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Nuclear disposal put in doubt by recovered Swedish galleon | Environment | guardian.co.uk
The plan to use copper for sealing nuclear waste underground has being thrown into disarray by corrosion in artefacts from the Vasa
Plans for nuclear waste disposal could be thrown into confusion tomorrow at a summit because of new evidence of corrosion in materials traditionally used for burial procedures.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) says it will keep careful watch on a meeting organised by the Swedish National Council for Nuclear Waste, which will look at potential problems with copper, designated for an important role in sealing radioactive waste underground.
S.C. waste coming to Oak Ridge » Knoxville News Sentinel
The U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River nuclear facility in South Carolina is using a wealth of Recovery Act funding to accelerate cleanup activities and reduce its Cold War stockpile of radioactive waste.
Some of that waste, containing radioactive tritium and other contaminants, is coming to Oak Ridge for treatment and packaging before being shipped west to Nevada or Utah for disposal. Two local facilities owned by Perma-Fix Environmental Services Inc. - Diversified Scientific Services Inc. near Kingston and Materials & Energy Corp. in Oak Ridge - have been hired to treat the so-called mixed waste, which contains both radioactive elements and hazardous chemicals.
The FINANCIAL - Boeing Seeks Review of California Site Cleanup Law
In its filing, Boeing says the recent state law changes the normal cleanup process applied throughout the state by imposing “irrational and arbitrary requirements” on Santa Susana.
Depleted uranium - Salt Lake Tribune
DU: Depleted uranium, a unique waste that will become more and more radioactive until, roughly, the year 1002009. The acronym also gives sound guidance for where depleted uranium should be buried: deep underground.
But a lack of deep, underground storage space and a growing need to find permanent storage for 1.4 million tons of DU is "clearly driving" federal regulators to erroneously steer the materials to shallow burial sites like EnergySolutions' low-level radioactive waste disposal facility in Utah.
That's the contention of Kansas State University Geologist Charles G. Oviatt and a pair of Brigham Young University scientists, geologist Steve Nelson and climatologist Summer Rupper. In a letter to the NRC, which is gathering input in the early stages of a three-year review of DU disposal issues, they cite a "programmatic failure" by the agency to properly plan for deep disposal of depleted uranium.
northumberlandnews | Low-level radioactive waste survey in Port Hope gets underway
- The annual telephone survey to gauge public attitudes about the community's low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) clean-up is set to kick-off once again in Port Hope.
The Port Hope Area Initiative's (PHAI) eighth annual public attitude survey will get underway in mid-November, said Sue Stickley, communications officer. Every year, the PHAI surveys local residents to get feedback on issues related to the clean-up and safe long-term management of historic low-level radioactive waste in the community. As in past years, individual survey responses are absolutely confidential, but the overall results will be made public.
"If you receive a phone call and are invited to take part in the survey, please take a few moments to answer the interviewer's questions," said Ms. Stickley.
Two reports find violations at SRS | Aiken Standard | Aiken, SC
Two reports from investigative teams have made significant recommendations to the Savannah River Site and its contractors after accidents and the verification of employees' citizenship seemed to be lacking.
The Department of Energy and its Office of the Inspector General have released the reports after investigations into activities at SRS.
One report was that of a "Type B" investigation into a serious hand and arm injury suffered by a worker in a powerhouse, the other regarding employment verification at SRS.
The investigation into the injury came about after a worker suffered first-, second- and third-degree burns on his arms and hands while working in a D-area powerhouse. The electrical burns were determined to have been caused when a metal level the worker was using came into contact with a live breaker.
EPA seeks ex-Santa Susana lab workers for cleanup - San Jose Mercury News
he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants the help of former workers at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory to identify contamination from nuclear and radiological projects at the site.
The EPA is interested in interviewing former workers for three companies—Atomics International, Rocketdyne and Rockwell—who may know about spills, dumping or other releases of radiological material, the agency said in a news release this week.
The lab was established in 1946 and covers nearly 2,900 acres in eastern Ventura County, just west of the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles.
Radiation board requires safety report on depleted uranium - Salt Lake Tribune
EnergySolutions won't be able to bring more depleted uranium to Utah until the company proves the waste can be safely disposed in Tooele County for the long run.
That's what the Utah Radiation Control Board decided Tuesday by sticking to principles it adopted last month, even after the company threatened legal action.
The limit on DU, as depleted uranium is often called, does not go into effect for several months, and that leaves open a window for EnergySolutions to bring up to 15,000 drums of it from a government cleanup in South Carolina. But board members said their action Tuesday actually gets the safeguard in place sooner than originally expected.
EnergySolutions sent its attorney to the board meeting Tuesday to warn of potential legal consequences if the board did not backtrack on actions taken at its October meeting.
Life after Yucca Mountain - Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009 | 2:06 a.m. - Las Vegas Sun
Report: Energy Department on verge of abandoning nuke dump application
We have cheered the Obama administration’s decision to eventually shutter the ill-conceived Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project by starving it of federal funding. Nonetheless, our optimism has been tempered because the Energy Department still has a pending license application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a permanent dump for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
What we eagerly await is the day when the Energy Department abandons the application so that the idea of forcing a potentially deadly nuke waste dump, on a state that does not want it, is buried for good.
Problematic 'pluthermal' era | The Japan Times Online
The 1.18 million-kW No. 3 reactor at Kyushu Electric Power Co.'s Genkai nuclear power plant in Saga Prefecture, which is Japan's first reactor using plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) as fuel, attained nuclear criticality last Thursday and started trial operations Monday (commerical operations are to start on Dec. 2). Thus "pluthermal" power generation has begun, but many problems remain unresolved.
MOX fuel, made of plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel and uranium, was primarily intended for use in a fast breeder reactor (FBR), the core of Japan's nuclear fuel-cycle plan. But the prototype FBR Monju in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, has remained shuttered since a major accident in 1995. As a secondary step, the government in 1997 decided to adopt pluthermal power generation, which burns MOX fuel in ordinary light water reactors. But mishaps delayed its start by 10 years.
Aiken-area group wants nuclear waste study - Local / Metro - TheState.com
Aiken-area business leaders say the Savannah River Site may become the nation's high-level nuclear waste dumping ground if the federal government drops plans for a disposal site in Nevada.
But the SRS Community Reuse Organization says shelving the Yucca Mountain site is a bad idea, and it says the nation now needs to figure out how to dispose of high-level nuclear waste. The group's mission supports job creation in the five counties around SRS, a 300-square mile nuclear weapons site.
Aiken, Augusta and surrounding communities could suffer a bad image if the waste is left at SRS, making it harder to recruit industry, the reuse organization said in a statement Monday. It is calling for a special blue-ribbon panel to study options for disposing of waste.
Company to present regulators some options -- and a warning - Salt Lake Tribune
EnergySolutions » Lawyer expected to outline "acceptable," unacceptable" paths
EnergySolutions Inc. says state regulators are tinkering too much with the depleted uranium provisions of its operating license, and the nuclear waste company is sending its lawyer Tuesday, along with a politely worded threat to sue, to the Radiation Control Board.
Company spokesman Mark Walker said EnergySolutions has no comment in advance of the discussion. But the company's eight-page outline of the radiation board's legal options range from what it considers "preferred" to "unacceptable."
"To avoid litigation of this issue," EnergySolutions says, the board must not impose a moratorium or follow through with the pending license change, says the prepared presentation of Craig D. Galli, an attorney for the company. The statement is contained in prepared testimony obtained by The Tribune through an open-records request.
Electricity for Americans From Russia’s Old Nuclear Weapons - NYTimes.com
What’s powering your home appliances?
Multiple warhead ballistic missiles like the ones deployed at this site north of Russia's border with Kazakhstan are being dismantled. Some nuclear material goes to the United States.
For about 10 percent of electricity in the United States, it’s fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, including Russian ones.
“It’s a great, easy source” of fuel, said Marina V. Alekseyenkova, an analyst at Renaissance Capital and an expert in the Russian nuclear industry that has profited from the arrangement since the end of the cold war.
But if more diluted weapons-grade uranium isn’t secured soon, the pipeline could run dry, with ramifications for consumers, as well as some American utilities and their Russian suppliers.
Already nervous about a supply gap, utilities operating America’s 104 nuclear reactors are paying as much attention to President Obama’s efforts to conclude a new arms treaty as the Nobel Peace Prize committee did.
Telluride environmental group sues Montrose County over uranium mill « Colorado Independent
Montrose County commissioners met in secret and had already made up their minds before approving a special use permit for a uranium mill in the Paradox Valley, a lawsuit filed in Montrose County District Court alleges.
The suit, filed by the Telluride-based environment organization Sheep Mountain Alliance, also accuses the commissioners of inadequately weighing the air and water quality impacts of an industrial milling operation in a valley zoned for agriculture.
Paradox Valley
Paradox Valley
The county attorney had not yet seen the suit and therefore couldn’t comment on its merits, according to the Telluride Daily Planet, but a representative of the company proposing the Piñon Ridge Mill, Energy Fuels of Ontario, Canada, said he expected such a delaying tactic.
Scientists: Nuke panel owes Utahns an apology - Salt Lake Tribune
Three scientists say federal nuclear regulators owe Utahns an apology -- and a policy change -- for allowing shallow burial of depleted uranium, including the 49,000 tons already at EnergySolutions Inc.'s landfill in Tooele County.
Geologist Stephen T. Nelson and climatologist Summer B. Rupper, both of Brigham Young University, and Kansas State University geologist Charles G. Oviatt, say it is "absurd" for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deem depleted uranium safe for surface disposal.
The uranium enrichment waste gets increasingly hazardous for a million years, and that's too long to reasonably ensure the safety of any shallow landfills, especially one like the Tooele County site that is underwater a few hundred of every several thousand years. Those wet cycles could spread long-lived radioactive material throughout the Great Salt Lake basin, the scientists say.
Britain's nuclear strategy threatens destruction of Kalahari | Environment | The Observer
Namibian environmentalists warn expansion of uranium mining could devastate spectacular natural landscape
The hidden cost of Britain's new generation of nuclear power could be the destruction of the Kalahari desert in Namibia and millions of tonnes of extra greenhouse gas emissions a year, the Observer has discovered.
The desert, with its towering sand dunes and spectacular lunar-like landscapes, is at the centre of an international uranium rush led by Rössing Uranium, a subsidiary of the British mining giant Rio Tinto, and the French state-owned company, Areva, which part-manages the nuclear complex at Sellafield and wants to build others in Britain.
Short-lived nuclear waste watchdog, Citizens For A Clean Idaho, folds | Local News | Idaho Statesman
A group created to protest American Ecology's plan to bring extremely low-level nuclear waste to its Owyhee County burial facility has closed up shop after the company filed a defamation lawsuit.
Rexburg-based Citizens for a Clean Idaho has taken its Web site down and failed to respond to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff report that discounted its claims about Westinghouse Electric's request for a federal exemption to ship 50,000 tons of soil and debris contaminated with extremely low levels of radioactive material to American Ecology's state-regulated facility.
The Idaho company filed a lawsuit in 4th District Court last week claiming the group and its founder Stephen Loosli - with the support of American Ecology's Utah competitor EnergySolutions - made false and misleading statements about American Ecology.
Loosli said the lawsuit was filed to quiet a critic and that the assertions that Citizens for a Clean Idaho is a front group for EnergySolutions are unfounded.
Social Networking for Nuclear Decommissioning
Faced with the challenges of delivering the right training to the right people, the IAEA´s International Decommissioning Network (IDN) has begun using popular social networking tools to connect with more than 400 nuclear professionals in 60 countries all year round.
Described as a network of networks, the IDN brings together experts in the decommissioning of nuclear facilities so they can share ideas and learn from each other.
It has proven difficult for some young nuclear professionals who are actually involved in day-to-day decommissioning to attend workshops, seminars and global site visits. So the IDN´s coordinators at the IAEA are using non-traditional approaches to engage them.
Nuclear Plant Promises Called Blank Sheet of Paper - Huntington News Network
A meeting of the Department of Energy’s Site Specific Advisory Board for clean up and reuse of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant at Piketon brought forth a tug of war. Much like the Huntington downtown Superblock which lay fallow for nearly 30 years, uses for the contaminated site break down to two camps: Clean up the radioactive waste that still kills former workers versus possibly attracting a so-called new nuclear plant that would allegedly be safe.
The latter would bring jobs to an area starving for employment. But, many nearby residents do not trust the statements that a ‘new’ nuclear plant would not continue the odyssey of cover ups since the former facility opened during the Cold War in the 1950s.
However, after an elaborate news conference in the summer of 2009, the project dropped off the radar.
Activist and former Piketon employee Vina Colley, referred to past contamination as a reason to avoid nuclear power. “All of their drains and laundry [water] where they washed contaminated clothes and [water from] equipment washed off went into the local creeks, which emptied into the Scioto River, then filtered to the Ohio and down to the Mississippi. We’re not the only ones affected. The whole world is affected by what these nuclear facilities are producing and releasing into the environment.”
NRC's decision on B&W incident could take 4-6 weeks | Lynchburg News Advance
It could take more than a month for federal regulators to decide whether to take action against Babcock & Wilcox for possible violations, officials said Friday.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a conference with B&W officials to discuss four “apparent violations” in the company’s performance in ensuring safety and reporting emergencies. The issues relate to an event in July when uranium was found in a location without safety checks at B&W’s Mt. Athos site in Campbell County.
NRC officials voiced several concerns and B&W explained what happened in July, and how they have adjusted their procedures since then.
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