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May 2, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Earthquakes and Train Wrecks and Radioactive Waste, Oh My!

Original cartoon for Nukewatch by Mark Taylor

By Kelly Lundeen and Leona Morgan

If you check the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) interactive map you can pinpoint all the earthquakes that have happened in the past day on the entire Earth. Most people believe earthquakes happen along fault lines related to uncontrollable shifts in tectonic plates. Nowadays, modern oil and gas production alters that simplistic view when wastewater is injected back into the ground inducing human-made earthquakes.

On November 16, 2022, the largest earthquake ever to hit the Permian Basin in west Texas and southeastern New Mexico, with a magnitude of 5.4, shook an area over 300 miles in diameter. Forbes reported November 25 that the frequency of earthquakes in the area has risen exponentially since the recent boom in oil and gas production. Until 2016, there were fewer than 10 quakes of magnitude 3.0 and less per year. In shocking contrast, during 2022 there were a projected 185 quakes of the same strength. If you visit the USGS website daily you are more likely than not to find an earthquake in the Permian Basin within the past 24 hours.

What does this have to do with radioactive waste? The consolidated interim storage (CIS) site for radioactive waste from commercial nuclear energy production proposed by Holtec International is only 60 miles from the November 16 quake. Also within the Permian Basin is a second CIS proposed by Interim Storage Partners (ISP), approximately 40 miles east of the Holtec site and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) for nuclear weapons waste, 14 miles south of the Holtec site.

Seismic activity or not, a recent statewide poll commissioned by the Center for Civic Policy of 1,015 New Mexican voters shows they overwhelmingly oppose the storage of the waste in their state, even temporarily, with 60 percent opposing, 30 percent in favor, and 10 percent undecided on the project. The poll points out the projected accident rate for rail transportation from the Final Environmental Impact Statement: 13 accidents over a 20-year period.

The recent train derailments in Ohio bring to mind the harrowing risks to communities along waste transportation routes running from nuclear reactor sites to the Southwest.

Don Gallegos, New Mexico Transportation Division State Legislative Director for the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers, states, “Safety on the railroads is neither negotiable or certain. The 2023 accident in East Palestine, Ohio is a failure in automation and precision scheduled railroading.”

The two largest counties in New Mexico, Bernalillo and Doña Ana, have passed resolutions opposing the proposed CIS and transport, joining a list of Indigenous Nations, municipalities, and counties in New Mexico and Texas. The governor of New Mexico has agreed to sign legislation requiring state consent for a radioactive waste storage facility if it were to arrive at her desk, as was done in Texas.

That is exactly the intention of New Mexico Senate Bill 53. At the time of publishing, the New Mexico Legislature had less than 10 days to pass this legislation which was already approved by the New Mexico State Senate and the House Government, Elections and Indian Affairs Committee. SB53 must pass the House Judiciary Committee and House Floor before it lands on the Governor’s desk.

Meanwhile, the Department of Energy (DOE) continues to promote a paid “consent-based siting” process. DOE has offered $26 million to 16 communities nationwide willing to consider hosting the waste. DOE will announce the awardees in summer 2023.

The Holtec proposal in New Mexico is expected to receive the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s rubber stamp for its license in March, while the ISP project was approved in 2021. Despite this green light, legal challenges and potential state laws may prevent these CIS sites from operating.

— U.S. Geological Survey, Mar. 8; Beyond Nuclear, Jan. 26; New Mexico SB53; Demand Nuclear Abolition press release, Jan. 10, 2023

— Leona Morgan (she/her) is a Diné activist and community organizer fighting nuclear colonialism, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

May 2, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Canadians Demand Ban on Plutonium Reprocessing

By Brennain Lloyd

In 2020, the Canadian federal government committed to review its radioactive waste policy, nine months after an international investigation concluded the policy was inadequate. Hundreds of Canadians and civil society organizations participated in a series of roundtable discussions convened by Nuclear Waste Watch with Natural Resources Canada – the federal department leading the review. Thousands submitted comments in letters, briefs, online, or by email.

The messages focused on the need for an independent agency, at arms-length from the government and industry, to oversee radioactive waste management and decommissioning. The comments asserted policy should direct perpetual care and monitoring of radioactive wastes rather than abandonment, such as in a deep geological repository (DGR). The public called on government to be more transparent in managing and transporting radioactive waste, and to give Indigenous peoples and other Canadians a right to access information, to engage in decision making, and to know the risks associated with radioactive waste. Quite explicitly, thousands of Canadians called for a policy that would prohibit the extraction of plutonium from radioactive fuel waste by reprocessing, including by “pyro-processing,” citing environmental, security, and proliferation issues.

In February 2022, Natural Resources Canada released a draft of their radioactive waste policy, which was disappointing in its superficiality and its failure to protect people and the environment. The draft policy did not establish independent oversight for the nuclear industry and nuclear operations or direct a national standard for the characterization of radioactive waste and maintenance of a verified inventory. It placed the nuclear industry in charge of waste management and identified no role for the federal government, Indigenous peoples, or civil society in developing and implementing an “integrated strategy” for radioactive waste. The draft policy also failed to prohibit reprocessing radioactive wastes, saying only that “deployment of reprocessing technology … is subject to policy approval by the Government of Canada” refusing to illuminate what that “policy” might be.

The matter of reprocessing and the need for a formal policy banning the extraction of plutonium has become more urgent in the two and a half years since the federal policy review was launched. The federal government has endorsed and even funded the development of a new generation of reactors, at least one of which would employ reprocessing of radioactive fuel waste from a Canada Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) pressurized heavy-water reactor.

Canada has had an informal ban on reprocessing since the 1970s, following India’s testing of its first nuclear weapon – made using plutonium from a “peaceful” nuclear reactor, a gift from Canada. However, the informal ban was breached in 2021 when the federal government granted $50.5 million to a New Brunswick company, Moltex Energy, to develop its technology to reprocess fuel waste from existing CANDU reactors with the intent of exporting the technology.

The government also granted more than $1.2 billion to Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) to expand their nuclear research center at Chalk River to include a laboratory for research on plutonium reprocessing. This was despite a 2016 CNL report that found no business case for reprocessing CANDU waste, in part “due to its low fissile content,” and the associated costs and risks. The CNL report also stated that reprocessing would “increase proliferation risk.”

In mid-December, a national alliance of civil society organizations launched a sixteen-week campaign to formally demand that Canada include a ban on plutonium reprocessing in its radioactive waste policy. The groups cite proliferation risk and environmental contamination as major concerns, but communities fighting proposals for DGRs for the burial of high-level nuclear waste have also raised the concern that centralizing all of Canada’s high level waste may be a stepping stone for the nuclear industry to then add a reprocessing facility to the operation.

PhotoCredit:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hl0Fu9w6r4

The campaign also links reprocessing risks to the current push by industry and support by government for so-called ‘small modular reactors.’ Every two weeks the campaign releases a new short video, theme message, and a call for action in the form of letter writing, visits and calls to members of parliament, and other public actions. To learn more about the current campaign visit reprocessing.ca or go to www.nuclearwastewatch.ca to read about the radioactive waste policy review.

— Brennain Lloyd is a public interest researcher, writer, and community organizer in northeastern Ontario, working with Northwatch, a regional coalition of environmental and social justice organizations, since the 1980s.

May 2, 2023 by Nukewatch 1 Comment

Twelve Years Later Fukushima

State of Nuclear Emergency Still in Effect, Deaths and Health Damages Unaccounted for, Pacific Wastewater Dumping Planned

By Mari Inoue

15,000 Fukushima residents sought criminal prosecution of TEPCO execs responsible for the nuclear disaster, but their acquittal was upheld January 2023. Signs read “All Acquitted” and “Wrongful Decision.”

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster
Twelve years have passed since the beginning of the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi triple nuclear reactor disaster. It started on March 11, 2011, after the Great East Japan Earthquake hit the area, damaging the electric supply to the reactors’ cooling systems. Subsequent 14-meter-high tsunamis swept over the facility’s 10-meter-high seawall, destroying the emergency generators, and causing a ‘station blackout.’ Consequently, the facility lost its ability to cool the reactors’ cores in Units 1, 2, and 3.

Declaration of Nuclear Emergency
A state of nuclear emergency was declared the evening of March 11. The Prime Minister’s office initially announced that no radiation was leaking from the facility and that residents should stay home and not evacuate. After losing ability to cool the three nuclear reactors’ cores, a triple nuclear meltdown occurred. There were hydrogen explosions at reactors. A large amount of radioactivity began being released into the environment. More than 160,000 Fukushima residents were forced to evacuate from their hometowns.

Evacuation Zones
Due to radioactive releases from the three crippled reactors, the Japanese government expanded the evacuation zone to about a 12.5-mile radius. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC) and State Department recommended U.S. citizens in Japan to evacuate within a 50 mile radius of Fukushima Daiichi.

Twenty mSv-per-year Standard
Japan’s evacuation zones were established based on an external radiation exposure level of 20mSv (a millisievert is a measure of health risk from ionizing radiation) per year. This is a threshold 20 times higher than both Japan’s pre-Fukushima disaster national standard for the public and the international standard (set by the International Commission on Radiological Protection). Japan continues to ignore international radiation protection principles.

Poor Regulation and Collusion
In July 2012, the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission chartered by the Diet, Japan’s Parliament, concluded that the nuclear disaster was a human-made disaster caused by poor regulation and collusion between the government, the reactor’s owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), and Japan’s nuclear regulator. The Commission accused TEPCO and regulators at the nuclear industrial safety agency of failing to take adequate safety measures, despite authoritative evidence and warnings from eminent seismologists that the area was susceptible to powerful earthquakes and tsunamis.

Twelve Years Later
The state of nuclear emergency is still in effect. Tens of thousands of Fukushima residents are still displaced. The government lifted evacuation orders for many districts in Fukushima and terminated housing assistance and other benefits for evacuees. As of December 2022, 338 Fukushima children (who were 18 or younger in 2011) were diagnosed with thyroid cancer. This is alarming, because pediatric thyroid cancer cases in Japan were only 1 or 2 per million before the disaster.

Disaster-related Deaths
As of June 2022, the official number of the so-called “disaster-related deaths” in Fukushima Prefecture had reached 2,333. These deaths refer to those who died due to the aggravation of injuries caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake or due to the physical burden of evacuation life. This figure is much higher than those of Miyagi Prefecture (930 deaths) and Iwate Prefecture (470 deaths), which were also heavily impacted by the earthquake and tsunamis.

Criminal Case Against TEPCO Executives
In 2012, a group of nearly 15,000 Fukushima residents sought criminal prosecution of those responsible for the nuclear disaster. Accordingly, three former TEPCO executives, including the chairman and VPs, were indicted in 2016. In September 2019, the Tokyo District Court concluded that there was insufficient evidence to convict them. The case was appealed. In January 2023, the Tokyo High Court upheld acquittal of those executives, finding them not guilty of professional negligence resulting in deaths and injuries on the grounds that they could not have predicted the tsunami that damaged the nuclear reactor.

Civil Suit Victory Against TEPCO Executives
A civil case was filed in Tokyo in 2012 by TEPCO shareholders since the disaster caused a huge financial loss to the company. In July 2022, the Tokyo District Court ordered the above three former executives and former President of TEPCO to pay 13 trillion yen ($95 billion) in damages to compensate shareholders, but not the victims. This ruling marks the first time a court has found former executives responsible for the nuclear disaster.

Image designed by Tony Sahara of Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World.

Million Metric Tons into the Pacific
On April 13, 2021, the Japanese government announced that it will start discharging more than 1.3 million metric tons of radioactive “treated” wastewater from Fukushima Daiichi into the Pacific starting in Spring of 2023. The dumping will continue for three decades or more. The “treated” water contains radioactive isotopes due to being used to cool the highly radioactive melted cores of the three nuclear reactors. Tritium and carbon-14 cannot be filtered out at all. [Editor’s Note: TEPCO acknowledged over 75% of the wastewater was not successfully filtered and still contained over 60 hazardous radioactive materials including strontium-90, cesium-137, and cobalt-60.]

Independent human rights experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council have expressed deep regret at Japan’s decision. Fukushima residents, fisheries associations, most of Fukushima’s districts, and many anti-nuclear groups in and outside Japan expressed their opposition to the plan. Henry Puna, Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum calls for Japan to hold off on any such release.

Global Action to Oppose Dumping Plan
Groups are holding a global action to halt Japan’s outrageous plan to dump radioactive water into the Pacific. Check mp-nuclear-free.com to join.

— Pacific Islands Forum, Feb. 6, 2023; “338 Children with Thyroid Cancer – Fukushima Health Survey,” Our Planet, Dec. 2; Reuters, Jul. 13, 2022; Reconstruction Agency of Japan, June 2022

— Mari Inoue is a lawyer and activist based in New York City, born and raised in Tokyo, and co-founder of Manhattan Project for a Nuclear-Free World (mp-nuclear-free.com).

May 2, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Japan to Delay Ocean Dumping of Contaminated Wastewater from Fukushima

By John LaForge

PhotoCredit:https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/04/contaminated-water-from-fukushima-nuclear-plant-to-be-released-into-the-ocean/.

Japan announced in January that the government would delay plans to pump over 1.37 million metric tons of watery radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean from the devastated six-reactor complex at Fukushima Daiichi. With the country facing harsh international pressure to cancel the dumping, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno acknowledged “the need to gain public support” for the plan, the Associated Press reported January 12. Public hostility toward the plan increased February 22, when the government approved TEPCO’s proposed reduction in wastewater monitoring; it okayed cutting the number of isotopes in released water that it will monitor from 64 to 30.

Fierce criticism of the scheme has come from China, South Korea, other Pacific Rim countries, scientists, environmental groups, UN human rights experts, and the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), an alliance of 17 Pacific island nations. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also said the government wants to postpone the dumping – by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) – until it is “verifiably safe to do so,” Thomas Heaton reported February 16 to Hawaii’s Civil Beat news outlet.

Anti-dumping pressure by the PIF, independent countries from whose waters up to half of the world’s tuna is sourced, was crucial in forcing Japan’s apparent retreat. The PIF has warned that contaminating the water could harm the fishing that island economies depend on. Mari Yamaguchi reported for the AP January 12: “Some scientists say the impact of long-term, low-dose exposure to tritium and other radionuclides on the environment and humans is still unknown and the release plan should be delayed. They say tritium affects humans more when it is consumed in fish.” A scientific expert panel has urged reconsideration of the dumping “because it was not supported by data and more information was needed,” Ken Buesseler, with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told the PIF January 18.

Japan announced in April 2021 that it would allow TEPCO to pump the collected wastewater into the Pacific. TEPCO has said the process will take 30 to 40 years using an underground and undersea tunnel now under construction. Media attention has focused on the radioactive tritium in the waste, which cannot be removed by filtering, and has ignored long-lived carbon-14 which likewise cannot be removed.

Mostly unreported has also been the collapse of TEPCO’s filter system which was supposed to separate dozens of long-lived radioactive elements from the cooling water, including ruthenium, cobalt, strontium, cesium, and even plutonium, but has not done so. Dr. Buesseler told Science magazine in 2020, “Many other isotopes are in those tanks still, and over 70 percent would have to be cleaned up further before they might even consider releasing….”

The water becomes contaminated (150 tons every day) after being poured over hundreds of tons of melted, radioactive uranium fuel – and plutonium in Reactor 3 – deadly hot wreckage amassed deep inside the foundations of the three destroyed nuclear reactors. Reactor 3 suffered a huge hydrogen explosion on March 14, 2011, and it was packed with “mixed oxide” fuel made of uranium and plutonium. Hydrogen explosions also caused severe damage to Reactors 1 and 2, and to the waste fuel pool of Reactor 4.

— Used by Counterpunch, March 3, 2023, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/03/03/japan-to-delay-ocean-dumping-of-contaminated-waste-water-from-fukushima/

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By Kelly Lundeen and Leona Morgan

By Brennain Lloyd

State of Nuclear Emergency Still in Effect, Deaths and Health Damages Unaccounted for, Pacific Wastewater Dumping Planned

By Mari Inoue

By John LaForge

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