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Pueblo Chieftain: Utah company defends rail transfer at Antonito
An official with the Utah company shipping contaminated soil from Los Alamos National Laboratory defended the company's decision to transfer its shipments from truck to rail at Antonito.
"The Antonito transfer point is the closest viable option to Los Alamos," EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker said. "Other transfer point options were inferior largely due to an increase in rail miles required, lack of daily rail service or multiple railroad switching requirements."
Pueblo Chieftain Online: Hazardous waste being hauled into state
A Salt Lake City company that ships hazardous waste from Los Alamos National Laboratory agreed Thursday to suspend their transfer operation at Antonito for two days, while alarmed Conejos County officials decide how to regulate the operation.
On Tuesday, EnergySolutions, which specializes in the recycling and disposal of nuclear material, began hauling contaminated soil by truck to Antonito where it transfers the waste to the San Luis & Rio Grande for shipment on to a company storage site in Clive, Utah.
Mike Williams, the company's project manager, said the company hopes to ship up to 36 bags per day.
He said they will contain up to 15,000 pounds per bag of soil contaminated with depleted uranium and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. But the county officials and residents, who found out about the project through word of mouth, were anything but generous toward the company's plans.
Cape Times: Truck with radioactive material crashes
A bakkie carrying radioactive material rolled on the N1 near Bellville, shutting down traffic in both directions for more than two hours yesterday.
Two men in the bakkie were taken to Louis Leipoldt Medi-Clinic for treatment after the accident at about 11.30am between Durban and Old Oak roads.
The bakkie allegedly swerved to avoid another car and rolled on to the centre island, said Tristan Wadeley, a spokesman for ER24. He said the driver told paramedics who were first on the scene that the bakkie was transporting hazardous material.
"It is radioactive, but the container was not broken and it did not spill," said Anzelle Smit, spokeswoman for the Western Cape Health Department EMS.
'Hot' nuclear waste could still be shipped to Hanford under proposed settlement | Oregon Local News - - OregonLive.com
When Oregon and Washington's governors announced a settlement with the U.S. Department of Energy in August for cleanup of radioactive tank waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, they said it included a "moratorium" on shipping new radioactive waste to Hanford until a plant to treat the tank wastes was up and running.
But in fact a big chunk of radioactive waste -- including contaminated metal from decommissioned U.S. nuclear plants -- isn't included in that proposed moratorium, Oregon officials confirmed Friday.
Ken Niles, assistant director of the Oregon Department of Energy, said Oregon continues to oppose importing the waste, formally known as "Greater than Class C" or GTCC waste.
Anti-nuclear group criticizes German waste shipments to Russia | Environment & Development | Deutsche Welle | 15.10.2009
In the wake of a French investigation into reports that nuclear waste is sent from French plants to Siberia, news has emerged that Germany has a long tradition of shipping toxic waste to Russia.
The German anti-nuclear group "Ausgestrahlt" said that since 1996, Germany's only uranium enrichment plant in Gronau has shipped about 22,000 tons of uranium hexafluoride, which is a compound used in the uranium enrichment process, to Russia.
"Ausgestrahlt" reported on Wednesday that only 10 percent of that was returned to Germany as enriched uranium. The anti-nuclear activists said the remaining 90 percent was stored in Siberia, outdoors and in rusting containers. Uranium hexafluoride is highly toxic and corrosive to most metals.
Radioactive waste shipments to Utah site facing year delay - Salt Lake Tribune
Drums of radioactive cleanup waste in South Carolina are ready for loading onto rail cars for the journey to a Tooele County disposal site.
But now those plans could be delayed more than a year, after the state Radiation Control Board voted Tuesday to allow more depleted uranium (DU) only after EnergySolutions Inc. submits a report confirming its extra steps to safeguard the waste will work.
The move was a victory for the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah (HEAL) which has sought at least a temporary moratorium on DU, as the uranium-enrichment waste is called.
Uranium reprieve - Salt Lake Tribune
It's the waste disposal equivalent of a last-minute call from the governor, a radioactive reprieve.
The trains were to start arriving in Utah this month, carrying 15,000 drums containing 11,000 metric tons of depleted uranium to EnergySolutions' low-level radioactive waste disposal facility in Tooele County. Now, the Department of Energy has announced the shipments won't start leaving the yard at DOE's Savannah River site in South Carolina until December.
The delay will buy time for Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, to convince the DOE to put the transfer on hold until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission completes an ongoing review of depleted uranium disposal. Matheson has a solid argument.
DOE wants to ship low-level radioactive waste to Anderson County landfill » Knoxville News Sentinel
The Department of Energy is proposing that tons of very low-level radioactive soil from a closed plutonium extraction plant in New York be trucked to Tennessee.
The Chestnut Ridge Landfill in Anderson County was the only landfill mentioned as the likely dirt depository during a conference call Thursday organized by DOE.
Some 6,000 cubic yards of soil that contains cesium-137 and detectable levels of strontium-90 and plutonium-239/240 are to be excavated from the New York site starting in mid-October, according to a DOE briefing.
That's the equivalent of some 200 dump truck loads of waste.
Hanford finishes shipping plutonium, unirradiated fuel - Mid-Columbia News | Tri-City Herald : Mid-Columbia news
Hanford has completed shipping its leftover weapons-grade plutonium and unirradiated nuclear fuel to South Carolina, a major step toward reducing security requirements at the nuclear reservation.
About 2,300 containers of material were shipped, most of them coffee-can-sized canisters of plutonium that had been stored at the Plutonium Finishing Plant. Shipments of the canisters ended in April.
Since then, the Department of Energy has been shipping about a dozen packages of unirradiated fuel, with those shipments completed in September. DOE had set a goal to have the shipping done before the start of fiscal 2010, which began today.
"It is a major accomplishment with a lot of effort by many people here at Hanford, a lot of effort by transportation crews and by the people at the Savannah River Site," said Geoff Tyree, a DOE Hanford spokesman.
New Mexico Independent » N.M. plays role in moving nuclear materials around the country
Want to know what a top-secret truck moving “special nuclear materials” around the country looks like?
Check out this photo, which comes from a blog at the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle. The photo was released after a Freedom of Information Act request from an environmental group.
“It’s big and blue – and rumbling down an interstate near you. But if you were parked next to a nuclear warhead at the gas station, would you know it?” writes Chronicle reporter Robert Pavey.
The Chronicle covers the Savannah River Site (SRS), a big-bomb producing facility back in the day, by which I mean the Cold War era. The Chronicle just published a series of stories on SRS’s critical role in disposing of plutonium from about 10,000 dismantled bombs.
So what does this top-secret transporting of nuclear materials have to do with New Mexico?
Patience, patience.
How U.S. Removed Half a Ton of Uranium From Kazakhstan - washingtonpost.com
On a snowy day in December 1993, just months after Andy Weber began his diplomatic job at the U.S. Embassy in Almaty, Kazakhstan, he met with a tall, bullet-headed man he knew only as Col. Korbator.
"Andy, let's take a walk," the colonel said. As they strolled through a dim apartment courtyard, Korbator handed Weber a piece of paper. Weber unfolded it. On the paper was written:
Colorado Independent » Colorado officials: Yellowcake uranium trucks ‘can go wherever they want’
State says material 'doesn’t really present that much of a hazard'; plans to truck sulfuric acid into Montrose County site
MONTROSE — Opponents of a proposed uranium mill in southwestern Colorado near the Utah state line may be relieved to hear that state officials in charge of overseeing the transport of incoming ore and outgoing yellowcake don’t actually consider such things “nuclear materials.”
Uranium yellowcake and sulfuric acid would be carted along I-70 in Colorado
By state statute, uranium ore and processed yellowcake, used to make fuel rods for nuclear reactors, are considered mere hazardous materials and therefore not limited to transportation along the state’s designated nuclear materials routes.
“When you’re dealing with yellowcake shipments, they get carried in pretty much a dump truck,” said Capt. Allan Turner of the Colorado State Patrol’s Hazardous Materials Transport Safety and Response (HMTSR) team.
www.KOB.com - Waste shipment from Calif. completed at Carlsbad
The first shipment of nuclear waste byproduct has been delivered to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in the southeastern corner of New Mexico.
The Department of Energy said the shipment arrived safely early Friday morning.
The DOE estimates that about 30-40 shipments will be sent from a facility in California to WIPP.
The waste is a byproduct of the nation's nuclear defense program. It consists of tools, rags, protective clothing, sludge, soil and other materials contaminated with radioactive elements that have atomic numbers greater than uranium.
The material arrives by truck in lead-lined casks certified by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Columbia Citypaper - Dark Convoy
Responding to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Friends of the Earth environmental organization, the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) recently released color photos of 18-wheeler trucks used to transport weapons grade plutonium, uranium and other nuclear materials over local highways to the Savannah River Nuclear Site for disposal. Prior to the DOE release, the only public image of the trucks and their escort vehicles belonged to Tom Clements, the Southeastern Campaign Coordinator of Friends of the Earth, who snapped a photo of the vehicles leaving the Charleston Naval Weapons Station with plutonium shipments bound of SRS and Duke Energy’s Catawba reactor in 2005.
The trucks in the recently released DOE photos are likely the same type as those used in recent plutonium shipments from the Hanford site in Washington State to the Savannah River Site (SRS). The K-Area Material Storage facility at SRS is slated to house approximately 13 metric tons of “non-pit” (never weaponized) plutonium, Allen Gunter, an SRS-based DOE manager, told City Paper in a Jan., 2008 report.
Hanford News: Email Story Print Story AddThis tool name close tool goes here Report: Gov't agency waives rules for hazardous materials shippers
The federal agency that regulates the transport of explosives, toxic chemicals, fireworks and other hazardous materials has for years quietly waived safety regulations because of its cozy relationship with industry, according to a congressional report.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which regulates shipment of potentially dangerous cargo by land, sea and air, also has ignored whether shippers have been involved in accidents or cited for violating regulations before granting or renewing the waivers, the report said.
The report was based on an investigation by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which has scheduled a hearing for Thursday on whether PHMSA is doing its job. The chief witness scheduled to testify at the hearing is Transportation Department Inspector General Calvin Scovel, who warned administration officials in late July that a separate investigation by his office had uncovered significant concerns.
Where does all the waste go? | knoxnews.com
Cleaning up the environment often creates waste, which in turn must be carefully handled, treated and/or disposed to make sure it doesn't hurt the environment again on the back end. Make sense?
Anyway, there are seven cleanup projects under way at the Y-12 National Security Complex that are funded by the Recovery Act, and it's estimated those projects will generate something approaching 3 million cubic feet of waste (of various categories).
Here's where the waste will be sent for disposal:
* 803,708 cubic feet to Y-12's sanitary landfill. This waste is likely to be uncontaminated demolition rubble and the like.
* 1,775,029 cubic feet to the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility. This is the CERCLA landfill just down the road from Y-12, and it's set up to receive low-level and mixed low-level radioactive wastes from Oak Ridge cleanup projects.
* 222,376 cubic feet to Nevada Test Site. No details here, but the waste typically sent to Nevada is the hotter low-level waste that doesn't meant the waste-acceptance criteria at the Oak Ridge landfill.
Officials find uranium ore at port of entry - Silver City Sun-News
A box of uranium ore was discovered Friday at the Anthony port of entry, according to New Mexico State Police.
A Fed-Ex truck going through radiological screening set off an alarm and was found to be emanating high levels of gamma rays.
The uranium ore was found in an unmarked, 8-inch by 8-inch by 8-inch box mailed by an out-of-state firefighter who travels the country teaching how to detect radiological dirty bombs, according to state police, which did not release the firefighter's name.
It is legal to ship uranium ore, but it must be disclosed to the shipping company and a placarded and hazardous material-certified driver must drive the truck.
Vehicles carrying low-level, naturally occurring radioactive material in things like clay floor tiles, gravel, fertilizer and propane sometimes trip alarms.
AFP: Finland denies missing ship carries nuclear material
Finnish authorities dismissed talk Sunday that the Arctic Sea was bearing a cargo of nuclear material, as Russia and NATO joined forces in an international hunt for the missing vessel.
Jukka Laaksonen, head of the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, said firefighters conducted radiation tests on the ship -- last reported off Cape Verde -- at a port in Finland before it began a voyage full of intrigue.
Arctic Sea surrounded by nuclear, ransom mysteries
Finnish officials have rejected claims that a missing Russian-manned freighter was carrying a 'secret nuclear cargo', as mystery surrounding the Arctic Sea's disappearance continues.
Russia and NATO joined forces on Sunday in an international hunt for the ship that vanished from the radar after crossing the English Channel in late July.
Jukka Laaksonen, Head of the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, confirmed reports that firefighters had conducted radiation tests on the Arctic Sea before its departure from Finland.
Greens oppose sending new uranium production by rail - 12/08/2009
Australia could see a five to tenfold increase of radioactive rail cargo if proposed uranium mines in South and Western Australia go ahead.
Green Senator Scott Ludlum says rail cars carrying radioactive material are a concern for rail workers and communities on the line to Darwin.
He's calling on communities across Australia to stand up against the expansion of uranium mining.
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