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July 31, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

New Mexico Bans & NRC Approves Radioactive Waste Facility

Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. July 7, 2022.
By Adrian Monty

New Mexico continues the fight to avoid becoming the nation’s radioactive dumping ground. The legislature recently passed a bill prohibiting the construction of an interim or permanent waste site without the state’s consent. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed it into law March 17, the moment it hit her desk, and it officially went into effect June 15. Under the statute, the federal government must have a plan for permanent disposal, and the state must approve a proposed facility before any interim waste facilities break ground. Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has notified Holtec International of its approval of the firm’s plan to build a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) for 8,680 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste in New Mexico. While a wide range of groups, tribes and lawmakers continue working against the project, others are strongly in support of it. Some elected officials in the New Mexico counties where the Holtec CISF would reside, formed the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance and continue to boost the project, as demonstrated in a recent letter to President Biden. — NM Political Report, May 3; Beyond Nuclear, May 11; Carlsbad Current-Argus, March 22, 2023

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

July 31, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Empty Rad Waste Train Derails in Vermont

By Matthew Jahnke
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Facility Unit 1. Photo Credit: Wikipedia

A recent train derailment once again highlights the risk of transporting radioactive waste. On February 29, a train headed to collect rad waste from the now-decommissioned Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor in Vernon, Vermont derailed. A spokesperson for NorthStar Group Services, the company responsible for the transfer of the material told the Battleboro Reformer, “The train was not carrying any NorthStar material at the time of the derailment, no one was injured, no property was damaged as a result, and the derailed train cars remained upright.” The Vermont Yankee reactor has been in the decommissioning process since 2019 and has since been transporting highly radioactive waste fuel rods thousands of miles, via NorthStar, to the Andrews County, Texas, Waste Control Specialists dumpsite, the presumptive destination of the recently derailed empty train cars. This incident comes only a few weeks after a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio that caused the release of several hazardous materials, a two-day fire, and evacuation of the local community. One can only speculate how a similar derailment of train cars carrying the waste would unfold. — Beyond Nuclear, March 2; Brattleboro Reformer, March 1, 2023

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

July 31, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Rad Waste Dump Decisions: Consent or Bribery?

Photo Credit: https://beyondnuclear.org/4643-2/
Reprinted with permission from Beyond Nuclear

On June 9, the U.S. Department of Energy named 13 consortia, each to receive $2 million in federal taxpayer funding, to help push the DOE’s so-called “consent-based siting” of a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) for highly radioactive waste. The funding will be directed to “groups of university, nonprofit, and private-sector partners” who will help communities decide that they want to be the recipients of the country’s waste reactor fuel. Having abjectly failed to find any safe, long-term radioactive waste management “solution” — possibly because there is none — while also failing to halt the production of radioactive waste, the DOE has now moved to what it calls “consent-based siting.” Ironically, Holtec is the “lead” of one “project team” funded by the DOE, even though the company is trying to force a private CISF on New Mexico, despite a clear lack of consent from the state. Given the three tribal affiliated groups, and three Indigenous Nations, being funded as consortia members, it appears the DOE will target Native American communities once again, as it did in the late 1980s and early 1990s. If past examples are any indicator, the “consenting” communities are likely to be those most deprived of resources, especially Indigenous communities and communities of color, who may feel pressured to accept the DOE largesse along with the deadly hazards of living alongside high-level radioactive waste.

— Beyond Nuclear, June 11, 2023

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

July 31, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Ukraine: Cooling Pond at Reactor Site at Risk

By John LaForge

The cooling pond at the six-reactor Zaporizhzhia nuclear power complex in Ukraine is in danger of collapse as a result of the destruction of the Kakhovka dam and the draining of its reservoir, according to the French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN). Without the reservoir on the other side to counteract it, the internal pressure of the water in the waste fuel cooling pool could break the dyke around it, the IRSN said in a June 7 report. Officials at Ukraine’s Energoatom corporation, replied that any collapse of the dike would be partial “even in a worst-case,” and that there would still be sufficient water to keep the six reactor cores and the waste fuel cool. Since the collapse of the Kakhovka dam on June 6, its reservoir has been draining into the Dnipro River, has lost over three-quarters of its volume of water, and was expected to drop below the water intakes used to pump water into ponds used to cool the reactors, the waste fuel rods, and the diesel generators at the site. The Zaporizhzhia reactors have been shut down for the past eight months, but fuel inside reactors and in the cooling ponds still requires cooling. — Reuters, June 12; The Guardian, June 8, 2023

Photo Credit: Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

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

July 31, 2023 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Domino Effect: 12-Year Series of Failed Fixes at Fukushima

By John LaForge

Japan’s record-breaking earthquake and tsunami waves of March 2011— which first smashed the reactors’ foundations and the electrical grid, then destroyed back-up power generators — led to a “station blackout” and the meltdown of three large reactors at Fukushima Daiichi.

At the time, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) had refused to upgrade its sea wall to a sufficient height, although the firm had been warned of the risk of extreme tsunamis. The result was a catastrophic, unprecedented simultaneous triple reactor meltdown: a radioactive pollution catastrophe that has never before been seen on Earth.

Although Tepco’s cost-cutting on the sea wall was only the first in a string of pollution-intensive failures that have followed like dominoes, it led in July 2022 to convictions of four top Tepco executives for negligence and a fine of $92 billion. Tepco itself had predicted in June 2008 that the site could be hit by a tsunami over 50 feet in height after a major earthquake.

South Korean protesters lampooned Japanese authorities who said you could drink the 1.37 million tons of radioactive wastewater they intend to pump into the Pacific Ocean.

In the 12 years since the meltdowns, Tepco’s disaster response efforts, always heralded as “fixes,” have been a series of hugely expensive failures: the “advanced” wastewater filter system “ALPS” has failed; the groundwater “ice wall” barrier has failed; containers made for radioactive sludge left by ALPS have failed; and plans to deal with millions of tons of collected debris now kept in plastic bags are being fiercely resisted by Japanese citizens.

Tons of cooling water is still poured into Fukushima’s triple wrecks every day to keep the hot melted fuel from again running amok. Additionally, groundwater continues to gush through countless foundation cracks and fissures caused by the earthquake, into what’s left of the structures’ sub-floors. All this water becomes highly radioactive as it passes over and through the three giant masses, some 880 tons, of melted and mangled uranium and plutonium fuel.

You read that right. Fukushima’s destroyed reactor No. 3 was using “mixed oxide” fuel made with plutonium, which is a major piece of the three deadly corium masses. (See sidebar on this page.) This plutonium contaminates not just the cooling water and groundwater contacting the melted fuel, but the ALPS apparatus and its filters, and the containers used to store the highly radioactive waste sludge extracted by ALPS.

Failed ALPS means million-tonne do-over

Tepco’s jerry-rigged system dubbed Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) has never worked as planned. “The ALPS system failed to reduce radioactive elements, as claimed by the owner,” Power Technology, reported June 2, 2021. Senior East Asia Greenpeace researcher Shaun Burnie wrote in June 2023, “The ALPS has been a spectacular failure.”

Tepco has repeatedly said ALPS would remove 62 radioactive materials — all but tritium and carbon-14 from the continuously expanding volume of wastewater. Some of the deadly isotopes picked up when the water runs over and through the three melted masses of reactor fuel include cesium, strontium, cobalt, ruthenium, carbon-14, tritium, iodine, plutonium, and over 54 others.

Consequently, Tepco says it will re-filter over 70 percent of the 1.37 million tonnes of wastewater stored in giant tanks on site. Approximately 875,000 tons of contaminated water must be put through the system again, a process that will leave behind more of the highly radioactive and corrosive waste sludge.

Shaun Burnie’s reporting on ALPS is worth quoting at length:

“About 70 percent or 931,600 cubic meters of the wastewater needs to be processed again (and probably many more times) by the ALPS to bring the radioactive concentration levels below the regulatory limit for discharge. Tepco has succeeded in reducing the concentration levels of strontium, iodine, and plutonium in only 0.2 percent of the total volume of the wastewater, and it still requires further processing. But no secondary processing has taken place in the past nearly three years. Neither Tepco nor the Japanese government [have] said how many times the wastewater needs to be processed, how long it will take to do so, or whether the efforts will ever be successful. Greenpeace reported on these problems and why the ALPS failed nearly five years ago, and none of these issues has been resolved.”

Ice wall also melts

Tepco intended to reduce the volume of groundwater gushing into the reactor building foundations by digging a $350 million “ice wall” into the earth between the destroyed reactors and the mountains behind. The company placed 1,568 heavy pipes filled with coolant 90 feet deep. It was to freeze the ground to form a deep impenetrable barrier, diverting groundwater to either side of the destroyed six-reactor Fukushima complex and prevent it seeping inside. It has failed to do so. In 2016, the Times of London reported that the scheme had only a “minor impact” on the volume of groundwater rushing in, which at the time still averaged 321 tonnes a day. Tepco announced then that it would retrofit the system and fix the leaks, but Science/The Wire reported in January 2022 that the company had admitted that its ice wall was “partially” melting. About 150 tonnes per day still gushes in.

Filtered sludge burning through containers

The ALPS filter has produced over 4,000 large containers filled with highly radioactive slurry and sludge left from the treatment.

Like the use of the word “advanced” in the name of the failed ALPS machinery, the heavy cylinders used for the caustic, highly radioactive sludge are called “High Integrity Containers” or HICs. In fact they are made of plastic and have degraded far faster than Tepco anticipated.
By March 2, Tepco had filled 4,143 containers, according to the daily Asahi Shimbun. At 30 cubic feet each, the cylinders now store a total of about 124,290 cubic feet of the highly radioactive sludge that will soon require expensive repackaging and, eventually, isolation from the biosphere for thousands of years.

Over two years ago, on June 8, 2021, Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) announced that 31 of the containers had “exceeded their lifespans” and were corroded badly enough by the harsh toxic material that they must be replaced. The NRA also warned that another 56 cylinders would need replacing within two years.

Japan’s Mainichi newspaper reported that the government regulators blamed Tepco for “underestimating the radiation the 31 plastic cylinders were exposed to.” The company then claimed it would start moving the contents to new containers.

The Asahi Shimbun reported April 27, 2023, that the HICs must be stored in concrete boxes that can block radiation.

Rad waste to be dumped, deregulated

As we go to press, Tepco has begun testing its large tunnel, with which it intends to begin dispersing 1.37 million tonnes of contaminated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean. The government has steadfastly ignored fierce local and international opposition to the plan from the fishing community, marine scientists, Pacific Island nations, environmentalists, South Korea, and China. So far only South Korean politicians have suggested bringing international legal action against the dumping.

Since the 2011 meltdowns spewed radioactive materials broadly across Japan’s main island, some 22-million tonnes of cesium-contaminated soil, leaves, and debris have been scraped from the ground and stored in large bags. Citizens are struggling desperately prevent authorities from using the radioactive waste in road building or burning it in incinerators. The bags are currently stacked in tens of thousands of piles all over the region.

Even more protest was raised last February when the NRA announced it would allow Tepco to severely weaken its monitoring of radioactivity in the dumped waste. The NRA said it reduced the number of radioactive elements to be measured from 64 to 34.

The environment minister of Hong Kong, a coastal metropolis of 7.5 million people, charged in June that Japan is “violating its obligations under international law and endangering the marine environment and public health.” Minister Tse Chin-wan wrote in the daily Ta Kung Pao that the city would “immediately prohibit imports of seafood caught off the coast of Fukushima prefecture.”

– CGTN, April 23, 2023

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

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