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January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Hanford Clean Up Hiccups

(https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/hanford-nuclear-site-washington-state-tank-farms-workers-sickened-investigation/281-48a540ea-1fa5-4de9-8ab7-b1dc9db6e5c8) – Photo Credit
By Adrian Monty

Radioactive waste has piled up at the Hanford, in Richland, Washington, since the production of plutonium began there in 1943 for use in the very first atom bomb, code-named “Trinity,” detonated outside Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the plutonium bomb, dubbed “Fat Man,” dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

The first round of single-shelled radioactive waste storage tanks on the site began leaking early in the 1950s, prompting the use of double-shelled tanks in the 1960s. These million-gallon tanks, 177 in total, house over 55 million gallons of low- to high-level radioactive waste, are prone to leaking, and are stored in a 150 foot deep football field-sized crater. Since the early 2000s, it has been the goal of the Energy Department to build a Waste Treatment Plant with the capacity to immobilize a large portion of the waste by mixing it with molten glass for permanent storage in a process called vitrification. The DOE’s plan is to start with low-level waste, including liquids separated from high-level radioactive waste in the double-shelled tanks, and to go from there.

On October 8, the 300-ton vitrification melter began heating up, the first step of the process, and the program had its first hiccups. The melter, designed to liquefy glass to be mixed with radioactive waste, is supposed to gradually heat to 2,100 degrees Fahrenheit over a period of weeks. In the first attempt, the melter began to overheat, and workers had to halt heating after only two days, to figure out the next steps. The melter was still empty, so there was no danger to workers or the environment. Leaders at the site have acknowledged that this is a first, and they want to make sure the melter can get up to temperature and melt glass mixed with other materials before bringing radioactive materials into the picture. Vitrification has successfully stabilized radioactive wastes in the past but on a much smaller scale.

Meanwhile on August 9, Nagasaki Day, two tribes, nine agencies, and governors Kate Brown of Oregon and Jay Inslee of Washington sent letters to President Biden urging him to expand the budget for cleanup efforts at what has been called “the most toxic place in America.” In October, every Washington State Congressional leader, Democrat and Republican, followed suit with a letter of their own. As we go to print, they are still awaiting a response.

— Hanford Site, 2022; Tri-City Herald, Oct. 9 & 20, 2022; The Spokesman-Review, Oct. 9, 2022

— Adrian Monty works with the Oregon State University Downwinder Project. She is an environmental journalist with a focus on atomic issues.

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Weapons, Quarterly Newsletter, Radioactive Waste

January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch 2 Comments

Bribes to Purchase ‘Consent’ for Waste Storage

Rose Gardner lives five miles from one proposed parking lot dump for high-level radioactive waste that has been licensed by the NRC and 35 miles from another awaiting a licensing decision.
By Kelly Lundeen

In September the Department of Energy (DOE) announced a $16 million fund to be distributed to eight communities willing to consider hosting the nation’s 90,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste in a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF). Resembling a bribery scenario, the candidates would likely be placed on a list of future host sites in exchange for the funds. The recipients will be tasked with engaging community stakeholders to inform them about advantages and disadvantages of storing the immensely hazardous waste from nuclear energy production, and exploring technical and geological factors. Awardees are expected to be announced by February of 2023. Yet the federal government appears to give with one hand and take with the other.

While the DOE claims to seek “consent” for the siting of waste storage, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is strong-arming a CISF into Texas with the Interim Storage Partners facility, and into New Mexico with the Holtec International proposal — no matter the resistance.

Rose Gardner, of Alliance for Environmental Strategies, spoke at a congressional briefing last March. “I live five miles from … Interim Storage Partners (ISP),” for which the NRC rubber-stamped a license in September 2021. “I have maintained my opposition against storage of nuclear waste … for many years…. Several communities in New Mexico have passed resolutions against Holtec…. There has never been any consent from the public to store commercial irradiated waste in their state.”

The NRC increased public distrust of its work in a November 3 public meeting about Holtec International’s licensing status. In the meeting NRC project manager Jose Cuadrado reported the submission of 6,600 public comments regarding the CISF Environmental Impact Statement. When he was corrected by Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear, Cuadrado was forced to admit that his data had excluded online form-generated comments, and there had been about 50,000 comments, mostly opposing the CISF. Kamps informed the meeting that this was a record-breaking number for the subject matter, and a far cry from “consent.” Additional opposition comes from the Western Governors’ Association, which has passed a resolution banning any of its 22 constituent states and US territories from accepting a CISF without the governor’s consent.

Lawsuits against the NRC’s granting of a license for the ISP facility in Texas have been filed by Beyond Nuclear, Sierra Club, a six-organization coalition headed by Don’t Waste Michigan, and the States of New Mexico and Texas. Oral arguments were heard August 29 in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, and November 10 in the US Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. The courts’ rulings are pending regarding the alleged illegality of the license under federal law (including the Nuclear Waste Policy Act), and dump promoters’ failure to consider emergency funds required in the event of an accident. The State of New Mexico has also appealed to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

While the DOE gives the appearance of being concerned about “consent” (via bribes), the NRC flaunts its intentions to forge ahead by lying at public hearings and breaking federal laws. Continuing the current licensing process undermines any consent the DOE professes to seek. If the NRC approves the license for Holtec’s CISF, and the facilities begin to operate, Rose Gardner concludes, “I would have a nuclear dump five miles from my home and another nuclear dump 35 miles from my home…. I consider that a grave environmental injustice to my community, to my family, and to this non-consenting state.”
— US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Nov. 10; NRC, Nov. 3; The Paper, Sept. 28; Power Magazine, Sept. 22; US Congressional Briefing, Mar. 31, 2022

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

January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Canadians Resisting High-Level Waste Dump

Deep Geological Repository. Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
By Lindsay Potter

After 10 years, Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) still seeks a “willing” host for the latest planned deep geological repository (DGR), a vault designed to hold over 5.5 million used reactor fuel bundles 2,200 feet below ground for thousands of years. Though there are no DGRs operating currently, the first has been constructed in Finland and potential sites are being surveyed in Switzerland. The NWMO is dangling “job creation” and short-term economic stimulus as boons of the $24 billion project, but environmental groups, concerned residents, and activists decry the threat to watersheds and local health.

The argument over the DGR’s viability is déjà vu for opponents of the similar Ontario Power Generation project, which sought approval for 16 years before scrapping plans in June 2020, capitulating to scientists, community and political leaders, and an overwhelming dissenting vote by the Saugeen Ojibway First Nation.

The newly proposed DGR site in the South Bruce community of 6,000 sits below 1,500 acres of farmland, 25 miles from Lake Huron and 30 miles inland from the Bruce Nuclear Station, where radioactive waste is currently stored in aboveground casks on the lake’s shore. Ignace, the other potential host, is a town of 1,200 in northwestern Ontario roughly 150 miles from Lake Superior on Indigenous treaty land.
The South Bruce community is divided between those against the DGR, largely lead by the group Protect our Waters (POW), and those in the self-titled “willing-to-listen” camp who tow the NWMO’s line that radioactive waste is safe and skeptics are fear-mongers. The latter want to delay a decision in order to learn more about the DGR, contradicting the more than 1,700 signatories to POW’s petition demanding a 2022 referendum. The campaign to persuade local residents features speakers selected by the NWMO who overwhelmingly find DGR and nuclear to be safe “best-practices.” Despite October’s local election of a slate of relatively pro-DGR candidates, including mayor Mark Goetz, there is bi-partisan support for holding a binding community referendum on the question. However, many Canadians and experts stipulate that leaving the decision up to a single provincial township puts tens of millions who rely on the lake for drinking water and southern Ontario for agricultural products at risk without consent, not to mention fails to consider the dangers posed by moving this waste across Canada to its chosen resting spot.

Indigenous activist and author Tanya Talaga describes Ignace-area tribal chiefs’ “vehement opposition” to hosting the DGR on the traditional territories of Treaty 9, Treaty 3, and the Robinson-Superior Treaty of 1850, on land near the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation and the Ojibway Nation of Saugeen, in an area also home to the Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) which represents 49 First Nations in northern Ontario close to the Arctic Watershed. “The NWMO appears to consider ‘agreement’ … to mean a decision made by the few while ignoring the many,” Talaga writes, confirming a “complete lack of consent” among NAN leaders. NAN Grand Chief Derek Fox said “if I have to be the one there, getting hauled away to jail … I will be there to make sure this waste does not enter into our territory.” The NAN chiefs collectively agreed their nations will resort to any means necessary and intend to protest and take legal action. A DGR in Ignace would violate Article 29 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Canadian Parliamentarians adopted in 2021, though Ontario refuses to enact matching provincial legislation.

For now, the Canadian nuclear industry seems determined to park its accumulated radioactive waste on the shores of the Great Lakes without regard for redundancies. It is hard to imagine how advocates of nuclear energy can consider this clean or green when the global failure to determine a safe way to store the constantly accumulating waste continues to prove unresolved.

— Bayshore Broadcasting, Oct. 24; London Free Press, Oct. 23; Midwestern Newspapers, Oct. 19; CTV News, Oct. 8; Globe and Mail, Aug. 11, 2022

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

January 22, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Military Plutonium Waste: Government Eyes More Poisons, Increased Storage, and Extended License at New Mexico Dump

Drums of waste in WIPP’s deep Panel 7, site of the 2014 barrel explosion, sealed on Oct. 22, 2022. (Carlsbad Current-Argus, Oct. 25, 2022)
By Lindsay Potter

The Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), in Carlsbad, New Mexico, opened in 1999 as the only long-term storage facility designed to entomb radioactive nuclear weapons waste for 10,000 years in ancient salt bed caverns excavated 2,000 feet below ground. However, in February 2014, an improperly packed drum self-heated to 1,600 degrees and exploded, spewing uranium, plutonium, and americium throughout 30,000 cubic meters and into the ventilation shaft, which failed to contain the poison air. The calamity caused a three-year shutdown, left at least 22 workers internally exposed to plutonium radiation, and potentially exposed another 140 people working on the surface. The lack of oversight cost tax-payers $2 billion in clean-up and another $73 million in fines the New Mexico Environmental Department (NMED) levied on the Department of Energy (DOE) — though the money went to improve infrastructure in and around WIPP rather than to local constituents affected by the release. Nuclear Waste Partners (NWP), the DOE’s contractor running the site, was docked a mere $1 million off its multi-million dollar annual incentive, paid by the federal government above the cost of operating the site. WIPP receives shipments of transuranic waste from 22 locations around the country, mostly plutonium-contaminated gloves, tools, and equipment from Cold-war era weapons production. However, the DOE is considering expanding WIPP’s capacity, operations, and timeline to include storage of private commercial nuclear wastes and surplus plutonium.

WIPP’s re-opening was plagued with mishaps — including releases of contaminated air, roof collapses, and dozens of permit violations — but resulted in no penalties. Regardless, the EPA deemed WIPP compliant in July 2017, and the DOE promised a $2 million reopening bonus, dangling another $2.1 million for meeting performance milestones. The facility resumed full operations in 2021. In October, Panel 7, a radioactively contaminated work space sitting open since 2014, was filled and sealed with a 100-foot thick layer of salt sandwiched between two steel bulkheads. In November, workers loaded the first barrels, from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, into Panel 8, the final-permitted panel.

Poor Performance, Perpetual Problems

Despite precedent, on February 26, 2021, improperly packed pyrophoric materials caused a waste drum to spark and, throughout 2022, WIPP faced a slew of further accidents, failures to comply, and unanticipated shutdowns, rendering the number of received shipments nearly fifty percent short of productivity goals.

In August, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) was forced to stop shipments to WIPP for two months while the NMED investigated issues at the waste handling bay, including several containers from INL with radioactive surface substances or elevated internal radioactivity, some of which were sent back to Idaho.

Multiple unplanned maintenance issues stalled work, including a September shutdown to assess the waste hoist’s brake pads. However, while the hoist was not operating, NWP changed specifications for the equipment, and work resumed days later.

On October 10, WIPP’s air monitors tripped. Tests found radon on air filters from radium-226, released by decaying uranium, likely from gas vented from containers as waste breaks down. Radon gas is the greatest cause of lung cancer among non-smokers according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Two months earlier, on August 9, NMED logged a shipment from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) missing vent filters necessary to contain particulate matter.

Sixty More Years of Waste Production

The DOE applied to renew its 10-year permit with requests to add two new panels and remove WIPP’s 2024 closure date, leaving its operational timeline open-ended. While the NMED reviews the application, Santa Fe locals are pushing back against a new plan to bury surplus plutonium at WIPP. The proposal would send plutonium across the country, some 1,500 miles each way, from LANL to the Savannah River Site to be diluted and then back for burial at WIPP.

Yet the DOE digs deeper to find further sources of waste for WIPP’s coffers. The Government Accountability Office reported on September 29 that WIPP is the “preferred alternative” dumping ground for “greater than Class C (GTCC)” waste — “commercial low-level nuclear waste from decommissioned reactors or unused medical or industrial equipment” (Carlsbad Current-Argus). Projections through 2083 estimate the DOE will accumulate 12,000 cubic meters of this and other “GTCC-like” wastes, neither of which has a current legal pathway for disposal. The DOE may “assume responsibility” for radioactive waste generated by private companies and use taxpayer money to bury it deep in the salt caverns, so the commercial nuclear industry can continue to rake in profits without concern for how to handle its legacy of contamination. Ultimately, the DOE is awaiting approval by Congress as federal law may not allow government custody of the waste.

These new projects could drive WIPP operations indefinitely, with the facility presently under half its statutory 6.2 million cubic foot capacity. However, the nine new storage panels needed to hold this quantity would require additional permitting by the NMED.

— Associated Press, Nov. 26; Carlsbad Current-Argus, Nov. 2, Oct. 25, Oct. 24, Oct. 14, and Oct. 13, 2022

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

October 17, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Fukushima: Novel Fixes Repeatedly Fail, Dumping Threatens Pacific Commons

By John LaForge

 

During the 11-year-long, $57.4 billion partial decontamination efforts at the destroyed Fukushima-Daiichi reactor site in Japan, almost every novel program invented to deal with the complex, unprecedented triple catastrophe has initially failed and then needed to be re-invented. Unworkable schemes instigated to repair, decontaminate, plug-up, or prevent ongoing radioactive contamination, along with cover-ups and corruption by the Tokyo Electric Power Co. which runs the operation, have left the Japanese public wary of the company’s plans and of safety assurances from the government.

Japan’s extensive bull-dozing and mass collection of contaminated topsoil and debris, poisoned by the meltdowns’ radioactive fallout, has filled approximately 20 million one-ton bags. These millions of tons of cesium-contaminated waste are standing outdoors in mountainous stacks scattered across seven states. Some of the heavy bags have been jostled and broken open by torrential rains during typhoons.

Attempts to locate and examine the total of 900 tons of melted reactor fuel (which possibly burned through the wrecked “containments” and foundations of the three units) have failed, because robotic cameras have repeatedly been destroyed by the ferociously hot and radioactive melted wastes. Eleven years after the catastrophe, the condition and location of the melted fuel masses, known as “corium,” is still uncertain because Tepco has yet to develop a robust enough camera.

South Korean fishing boats joined nationwide protests to demand Japan reverse its decision to release contaminated water from its crippled Fukushima nuclear complex into the sea. The banners read “Condemning Japan’s decision to release Fukushima water into the sea.” Photo by Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji

The reactors’ concrete foundations were so severely broken up by the record 9.0 magnitude earthquake, that groundwater rushes through cracks and broken pipes, pours over the three huge masses of corium and becomes highly contaminated with a mix of at least 62 radioactive materials. Tepco’s installation of an expensive “ice wall” that was dug into the ground behind the wrecked reactors, was intended to divert the groundwater keeping it away from the foundations. This fix has also failed.

Tepco has slowed the direct flow of the contaminated water into the Pacific by filtering it and then collecting it in giant tanks. But the tank farm is plagued by leaks and by the discovery that the filter system has failed. In 2018, Tepco admitted that its “Advanced Liquid Processing System” or ALPS had not removed iodine-129, ruthenium-106 and technetium-99, as well as carbon-14, and 60 other long-lived poisons, putting the lie to its repeated assurances that ALPS would remove everything but tritium. The company then promised that it would re-treat the collected water, before dumping all 1.3 million tons of the waste water into the Pacific.

In July, Japan’s nuclear regulator formally approved Tepco’s plan to dump the water into the ocean beginning in spring 2023 and continuing for 30 years. (The reactors produce 140 cubic meters of contaminated water every day, a combination of ground- and rainwater that seeps into the wreckage, and cooling water mechanically poured over the three corium piles.) While independent scientists and environmental historians have charged that dumping would constitute the worst premeditated maritime pollution in recorded history, Tepco’s ocean pollution solution has already been okayed by the government in Tokyo and by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Ocean dumping would violate international law

In August, Tepco announced that it would begin constructing a tunnel to the sea for releasing the waste water. Complaints from scientists, environmental groups and Pacific rim countries, particularly South Korea and China, have not forced Japan to reconsider the plan.

Certain international treaties forbid such deliberate pollution of the global commons. The “Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter,” or London Convention, prohibits any intentional release of radioactive wastes into the sea. Writing in The Korea Times, environmental attorney Duncan Currie and nuclear specialist Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace Germany noted that ocean dumping would also violate the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea by posing a direct threat to the marine environment and the jurisdictional waters of the Korean peninsula.

Tepco says the tritium concentration in the wastewater will be lowered before dumping by diluting it with seawater. However, dilution is basically a public relations scheme since the total amount of radioactive tritium will remain the same. Greenpeace’s Burnie and Currie and others have warned about tritium’s ability to form organically-bound tritium, and that if ingested with seafood the biological power of its beta radiation can damage human DNA.

 

-The Guardian, July 13  & June 29; Hankyoreh, June 9, 2022

Filed Under: Environment, Environmental Justice, Fukushima, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radioactive Waste

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