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December 20, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

World Nuclear Industry Status Report Summary

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022

The conclusion of the 2021 World Nuclear Industry Status Report is that nuclear power is in decline. The 409-page report reveals that nuclear’s share of global electricity production is falling, having generated 3.9 percent less electricity in 2020 than the previous year. “Nuclear energy’s share of global gross electricity generation continues its slow but steady decline from a peak of 17.5% in 1996 [to] a share of 10.1% in 2020,” the report found. The report also reminds readers that “small modular reactors,” under development in the US, Canada and elsewhere, may never be commercially viable. The data indicate that renewable energy sources are fast becoming more available and increasingly cheaper than nuclear. Even China has slowed its reactor expansion and only increased its nuclear electricity capacity by 2 gigawatts (GW) in 2020, compared to a total of 133 GW from renewables. The world nuclear report also highlights the increasing levels of reported corruption in the nuclear industry, with an entire chapter devoted to the topic.

—Deutsche Welle, Sep. 28, 2021; The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2021

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter

December 20, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Ex Reactor Builder Sentenced for Fraud

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022
By Adrian Monty

A former Chairman and CEO of SCANA Corp. in South Carolina, Kevin Marsh, was sentenced to two years in prison for fraud in the construction of two nuclear reactors that never produced a single watt of electricity. Marsh and other officials knowingly covered up various failings during construction of the “Westinghouse AP1000” reactors at the VC Summer site, in order to win rate increases and to $2.2 billion in tax credits. “Due to this fraud,” said acting US attorney M. Rhett DeHart, “an $11 billion nuclear ghost town, paid for by SCANA investors and customers, now sits vacant in Jenkinsville, South Carolina.” Both SCANA and Westinghouse were forced into bankruptcy in 2017, and construction at VC Summer was halted, leaving 5,000 workers unemployed. Marsh has paid $5 million in fines in a plea agreement. This case follows a July 2017 Westinghouse fraud scandal in which Senior VP Jeffrey Benjamin was charged with 16 felonies and could face up to 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine. Three other Westinghouse officials pleaded guilty to charges. In 2020, federal prosecutors accused Ohio’s Republican House Speaker Larry Householder and four associates of funneling $60 million in bribes to themselves in exchange for passing a financial bailout of the state’s decrepet old reactors. Power corrupts of course, but nuclear power means corruption on steroids.

— US Attorney’s Office, District of South Carolina, Press Release, Oct. 7, 2021; Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Aug. 31, 2021; AP, Aug. 2, 2020

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter

December 20, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Germany’s High-Level Waste Dump Plan Scrapped

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022
By Christine Manwiller

On September 17, 2021 Gorleben, the highly controversial nuclear waste dump site in Lower Saxony will close. The former salt mine was chosen by government officials in 1977 to be the final repository for high-level waste. This proposal was permanently discarded by the waste management organization Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung (BGE) with their 2021 report. In it, a total of 90 sites were identified as being geologically acceptable. The Gorleben salt dome was not included in this list.

Geological issues have always caused criticism of the proposed facility. Critics called the site unsuitable, according to Deutsch Welle, “arguing that the salt in the ground could weaken containment structures and cause radioactive leaks.” In addition, a lack of consultation with local residents or municipalities, and the steamroller approach taken by the government inflamed the controversy. Gorle

Police officers blocked anti-nuclear activists from interfering with a shipment of high-level radioactive waste Nov. 11, 2001, as it approached Gorleben, Germany, which was until now the proposed site for deep underground abandonment of the waste. This photo by John LaForge, taken with standard 35-milimeter film, was fogged by exposure to gamma radiation emitted by the passing “Castor” casks. Decades of broad-based opposition ended in September when Germany announced the proposal’s cancellation.

ben became the battleground for tens of thousands of farmers, anti-nuclear activists, scientists, medical workers, and students who organized dozens of protests. In 1979, over 100,000 attended a Berlin protest, making it one of the largest in the history of West Germany. The idea of building a waste reactor fuel reprocessing plant at the Gorleben site was abandoned in 1979 largely because of the intense public outcry. However, plans for the permanent waste repository continued, and shipments of “Castor” waste casks continued to arrive and to be stored above-ground awaiting placement underground.

On May 3, 1980 some 5,000 protesters converged on a test drilling site and built a large resistance camp they named the Free Republic of Wendland. After a month, police moved in and destroyed the encampment, but the movement was energized, and shipments of waste from 1995-2011 were regularly interrupted by demonstrations involving thousands of protesters. The site received a total of 13 shipments. According to one report, the first transport held five Castor casks of “reprocessing” waste fuel elements, and the remaining 12 shipments totaled 108 Castor casks, each holding 28 canisters. The
“vitrified” or glassified waste was shipped back to Gorleben after first being transferred to France for reprocessing. The last shipment of waste in 2011 incited strong public outrage, with protestors again physically blocking vehicles. Twenty-thousand police were required to hold back the protestors.

Cancellation of the Gorleben dump is a significant win for the local community and for organized anti-nuclear activism. Germany’s state secretary for the environment, Jochen Flasbarth said in September 2021, “I hope that the wounds in [the region of] Wendland can heal now that the decades-long dispute over Gorleben is over…. Gorleben stood [as] a major social conflict in Germany for over three decades.”

However, the fight is far from over as the search continues for a permanent reactor waste abandonment facility. Germany is faced with 1,900 Castor casks of the 1-million-year radioactive hazard, which hold about 27,000 cubic meters of waste. According to BGE chairman Stefan Studt, this inventory accounts for “only five percent of Germany’s radioactive waste

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radioactive Waste

December 19, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Proposed US/UK Nuclear-Powered Submarines for Australia Jeopardize Health, and Escalate an Arms Race No One Can Win

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022

A joint statement, excerpted, by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, the Medical Association for Prevention of War Australia, Medact UK, and Physicians for Social Responsibility USA, Sept. 21, 2021.

A total of eight nuclear-powered submarines sank because of accidents at sea between 1963 and 2003. Pictured is the Soviet submarine K-159, which sank on Aug. 30, 2003 during towing to dismantling, leaving nine dead. Photo: Bellona Foundation

Physicians in the countries involved in the proposal announced on September 16 — for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines with UK and US assistance — are concerned this plan will jeopardize global health and security. Under this proposal, Australia would become the seventh country to use nuclear propulsion for its military vessels, and the first state to do so which does not possess nuclear weapons, or nuclear power reactors. These submarines are to be armed with sophisticated long-range missiles including US Tomahawk cruise missiles. These submarines would increase tensions and militarization across Asia and the Pacific region, fuel an arms race, and risk deepening a new cold war involving China.

The wrong decision at the wrong time

Humanity is in the midst of a major pandemic, and facing twin existential threats of dire urgency — global heating and the growing danger of nuclear war….
If ever there was a time to build goodwill and focus on cooperation to complex global problems rather than escalate military confrontation, that time is now. Our [countries] should focus not on escalating a new arms race with China, but on building peaceful cooperation with the government of the world’s most populous to address urgent shared threats.
Instead, this plan will raise tensions, make cooperation more difficult, drive proliferation of ever more destructive weapons, divert vast resources needed to improve health and stabilize our climate, and increase the risks of … armed conflict between the world’s most heavily armed states, risking nuclear escalation in which there can be no winners.

Spreading nuclear bomb fuel

… All UK and US nuclear-powered submarines use HEU [highly-enriched uranium] as fuel, which is directly usable in nuclear weapons…. Indeed their current naval reactor fuel is enriched to 93% and was originally produced for use in nuclear warheads. They have resisted and delayed efforts to convert their naval reactors to much less proliferation-prone, low-enriched uranium fuel, as France and China have done….
Precisely because of the proliferation dangers of naval reactor fuel, the US has previously gone to considerable lengths to thwart the spread of naval reactors, such as in the 1980s blocking Canada from buying nuclear attack submarines from France and the UK….
The quantities of HEU involved are large. As Sebastien Philippe from Princeton University has estimated, a fleet of between 6 and 12 nuclear submarines as proposed, operated for about 30 years, will require between 3 and 6 tons of HEU. The International Atomic Energy Agency stipulates that [55 lbs] of HEU would enable a nuclear weapon, even though US nuclear weapons are known to contain an average of only 12 kg of HEU.
So HEU fuel for the proposed Australian submarines would involve 120 to 240 times the amount of HEU as the IAEA stipulates is sufficient to build a nuclear weapon, and it could be out of international safeguards for decades. Philippe has aptly characterized this as “a terrible decision for the non-proliferation regime.” It discredits all three nations’ claims to support a treaty curbing fissile materials, and would make such a treaty harder to verify. …
This proposal needs careful independent scrutiny and strong new safeguard provisions to ensure Australia fulfills its obligations under both the NPT and the South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty….
The UK announcement in March of a planned 40% increase in its nuclear arsenal [violates] its NPT obligations, as the UN Secretary-General has stated. The UK and US are modernizing their nuclear arsenals, both in [violation] of their 51-year-old legally binding NPT commitment to disarm….

Radioactive risk

Proliferation of submarines … with lifespans of several decades that are fueled by weapons-grade HEU will encourage uranium enrichment, wider use and storage of HEU, and will set back and make more difficult control and elimination of fissile materials.
Nuclear reactors on ships and submarines have been involved in numerous accidents. The risks of accident or attack causing release of radioactive material, combined with the targeting by adversaries of such vessels, including while they are in port, are why many cities around the world sensibly [forbid] visits of such vessels to their harbors….
Australia’s lack of nuclear scientific, engineering, management and regulatory capacity and experience will inevitably mean that more is likely to go wrong building and operating nuclear submarines. If something does go wrong with one of its nuclear submarines, the likelihood of it being quickly and effectively managed is reduced, and the risk of radioactive release in a port city or into the marine or coastal environment is increased….
These contribute substantially to the already widespread radioactive pollution resulting from naval reactors. The most recently reported fatal accident was a fire in a Russian nuclear submarine in 2019, that killed 14 people.
The radioactive waste from reactors poses a difficult and expensive problem: to manage health and environmental hazards for geological time periods. The governments involved in this proposal have been silent about disposal of the high- and intermediate level waste that would be generated. Despite many flawed and failed attempts at interim storage, Australia has no current plan for disposal of the much smaller amount of its … radioactive waste.

A step toward reactors and nuclear weapons?

Already, in the wake of the announced plans, there are mounting calls in Australia, including from some government MPs, for Australia to embrace nuclear power as well. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Australia made active plans and preparations to acquire nuclear weapons. … Twenty nuclear weapons could be built from the amount of HEU fueling the nuclear reactor of each planned submarine.

The way forward

… Rather than escalating a nuclear-propelled new cold war, both the UK and US should make their people and the world truly safer by pursuing a verifiable and binding agreement with other nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. They should welcome and work towards joining the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which provides the only internationally agreed, treaty-codified framework for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Naval nuclear propulsion, especially with HEU, should be phased out.
…Contrary to its support for the treaties prohibiting all other major types of inhumane and indiscriminate weapons and weapons of mass destruction — biological and chemical weapons, landmines, and cluster munitions — Australia opposes the TPNW.
The best way for Australia to provide surety that any nuclear-powered submarines would not be a stepping stone towards acquiring nuclear weapons, nor have any role in the possible use of nuclear weapons, is to join the TPNW. If it continues to refuse to do so, such concerns will remain well justified.
If Australia proceeds to acquire nuclear submarines, it should insist on LEU fuel, implement stringent safeguards, the submarines should be configured so that they cannot carry nuclear weapons, and nothing about their construction or operation should impede Australia joining the TPNW.
— For the full joint statement with signatures, see: https://www.ippnw.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/IPPNW-statement-Nuclear-Subs-letterhead-21.9.21.pdf.
— International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, was awarded the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2007, MAPW and IPPNW launched the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter

December 19, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

“Temporary” Storage Sites for High-Level Radioactive Waste from US Reactors Face Challenges

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2021-2022
By Leona Morgan

The New Year will begin with one proposed “temporary” storage facility for high-level radioactive waste being fully-licensed, and another not far behind. The two “Consolidated Interim Storage” (CIS) sites are about 40 miles apart in the Desert Southwest: 1) the 40,000 metric ton Interim Storage Partners or ISP facility (also known as Waste Control Specialists or WCS) in Texas; and 2) Holtec Inc.’s 173,600 metric ton site — the world’s largest — in New Mexico.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved ISP’s license application in September 2021. Don Hancock, Director of the Southwest Research and Information Center, expects that NRC will issue a license to Holtec in 2022. Hancock is convinced “that the NRC will issue these two licenses,” but, he explains, there are additional obstacles to be overcome, such as economic, political, and legal challenges. Therefore “the license approval is not the final decision.”
Both CIS license applications have been challenged in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals by regional groups, national environmental organizations, and one oil and gas company. In addition, the State of Texas is challenging ISP and opposes Holtec, while the State of New Mexico is fighting both Holtec and ISP.
Terry Lodge, an attorney representing community intervenors in both cases, estimates that oral arguments for ISP may be scheduled for late Summer 2022, with a final decision in early 2023. The case against Holtec has no hearings scheduled, but may move ahead if NRC issues the license.
CIS is a national issue, since opening a site would launch thousands of cross-country shipments of the deadly waste, so 2022 must be a year of anti-CIS action.
— Leona Morgan works with the Nuclear Issues Study Group in New Mexico.

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radioactive Waste

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