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Thousands Oppose Haphazard, Unregulated Radioactive Waste Landfill Dumping

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2020-2021

Nearly 10,000 comments were submitted to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) condemning the agency’s plan to deliberately allow radioactive waste, mainly from nuclear power reactors, to go into regular garbage dumps and other landfills that do not have radioactive waste licenses.

In one letter, Roxanne Brown, vice president of the United Steel Workers, wrote, “Putting nuclear waste, of any dosage level, in the hands of undertrained and unqualified workers is not only a bad decision for business and the environment, but hazardous to the people doing the work.”

The NRC proposes to “interpret” its rules, which now require radioactive waste to go to licensed sites. The change would allow waste to be sent to any dump granted a “specific exemption” by the NRC. “Exempt” landfills would be allowed to expose the public to as much radiation as operating nuclear power reactors or licensed nuclear waste sites—a level of exposure that can give cancer to one in every 500 people exposed over their lifetimes, according to Environmental Protection Agency calculations.

“Since there is no safe level of radiation exposure, all industrially generated nuclear waste needs to be isolated, not dispersed into landfills, air, water and possibly even recycled consumer goods,” said Diane D’Arrigo, who has spent 30 years following the issue for the non-profit Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). “The big concern is the radioactive danger to current and future generations and the unlimited amount of radioactivity released to the environment. Most commenters don’t like that there is no public notice or opportunity to even know if their local landfill gets ‘exempt’ authorization from the NRC,” D’Arrigo said.

“This proposal is sure to spawn fly-by-night dump operations on vacant lots, in urban renewal excavations, and on brownfield sites of old factories,” said Terry Lodge, a Toledo-based environmental attorney working for NIRS. “As usual, the poor and most vulnerable populations will be the collateral damage from this dark atom that was supposed to save us.”

—Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Oct. 21; United Steel Workers, June 29, 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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Germany’s US Bombs in Spotlight

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2020-2021
By Kelly Lundeen

In Germany this year, 41 peace activists have been put on trial for protest actions at Germany’s Büchel air force base, where the US stations 20 of its B61 H-bombs.

Nuclear abolitionists Dennis DuVall, a US Veteran for Peace now living in Dresden, and Margriet Bos, a Catholic Worker from Amsterdam, go on trial Dec. 7, 2020 in Cochem, charged with trespass and damage to the base’s fence. The trials will draw wide attention because a Dutch national television crew is reporting.

Pilots wave from a Tornado fighter jet.

Over a dozen resisters including DuVall are appealing their lower court convictions, and hope to win a judicial order condemning Germany’s “sharing” of US nuclear weapons—a policy that many contend violates binding international treaty law.

Nukewatch staffer and Quarterly editor John LaForge, who was similarly charged last year for actions in 2018 and 2019, is scheduled for trial February 1 in Cochem.

Just before trial, Margriet said in part, “Along with North American peace activists Susan Crane, Ralph Hutchison and Andrew Lanier, I entered the nuclear military base in Büchel to hinder and frustrate the machine of death and destruction that’s preparing a third world war with thermonuclear bombs. We cut the fence and walked towards the runway to prevent the Tornados from flying. Tornado jet fighters practice every weekday and expel 12,000 kilos of Co2 every hour they fly, the same amount as driving a diesel car nonstop for 62.5 days.”

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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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Reporting the facts and resisting the recklessness of nuclear power and weapons is what we have done for over 40 years, and that’s what we’ll continue to do. The truth is that nukes do no good on this Earth. From the first shovelful of dirt from a uranium mine, to machining into the most dangerous weapons in the world, from the wasted trillions of dollars stolen from the homeless, hungry and unhealthy, to the deadly wastes leaving a radioactive environment for hundreds of thousands of years, nukes only hurt.

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