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January 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Radioactive Waste Truck Burns In Ohio

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2013-2014

A truck started on fire on Aug. 22, on Interstate-75 near Troy, Ohio. The cargo consisted of 12,000 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride, a radioactive heavy metal that turns into hydrogen fluoride (UF6) — an extremely corrosive and caustic gas — if it comes into contact with water or water vapor. In spite of the hazards posed by the radioactive cargo, the trucking company, RSB Logistic, of Saskatoon, was more worried about media exposure than radiation. The UF6 was in route from Cameco in Port Hope, Ontario, to Kentucky. In spite of the potential for wide-spread contamination, no rules exist in the US or in Canada mandating that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission or the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission be informed of the incident. 

Brian Hanson of Alberta, Canada, was driving the truck when the brakes ignited. Hanson doused the fire using an extinguisher but didn’t get it completely extinguished. He drove for two miles with reignited flames shooting out of the truck before exiting the highway. At that point, with half the truck on fire, Hanson disconnected the cab from the trailer knowing that the UF6 is heat activated. The fire burned the hair off of Hanson’s arms as he uncoupled the rig. An Ohio Traffic Crash Report said the right side tires, fenders, mud flaps, air hoses, sleeper compartment and passenger side of the cab were destroyed by the fire. 

Hanson is quoted in the Toronto Star saying, “We’re so programmed and told about the danger of a load, and the media danger. We’re basically taught that the media’s like terrorism. We’re supposed to do everything we can to avoid media.” 

Hanson and his wife had to find their own way home from Ohio while RSB Logistic sent a new cab and driver to complete the shipment to Kentucky. 

Canada’s Nuclear Safety Commission absolved itself of all responsibility since the truck started burning in the US. US regulators say it was Ohio’s responsibility. Neither Ohio’s Bureau of Radiation Protection or state emergency management agency had been informed of the truck fire. 

The Toronto Star reported on Nov. 15 that one in seven trucks carrying radioactive materials are pulled off the road after inspection by the Ontario ministry of transportation. Faulty brakes, load security, flat tires, falsified logs, faulty air lines and lack of driver training are among the problems discovered during inspections. 

— Toronto Star, Oct. 31 & Nov. 15; Nuclear Street News Team, Nov. 1, 2013

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

January 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Italy’s Illegal Dumping Linked to Cancers 

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2013-2014

Nukewatch Quarterly has reported previously on illegal dumping of toxic waste by the Italian Mafia. Now, the environmental group Legambiente reports that about 31,000 environmental crimes were committed in 2010, and nearly half involved illegal disposal of radioactive and industrial waste. The majority of the waste was dumped in Campania, a region around Naples — Italy’s third largest city — and sadly the repercussions of this unregulated dumping are registering in the form of an increased number of cancers reported around the dumping area. 

The Italian Senate has begun an investigation into the rise in the number of tumors being diagnosed in Campania. The BBC reports, “Two decades ago doctors noticed that the incidence of cancer in towns around Naples was on the rise. Since then, the number of tumors found in women has risen by 40%, and those in men by 47%.” 

The details of the illegal dumping came to light when ex-Mafia boss Carmine Schiavone was overcome with guilt at the environmental damage he was causing and decided to turn informant. Schiavone turned on his cousin Francesco Schiavone — the head of Camorra, a secret society of criminals loosely based in Naples — and revealed that the mafia family had disposed of contaminated waste all over Southern Italy. They dumped in Lake Lucrino, coastal areas, pastures and 520 drums of toxic waste were even buried in a specially dug quarry. The BBC reported that Legambiente has alleged that 30 or more ships, stuffed with radioactive waste, may have been sunk off the Calabrian coast in suspicious circumstances over the past 20 years. Schiavone also said that radioactive sludge was brought in on trucks from facilities in Germany and dumped haphazardly in landfills at night. Schiavone said, “We disposed of … millions and millions of tons.” 

— The Independent, June 8; BBC, Oct. 29; and The (London) Daily Mail, Nov. 1, 2013 — PVB 

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

January 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

The Pentagon’s Renewable War Power

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2013-2014

The US military is the largest energy hog in the country in an unsustainable situation that even the Pentagon recognizes. 

In 2008, the Pentagon spent $24 billion on electricity and fossil fuel — 80% of the government’s energy consumption. In 2010, the military used more than 5 billion gallons of fuel. The military uses more than 125 million barrels of petroleum every year, at times costing $400 per gallon when delivered in Afghan and Iraqi war zones. The Navy alone uses 80,000 barrels of oil daily. 

A 2010 Pentagon and Energy Department Memorandum of Understanding says the Pentagon is “increasing its use of renewable energy supplies and reducing energy demand to improve energy security and operational effectiveness, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in support of US climate change initiatives, and protect the DoD from energy price fluctuations.” 

Since the 1970s, the Pentagon has been reducing its usage and increasing renewable energy production. Working with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the military aims to get 25% of its energy from renewables by 2025. Private sector investment of at least $7 billion is going into renewable projects on government property. Private companies pay for and install solar, wind, geothermal and biomass. In exchange for land use, the military gets electricity at a fixed long-term rate. Residual energy feeds the civilian electric grid. An entire neighborhood at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona sports roof-top solar panels. The development of renewables is necessary so the Pentagon gets a point for participation. War, on the other hand, will never be green. 

— Department of Defense press release, Nov. 20; SolarCity Corporation, July 24, 2013; American Council on Renewable Energy, Jan. 2012; CleanTechnica, Tina Casey, undated. — BU

Filed Under: Military Spending, Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Renewable Energy

January 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nuclear Wa$te — of Billion$

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2013-2014
By Lisa Kasenow 

Editor’s note: 

Cancelled, unused and destroyed reactors give the lie to industry boosters who speak of its “24/7 reliability.” Shutdowns, fires, explosions, leaks, meltdowns and hugely expensive re-builds add up to a record of nuclear malfeasance. The industry has been such a financial failure that Forbes magazine thundered from its Feb. 11, 1985 cover, “The failure of the US nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale. …only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money has been well spent. … The scale of the US nuclear power program’s collapse is appalling: 75 plants cancelled since 1978, including 28 already under construction…” By 1999, a total of 121 reactors had been cancelled, squandering about $50 billion in 1995 dollars.* Lisa Kasenow sent Nukewatch an outline of the more recent financial disasters: 

1. Ten partially-constructed nuclear power reactors have been cancelled. All 10 were scrapped more than 10 years after they had been ordered, and half were cancelled 18-22 years into construction. Three possible terminations — Tennessee Valley Authority’s Bellefonte 1 & 2, and Watts Bar 2 — are still under construction today, even though these reactor orders date from 1970. 

2. Nuclear power units scratched before construction work had begun number 117, and in most cases the cancellations occurred years after the reactors were ordered. 

Of the 117 reactors abandoned after being ordered, half of them were stopped 4-10 years after being ordered, and 20% were halted 8-10 years after the order was made. 

The TVA wins the gold medal for nuclear wasted money, because it’s responsible for the abandonment of 10 and possibly 11 federally permitted reactors. Bellefonte 1 & 2; Hartsville A1, A2, B1 & B2; Phipps Bend 1 & 2; Yellow Creek 1 & 2 and possibly Watts Bar 2. 

3. There are 21 fully-constructed and licensed commercial reactors that no longer supply electricity. These 21 commercial reactors were in operation for an average of 17 years each. Of these, 14 have high-level radioactive waste (used fuel) on site. 

The longest operating time for one of these reactors is 34 years, while the shortest was under one year. More than half operated for less than 20 years. Twenty-eight percent were operational for less than 10 years. Three Mile Island Unit 2 operated for one year. Pathfinder in South Dakota ran for 30 minutes. Shoreham operated for less than one year and then closed. 

* Arjun Makhijani, The Nuclear Deception,1999, p. xiv. 

— Lisa Kasenow is a retired physics, chemistry & biology teacher and fulltime anti-nuclear activist in Florida.

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

January 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

The Streamline 72

Through the Prism of Nonviolence
Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2013-2014
By John Heid 

Among the thousands of photos taken at a bus blockade in Tucson in early October one picture, taken by an Al Jazeera photographer, crystallizes the moment starkly and simply. The image leaves an indelible, if not iconic impression. 

Through the grimy, barred windows of a private prison bus, a young Latino can be faintly seen bowing with folded hands. His shackles drape, like a priest’s stole, from wrist to waist to unseen ankles. His barely visible face is solemn, his gaze dignified. Who is this man? What has he done? How did he come to this fate? Why is he chained? Why is he headed, or rather herded, to federal court and “Operation Streamline”? (For more information on Operation Streamline, visit www.EndStreamline.org, or see the Fall 2012 Nukewatch Quarterly.) 

Is he a member of one the 17 million US families separated by immigration policy and law? Is he one of the 70% of those crossing the border to return to his family? Could he be one of the two-thirds of those without “status” who have lived in the US over a decade? He’s wearing a Shell Oil Co. shirt. Was he snatched on his way to work, or while on the job? 

Is this man another casualty of immigration enforcement, or is he part of a vanguard of a social transformation movement? Or is he just a guy trying to make a living, support his family and live in peace? Does he bow supplication or solidarity? 

Once again the workhorse of motor vehicles, a bus, becomes the flash point of a human rights campaign, vaguely reminiscent of civil rights days and the accessibility rights movement. This time, the issue is not about equal access to public transportation. The issue is why people are on the bus in the first place — chained to the benches. The heart of the story is contained within the buses, not with the protesters locked-down underneath them. Thus, the action has appropriately taken on the moniker the Streamline 72, the number of men held in the two blocked vehicles. 

Media and public curiosity were immediately drawn to the canary yellow-shirted activists that for four hours immobilized two G4S private security buses en route from an immigration detention facility to the federal courthouse — and to those who simultaneously locked down the parking lot of the federal complex. Yet, as the aforementioned photo intimates, the back story belongs to the manacled passengers. 

Yes, one can celebrate that the wheels of injustice were halted for a proverbial minute. A momentary monkey wrench in the judicial gristmill called Operation Streamline. And yes, one can be amused by the “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” approach of the police trying to figure out how to sever the “dragon sleeves” that held the buses in place. And certainly we are grateful that the 72 bus riders were not branded with criminal charges that day. Still they were deported post haste through distant ports of entry. 

So, after a deep breath, we look to dismantling the apparatus that was interrupted for a day, which is to say shutting down “Streamline” and ultimately ending all deportations. As the popular chant declares: “Not one more deportation.” 

The action, consistent with the philosophy and practice of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., created a tension “so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal.” (“Letter From A Birmingham Jail”) While those on the bus are palpably in bondage, it is our “filthy rotten system” that binds all of us, heart, mind and soul. For many US citizens, the chains are invisible. The blockade served to raise local and national awareness, but the story remains woefully incomplete, even inaccurate, if we do not acknowledge that we too are bound by Streamline. 

That October morning we merely joined a human rights struggle and its contemporary vanguard — those bus riders in chains. They are the primal revolutionaries. They are the ones who envision a continent, and a world, where work is shared along with wealth, where borders are not walls but way stations. Theirs is a story of human passion and persistence which began years ago and miles away. It is humanity’s story. They are the ones who at risk of life and liberty struggle for a “new world in the shell of the old” for all of us. Those of us around and under the bus were an ad hoc affinity group for those inside. Those who engage in human rights work are supporting the vision of those who have been in this justice struggle across generations. It is a vision we share in and outside the bus. That October morning a peculiar, powerful solidarity was reaffirmed, and sealed in chains, as we all left the scene in cuffs. 

Above my desk the anonymous man in the Al Jazeera photo peers out at me, into me. His visage is seared into my psyche. I look back at the photo and ask, as Gandhi advised, if my next steps will be of any use to this person. “Will it restore him to a control over his life and destiny?” (the Gandhi “Talisman”) 

I notice the rider in chains is bowed, but unbowed. He knows where he’s going because he knows where he’s been. So, as I contemplate the trajectory and character of my next step, the query reads more like: Is the next step I take going to make any difference in my life, let alone his? Our fates are ultimately interwoven, aren’t they? After all, we’re all passengers on the same bus. Life. 

— John Heid lives and works at the Casa Mariposa Community in Tucson, Arizona.

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Through the Prism of Nonviolence

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