 391, which comes into force on May 1 this year.
According to the document, other companies in the sector are to calculate the sum of charges depending on the level of radiation of the materials, and pay 10% of the value of an ionizing irradiation source every month.
The document stipulates that these fees will not be charged if the waste is returned to the company that produced the initial nuclear material abroad.
Questions with nuclear plant
Questions with nuclear plant
Mountain Home News Diana Hooley April 29, 2009 – “The promoters for the proposed nuclear power plant have used the promise of jobs and money to strike an emotional chord in a down economy.But who are these people really and can they deliver the goods or are they just salesmen preying on people’s needs?……………………..Idaho and Elmore County land is being auctioned off potentially to out of state utility companies for the energy needs of out of state localities like Las Vegas and Los Angeles area.
Why would Elmore County ever be willing to give up control over its land and water to this group of developers? For the promise of jobs — not the assurance — just the promise………………………
With all the excitement about jobs and money, forgotten is the possibility that though the economy will fluctuate and the job market will get better, the nuclear waste will be stored on site in perpetuity.
This toxic waste will be something the children of Elmore County citizens, and their children, will have to live with for a long time.
Storing waste on that piece of property is a terrible risk. The soil and rock are porous and the ground slopes directly to the river. Any leak of toxic materials will run off.
A nuclear weapons free world is now possible
A nuclear weapons free world is now possible On Line Opinion by Bill Williams 28 April 9
Not such a crazy proposition really. The detonation of a small, “primitive” uranium fission weapon, concealed in a shipping container in one of Australia’s harbour cities, for instance, would obliterate the CBD, causing up to a quarter of a million fatalities and an enormous radiotoxic legacy. Meanwhile, the explosion of even a small portion of the currently available 26,500 nuclear weapons would mean global catastrophe.
New evidence from climate and vulcanology specialists suggest a “nuclear winter” could result from the detonation of less than 100 smallish nukes (i.e. Hiroshima-size) on large urban centres. Think Krakatoa meets Hiroshima and multiply accordingly. All this is well within the arsenal capacities of Russia, America, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, France and the UK.
How could such scenarios fade from the public consciousness? And what could an informed, concerned public do about it? There is an urgent need to call for a credible, universal treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.
A draft for such a treaty already exists: the “Model Nuclear Weapons Convention” (NWC) was prepared by an international consortium of legal and technical specialists, and was released and circulated by the United Nations (UN) in 1997. It was revised and published in 2007 as a key project of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons (ICAN). The document, Securing our Survival, lauded by UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon and available at www.icanw.org – sets out in detail the essential steps to abolition…………………..Clearly, we will have to push the politicians if they are to instruct the diplomats to negotiate and implement a convention. Otherwise they’ll muddle on for decades, shuffling up the “incremental steps”, plastering over cracks in the disarmament edifice, wavering in the shadow of annihilation.
A nuclear weapons free world is now possible – On Line Opinion – 28/4/2009
1,250 tonnes of depleted uranium railed through densely populated Germany – to France?
1,250 tonnes of depleted uranium railed through densely populated Germany – to France?
Sydney Indymedia April 29th, 2009 By Diet Simon, adapting Cecile Lecomte’s report A 25-car train half a kilometre long has just carried 1,250 tonnes of depleted uranium through the most densely populated region of Germany – destination unknown, presumably France.
The train left Germany’s only uranium enrichment plant at Gronau (52° 12′, 160 km south of Hamburg) in the night from 27 to 28 April.Usually trains from the German-Dutch-British-owned enrichment plant close to the city of Münster and the Dutch border have taken depleted uranium to Rotterdam for shipment to Russia, where it’s been dumped in the open air.
The Urenco company is extremely secretive about the transports. This time journalists were told by federal police that the train headed for Duisburg and on to France.That would have taken the dangerous cargo through the densely populated Ruhr and Rhineland areas – if the police information is correct…………….
…….The train from Gronau was held up by two hours because a female French activist who lives in Germany, 27-year-old Cécile Lecomte, had abseiled over the tracks from a road overpass. She and other climbers have made such a name for themselves in disrupting nuclear transports that police now always have climbing specialists along on the trains to take the protesters down……….
………….”The aim is to reveal the secret atomic transports from the Gronau uranium enrichment plant and to draw people’s attention to the policy of Urenco,” she writes. ………………………..“Radioactivity knows no borders. What kind of an end to atomic power is it if Gronau is expanded, thereby supporting the construction of new nuclear plants – such as the EPR in Flamanville, France – by supplying the product to power stations all over the globe.
“The waste is carted right across Europe in secret transports. That is no solution to the nuclear waste problem. On the contrary, the population is exposed to ever more dangers, the environment is polluted ever more…..”………………….’
The period of “Chernobyl’s decay” /ДЕНЬ/
The period of “Chernobyl’s decay”U kraine will be exposed to residual radiation for hundreds of years. What can be done today? day.kiev.ua By Oleksandra SHEPEL 28 April 09
Twenty-three years have passed since The Day of April 26 divided human fates into “before” and “after” the disaster at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Until this day it is the world’s worst anthropogenic catastrophe unmatched for its environmental impact.
For Ukraine Chornobyl is an everyday reality and a host of global-scale problems. Unfortunately, the problems caused by the catastrophe are as acute today as they were 23 years ago. Can one get used to devastated villages and abandoned fertile land?………………………..
Radioisotopes of iodine, which were present in the air in the largest quantities, were the most dangerous for people. Therefore, Ukrainians who were outside under the radioactive clouds in the last days of April and early May picked up plenty of this isotope. Their thyroid glands accumulating this substance, received the largest dose of irradiation of all the parts of body, and suffered worst. As a result, several years after the Chornobyl disaster, doctors registered a spike in thyroid cancer among children.
Some experts assert that the life of radioactive iodine is short, so it cannot be affecting our health today. In fact, radioactive iodine does not disappear within eight days, as some write, but plants itself in the thyroid of its victims and stays there for 80 days.
Back in 1978 the children’s doctor Helen Caldicott warned humanity that the silence of doctors about the consequences of nuclear technologies and radiation would lead to an increase in cancer and hereditary diseases. In 1982 Ukraine published data of foreign authors proving the dangerous influence of radiation on the health of pregnant women and children, specifically mentioning children with inborn defects born of irradiated parents.
Before the Chornobyl catastrophe, in 1985, academician Valeri Legasov argued that the residual radioactivity after nuclear plant explosions increases with time because of accumulation of long-lived radionuclides. Alice Stuart, an expert on the effects of low levels of radiation, studied the state of health of the employees of the Hanford military plant, and victims of nuclear bombing in Japanese cities, and proved that small doses of radiation over a longer period of time are more of a carcinogenic threat than a one-time equivalent.
Are the restless experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) aware of this?………………………………….plutonium-241 will “leave the arena” in a century — it will be replaced by more mobile “long-lived” americium-241. Experts are afraid that this isotope, able to percolate into the ground, will contaminate the subsoil waters and will spread from the worst contaminated zone to clean territories over several thousands of years.
Espionage and the ‘Nuclear Renaissance’
Espionage and the ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ The New York Times April 28, 2009,By James Kanter Accusations of spying and corporate hacking are swirling in Europe’s nuclear industry. – “………………
French judges last month opened an investigation into allegations that the power company’s executives may have been involved in espionage — including breaking into computer systems at Greenpeace offices.
Another dimension to the affair could involve Britain, where Greenpeace is concerned that spying activities also took place.
E.D.F. has suspended two staff members from their duties while the French inquiry continues………………………….The allegations of espionage are important for the future of nuclear power because they do little to help generate trust in major operators like E.D.F., which are seeking to rebuild an industry plagued by giant cost overruns and the legacies of nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
Espionage and the ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ – Green Inc. Blog – NYTimes.com
1 This Month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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