Weekly Column

May 9, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Cape Cod Bay in the Crosshairs — Holtec’s Reactor Waste Water Threat

By John LaForge

Still dreaming of a nuclear reactor that is clean, safe and cheap? Holtec Decommissioning International Corp. is trying to turn that dream to a nightmare.

The newly minted subsidiary intends to dump roughly one million gallons radioactively contaminated nuclear reactor waste water into Cape Cod Bay, which happens to be a part of the protected Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. The million gallons are stagnating in the shutdown Pilgrim reactor’s waste fuel pool, formerly used to cool extremely hot uranium fuel rods which are taken from the reactor core (at around 5,092 degrees Fahrenheit) when fresh fuel is emplaced.

Holtec’s pollution plan has produced such a tsunami of public opposition that Massachusetts Senator Ed Marky convenes a congressional subcommittee field hearing in Plymouth, Massachusetts Friday, May 6, to air questions about an array of vexing problems with decommissioning the Pilgrim reactor, which is on the northwest shore of Cape Cod Bay. Markey is Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air, Climate, and Nuclear Safety.

Diane Turco is director of Cape Downwinders, a grassroots watchdog group working to protect local communities from the radiation risks created by Pilgrim. The group has helped bring critical attention to Holtec’s scandalous proposal and has organized gut-reaction outrage into a broad-based coalition of resistance that includes the fishing community, the labor movement, the real estate industry, as well as country’s major environmental organizations.

While Markey’s field hearing is being arranged, and Holtec works the bribery zone trying to win support, Turco has had to spend countless hours preparing to defend against trumped-up trespass charges resulting from a tour of the Pilgrim site she gave to a pair of National Public Radio reporters. The charge is crass political harassment, since neither of the reporters were charged, and attorneys have told Turco that a motion to dismiss based on selective prosecution is a no-brainer. But the court has not agreed to hold a motion hearing, so she has to prepare testimony and expert witnesses for a May 9 trial, even though the court could do the right thing and dismiss.

Waste water’s contents still secret

In a phone interview, Turco told me that Holtec has not even made public the radioactive character of the waste water it wants to spew to the public commons. If the state department of environmental protection has been informed, it has not divulged either the sorts of isotopes in the water or their concentration. This secrecy makes impossible an valid assessment of the risks involved and only aggravates public fear and hostility.

“If Holtec had true concern for public health and the environment and worked with transparency as they promised, it would halt any dumping until a viable solution is found acceptable”, Turco told the Cape Cod Times last December. “[D]umping into Cape Cod Bay just highlights the fact that the [US] Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Holtec don’t have a solution for what to do with nuclear waste. Contaminating our environment is …is immoral.”

The thought of Holtec’s river of poison being poured into Cape Cod brings to mind a wartime atrocity like poisoning wells. Holtec says it intends to dilute the radioactive waste water (like Tepco Corp’s plan to pour 1 million tons of radioactive waste water into the Pacific beginning next spring), but this is an irrelevant distraction.

The volume of radioactive chemicals, metals, or isotopes will not be changed or reduced at all by diluting. The same total of radioactive materials and their radioactivity are merely spread through a larger volume of water — all of which will then be poisoned for a very long time. Strontium-90 taints the water for 300 years (ten half-lives); iodine-129 for 160 million years; carbon-14 for 57,000 years. All such cancer-causing radionuclides cio-accumulate and bio-concentrate in the ocean’s web of life and can contaminate seafood like Cape Cod’s famous mussels, clams and oysters — becoming internal radiation emitters.

Last January 12, Sen. Markey and three other members of congress wrote to Holtec opposing the proposed discharge into Cape Cod Bay. The letter encouraged Holtec to consider alternative methods of disposal, none of which are good answers to nuclear power’s endless waste dilemma. Operators of the closed Vermont Yankee reactor shipped its poison water out of state, which moved the radiation risk to someone else’s water table. Evaporation is an option that risks spewing radionuclides on the wind. Nuclear power stories just don’t have happy endings. ####

— A version of this piece ran at CounterPunch (https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/05/06/cape-cod-bay-in-the-crosshairs-holtecs-reactor-waste-water-threat/) May 6-8, 2022

April 30, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Reducing Tensions, Building Trust, De-escalating

By John LaForge

The United States could immediately take direct actions that would de-escalate the over-arching nuclear threat that haunts Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. A few such actions would demonstrate good will and indicate a real intention to reduce tensions in the crisis which seems every day to grow more dangerous.

1. U.S. hydrogen bombs stationed in Europe could be withdrawn and their planned replacement cancelled.

The United States and Germany are formal states parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Articles I and II of the NPT flatly prohibit the transfer of nuclear weapons from one states party to another. Any fourth grader can understand that the NATO practice of “nuclear sharing” with Germany, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Turkey — which together have over 100 U.S. nuclear weapons — is an open violation of the clear, unambiguous, unequivocal and binding prohibitions of the NPT.

The United States stations an estimated 20 of its B61-3 and B61-4 thermonuclear gravity bombs at the German Air Force Base Büchel, 80 miles southeast of Cologne. These B61 H-bombs at Büchel are identified as “intermediate-yield strategic and tactical thermonuclear” bombs, and “the primary thermonuclear gravity bomb in the U.S.” according to the NuclearWeaponArchive.org.

Calling these weapons “intermediate” or “tactical” is shocking disinformation. The maximum yield of the B61-3 is 170 kilotons, and the maximum B61-4 yield is 50 kilotons, as reported by the Bulletin of the atomic Scientists. These H-bombs respectively produce over 11 times and 3 times the explosive blast, mass fire, and radiation of the 15-kiloton Hiroshima bomb that killed 140,000 people. (For background, see Lynn Eden’s “Whole World on Fire,” or Howard Zinn’s “The Bomb.”

The effects of detonating B61-3 or B61-4 bombs would inevitably be catastrophic mass destruction involving disproportionate, indiscriminate and long-lasting devastation. Plans to replace the current B61 with a new “model 12” could be cancelled now, and constitute a real ratcheting down of tensions in Europe.

2. The U.S. can discontinue its nuclear attack courses underway at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

The U.S. studies and plans nuclear weapon attacks at classrooms of its Defense Nuclear Weapons School (DNWS), and the one branch school outside the U.S. is at Ramstein in Germany, the largest U.S. military base outside the country, headquarters of the U.S. Air Forces in Europe, and NATO Allied Air Command. Outlines of nuclear attack coursework can be read on the DNWS website, which boldly declares the school: “is responsible for delivering, sustaining and supporting air-delivered nuclear weapon systems for our warfighters …every day.”

One class outlined on the DNWS website is for “Theater Nuclear Operations,” described as “a 4.5-day course that provides training for planners, support staff, targeteers, and staff nuclear planners for joint operations and targeting. The course provides an overview of nuclear weapon design, capabilities, and effects as well as U.S. nuclear policy, and joint nuclear doctrine…. Objectives: … Understand the U.S. nuclear planning and execution process…; Understand the targeting effects of nuclear weapon employment….”

Dispensing with this nuclear attack planning school would reduce tensions and help eliminate Russia’s dread of the U.S./NATO nuclear posture.

3. NATO can suspend its provocative military exercises.

Attacks with U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe are regularly simulated or “rehearsed,” as is often reported. Recent headlines noted: “German Air Force training for nuclear war as part of NATO” (Kazakh Telegraph Agency 2020), “Secret nuclear weapons exercise ‘Steadfast Noon” (German Armed Forces Journal 2019), “NATO nuclear weapons exercise unusually open” (2017), and “NATO nuclear weapons exercise Steadfast Noon in Büchel” (2015).

Giant NATO war games routinely zero in on Russia. In 2018, there was “Trident Juncture” with 50,000 troops in Norway, and “Atlantic Resolve” was conducted in Eastern Europe. In 2016, some 16,000 troops gathered in Norway for “Cold Response,” and in “Anaconda 2016” another 31,000 troops from 24 countries were again in motion across Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. In 2015, there was “Atlantic Resolve,” “Dragoon Ride,” and “Spring Storm,” all conducted across Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. In 2014, the routine “Cold Response” game in Norway involved 16,000 troops, and “Atlantic Resolve” took place in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.

Beyond the annual “Steadfast Noon” simulations, complex, multinational NATO exercises in Eastern European countries just recently ballooned in number. In 2019, there was a single big exercise called “Atlantic Resolve.” In 2020 there were five. In 2021 the number leaped to eleven, and NATO that year made plans for a total of 95 exercises. Individual NATO states had plans for another 220 of their own war games. Nothing justifies Putin’s naked aggression, but the marked increase in NATO war practices would even make the Dali Lama defensive.

4. The U.S. and NATO could end their nuclear weapon “first-use” policy.

The public policy of readiness to initiate attack with nuclear weapons — not as a deterrent against being attacked with nuclear weapons, but its exact opposite — is at the heart of both U.S. and NATO “nuclear posture.” This perpetual threat to start nuclear attacks during a conventional conflict, especially in the context of routine NATO nuclear war exercises, is unnecessarily destabilizing and reckless. In view of the enormously overwhelming power of U.S. and NATO conventional military forces, the nuclear option is grossly redundant and militarily useless.

After he retired, Paul Nitze, a former Navy Secretary and personal advisor to President Ron Reagan, wrote “A Threat Mostly to Ourselves” where he observed: “In view of the fact that we can achieve our objectives with conventional weapons, there is no purpose to be gained through the use of our nuclear arsenal.”

Now that the U.S. public as a whole has been transformed into one big anti-war group, it should recognize that it can influence our own government but not Russia’s. Our demands for negotiation, cease-fire, de-escalation and a peace agreement need to be directed in a way that has some chance of success. ###

Published at CounterPunch, APRIL 29, 2022

April 6, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Russia Can Get In Line: Investigate U.S. Atrocities First

On April 23, 1999, the U.S. rocketed the central state broadcasting corporation in Belgrade, destroying the building, killing 16 civilian employees and wounding 16. Human rights groups around the world said the attack was a war crime.

By John LaForge

Before the International Criminal Court confronts the criminal outrages currently being committed by Putin’s forces in Ukraine, there are scores of alleged U.S. war crimes to be investigated.

Nukewatch, CounterPunch and World Beyond War published part of this list of headlines (below) ten years ago, but in view of relentless ongoing U.S. wars and the outpouring of legitimate, agonized of grief for civilian victims of Russia’s illegal war, an updated compilation is in order.

The U.S. military has a long record of apparent atrocities during its attacks and its unprovoked wars of aggression or occupation in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Yugoslavia and elsewhere. Like Russia in Ukraine today, the crimes include bombing hospitals, desecrating corpses, attacks on civilians and civilian objects, attacking allied troops, torturing and executing prisoners, and using banned cluster bombs.

But unlike todays’ wall-to-wall news coverage of Russia’s onslaught, the U.S. media mostly withdrew from reporting on U.S. military occupations and still chooses not to present many photos or film of alleged U.S. crimes. Like news censorship inside Russia, our media’s blind eye helps maintain U.S. public support for its wars-of-choice, so protests have been raised mostly by victims, survivors, human rights groups, anti-war coalitions, and international law advocates.

The most notorious and well-documented U.S. crimes have involved its torture of prisoners. “It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture,” concluded the nonpartisan 11-member panel of the Constitution Project in 2013. The group’s 577-page report found that President George W. Bush and others bore ultimate responsibility for it.[1]

While bombing Libya in March 2011, U.S. forces refused to aid a group of 72 migrants adrift in the Mediterranean. Only nine people on board survived. The refusal was condemned as criminal by the Council of Europe, the continent’s human rights watchdog.[2]

On Feb. 12, 2010, in an atrocity kept secret until March 13, U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan killed a teenage girl, a pregnant mother of 10, a pregnant mother of six, a police officer and his brother, and were accused of trying to cover-up the killings by digging bullets out of the victims’ bodies, washing the wounds with alcohol and lying to superior officers.[3]

U.S. jets bombed and rocketed an allied Pakistani military base for two hours Nov. 26, 2011, killing 26 members of a force called the Frontier Corps and wounding dozens more.[4]

During the war in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, U.S. pilots deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade May 7, 1999 using five GPS-guided bombs. President Bill Clinton, CIA director George Tenet, and Defense Secretary William Cohen all claimed it was a mistake.[5]

On April 23, 1999, the U.S. rocketed the central state broadcasting corporation in Belgrade, destroying the building, killing 16 civilian employees and wounding 16. Human rights groups around the world said the attack was a war crime.[6]

In spite of international treaty law banning cluster bombs, the Unites States has used them widely its wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia.[7]

The headlines below highlight U.S. conduct in the world, and provide an outline for prosecutors in The Hague to begin investigations.

Headlines allege U.S. war crime spree

“How the U.S. Hid an Airstrike That Killed Dozens of Civilians in Syria,” New York Times, Nov. 13, 2019

“U.S. Drone Kills 30 Civilians, Afghans ay, Target Was ISIS,” New York Times, Sept. 20, 2019

“U.S. Airstrikes and Raids Killed 120 Civilians in 2018, Pentagon Says,” New York Times, May 3, 2019

“U.S. and Afghan Forces Killed More Civilians in Early 2019 Than Taliban did, U.N. Finds,” New York Times, April 25, 2019

“For Afghan Civilians, 2018 Was the Deadliest in a Decade” (“Among the dead last year were 927 children” the United Nations report found), New York Times, Feb. 25, 2019

“U.S. Airstrikes Said to Kill at Least 0 Afghan Civilians,” New York Times, Feb. 11, 2019

“American Airstrikes Kill Civilians, Including Children, Afghans Charge,” New York Times, Jan. 26, 2019

“Decorated Navy SEAL Is Accused of War Crimes in Iraq,” New York Times, Nov. 15, 2018

“Report: 3,301 civilians killed in US-led strikes in Syria since 2014,” Duluth News Tribune, Sept. 24, 2018

“Study: US killed 500 civilians,” Minneapolis StarTribune, June 3, 2018 (“Pentagon may be grossly undercounting.”)

“More Afghan Civilians are Victims of Targeted Attacks, UN Says,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 2018

“Afghan Pedophiles Get Pass from US Military, Report Says,” New York Times, January 24, 2018

“‘Killed, Shovel in Hand’: Afghan Farmers are the Latest Victims of a Chaotic War,” New York Times, March 19, 2018

“American Airstrikes in Afghanistan Stir Debate Over Who Was Killed,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 2017

“US Airstrikes kill at least 13 civilians,” Minneapolis StarTribune, Nov. 5, 2017

“Airstrike Kills at Least 25 at Street Market in Yemen,” New York Times, Nov. 2, 2017

“Civilian deaths from US-led strikes on Isis surge under Trump administration” (“Airwars, a UK-based watchdog group, estimates the civilian death toll from coalition airstrikes at over 3,800.”), The Guardian, June 6, 2017

“11 Afghans Killed in US Airstrike,” New York Times, Aug. 31, 2017

“3 Children Among Dead in a Raid In Somalia,” New York Times, Aug. 26, 2017

“Afghans Say US Strike Hit Civilians,” New York Times, Aug. 12, 2017

“Civilian deaths a windfall for militants’ propaganda,” AP/Minneapolis StarTribune, April 2, 2017

“US Airstrike ‘Probably Had a Role’ in Mosul Civilian Deaths, Commander Concedes,” New York Times, March 29, 2017

“US strike reportedly killed 30 Syrians,” New York Times & Minneapolis StarTribune, March 23, 2017

“US military says fight with Taliban killed 33 civilians,” Minneapolis StarTribune, Jan. 13, 2017

“US-led strikes in Iraq, Syria have killed at least 188 civilians, military says,” Duluth NewsTribune, Jan. 3, 2017

“US admits its airstrikes likely killed Afghan civilians.” Washington Post & Minneapolis StarTribune, Nov. 6, 2016

“US Drones Hit Civilians, U.N. Says,” New York Times, Sept. 30, 2016

“Residents Say US Strike Killed Civilians” (killed at least 15 civilians), Wall Street Journal, Sept. 29, 2016

“Pentagon: Errors led to hospital strike,” (“which killed 42 people”), New York Time & Minneapolis StarTribune, May 1, 2016

“A Moral Debt for Bombing a Hospital” (“killing 42 innocent people”), editorial, New York Times, April 30, 2016

“Airstrike on Afghan hospital stirs fury,” New York Times, & Minneapolis StarTribune; and “19 die in apparent US airstrike on Afghan hospital,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 4, 2015

“Afghanistan Says NATO Airstrike in East Killed Civilians,” New York Times, April 16, 2014

“U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes,” New York Times, April 16, 2013

“US marine pleads guilty to urinating on corpse of Taliban fighter in Afghanistan,” The Guardian, Jan. 16, 2013

“US troops posed with body parts of Afghan bombers,” Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2012

“Drones at Issue… Raids Disrupt Militants, but Civilian Deaths Stir Outrage,” New York Times, March 18, 2012

“G.I. Kills 16 Afghans, Including 9 Children In Attacks on Homes,” New York Times, March 12, 2012

“NATO Admits Airstrike Killed 8 Young Afghans, but Contends They Were Armed,” New York Times, Feb. 16, 2012

“Informer Misled NATO in Airstrike That Killed 8 Civilians, Afghans Say” (“seven shepherd boys under 14”), New York Times, Feb. 10, 2012

“One of the U.S. Marines who was caught on video urinating on the corpses of suspected Taliban fighters [in July 2011] has said that he’s not sorry for what he did and he’d do it again.” –ABC News

“Video [of Marines urinating on dead fighters] Inflames a Delicate Moment for US in Afghanistan,” New York Times, Jan. 12, 2012

“Commission alleges US detainee abuse,” Minneapolis StarTribune, Jan. 8, 2012

“Six Children Are Killed by NATO Airstrike in Afghanistan,” New York Times, Nov. 25, 2011

“American Soldier Is Convicted of Killing Afghan Civilians for Sport,” New York Times, Nov. 11, 2011

“US Drone Strike Kills Brother of a Taliban Commander,” New York Times, Oct. 28, 2011

“G.I. Killed Afghan Journalist, NATO Says,” New York Times, Sept. 9, 2011

“Cable Implicates Americans in Deaths of Iraqi Civilians,” New York Times, Sept. 2, 2011

“Civilians Die in a Raid by Americans and Iraqis,” New York Times, Aug. 7, 2011

“NATO Strikes Libyan State TV Transmitters,” New York Times, July 31, 2011

“NATO admits raid probably killed nine in Tripoli,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 20, 2011

“US Expands Its Drone War to Take On Somali Militants,” New York Times, July 2, 2011

“NATO airstrike blamed in 14 civilian deaths,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 30, 2011

“Libya Effort Is Called Violation of War Act,” New York Times, May 26, 2011

“Raid on Wrong House Kills Afghan Girl, 12,” New York Times, May 12, 2011

“Yemen: 2 Killed in Missile Strike,” AP, May 5, 2011

“NATO Accused of Going Too Far With Libya Strikes,” New York Times, May 2, 2011

“Disposal of Bin Laden’s remains violated Islamic principles, clerics say,” AP, May 2, 2011

“Photos of atrocities seen as threat to Afghan relations,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, March 22, 2011

“Missiles Kill 26 in Pakistan” (“most of them civilians”), New York Times, March 18, 2011

“Afghans Say NATO Troops Killed 8 Civilians in Raid,” New York Times, Aug. 24, 2010

“‘A dozen or more’ Afghan civilians were killed during a nighttime raid Aug. 5, 2010 in eastern Afghanistan, NATO’s officers said.” Chicago Tribune, Aug. 6, 2010

“Afghans Say Attack Killed 52 Civilians; NATO Differs,” New York Times, July 27, 2010

“Afghans Die in Bombing, As Toll Rises for Civilians,” New York Times, May 3, 2010

“Marines Used ‘Excessive Force’ in Afghan Civilian Deaths,” Washington Post, April 14, 2007

See you in court.

Notes:

[1] “U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes,” New York Times, April 16, 2013

[2] “NATO Failed to Aid a Boat of Migrants Off Libya Last Year, Rights Group Says,” New York Times, March 30, 2012

[3] Times of London, Mar. 13, 2010; & “US Admits Role in February Killing of Afghan Women,” New York Times, April 4, 2010

[4] “NATO Strikes Kill Pakistani Forces, Raising Tensions,” New York Times, Nov. 27, 2011

[5] The Guardian, “NATO bombed Chinese deliberately: Nato hit embassy on purpose,” Oct 16, 1999, https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/oct/17/balkans

[6] Amnesty Int’l, “NATO/Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: ‘Collateral damage’ or Unlawful Killings? Violations of the Laws of War by NATO During Operation Allied Force,” June 6, 2000, p. 40

[7] Human Rights Watch, “US Using Cluster munitions in Iraq,” April 1, 2003, https://www.hrw.org/news/2003/04/01/us-using-cluster-munitions-iraq#; The Lancet, “Pressure groups condemn US use of cluster bombs in Afghanistan”, Nov. 3, 2001,

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(01)06627-2.pdf; UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, “Cluster bombs were used by NATO forces during the bombing campaign,” https://www.icty.org/en/press/final-report-prosecutor-committee-established-review-nato-bombing-campaign-against-federal

February 19, 2022 by Nukewatch 1 Comment

“Most, if not all” US Reactors Dangerously Operating Using Counterfeit Parts

By John LaForge

The lead paragraph from Reuters was originally correct: “Most, if not all, U.S. nuclear power plants contain counterfeit or fraudulent parts, potentially increasing the risk of a safety failure…”

This hair-raising news is just one of the shocking findings in a set of seven reports released February 10 by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Office of Inspector General (OIG), now headed by Robert J. Feitel.

Among the findings of the first of the seven reports were: 1. “Counterfeit, fraudulent, and suspect items (CFSI) are present in operating plants”; 2. “The extent of CFSI in operating plants is unknown because the NRC does not usually require licensees to track CFSI” … “if done at all, tracking is voluntary and methods and data quality vary among licensees”; 3. The questionable “termination of [some] rulemaking in 2016 that addressed CFSI oversight concerns”; and 4. “Department of Energy staff identified more than 100 incidents involving CFSI in FY 2021 alone, including 5 incidents involving safety-significant components.”

“Counterfeit parts are safety and security concerns that could have serious consequences in critical power plant equipment required to perform a safety function,” the OIG report says in its understated bureaucratese. And, “According to the Electric Power Research Institute, counterfeit parts have been found in valves, bearings, circuit breakers, pipe fittings, and structural steel, and can be difficult to spot.”

The antiseptic euphemism “serious consequences” resulting from the failure of critical but counterfeit “safety function” parts, means, in plain-spoken terms, nuclear reactors going out-of-control, suffering loss-of-coolant meltdowns, and causing massive radioactive releases with its acute and long-term damage to environmental and human health.

The finding that “most, if not all” of the country’s 94 operating reactors are more dangerous than we thought is potentially so devastating to the environmentally toxic and financially bailed-out nuclear power sector (Reuters said the OIG’s reports are “a blow to a US nuclear industry”), that public relations agents and industry allies in the media must have run headlong to the phones and demanded retractions. Somehow, they were rewarded almost immediately with a so-called “correction” which misstates and weakens the OIG findings — a “correction” that was placed at the beginning of most follow-up reports.

The retraction misleadingly states that it, “Corrects lead paragraph to say many counterfeit parts are in U.S. nuclear plants instead of most, if not all, plants contain counterfeit parts.”

In fact, the report from the OIG — based on confidential testimony from several industry and NRC whistle-blowers — says that “well placed NRC sources” allege that “most, if not all” nuclear reactors operating in the United States today have counterfeit or faulty, substandard parts essential for preventing disasters.

The lead paragraph in The Energy Daily improved on the Reuters report by including the word “operating” before “nuclear plant” — a salient point considering their increased potential for radiation disasters compared to the 23 shuttered units.

The “most, if not all” bombshell follows from the fact, as OIG found, that “the Nuclear Regulatory Commission may be underestimating the number of CFSI in plants and their impact because it does not require licensees [reactor operators] to report CFSI except in extraordinary circumstances” like “the failure of equipment that performs a significant safety function.”

One such fraudulently manufactured, purchased and installed part identified after it failed was a “service water pump shaft” that was found to be counterfeit after if snapped. The loss of cooling water circulation, either inside a reactor vessel, or in the deep pool of ferociously hot waste fuel rods, has caused some of the industry’s worse radiation release disasters.

Inspector General Savages ‘Misleading’ NRC Actions, Thanks Comley

The depth of deliberate malfeasance or deception by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is justifiably savaged in the OIG report. The investigation found that NRC staff had for more than 10 years dismissed, ignored and even misfiled so as to hide allegations regarding FCSI. “This investigation revealed that the alleger communicated CFSI concerns to the agency staff via letters, e-mails, phone calls, and discussions at public meetings over 10 years. Most of the alleger’s concerns involved Seabrook Station.”

“… we found that the NRC did not investigate or pursue any substantive actions regarding an alleger’s concerns about the presence of CFSI, nor did the NRC process any of the information provided by the alleger over the last 10 years through its Allegation Review Boards.”

Indeed, the NRC’s Office Allegation Coordinator was found to have classified the alleger’s charges as “non-allegations,” and then kept secret the details of how such a designation is applied. The OIG politely condemned the agency’s action, writing, “Such missing information regarding the NRC’s approach to reviewing allegations could be construed as misleading to the public.”

“The alleger” is a reference to Mr. Stephen J. Comley, Jr., of the national whistle-blower protection organization We the People, in Rowley, Mass. In a February 10 cover letter to Comley accompanying the reports, OIG head Feitel wrote appreciatively, “Thank you for taking considerable time to bring your concerns to the OIG,” and noted that “my staff has completed its investigations” into “your allegations that CFSI are present in most, if not all, U.S. nuclear power plants.…”

Feitel confirmed to Comley that “OIG investigators interviewed several individuals you identified.” They are some of the over two-dozen whistle-blowers who have spoken with We the People, and who are referred to in the OIG reports as “a well-placed NRC principle” or “an NRC source.”

As I reported last October in Steve Comley has for 35 years been haranguing the NRC and its inspectors, demanding that they take the whistle-blowers’ charges seriously. So the OIGs’ damning and alarming February findings (too many to report on in one or two articles) are the long-awaited validation and vindication of Comley’s steadfast work that goes back almost four decades.

Feitel’s letter to Comley speaks to his group’s repeated warnings to the NRC about the impossibility of safely evacuating the Seabrook, New Hampshire reactor site during an emergency, and, beyond this, to the whistle-blowers’ allegations that they as first responders — State Patrol and National Guard forces — have been gag-ordered by state authorities not to discuss the endangerment caused by the lack of a feasible evacuation plan. (Nuclear reactors are the only industrial operations required to earn the approval of an emergency evacuation plan prior to startup.)

“The OIG also investigated your allegation that Seabrook Station’s evacuation plan is inadequate,” Feitel wrote. This report is complete, but a response from the NRC is pending, and only after the response is filed with OIG can the public “request a copy of the report via the Freedom of Information Act,” Feitel advised.

For now, the NRC can continue to hide behind its PR hacks that manage major news services with bald-faced lies. An NRC Public Affairs Officer named Scott Burnell told Reuters, “Nothing in the report suggests an immediate safety concern.” And Burnell has a point. The report doesn’t “suggest” anything. While using more polite language then me, it directly condemns the deceitful, bogus, unscrupulous, immoral, deceptive, dodgy, and duplicitous chicanery of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when dealing with its own whistle-blowers, and warns against the reckless endangerment of operating counterfeit, substandard nuclear power reactors.

published at CounterPunch, Feb. 18, 2022: https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/18/us-reactors-dangerously-operating-using-counterfeit-parts/

January 7, 2022 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Plans for Mass Shipments of High-Level Radioactive Waste Quietly Disclosed

BY JOHN LAFORGE, COUNTERPUNCH, JANUARY 7, 2022

https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/01/07/plans-for-mass-shipments-of-high-level-radioactive-waste-quietly-disclosed/

How far is your house or apartment from a major highway, or railroad line? Do you want to play Russian roulette with radioactive waste in transit for 40 years?

Last month US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff quietly reported preparing for tens of thousands of cross-country shipments of high-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors to the desert Southwest. The oft-disparaged US infrastructure of decrepit of roads, faulty bridges, rickety rails, and rusty barges may not be ready for such an onrush of immensely heavy rad waste casks.

Steel and concrete canisters known as “dry casks” are set outside near nuclear reactors holding the high-level radioactive waste fuel rods that must be containerized for over one million years. The casks are not designed or engineered for trans-shipment to centralized waste dumps. Photo by Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Diane D’Arrigo, of Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Maryland, and Leona Morgan, with Nuclear Issues Study Group in New Mexico, report for NIRS that the transports would carry “the hottest, most concentrated atomic waste from the nuclear fuel chain, misleadingly dubbed “spent nuclear fuel. This radioactive waste can cause death in minutes if unshielded, and remains radioactive for literally millions of years; it is one of the most deadly materials on Earth.”

In his Dec. 2, 2021 letter to NRC commissioners, Daniel Dorman, NRC’s Executive Director for Operations, wrote that: “To prepare for a potential large-scale commercial transportation campaign, staff … assessed the NRC’s readiness for oversight of a large-scale, multi-mode, multi-package, extended-duration campaign” of heavy radioactive waste shipments by trains, trucks, and barges. The NRC’s “assessment” was published December 17 with Dorman’s letter, which noted that storage of the waste is now done in cooling pools and/or heavy outdoor casks near the reactors that produce it — at 75 sites across the country.

Radioactive waste storage may be consolidated

Dorman’s letter — unearthed January 4 by Michael Keegan of the Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes — reminds us, “The NRC received two applications to construct and operate consolidated interim storage facilities for [high-level waste], using dry storage systems, at sites in Texas and New Mexico.” In September 2021, the NRC issued a license to Interim Storage Partners Inc., for the Texas site, and a license decision is pending on a Holtec Corp. proposal for New Mexico. Both projects are the subject of lawsuits that will slow the industry’s and government’s rush to dump.

Critics of the proposed licensing are demanding that the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board halt the Holtec licensing because it is illegal. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act “only allows the US Department of Energy (DOE) to take ownership of irradiated nuclear fuel at an operating permanent geologic repository,” NIRS notes. “Such a title- and liability-transfer to DOE at the ‘interim’ site proposed by Holtec, is not allowed.”

NIRS reports that “The Holtec [company’s] license application says the lethal waste at the site would be owned by either the DOE or the nuclear utility companies that made it.” Yet at one licensing hearing, Holtec’s lawyer, Jay Silberg, admitted that under current law, DOE cannot take title and ownership of the waste at an “interim” centralized storage site.

Presently, “dry casks” that hold the waste onsite near reactors are not the same canisters required for long-haul transport. Dangerous repackaging, testing, and mishaps will be required. Government environmental impact statements regarding the thousands of these shipments over a decades-long timeline have officially predicted an alarming number of accidents, crashes, and potential disasters.

Maps of likely transport routes produced by the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects are available at Beyond Nuclear. They show cities, states, and congressional districts “potentially affected by shipments,” and are based on DOE plans in 2008 for the discredited Yucca Mountain dump site near Las Vegas. Yucca Mountain was scientifically disqualified and cancelled during the Obama Administration, but Nevada’s maps shed light on routes to the New Mexico and Texas sites, because the further away from the Southwest such waste shipments originate, the more similar-to-identical the transport routes would be.

The Tex-Mex dump site owners (Interim Storage Partners, and Holtec) in league with the NRC, have kept their shipment plans obscure and secretive. The waste’s producers and managers don’t want the public to know if or when “Mobile Chernobyls” could pass through their communities, or to start organizing to stop them. They know there are reasons to protest. The government has notoriously proposed water-borne routes that would see high-level waste casks on barges — a scheme critics call “Floating Fukushimas” or “Edmund Fitzgerald Follies.” The gales of November be damned. ###

—John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and edits its newsletter.

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BY JOHN LAFORGE, COUNTERPUNCH, JANUARY 7, 2022

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BY JOHN LAFORGE, COUNTERPUNCH, JANUARY 7, 2022

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