Nuclear Power – Page 65

April 19, 2018 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Explosive and Linguistic Events with Radioactive Waste

This week’s explosive news from the “more bang for the buck” folks is that up to three barrels of unspecified “radioactive material” either ruptured or burst or exploded at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL), near Idaho Falls, on April 11. “An exothermal event” is how Energy Department (DOE) spokesperson Danielle Miller described the prompt deconstruction of the rad waste drum(s).

“Exothermal” is a nice distraction that means “a chemical reaction accompanied by the release of heat.” The usage reminds me of the May 1996 “gaseous ignition event” involving hydrogen gas in a fully loaded high-level rad waste cask at Wisconsin’s Point Beach reactor site. The cask contained 14 tons of highly radioactive used reactor fuel, and the eruption of Public Relations inventiveness popped the container’s 4,000-pound lid right off.

The Idaho Lab accident was reported by ABC News, Associated Press, the Seattle Times, the Japan Times, and Fox Radio News among others.* PR people at INL have said three 55-gallon drums holding “transuranic” (heavier-than-uranium) radioactive sludge may have “ruptured.”

One theory about the cause, according to the AP, is that “radioactive decay made the barrel[s] heat up and ignite particles of uranium.” Unfortunately for those who put out the smoldering barrels, “When the firefighters left the building emergency workers detected a small amount of radioactive material on their skin,” the AP reported April 12.

The very next sentence in this story was that the DOE’s Miller said, “None of the radioactive material was detected outside of the building where the rupture occurred” — except for the contaminated firefighters who somehow don’t count.

Because of decades of “secretive record-keeping” it is hard to find out exactly what is in the burst barrels and got on the firefighters. INL officials do not “know the exact contents,” Joint Information Center spokesman Don Miley reportedly said.

Nuclear waste explosions are us

The ruptured Idaho Lab barrels reportedly contain a mixture of fluids and solvents sent from the long-shuttered Rocky Flats plutonium weapons production site near Denver, the AP reported April 13. The name Rocky Flats should have rung a bell for INL’s “they haven’t run into this” Don Miley.

Plutonium bomb fabrication at Rocky Flats caused the second largest industrial fire in US history, Sept. 11, 1957. The blaze howled for over 13 hours, consuming two tons of plutonium and destroying all 620 industrial filters designed to trap particles. Between 30 and 44 pounds of respirable plutonium-239 and plutonium-240 escaped through chimneystacks, drifting downwind to Denver. When smokestack monitors were reconnected, radioactive measurements were 16,000 times greater than “allowable” standards. No emergency response was taken to protect the people of Denver.

Exploding rad waste has been around a long time and has a sordid history. In September 1957 at Kyshtym in Russia, a tank holding 70 million metric tons of highly radioactive waste exploded and produced a massive plume that contaminated 250,000 people across 410 square miles. This risk always comes with high-level rad waste. It helped cancel the plan to use Yucca Mountain, Nevada for abandonment of commercial nuclear power waste, because physicists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory reported in 1995 that the material could erupt in a catastrophic explosion. In December 1993, DOE assistant secretary Thomas Grumbly told the New York Times that high-level rad waste in tanks at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Hanford Site in Washington State, and at Idaho Lab could also “fly apart” if it fuel fell to the bottom of storage pools and caused a “critical mass” to accumulate.

At Hanford, hydrogen gas that builds up inside large tanks of high-level liquid rad waste could “possibly cause an explosion that would release radioactive material,” the AP reported in June 2013. In 1990, Ronald Gerton, then a director of waste management there said, “A spark could really set it off,” referring to 22 tanks that generate enough hydrogen gas to cause and explosion “powerful enough to blow them open,” the Milwaukee Journal reported. The Environmental Policy Institute had warned of this risk in September 1987, reporting that the probability of such an explosion may be as high as one-in-50.

Back at the Idaho Lab, spokesman Don Miley said, “They haven’t run into anything like this actually happening” but he has a short memory. It happened four years ago, on Valentine’s Day 2014, at the DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico. A barrel of plutonium waste exploded underground, contaminating the entire facility, including the elevator and ventilator shafts, and internally poisoned 22 workers who inhaled the plutonium-laced dust.

More recently, on October 18, 2015, a fire and explosions spurred by rainfall hurled 11 buried barrels of radioactive chemical waste from a trench into the air and spewed debris like a geyser 60 feet high, at a “US Ecology” site near Beatty, Nevada. This shocking fire in one of 22 shallow trenches of radioactive waste couldn’t be put out with water hoses because water started it in the first place. Authorities had to close US Highway 95, cancel school, and await more explosions while they let the fire burned itself out. US Ecology had its records seized by Nevada’s Radiation Control Program, which has never disclosed what sorts of radioactive materials were burned in exploded Trench 14 — although dump site is known to hold a total of 47 pounds of plutonium and uranium isotopes.

In the Idaho Lab accident, the first responders “got some radioactive contamination on their skin, but emergency workers washed it away,” the DOE’s Danielle Miller told reporters. And, she added, “The firefighters did not inhale any of the radioactive material.” Miller can’t possibly know this, but it could be true, someday, when our noses and mouths aren’t attached to our skin.

*Sources:

Keith Ridler, Associated Press, “Radioactive sludge barrel ruptures at eastern Idaho nuclear facility” (AP), April 13, 2018; and Keith Ridler, “Radioactive sludge barrel ruptures at Idaho nuclear site,” Seattle Times (AP), April 12, 2018;

Japan Times (AP), “Sludge barrel ruptures at Idaho nuclear site; no injuries or public risk reported,” April 13, 2018;

ABC News, “Radioactive material washed off 3 firefighters,” (AP) April 12, 2018;

Associated Press, “More Barrel Ruptures Possible at Idaho Nuke Site,” April 12, 2018;

FOX news radio (AP), “Incident Reported At Idaho Nuclear Site, Crews Responding,” April 12, 2018;

Danielle Miller, DOE Idaho Communications announcement, April 12, 2018, which noted, “Later, there were indications that a third drum may have been involved.”

— John LaForge

April 13, 2018 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nuclear Keeps Polluting Long After Shutdown

By John LaForge

Last month, the La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor, on the banks of the Mississippi River in Wisconsin, was found to be leaking radioactive tritium (the radioactive form of hydrogen) into the groundwater.

Again, clean, safe, cheap nuclear power comes to the aid of a hungry nation.

The La Crosse Tribune reported on March 14 that the company LaCrosseSolutions (a subsidiary of Utah-based EnergySolutions) reported a reading of 24,200 “picocurie”-per-liter in water taken from a monitoring well on Feb. 1. The US Environmental Protection Agency allows up to 20,000 picocuries-per-liter tritium in drinking water.

The EPA estimates that seven of 200,000 people who drink such water would develop cancer. So the nuclear industry has somehow earned a government license to kill, if you will. But, hey, 24,200 picocuries per-liter isn’t that much over the allowable cancer rate.

LaCrosseSolutions is working an $85 million contract to “decommission” the La Crosse reactor. The small water boiler was shut down in 1987, 31 years ago, but damn if it isn’t still trashing the environment. You gotta hand it to the long reach of the nuclear industry: It keeps on poisoning even three decades after going of business.

The Dairyland Power Coop isn’t alone in its despoiling of the Earth. (The coop ran the reactor from 1967 to ’87, and then transferred its license to LaCrosseSolutions in 2016.) In June 2011, Jeff Donn’s four-part, year-long investigation for the Associated Press reported that tritium leaks were found at 48 of 75 US reactor sites, three-quarters of the country’s commercial reactor operations, “often from corroded, buried piping.”

La Crosse’s reactor-borne tritium in the groundwater is a danger to everyone drinking it, but the Tribune news report noted, “[T]he monitoring well was just 25 feet below the surface and not used for human consumption.” This should come as a great relief to anyone in the area using well water that’s not been tested.

Operating reactors also spew tritium from stacks in the form of tritiated water vapor. This can produce radioactive rainfall “which can contaminate surface water bodies as well as groundwater,” according to Annie and Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. But since the La Crosse reactor has ceased operations, its legacy is poisoned ground, contaminated and corroded pipes, and leaked tritium in the ground.

LaCrosseSolutions’ Dirty “Clean” Up

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced on March 26, 2018 that in February 2017 LaCrosseSolutions had spilled 400 gallons of radioactively contaminated water directly into the Mississippi River. The NRC announcement also noted that there was a risk to public health from the spill, although the way the La Crosse Tribune reported it was: “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says there was little risk to public health.”

The NRC determined that the spill of waste water containing the deadly isotope cesium-137 was a violation of federal regulations, one of three low-level violations identified in its annual inspection of decommissioning being done by LaCrosseSolutions.

An analysis found cesium-137 in water samples at concentrations that exceed the federal limits, the La Crosse Tribune reported. The NRC did not issue a citation but found LaCrosseSolutions had violated NRC policy.

The Tribune’s reporter Chris Hubbuch called up Professor Jeff Bryan who teaches chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse. Prof. Bryan said, “Potential exposure to ionizing radiation [from drinking contaminated water] was very low, about 1/100^th the exposure for an hour on a commercial flight.”

This “apples and tires” comparison is not just useless, it deliberately misinforms readers who might think voluntary external exposure to cosmic radiation inside planes is no different from internal, involuntary radiation exposure from drinking water contaminated with cesium-137.

I wrote to the good professor and asked him if people on commercial flights are exposed to cesium-137. He didn’t reply. (They are not.) I asked if there is any internal cesium exposure on a commercial flight. Again, no answer. (There is none.)

Prof. Bryan told the newspaper what he thought about LaCrosseSolutions’ cesium spill into the Mississippi: “This was a really dumb accident. Stupid, but not hazardous.”

The National Academy of Sciences does not agree with Prof. Bryan. The NAS’s most recent report on the subject (known as BEIR VII) concluded that every exposure to radiation produces a corresponding cancer risk. There is no such thing, Professor Bryan, as radioactive pollution that is not hazardous.

April 2, 2018 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Dismantling the Nuclear Beast in New Mexico

By Leona Morgan

Spring Quarterly 2018

The Albuquerque-based Nuclear Issues Study Group (NISG), formed in June 2016 “To Protect New Mexico from All Things Nuclear.” NISG came together in response to the lack of young organizers, young activists, and people of color at the forefront of nuclear issues affecting New Mexico. We live in a state that is targeted by the nuclear/industrial complex and we see this as environmental racism. We are primarily concerned about new threats of uranium mining, weapons modernization, and nuclear waste dumping, while many long-standing issues remain unaddressed. We emphasize the need for a new way to reach out to young people, with a focus on recruiting a new generation of New Mexicans to get involved in resisting every level of the deadly nuclear fuel chain.

The co-founders, Eileen Shaughnessy and I, wanted to bring the perspectives of a more diverse and younger population to the decision-making table of national organizing against nuclear proliferation. Eileen started a class within the Sustainability Studies Program at the University of New Mexico (UNM) called “Nuclear New Mexico”—now in its 7th semester. The class gives students an honest history of nuclear colonialism in our state, as well as a pathway into activism. I have more than a decade of experience organizing against uranium mining on indigenous lands. Between the two of us, we’ve been able to tap into a wide network of resources and support to start NISG.

The symposium explored every aspect of the nuclear fuel chain—past, current, and future—as well as highlight some key threats to New Mexico that Nuclear Issues Study Group is focusing on including: Sandia National Laboratories’ Mixed Waste Landfill and the proposed Centralized “Interim” Storage of high-level radioactive waste.

In December 2017, we held our first major event, an educational gathering called “Dismantling the Nuclear Beast: Connecting Local Work to the National Movement.” The symposium featured over 60 organizers, artists, and student presenters, and welcomed more than 200 attendees from across the country. We heard directly from indigenous leaders, organizers, and community members impacted by various stages of the nuclear fuel chain, from uranium mining and milling, to bomb building at Los Alamos and Sandia National labs. Down-winders of the Trinity bomb blast in 1945, and students from Ukraine and Japan—places devastated by nuclear disasters—presented as well. We also had guests from the East Coast and the Deep South who are confronting nuclear reactor and radioactive waste issues. (Videos available on YouTube.com.)

Since then, we have been steadily focused on resisting the proposed Centralized “Interim” Storage, aka “CIS” of high-level radioactive waste in the area. NISG proudly participated in the 2018 New Mexico Legislative Session, helping to educate legislators about the threat of CIS and asking them to intervene on the issue. Currently, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is processing an application from Holtec International to build a CIS facility between Carlsbad and Hobbs, a “temporary” dump that would hold all of the nation’s waste uranium fuel from commercial nuclear reactors for up to 120 years. In a collaborative effort, NISG worked with UNM students, New Mexico activists and organizers, the SEED Coalition from Texas, and legislators on a letter urging the NRC to slow down the licensing process and allow more time to thoroughly study how this facility and waste transport could impact New Mexico. In total, 21 representatives and nine senators signed on to this letter! Along with local community members, we will present the letter and our concerns at this spring’s public hearings to show how, collectively, we believe that nationwide waste transports and dumping on New Mexico are injustices that must be addressed on local, state, and national levels. We will continue to work toward stopping additional radioactive waste from being created in our state, as well as keeping it from being transported and dumped here.

—Leona Morgan works with the Nuclear Issues Study Group in New Mexico.

April 2, 2018 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Fukushima’s Triple Meltdowns, Seven Years On*

By John LaForge

Spring Quarterly 2018

March 11 marks the seventh anniversary of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and tsunami that killed over 18,000 people. The quake destroyed the foundations and pipes of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear reactor complex, and caused a tsunami that crashed the site’s emergency back-up generators resulting in a “station blackout” and the world’s only simultaneous triple reactor meltdown. The consequent mass radiation releases, mass evacuations and mass contamination of the Pacific Ocean are unprecedented. Only the 1986 Chernobyl disaster compares to Fukushima, although its radiation was dispersed largely to the atmosphere rather than the sea.

One of the first books on the subject was Takashi Hirose’s Fukushima Meltdown: The World’s First Earthquake-Tsunami-Nuclear Disaster. This passage from the introduction is a reminder of the avoidable risks of operating nuclear reactors in earthquake zones:

“…the fact that there is no way of putting an end to earthquakes and tsunamis is … something that we must accept….

“However, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Disaster is neither a natural disaster nor ordained by fate. It is a human-made disaster brought about by bad faith. Unlike natural disasters, which are beyond human understanding, this was easily predictable and preventable. The officials of Tokyo Electric Power Co. [Tepco] say things like, ‘We could not imagine that a once-in-a-thousand-years earthquake might come,’ and ‘The tsunami was beyond our expectation,’ but these are only obfuscations. A major earthquake accompanied by a nuclear power plant accident was—as I will show in detail—something very much within the realm of possibility, a possibility these officials arrogantly refused to consider.

“If I, neither a scholar nor a specialist, was able to foresee this, and the nuclear power specialists from Tepco and from the government’s nuclear-related agencies were not, then for what do they exist?”

Minister Opposes Ocean Dumping Contaminated Water in Pacific

Japan’s disaster reconstruction minister announced at a press conference last July 15 that he opposes dumping contaminated cooling water from the disaster-struck Fukushima Daiichi site into the sea, citing protests by local fishermen. While the minister has no control over how the waste water will be disposed, his comments came after several experts endorsed the ocean dumping.

About 770,000 tons of waste water has been collected in over 900 densely crowded tanks on site, and the amount grows by 150 tons a day. With limited acreage Tepco officials have said it can keep adding tanks only until 2020, and the tank farm is vulnerable to earthquakes that could spill the waste.

The water becomes highly radioactive when it is poured over wreckage inside the three reactors in order to cool the three masses of “corium”—the hot uranium fuel and its cladding melted into a giant mass that has partially burned through the foundations. Most of the water is then treated in an experimental process that removes many radioactive materials but not the tritium, the radioactive form of hydrogen.

Reconstruction minister Masayoshi Yoshino spoke shortly after Takashi Kawamura, chairman of Tepco Inc., which owns the reactors and caused the catastrophe, said in an interview that the decision to dump the contaminated water “has already been made.”

Kawamura’s remarks were widely condemned and a Tepco spokesperson made a retraction saying, “The chairman meant to say that the decision to release is not yet final.” Minister Yoshino also asked dumping advocates “not to drive (fishermen) further towards the edge,” alluding to concern among local fishermen about the effects on their livelihood if the fish and other marine products they catch were to be contaminated.

Misinformation About Tritium**

Reporting about the millions of gallons of radioactive waste water accumulating at the Fukushima site, major media have called tritium harmless. Kyodo News Service said last July: “Tritium is a radioactive substance considered relatively harmless to humans.” The London Independent said last November, “Treatment has removed all the radioactive elements except tritium, which they say is safe in small amounts.” The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) notes that these assertions directly contradict the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Fact Sheet on tritium. That fact sheet says tritium is one of the “least dangerous radionuclides” but reminds readers that “As with all ionizing radiation, exposure to tritium increases the risk of developing cancer.” IEER notes, “The established science is that there is no threshold for cancer risk of radiation and therefore no level of exposure is ‘safe.’”

High Radiation Levels Found Outside Reactors

Tepco still knows so little about the state of the deadly melted fuel inside the three reactors that the most the company could say in January about its latest remote-controlled probe inside Unit 2 was, “the radiation reading [8 Sieverts] was taken near what appeared to be fuel debris.” (emphasis added). The harsh radiation environment inside the wrecked reactors is so novel and deadly that robotic probes and containment equipment haven’t yet been devised and have to be invented whole cloth. Seven years in, Tepco hasn’t yet positively located the melted fuel debris inside all three reactors.

What surprised the January inspectors was a reading of 42 Sieverts per/hour “outside the foundations of the reactor.” Mycle Schneider, an energy consultant and lead author of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report, told the Independent, the company “hasn’t a clue what it is doing,” in decontaminating and securing the complex.

Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said that the high radiation reading from outside the foundations is “more of a concern as the cause is at present unclear.” Schneider said more directly, “I find it symptomatic of the past seven years, in that they don’t know what they’re doing.”

* For a detailed review of the ongoing Fukushima catastrophe, see “Key figures for the seventh anniversary,” published Feb. 17 by the group ACROnique Fukushima. The group offers daily monitoring of events related to the current radiation disaster in Japan, and more.

** For an excellent analysis of the dangers of exposure to tritium, see author Dahr Jamail’s Aug. 2017 report “Fukushima Plant Is Releasing 770,000 Tons of Radioactive Water Into the Pacific Ocean.”

Explosive and Linguistic Events with Radioactive Waste

Nuclear Keeps Polluting Long After Shutdown

By John LaForge

LaCrosseSolutions’ Dirty “Clean” Up

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By John LaForge

LaCrosseSolutions’ Dirty “Clean” Up

By Leona Morgan

Spring Quarterly 2018

By John LaForge

Spring Quarterly 2018

Minister Opposes Ocean Dumping Contaminated Water in Pacific

Misinformation About Tritium**

High Radiation Levels Found Outside Reactors

Nuclear Shorts

Spring Quarterly 2018

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