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Waste Transport Accident Risks Underrated

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2020-2021

The risks of accidents and fires with cross-country shipments of high-level radioactive waste have been “underestimated” by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), according to an independent analysis. Freight train accidents per mile are some “36 times the NRC/DOT estimate” says the author, Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, a physicist with Radioactive Waste Management Associates. Resnikoff reviewed the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) written by Interim Storage Partners and Waste Control Specialists—firms seeking a license for a dump site in Texas. Resnikoff concluded that the likelihood of transportation accidents involving fires was “underestimated,” because the DEIS fails to consider blazes lasting longer than 11 hours, a cap set by the NRC. Resnikoff points to the 2013 Lac-Megantic, Quebec, rail disaster that resulted in a 48-hour-long fire, killed 47 people, and destroyed half the downtown buildings. Had the train been carrying fissionable materials instead of crude oil, the damages and death toll would have been worse.

Further, the DEIS overlooks the inability of transport casks to withstand temperatures created by fires—particularly high temperatures typically found near the tops and bottoms of casks—which cause seals to degrade faster than the NRC model suggests, resulting in the release of radioactive gases and particles.

Resnikoff also faulted the DEIS’s analysis for only reviewing “mid-burnup” fuels (uranium that’s been moderately burned in a reactor), while ignoring “high-burnup” fuels which hold increased amounts of highly radioactive fission products, produced inside power reactors. The NRC must “more carefully review the impact of transporting high burnup fuel to the proposed … facility,” he said.

—M. Resnikoff, Ph.D., Radioactive Waste Management, Comments on ISP/WCS DEIS, October 2020

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DOE Plans to Ship Plutonium 1,400 Miles

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2020-2021

In late August, the Energy Department (DOE) announced that it would dilute 9.5 metric tonnes of waste plutonium at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina and ship it 1,400 miles to a military dumpsite in New Mexico. The DOE’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, is an accident-plagued repository, licensed to store plutonium-contaminated radioactive waste left at 22 nuclear weapons production sites. The “downblended” weapons plutonium at Savanah River is typically shipped in “TRUPACT-II” containers made of multilayered stainless-steel. Up to three TRUPACT-II cans are hauled by a single semi-trailer truck. Shipment routes and a timeline for shipments will not be made public.

Plutonium is often referred to as the most deadly substance known to science. If ingested, even the tiniest amount of plutonium will continually bombard surrounding tissue with alpha particles greatly increasing the risk of various cancers. After dilution, the SRS plutonium waste is declared “below weapons grade” and would require extensive processing to be made into a nuclear weapon.

While the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration produced a Risk and Opportunity Analysis Report to assess potential transport dangers, the National Academies of Science said not all risks were “sufficiently captured and reviewed—especially in terms of health and safety.” The NAS report also noted that the number of shipments between Savannah River and WIPP will be far greater than from any other plutonium waste site.

Tom Clements, the director of Savanah River Site Watch, said, “While today’s announcement may sound good, SRS lacks down-blending [diluting] capacity and there is no schedule for the removal of the plutonium from SRS.” The current timeline projects that the plutonium will not be completely removed until 2049.

—Carlsbad Current-Argus, Sept. 15; Department of Energy, Aug. 31; National Academies Press, 2020

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French Rad Waste Freighter Arrives in US

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2020-2021

A freighter carrying high level radioactive waste from France arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, on November 20. The freighter, Pacific Heron, left Cherbourg November 5 with a load of radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which had been used to power marine beacons. The Pacific Heron crossed the Atlantic with a deactivated location beacon—a common practice with shipments of radioactive waste—leaving the vessel difficult to locate and at higher risk of an accident, especially at night.

The RTGs contain strontium-90, a radioactive isotope dangerous for 300 years that is produced by nuclear reactors and bomb tests. It is known to cause leukemia, skin cancer, and bone cancer. In the body, strontium-90 behaves like calcium and permanently embeds itself in bone tissue, exposing the surrounding cells to continuous radiation. Because children have rapid bone growth, they are particularly susceptible to the carcinogenic effects of strontium-90.

The RTGs will be trucked across the US and buried in a shallow trench at the former Nevada Test Site, where RTGs have been disposed of in the past. Savannah River Site Watch reports that the RTGs are believed to have been fabricated by the US Department of Energy. The group said in a news release that neither the public in South Carolina, Nevada, nor the states along the route have granted permission for or even been informed of the transport of these materials through their jurisdictions. Neither the Nevada Attorney General nor the US Department Energy responded to requests for information.

—Savannah River Site Watch, Nov. 17, 2020; CDC Toxicological Profile for Strontium, 2004

 

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Growing Criticism of Unlawful Rad Waste Storage Plans

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2020-2021
By Christine Manwiller

Proposals targeting Texas and New Mexico for above-ground centralization of the nation’s high-level radioactive waste (dubbed Consolidated Interim Storage) under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), face broad opposition. In 2017, Holtec International and partners proposed what they call a “temporary” dump in New Mexico for the waste reactor fuel. The companies claims that storage of this waste will only last 40 years, but the fine print allows for 80 years of “renewals.” In 2018, Interim Storage Partners, Inc., and Waste Control Specialists (WCS) requested that the NRC “resume evaluation” of a separate proposal to store up to 40,000 tonnes of the waste, along with other radioactive waste referred to as “low-level,” in Andrews County, West Texas.

Beyond Nuclear, in Takoma Park, Maryland, notes that both the WCS and Holtec plans are proceeding unlawfully. Under the federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act (as amended), the federal government may not take title to high-level radioactive waste from commercial nuclear reactors until a permanent geologic dumpsite is operating. Under this law, the federal government cannot authorize funds for the transportation or “interim” storage of the waste, as Holtec and WCS propose, because there is no operating federal abandonment site. A license cannot be lawfully issued to WCS or Holtec until either a permanent site is operating, or the NWPA statute is again amended. Beyond Nuclear’s lawsuit in the case is on appeal.

Broad public resistance to the dumps was joined by Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott who wrote November 3 to the NRC outlining the plan’s negative consequences: the risks of allowing volatile waste to sit on the surface in casks; the danger of the waste being close to the “largest producing oilfield in the world”: the potential for the site to attract terrorist acts; and the likelihood of the waste remaining in Texas for much longer than the proposed limit.

Risky transport of such dangerous waste is also under attack, and 19 resolutions have been adopted by communities across Texas and New Mexico, several of which are municipal resolutions banning the transportation. —Carlsbad Current-Argus, Nov. 10; Office of Governor of Texas letter, Nov. 3, 2020

 

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Japan Waffles Over Plan to Dump Radioactive Water Tainted with Tritium, Strontium, Cesium, etc. 

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2020-2021

News was leaked in early October that Japan had decided to release over one million metric tons of Fukushima’s radioactive waste water into the Pacific.

But on October 23, the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Hiroshi Kajiyama told a press conference “the government has no plan to make a decision on what to do with over [one million metric tons] of treated water,” and Kyodo News reported that the government had “put off a decision.”

Flipping again on October 28, the AP reported that “Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga says his government is working on the final details of a plan to release” the tainted cooling water, a process that would reportedly involve dilution and gradual dumping over many years’ time.

Tanks hold over 1.2 million metric tons of radioactive waste water left from cooling melted fuel under the three destroyed reactors at Fukushima, Japan. The amount of contaminated waste water increases by about 150 tonnes a day because the hot melted wreckage requires cooling water to be continuously poured over it.

Critics of the dumping proposal called the plan a bailout of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco), which owns the wreckage. Local and national representatives of the fishing community traveled to Tokyo in October to protest to federal ministers. Nongovernmental experts have recommended costlier alternatives to ocean dumping including evaporation, long-term storage, mixing with concrete for burial, or buying additional tank farm acreage.

Although the stored water has been through Tepco’s novel filter system known as ALPS, the process has largely failed. About 70 percent of the stored waste water contains deadly isotopes that Tepco earlier claimed would be removed.

Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, reported about the waste water Oct. 26: “Radioactive varieties of iodine, ruthenium, rhodium, antimony, tellurium, cobalt, and strontium have been reduced by ALPS but not eliminated. In 2017, more than half of the samples studied showed levels of radioactive contamination for these materials that are above legal limits. In the case of strontium-90, a bone-seeking radioisotope, some 65,000 tonnes of water had levels 100 times above the legal limit even after being treated by ALPS.”

Tepco, trying to quell the uproar over the ALPS failure, announced that it can re-filter the waste before piping it into the Pacific. The fishing industry and neighboring countries including South Korea oppose any ocean release of tritium and other radioactive contaminants which would eventually contaminate seafood as the materials move up the food chain. An Oct. 9 editorial in the Korea Times that condemned the dumping threat warned of an “environmental disaster” that could “destroy the marine ecosystem.”

Independent scientists argue that long-term food and environmental impacts from radioactive seawater are unknown and could pose higher risks than Japan’s environmental, agricultural, and industrial ministries have claimed. Ken Buesseler, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, wrote recently that not only tritium but other isotopes that affect marine life should be carefully examined.

—JL

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