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Radioactive Waste

Radioactive Waste

Radioactive waste originates with nuclear power, weapons, industry and nuclear medicine. It comes from uranium mining, reactor fuel fabrication and fuel reprocessing. Nuclear waste is radioactive and by nature, dangerous. It can be called “low-level, transuranic, intermediate-level or high-level depending on the country and agency categorizing the isotopes, or a label may depend on the radioactivity per mass or volume, or for what the element can be used. It can be long-lived or short-lived depending on the half-life, or the amount of time half of the isotope’s energy disintegrates. A half-life can be seconds or millions of years and the faster it decays, the more radioactive it will be. Radioisotopes are unstable configurations of elements in decay and through the decay process, radiation is emitted. Many radionuclides decay into other radioactive elements. Isotopes may be a gas, solid or liquid. Hundreds of human-made isotopes are created in nuclear reactors. Some waste can be handled by humans and some solely by robots.

Nuclear waste has been chucked into ravines, buried in shallow graves, stored in underground caverns, left to blow with the wind, thrown overboard into the sea, smelted in scrap yards and has been making its way, in increasing amounts, into our environment since its use for weapons and power became a focus for nations around the world.

Exposure to certain levels of radioactive waste may cause serious harm or death. The effect of exposure depends on the isotope and decay mode of an element. Cesium-137 is water soluble and can pass through the body and exit in urine causing less damage than iodine-131 which tends to lodge in the thyroid gland and continuously emits harmful beta and gamma radiation into surrounding tissue.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that 108 sites nationwide are contaminated with enough radioactive waste as to be unusable for the foreseeable future. The Oak Ridge nuclear weapons production site contained 167 poisoned areas. While “clean up” is taking place, clean up means packaging and re-dumping in another location.

Radioactive waste has been filtered into industry and used for such things as the irradiation of food to kill pathogens, those harmful and useful to humans and industry has created radioisotope thermoelectric generators or RTH batteries for space craft.

Radioactive waste is a lethal by-product and the wisest path to take is to stop producing it.

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Nuclear Power

Nuclear Power

Nuclear power is unsafe, uneconomic, unsustainable, contributes to rather than prevents climate change, produces persistent, highly radioactive toxic waste, creates terrorist targets, promulgates nuclear weapons and is unnecessary. New investment in it robs resources from clean, renewable and safe energy production.

Nuclear Power Dead in the Water it Poisoned

By John LaForge, Nukewatch Staff

Cover story, CounterPunch magazine, March 2014, Vol. 21. No. 2, pp. 10-14

On Feb. 11, 1985, the cover page of Forbes thundered, “The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale.…”

Fourteen months later, reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl exploded and burned for 40 days, spreading radioactive fallout across the entire Northern Hemisphere, depositing cesium-137 in Minnesota’s milk and Japan’s topsoil.

So how is it that Congressional representatives, TV network pundits, FOX ditto heads and even CNN program directors still promote nuclear power?

Part of the answer comes from American University researcher Judy Pasternak and her students. According to Pasternak’s 2010 study, the nuclear industry spent $645 million over 10 years lobbying Capitol Hill, and another $63 million in campaign contributions over the same period. Between 1999 and 2008, these millions manufactured the canard that nuclear power is “carbon free,” “clean” and can “help fend off climate change.” Prior to this spending blitz, the US nuclear power program was, because of the shock of accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, “pretty well dead in the water” — in the words of economist and author Jeremy Rifkin. …

Download the full, footnoted article here.

Nuclear Power Too Expensive, Too Dangerous

Commentary by John LaForge

Duluth News Tribune, Monday, Jan. 11, 2010

Lofty claims about the benefits of nuclear power have been coming from the Nuclear Energy Institute’s lobbyists and others. Yet news journals, financial journals and energy journals all make clear that boiling water with uranium is the costliest and dirtiest energy choice.

Even Time magazine reported, on Dec. 31, 2008, that, “New [reactors] would be not just extremely expensive but spectacularly expensive.”

Florida Power and Light’s recent estimate for a two-reactor system was a shocking $12 billion to $18 billion. The Wall Street Journal reported on nuclear’s prospects on May 12, 2008, finding that, “The projected cost is causing some sticker shock [and is] double to quadruple earlier rough estimates.”

No less than Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric, one of the world’s richest nuclear engineering firms, discouraged new reactor construction because of financial liabilities. In the Nov. 18, 2007, LondonFinancial Times, Immelt said, “If you were a utility CEO and looked at your world today, you would just do gas and wind. You would say [they are] easier to site, digestible [and] I don’t have to bet my company on any of this stuff. You would never do nuclear. The economics are overwhelming.”

The estimates never even include the cost of managing radioactive waste, a bill that keeps coming for centuries. The New York Times reported five years ago that the owners of nearly half the reactors in the U.S. “are not reserving enough money to decommission them on retirement.” The newspaper’s sources were Congressional auditors, who also said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was not tracking the money carefully.

Radioactive tritium has poisoned groundwater near at least 14 reactors in the U.S., including in Kewaunee, Wis. Groundwater is contaminated with tritium above Environmental Protection Agency and Nuclear Regulatory Commission allowances under the communities of Braidwood, Ill., Dresden, Ill., Brookhaven, N.Y., Palo Verde, Ariz., Indian Point, N.Y., Diablo Canyon, Calif., San Onofre, Calif., and Kewaunee.

Nuclear is so dirty Germany legislated a national phase-out of its 17 reactors by 2025. That 1998 decision was based partly on government studies that found high rates of childhood leukemia in areas near German reactors. In July 2007 the European Journal of Cancer Care published a similar report by Dr. Peter Baker of the Medical University of South Carolina that found elevated leukemia incidence in children near U.S. reactors.

U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., complained to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2005: “The nuclear industry and the NRC have automatically dismissed all studies that link increased cancer risk to exposure to low levels of radiation. The NRC needs to study — not summarily dismiss — the connection between serious health risks and radiation released from nuclear reactors.”

The Oxford Research Group’s 2007 study, “Too Hot to Handle,” called the hope of quickly building new reactors a “pipe dream.” In his 2008 book, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, said, “Even the leaders of the nuclear industry have said that they will not build new plants without 100 percent federal loan guarantees.”

Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, wrote “The Flawed Economics of Nuclear Power” in 2008, noting, “While little private capital is going into nuclear power, investors are pouring tens of billions of dollars into wind farms each year. And while the world’s nuclear-generating capacity is estimated to expand by only 1,000 megawatts this year, wind-generating capacity will likely grow by 30,000 megawatts.”

The Washington Post reported less than two months ago that “leading environmental figures, including former Vice President Al Gore, remain skeptical of nuclear’s promise.” That’s due to the high cost of construction and the threat of nuclear-weapons proliferation. Leading security and big-business figures are skeptical for similar reasons.

The U.S. Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism has called for ending subsidies that would expand nuclear power. In its Oct. 21 report, “The Clock Is Ticking,” the commission recommended that the “U.S. … work internationally toward strengthening the non-proliferation regime … discouraging, to the extent possible, the use of financial incentives in the promotion of civil nuclear power.”

Nuclear power’s pollution burden already is carried by the public. This is bailout enough. The industry should not also be allowed to unload on us its overwhelming financial risks.

— John LaForge of Luck, Wis., is a staff member for the independent action group Nukewatch and edits its quarterly newsletter.

President Barack Obama on radiation exposure

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpAqiGSp29c

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Nuclear Weapons & War

nuclearblastMissile Fields Still Armed & Dangerous

By John LaForge
Reprinted from the Winter 2006 – 2007 Nukewatch Quarterly

The number of Minuteman missiles has been cut in half since 1988, when Nukewatch published Nuclear Heartland, our groundbreaking atlas of the missiles’ locations.

At the time, the Air Force was operating six giant missile fields: two in North Dakota, and one each in Missouri, South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming/Colorado/Nebraska.

Three of these missile fields have now been decommissioned and eliminated: Missouri, South Dakota and Grand Forks, ND. Interestingly, these three areas were the most active with political and nonviolent direct action protesting nuclear weapons and the suicidal nuclear war policies that persist to this day.

mushroom

In South Dakota, adjacent to the Ellsworth Air Force Base, horse rancher Marv Kammerer kept a permanent vigil against nuclear madness. Marv’s ranch was a hub of Black Hills anti-nuclear activism during the ‘80s. He placed a giant peace sign made of painted stones on his land at one end of the air force runway so the bomber pilots wouldn’t ever miss it.

In Missouri, the Silo Pruning Hooks plowshares action in 1984 brought attention to the first-strike Minuteman missiles, especially after four activists ¯ Carl and Paul Kabat, Helen Woodson and Larry Cloud Morgan ¯ received 8-to-12 years, the longest prison sentences for civil disobedience in U.S. history. Later, Nukewatch sponsored educational peace camps and participated in the Missouri Peace Planters actions that also resulted in serious prison sentences.

In Grand Forks, North Dakota, the Bemidji, Minnesota Friends for a Nonviolent World organized annual Martin Luther King birthday protests (beginning before it was a holiday), as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki Day actions, and a 150-mile Walk for Peace from Bemidji to the Grand Forks Air Force base ¯ a walk conducted six years in a row.

In Wyoming, 50 giant MX missiles, with up to ten warheads on each rocket, have all been withdrawn from the western side of the field which is still maintained by the F.E. Warren Air Force Base “missileers.”

The missiles still in operation — with a total of 500 Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) still on “alert” status — are at Minot, North Dakota; Great Falls, Montana; and at the shared border area of Wyoming/Colorado/Nebraska. (See maps above)

Of the 10,000 warheads still deployed and stored in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, 2,346, about 24 percent, are now on 14 Trident submarines. Eight Tridents are on the East Coast at Kings Bay, Georgia, and six are on the West Coast at Bangor, Washington.

The U.S. is alone in placing its nuclear weapons in other countries; between 400 and 480 U.S. warheads are deployed at U.S. bases in England, Holland, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Turkey.

minot map copy

 

Each dot in the maps above and below pinpoints the location of one Minuteman missile. Nukewatch spent three years — 1985 through 1988 — locating the landbased missile silos of the United States. Above are the 150 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles located in North Dakota.

montana copy

The 200 ICBMs located in Montana (above)

nebraska, colorado, wyoming

The 150 ICBMs located in the field covering the corners of Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado

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Plans for Increased Drinking Water Contamination Raise Alarm

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2016

In the summer 2016 Quarterly we reported on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed weakening of drinking water contamination standards—known as Protective Action Guides—and urged readers to send comments. Diane D’Arrigo, Radioactive Waste Project Director at Nuclear Information & Resource Service, wrote this update on the status of the proposal.

Well over 60,000 comments were submitted to the EPA by the July 2016 deadline, nearly all of them critical and calling on the agency to:

  • Reject the water PAGs—the not-so protective Protective Action Guides—which would dramatically increase allowable radioactivity in drinking water for up to years after nuclear incidents. “Incidents” could be as routine as a radioactive release or a spill, or as devastating as a nuclear bomb or reactor meltdown;
  • Require drinking water to meet existing Safe Drinking Water Act Maximum Concentration Levels for the weeks, months or years (the intermediate phase) after radioactive contamination “incidents.”

Over 66,000 comments were submitted to EPA in total on both the 2016 proposed EPA Water Protective Action Guides (Water PAGs) and the more inclusive proposed 2013 PAGs, to which they are being added. The 2013 PAGs on all “pathways of exposure” include a 1998 PAG for food. EPA had said there was no PAG for drinking water, but a review of the agency’s Food PAG revealed that in fact, drinking water was included. So the newly proposed Water PAG would actually add even more allowable radiation exposure from water, essentially doubling the exposure from food and water!

EPA is determined to make official both the 2013 “Protective Action Guides” and their proposed 2016 Water PAGs before the next Presidential Administration is installed—possibly before the election. The agency tried back when President Bush was leaving office but missed getting them finalized then, so is trying again.

The EPA is disingenuous in its promotion of this dangerous “guidance” in several ways. Two are described here:

First, EPA strongly implies the PAGs would apply to the immediate aftermath of a huge disaster, when in fact they apply to the “intermediate” phase of any radioactive “incident” …that “warrant[s] consideration of protective action.” (Ch.1 para 1.1 of the EPA 2013 PAG; https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/documents/pag-manual-interim-public-comment-4-2-2013.pdf).

So the “Guides” would be preferentially used by reactor operators and others to avoid meeting the stricter Safe Drinking Water Act requirements. The new weaker PAGs would allow enormous levels of invisible but deadly radioactive contamination in drinking water for weeks, months or even years after a nuclear “incident.”

This is a deceptive way to get around meeting the Safe Drinking Water Act Maximum Contamination Levels, Superfund cleanup levels, and the EPA’s long-standing allowable risk range—giving cancer to 1-in-a-million or at worst 1-in-10,000 exposed. The PAGs protect the polluters from liability more than the public from radiation.

Second, these unconscionably high radiation doses from the Water PAGS will be added to very high internal doses from contaminated food we would be allowed to eat under the 1998 Food PAGs (www.fda.gov/downloads/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/GuidanceDocuments/UCM094513.pdf) which are incorporated into the 2013 PAG.

Individuals would be allowed doses of 500 millirem/year from water plus 500 millirems/year from food and water in the intermediate phase; plus internal and external doses (2000 millirem the first year, and 500 millirem the year after) from the air we breathe and from external direct gamma rays emitted from the radioactive sources, as permitted by the 2013 PAG. (www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-06/documents/pag-manual-interim-public-comment-4-2-2013.pdf; p. 7, Table 1-1)

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Ominous-Looking Unidentified Object Found on Lake Superior Beach

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2016
By John LaForge

A local beach comber came across a startling object August 17 while walking on the Southshore of Lake Superior near Poplar, 18 miles east of Superior, Wisconsin. The deck-of-cards-sized steel object was stamped with the warning: “CAUTION – RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL” as well as the string of letters—C2O-O8-O. The metal was also stamped with a version of the standard radiation symbol which looks like a ceiling fan with wide blades. The alarmed hiker called the Douglas County Sheriff, and a deluge of official emergency responders soon descended on the small village.

When the story became public, long-time residents of the area called or emailed the Nukewatch office wondering about the Army Corps of Engineers and its dumping of corporate military wastes in the big lake in the 1960s and ‘70s.

The 9th District US Coast Guard office issued a press release from Cleveland, Ohio that noted “federal, state and local agencies worked jointly to determine the contents and source of a mysterious container found on the beach near the mouth of the Poplar River.” However, none of the eight agencies involved were able to determine either contents or the source of the strange object.

The Coast Guard’s press release said, “Initial responders from the US Coast Guard and Superior, Wisconsin, Fire Department determined the metal was not emitting any radioactivity. A follow-on investigation by the Wisconsin National Guard Civil Support Team and Wisconsin Department of Health Services ensured there was no radiation source from the surrounding area and that the object was not a hazard to the public.”

First responders swooped into the little town (pop. 603) from Green Bay and Madison, both five hours away, to examine, take custody, and ultimately dispose of the mysterious item. According to the US Coast Guard, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Wisc. Department of Health Services, the Wisc. Department of Natural Resources, the Wisc. National Guard Civil Support Team, the Superior Fire Department, the Douglas County Sheriff, and the Douglas County Emergency Management office were all involved.

The Coast Guard also said, “The object has been removed by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services for proper disposal.” The reference to “proper disposal” of harmless, nonradioactive metal was not explained.

Nukewatch asked several participants about the unusual event and the out-sized response. It was the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Unit (MSU) in Duluth that first sent a team to the Poplar River site, along with the Superior Fire Dept. Lt. Commander Jerry Butwid of the MSU, told me his office sent a team to the site because, “We were 30 minutes away” while the EPA had to travel from Green Bay. Asked if the team identified the origin of the object, Butwid said, “No. We were just the ‘eyes-on-the-scene’ and did some basic generic testing.” Butwid said the Wisconsin Department of Health Services “had jurisdiction and they took it away.”

Lt. John Mack at the Coast Guard Marine Safety Unit in Duluth said he knew of no additional photographs of the box that might aid in identifying its owner or manufacturer. “I don’t believe we took that photo,” Mack said, “maybe the fire department.”

Steven Panger, Chief of Superior Wisconsin Fire Department (SFD), told Nukewatch, “We had a few other pictures, but they’re the same,” adding, “Actually those were from the resident [who found the object]. She sent them to us.” The Coast Guard press release included one photograph of the item with the credit, “US Coast Guard photo,” perhaps done to protect the privacy of the beach walker.

The SFD produced a routine incident report of the finding that included remarks by two members of the department’s four-person Regional Chemical Assessment Team. Captain Andrew Knutson reported that while no additional markings were found on the metal, “It was however discovered that at some time the device appeared to be affixed to something and had been ripped off. The back side appeared to have been torn open revealing that the device was empty.” Sgt. Ed Bunayon of Wisconsin National Guard’s 54th Civil Support Team in Madison was also sent to Poplar. Bunayon, who said his unit “specializes in WMDs,” thought the item “looked like a cover of something like a smoke detector. But it was old, nothing like equipment we see today.”

Paul Schmidt of the Radiological Emergency Response section of the Wisc. Dept. of Health Services said his report of the event was not yet available. “We did an extensive area survey, to determine there was no radiation,” Schmidt said. Jason Hunt who led the department’s response team said Sept. 7 that the report was complete but being reviewed prior to publication. Both men said their investigations failed to determine the container’s origin.

Without access to the various departmental incident reports, no connection to the Army Corps of Engineers’ decades-long history of Lake Superior dumping could be established.

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