Quarterly Newsletter

July 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

WIPP Leak Traced to Kitty Litter Mishap

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2014

After months of investigation, federal officials are finally closer to understanding what caused the February radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) in southeastern New Mexico — and the evidence points to organic kitty litter.

On May 5, crews from the Department of Energy (DOE) discovered melted plastic and rubber on one of the 55-gallon waste drums from the Los Alamos National Laboratory stored in Panel 7, Room 7 — the WIPP area suspected to be the origin of the leak. Photographs later taken in the storage area, which is carved into a massive salt bed 2,000 feet underground, show evidence that heat and probably a small explosion made a hole in at least one container, leading to the leak. One-ton bags of magnesium oxide, placed on top of waste containers to help stop the spread of leaks and designed to last 10,000 years, were also damaged.

Taken with a remote camera in panel 7, room 7 of the WIPP nuclear waste storage site on May 22, this Department of Energy photo shows damage to a radioactive waste barrel caused by a heat reaction between radioactive waste and an organic compound — probably kitty litter — packed inside.

Jim Conca, a scientist who worked at WIPP from 2000 to 2010, has publicly shared his theory that the reaction was caused by a change from non-organic to organic kitty litter, which is packed in the barrels to soak up any liquid waste. (WIPP’s congressional mandate only allows it to accept solid radioactive waste.)

Inorganic cat litter, made with materials like diatomaceous earth, can help stabilize nitrates in radioactive materials, ensuring they don’t become too hot, and is routinely used at nuclear laboratories. But Conca and others suspect organic cat litter was packed into about 500 barrels at the Los Alamos lab instead — probably due to a bad decision by a purchasing agent.

“‘Green’ cat litter is made with materials like wheat or corn,” according to Conca. “These organic litters do not have the silicate properties needed to chemically stabilize nitrate the correct way. Solutions can ignite when they dry out,” Conca said.

DOE officials confirmed May 22 that a change in kitty litter “may have caused a chemical reaction” that led to the February 14 release, which doused at least 22 WIPP workers with radiation and has caused the facility to remain closed. About 350 of the other barrels that contain the volatile organic litter are in storage alongside the unsealed barrel at WIPP, but some were diverted to a privately-run waste dump in Andrews, Texas, and some remain onsite at Los Alamos.

The Andrews dump has taken extra precautions to seal the unstable barrels at its site, but the fact that some remain above ground at the Los Alamos facility is troubling to Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer at Fairewinds Energy Education, who says the barrels will become more and more unstable as the New Mexico desert sun heats them. Los Alamos has been under a tight schedule to move its plutonium contaminated waste before the peak of wildfire season. In 2011, a massive wildfire reached the edges of the property where the waste is currently stored.

The New Mexico Environment Department issued an administrative order May 21 requiring the DOE and its contractor Nuclear Waste Partnership to submit a detailed plan for expedited closure of Panel 6 and Panel 7, Room 7, where the affected barrels are stored. A similar May 19 order required the Los Alamos National Lab to isolate all suspect waste drums. The Lab claims to have complied by keeping its remaining barrels under 24-hour surveillance in a fire-protected area. The State Environment Secretary has publicly vented his frustration with a lack of transparency on the part of the site’s federal operators.

The DOE has estimated it will take between 18 months and three years to have the WIPP site ready to resume full operations. This is the DOE’s first ever attempt to clean up a contaminated underground radioactive waste storage site, so its estimates are speculative.

Per Peterson of UC-Berkeley’s Department of Nuclear Engineering told The Verge May 23 that permanent shut-down of the $7.2 billion facility was a real possibility.

“Expert assessment will be needed … to determine whether the safety benefits of stabilizing or repackaging the material in these drums are justified by the risk to personnel who would attempt to do this work.”— ASP

— Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Mar. 23; Nuclear Threat Initiative, Apr. 24; AP, May 8 & 17; Indian Country Today, May 9; Carlsbad Current Argus, May 12 & 23; Albuquerque Journal, May 15; CNN Video Interview with Arnie Gunderson, May 20; The Verge, May 23, 2014

July 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Canadian ‘Experts’ Comfy with Radioactive Pollution of Great Lakes

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2014

By John LaForge

The giant Canadian utility corporation Ontario Power Generation (OPG) — which operaties 20 nuclear reactors on the Great Lakes in Ontario — would save loads of cash by not having to contain, monitor and repackage above-ground storage casks for its radioactive waste. The company intends to deeply bury some of this waste next to Lake Huron, a source of drinking water for 40 million people including 24 million US residents.

OPG officially plans to let its waste canisters leak their contents, 680 meters underground, risking long-term contamination of the Great Lakes.

OPG’s formal plans and public statements make this clear.

First, the near-lake dump would be dug into deep caverns of porous limestone. The underground caverns are to “become the container,” OPG testified last fall — because its canisters are projected to be rotted-through by the waste in five years. The company wants to bury 200,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste — everything except high-level waste fuel rods — but with a wide range of radioactivity levels.

On April 13 the Canadian government was shocked to learn that OPG has grossly understated the radioactive severity of its waste material, some of which, like cesium, is 1,000 times more radioactive than OPG has officially claimed.

The Bruce reactor complex — the world’s biggest with eight reactors — is on Lake Huron’s Bruce Peninsula and is now the storage site for radioactive waste (other than fuel rods) from all of OPG’s 20 reactors. Digging its 2,000 foot deep dump on site would save the firm money — and put the hazard out of sight, out of mind.

Second, OPG’s blithe opinion about poison was broadcast in a December 2008 handout. Radioactive contamination of the drinking water would not be a problem, OPG says, because “The dose is predicted to be negligible initially and will continue to decay over time.”

The ‘expert’ group’s report predicted that it’s possible that as much as 1,000 cubic meters of radioactively contaminated water might leach from the dump every year, but calls such pollution “highly improbable.” The mathematical basis for this “prediction” of “improbability” has to be considered in view of the US government’s 650-meter-deep Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) in New Mexico. The WIPP dump was predicted to contain radiation for 10,000 years. It has failed disasterously, contaminating 22 workers on Feb. 14, after operating only 15 years. It may never reopen.

OPG’s pamphlet goes further in answer to its own question, “Will the [dump] contaminate the water?” The company claims, “…even if the entire waste volume were to be dissolved into Lake Huron, the corresponding drinking water dose would be a factor of 100 below the regulatory criteria initially, and decreasing with time.”

Last September, I testified against the proposal at formal hearings in Kincardine, Ontario. This unsubstantiated assertion made me ask in my testimony: “Why would the government spend $1 billion on a dump when it is safe to throw all the radioactive waste in the water?” Now, what I thought of then as a rhetorical outburst has become “expert” opinion.

Experts: radiation to be “diluted” by Great Lakes

On March 25, the “Report of the Independent Expert Group” was presented to Canada’s waste review panel. Experts Maurice Dusseault, Tom Isaacs, William Leiss and Greg Paoli concluded that the “immense” waters of the Great Lakes would dilute any radiation-bearing plumes leaching from the site.

Dusseault advises governments and teaches short courses at the University of Waterloo on oil production, petroleum geomechanics, waste disposal and sand control.

Paoli founded Risk Sciences International and the company’s web site notes his position on Expert and Advisory Committees of Canada’s National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy.

Isaacs, with degrees in engineering and applied physics, works at the plutonium-spewing Lawrence Livermore National Lab, studying “challenges to the effective management of the worldwide expansion of nuclear energy.” Of course, hiding radioactive waste from public scrutiny is one of his industry’s biggest challenges.

Leiss has degrees in history, accounting and philosophy, and has taught sociology, eco-research, risk communications and health risk assessment at several Canadian universities.

So what level of expertise do the experts bring? None of them have any background in water quality, limnology, radio-biology, medicine, health physics or even radiology, hazardous nuclides, health physics, or radiation risk.

As the plume of radiation spreading across the Pacific from Fukushima continues to show, nuclear reactor disasters can contaminate entire oceans. Fish large and small and other organisms bio-accumulate the cesium, strontium (which persists for 300 years), etc., in the plume. The isotopes also bio-magnify in the food chain as blue fin and albacore tuna studies continue to show.

Canada’s expert group’s opinion on how radioactive waste might spread and be diluted in Great Lakes drinking water is inane and meaningless — its cubic meter estimates and risk assessments nothing but fairy tales. You could call the report a rhetorical outburst.

— Brennain Lloyd, Northwatch (North Bay, Ontario) email communication, Apr. 22; Toronto Star, Apr. 18, & Mar. 25, 2014

July 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Y-12 Plowshares Sabotage Convictions to be Appealed

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2014

On March 6 attorneys for the three Transform Now Plowshares activists who were sentenced to long prison terms in February announced that an appeal team was being assembled and moving forward.

The disarmament action of July 2012 resulted in felony property damage and sabotage convictions for Sr. Megan Rice, 83, Greg Boertje-Obed, 58, and Michael Walli, 65, who were sentenced to 35 months, 62 months and 62 months in federal prison respectively. The three senior citizens humiliated the nuclear weapons establishment generally, and National Nuclear Security Agency in particular, by reaching the “Fort Knox of Uranium” building at the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and painting slogans and hanging banners there after passing undetected through four fences.

Transform Now Plowshares activists Michael Walli, Sr. Megan Rice, and Greg Boertje-Obed.

The federal appeal will confront the sabotage conviction. Attorney Bill Quiqley says the sabotage charge is “an attempt to intimidate the defendants and others from doing symbolic disarmament actions at other nuclear facilities.”

Quigley, Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a professor of law at Loyola University, wrote to the three that the appeal will challenge the sabotage conviction “on the grounds that your open dedication to nuclear disarmament cannot be used as an element of ‘criminal intent.’”

A reversal of the sabotage conviction would require the three to return to court to be re-sentenced. Such an appeal victory could also make the US government less likely to charge it against other peace activists.

There is a risk that the government will choose to cross appeal and ask that the sentences be lengthened.

Volunteer lawyers, including Quigley, Anna Lellelid, and members of the influential Orrick law firm in New York, are studying the May 2013 trial transcripts and preparing to enroll as counsel in the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. The circuit takes cases from Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

July 18, 2014 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Russian Expansion Sparks Nuclear Regression

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2014

By Paul Vos Benkowski

Russia’s recent annexation of Crimea in Ukraine has led to a rush for nuclear “protection” in the region. Many neighboring countries are changing their tunes from 2010 when President Obama, speaking in Prague after a NATO summit, outlined his vision for eliminating nuclear weapons. NATO countries applauded the sentiment and sought to remove the 180 US nuclear weapons from Europe. But on April 2, NATO suspended cooperation with Russia, ending the NATO-Russian Council which was established in 2002. NATO members and Russia had sought to “work towards achieving a true strategic and modernized partnership with the aim of contributing to the creation of a common space of peace, security and stability.” Not so much anymore.

Stanislaw Koziej, head of Poland’s National Security Bureau, has said, “Although there’s a very small risk of Russia acting against Poland, that risk is much bigger now than it was just a few weeks ago. The most important deterrence is NATO solidarity and the presence of the US military in Europe. Nuclear deterrence is a very important factor that NATO has at its disposal, and it’s becoming increasingly important.” Jiri Schneider, the Czech deputy foreign minister until earlier this year added to the concern, “nobody is expecting a large-scale Russian invasion but what Russia is doing is provocation, and we have to show some muscle.”

These fears are the same that led to the nuclear buildup during the Cold War. The deployments of US nuclear weapons in Europe are not the only ones in the region. France has 300 nuclear weapons and Britain possesses 225 submarine-mounted warheads. Germany has floated plans to end its “nuclear sharing” duties, hoping to retire its nuclear-capable aircraft by the year 2020. That leaves Russia with some 2,000 short-range warheads in its European territories and it has some neighboring countries more than a little nervous.

In order to assuage central European fears, the US has moved fighter planes from its base in Aviano, Italy to Poland and US Army and Navy units have been deployed to the Baltic States. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has asked NATO to station 10,000 troops on its soil. While these moves have been made public, the idea of bolstering certain countries with nuclear weapons has remained a secret. Polish National Security Chief, Koziej reportedly said, “In nuclear deterrence, the most important aspect is keeping your adversary in the dark about your plans, so it’s best not to talk about where it would be suitable to base US nuclear weapons.”

Russia’s interest in Ukraine is largely military. Ukraine is home to 50 factories that manufacture much of Russia’s military hardware. The city of Zhovti Vody provides 20 percent of all natural uranium currently used by the nuclear industry. The Washington Post reported that “Russian troops don’t just threaten Ukraine: They rely on it too.”

Hopefully NATO countries will recall the purpose of their alliance and remain committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes. As the Cold War has shown us, there are no winners in a nuclear arms race, only the toxic remains of rampant paranoia and bluster serving no one.

— Newsweek, Apr. 15; Washington Post, May 9, 2014

Contact Us

Donate To Nukewatch

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2014

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2014

By John LaForge

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2014

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2014

By Paul Vos Benkowski

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2014

Contact Us

Donate To Nukewatch

Stay Connected