Home
Energy Net's Library tagged → View Popular
Czech in Sumava again protest against nuclear waste repository - ČeskéNoviny.cz
Some 300 people from 19 municipalities situated at the foothills of the Sumava Mountains took part in a 10km-long march copying the imaginary boundaries of the 300 hectare are on which the planned nuclear waste repository is to be built today.
All 19 municipalities concerned have clearly rejected the repository in referenda or self-rule bodies´ resolutions, Chanovice mayor Petr Klasek told CTK.
The project is also resolutely opposed by the civic association Nuclear waste - thank you, we do not want it! that has about 5000 members.
The Czech Radioactive Waste Repository Authority (SURAO) has proposed six localities in the area between Chanovice and Pacejov for the possible nuclear waste repository.
DOE to Study Storage Options for Spent Nuclear Fuel, Small Reactors -- Official - NYTimes.com
The Energy Department is close to naming a blue-ribbon committee to consider new policies for dealing with spent nuclear reactor fuel but has further to go in completing negotiations on loan guarantees for a first group of new nuclear reactors, Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman said.
Poneman also said he is interested in the possibilities for development of smaller modular nuclear reactors, calling this a potentially important carbon policy option in the United States and abroad. "I certainly agree with the premise that small, modular reactors are a very interesting path to explore," Poneman said in an interview this week.
Court: nuclear spent fuel can be stored at plants - California - Fresnobee.com
A federal appeals court has refused a request by several states to force the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to declare spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants a serious environmental threat.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday in Manhattan. It denied appeals by New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts that it review the NRC's rejection of a request by Massachusetts and California that it raise the risk level.
The states had argued that spent fuel causes a greater risk of fire than previously appreciated. The appeals court said it must defer to the regulatory agency's expertise.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said he will continue legal actions to force the agency to create a central national site to store nuclear waste.
Nuclear issues top the new Tribal Council's priority list | The Republican Eagle | Red Wing, Minnesota
Prairie Island tribal leaders pledged Monday to keep their focus on nuclear waste management.
Newly elected Tribal Council members said after being sworn-in that the fight over dry cask storage at the nearby Prairie Island nuclear plant would continue over the next two years.
"Our community faces significant challenges in the coming years and we need to band together to make sure the tribe's interests are well represented," said Tribal Council President Victoria Winfrey. "Our continued battle to get nuclear waste removed from Prairie Island and to preserve our community's culture and heritage will be our top priority."
YUCCA MOUNTAIN: Licensing efforts continue -
Department of Energy lawyers are forging ahead with their defense of a license application to build the nation's nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.
They met a deadline last week for filing briefs on questions that Nevada's attorneys raised with a nuclear regulatory panel, which is tracking safety concerns about plans for turning the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, into a burial site for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste.
Most Popular Stories
# Sahara closes two hotel towers due to low demand
# Real estate analysts predict continued gloom for Las Vegas
# CITYCENTER'S ARIA: THE CRESCENDO
# Fatal pedestrian accident shuts down I-15
# Teen arrested in slaying of mother
# NORM: Palms owner sees Gaga as Palms hit
# NORM: Trump fires back about CityCenter
# NORM: The Donald slams new megaresort
# Armored truck heist nets $36,000
# Teacher arrested on sexual misconduct charges
The briefs were filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board despite the Obama administration's stance that Yucca Mountain is no longer an option for a repository. An internal DOE memo that surfaced last month also stated, "All license defense activities will be terminated in December 2009."
Nevada's top legal consultant, Marty Malsch, had hoped lawyers for the DOE would default by missing the deadline but was not surprised that didn't happen.
"As things now stand, they are pursuing the license application by defending their position in the briefs they filed," he said Tuesday.
Report: Spent fuel storage costs may run $225B - Brattleboro Reformer
If no federal repository for spent nuclear fuel is opened in the next 100 years, the nation’s taxpayers could be on the hook to pay for on-site storage, such as the dry casks at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon.
That cost could run anywhere between $10 billion and $26 billion.
That was the conclusion of the Government Accounting Office, which just released a report on the costs of nuclear waste management -- whether it be a long-term repository, centralized storage or on-site storage.
The United States has 70,000 tons of waste stored at 80 sites in 35 states. By 2055, the amount of waste is expected to increase to 153,000 tons.
The GAO also conducted a scenario in which fuel stays on site for 500 years. It concluded the cost for that scenario could range between $34 billion to $225 billion.
Platts: US GAO ranks cost of spent fuel options
Storing spent nuclear fuel at reactor sites and eventually depositing the waste in a geologic repository is likely to be the most expensive of several options available for addressing the US' atomic waste problem, the Government Accountability Office said in a report evaluating different storage and repository options. Nevada senators Harry Reid, a Democrat, and John Ensign, a Republican, requested the GAO report on nuclear waste management in addition to Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat. The report evaluates the Department of Energy's nuclear waste management program and other possible approaches to storing spent nuclear fuel in the long term. It evaluates the attributes, challenges and cost of the Yucca Mountain waste repository program in Nevada, which President Barack Obama's administration is terminating, and alternative waste management approaches. The Obama administration plans to establish a commission to evaluate the alternatives to Yucca Mountain, which is roughly 95 miles outside Las Vegas. GAO does not make a final recommendation in the report but does call on federal agencies, industry and policymakers to consider a "complementary and parallel" strategy of interim and long-term disposal options. Such a route "would allow [the government] time to work with local communities and to pursue research and development efforts in key areas," GAO said in the report. GAO estimates that developing Yucca Mountain to dispose of 153,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel would cost $41 billion to $67 billion in 2009 present value over a 143-year period until the repository is closed. The US is expected to generate 153,000 metric tons of nuclear waste by 2055, GAO said.
Finnish Company Claims Its Copper Canisters Can Store Nuclear Waste for 100,000 Years | Popular Science
While the fate of America's Yucca Mountain appears to be sealed, Finnish company Posiva is moving forward with a cutting-edge nuclear waste storage facility that it claims will safely store radioactive waste in drums deep in the ground for 100,000 years. While challenges abound, a green light from the Finnish government expected by 2012 will make the site on Finland's Olkiluoto Island the first permanent nuclear waste repository in the world, opening the door for more to follow.
The task is not a small one, however. First, Posiva carved nearly 16,500 feet of tunnels, collecting borehole samples along the way to ensure that the bedrock is solid and that water -- a nuclear waste repository's biggest enemy -- cannot get in. Then they had to figure out how to create the nearly 29-ton copper storage bins lined with iron and sealed with a weld so precise that it will hold through Finland's next ice age.
Report: Yucca Mountain costs double other alternatives - Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009 | 1:11 p.m. - Las Vegas Sun
A government report released today said developing Yucca Mountain would cost twice as much as other options for storing nuclear waste, but that both interim or on-site storage alternatives would face long-term costs and potential political pitfalls.
The report comes the day after a longtime advocate of nuclear power said during a speech in Washington that the Yucca Mountain project is dead.
Nevada’s lawmakers said the developments are more evidence that the proposed nuclear waste dump 90 miles north of Las Vegas will not be built.
“This $100 billion dinosaur’s days are numbered,” Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley said in a statement. “It’s long past time those who produced this nuclear garbage take responsibility for finding a real solution to this issue.”
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.
Yucca Mountain Licensing Proceeding
In order to participate as a party in the Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository licensing proceeding, an entity or person must be admitted to the proceeding by following the procedures of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's rules, at 10 CFR §2.309, which require a request for hearing, a petition to intervene, a demonstration of standing, and at least one admitted contention. At the close of the filing period, on December 22, 2008, a total of 318 contentions had been filed by 12 entities, including 229 from the State of Nevada, 24 from California, and 15 from Clark County.
A contention is an issue of law or fact (in this case, possible scientific fact) that alleges the license application or Yucca Mountain Environmental Impact Statement (as adopted by NRC) does not meet statutory or regulatory requirements, and in the case of the license application "nonconformance would be contrary to providing reasonable assurance of adequate protection of the public health and safety."
The NRC rule prescribes the format of contentions as seen below:
'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.
FACTBOX-What happens to spent nuclear fuel? | Reuters
GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GE.N) (6501.T) has proposed an alternative nuclear fuel recycling system, which could reduce radioactive waste and avoid extraction of plutonium that can be used for making weapons.
Nuclear experts say while the proposed Advanced Recycling Center (ARC) could help to solve some of the biggest worries as more countries build nuclear reactors, high costs are drawbacks.
Here is what is happens about spent nuclear fuel at present:
-- What happens to spent nuclear fuel?
NewsRoom Finland: Finland's Posiva to dig world's first final repository of nuclear waste in bedrock
Finnish nuclear waste management company Posiva said Thursday it would file a construction licence application in 2012 to excavate the world's first final repository of nuclear waste in bedrock.
Reijo Sundel, the managing director of Posiva, said construction was slated to begin in 2014, with commissioning scheduled for 2020.
The repository in Olkiluoto in western Finland is to be used to store about 12,000 tonnes of spent fuel.
Minnesota Indian Tribe Calls on President Obama to Find Solution to Nuclear Waste Issue; 'Continued Inaction is Irresponsible'
The Prairie Island Indian Community today called on President Barack Obama to follow the law and deliver on the federal government's decades-old mandate and promise to establish a permanent repository for the nation's commercial nuclear waste. The Tribe's urging comes after Congress approved the FY2010 Energy and Water Appropriations bill which cuts funding for the proposed national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., to record low levels. High-level, radioactive nuclear waste from the nation's nuclear power plants is currently accumulating at 'temporary' storage sites in 39 different states, including Minnesota. The Prairie Island Indian Community, near Red Wing, Minn., is located less than 600 yards from a nuclear power plant and nuclear waste storage site operated by Xcel Energy.
Critics say recycling spent fuel creates more problems - Brattleboro Reformer
This is the last story in a three-part series related to the problems of spent fuel produced by the nation’s nuclear power plants.
BRATTLEBORO -- Is the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel the answer to the nation’s nuclear waste storage woes?
The nuclear industry contends reprocessing, or recycling as some in the industry call it, could reduce the amount of spent fuel that will one day need to be stored away and isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years.
The nuclear industry doesn’t consider spent fuel a waste product, said Thomas Kauffman, senior media relations manager for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry funded organization that promotes nuclear power around the world.
"It can be recycled through reprocessing," he said. "It’s an energy-rich resource that needs to be stored until the government decides how it wants to handle it."
The NEI believes programs currently operating in countries such as Japan, France, Germany and Russia can serve as examples for the United States. The NEI also contends that new technology, including the development of breeder reactors that can consume spent fuel, might make spent fuel storage a thing of the past.
And while it is true that strides have been made in the field of nuclear fuel reprocessing, it has a checkered history that includes contamination of land, pollution of water and huge clean-up costs.
"Reprocessing would be a serious mistake with costs and risks that outweigh the benefits," said Jim Riccio, Greenpeace’s nuclear policy analyst.
Spent fuel could remain at VY for 100 years or more - Brattleboro Reformer
This is the second in a series of stories dealing with the issue of spent fuel stored at the nation’s nuclear power plants.
BRATTLEBORO -- With spent fuel piling up at commercial nuclear power plants around the country and no permanent disposal site on the horizon, many power plant operators are hoping the federal government might soon endorse the interim storage of the waste at one or two locations in the nation.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry-funded organization that promotes nuclear power around the world, is suggesting just that.
"An interim facility wouldn’t have to be huge," said Thomas Kauffman, senior media relations manager for NEI. If you were to put the 60,000 tons of spent fuel currently being stored in dry casks into one location, he said, "They would fit onto an area of about a square half-mile."
No site has been identified yet for interim storage.
"The industry has had some dialogue with volunteer communities," said Kauffman.
Those communities include the sites of decommissioned power plants.
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.
Nuclear sites fear being the alternative to Yucca | Richmond Times-Dispatch
It is among the nastiest substances on earth: more than 14,000 tons of highly radioactive waste left over from the building of the nation's nuclear-weapons arsenal.
As the Obama administration and Senate leaders move to scuttle a proposed repository for the waste in Nevada, the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state, along with federal facilities in Idaho and South Carolina, could become the de facto dump sites for years to come.
After spending $10 billion to $12 billion over the past 25 years studying a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, President Barack Obama is fulfilling a campaign promise to kill it as a site for the repository. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada also stands to benefit, as he faces re-election next year and Nevada residents adamantly oppose the project.
Nuclear waste experts meet in Kennewick - Business | Tri-City Herald : Mid-Columbia news
Nearly 300 of the world's top experts from 21 countries in dealing with subterranean nuclear waste issues are meeting this week at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick.
They are sharing science and trying to better understand how to deal with the legacy of radioactive materials.
The Migration '09 conference has booked the convention center all week. That means the Kennewick Public Facilities District Board of Directors must hold its monthly meeting Thursday across the parking lot at the Toyota Center.
"This is the most important conference (in the world) relating to the science behind the solutions," said Thomas Fanghanel, a researcher from Germany who is chairman of the conference.
Selected Tags
Related Tags
Sponsored Links
Groups interested in spent-fuel
-
Nuclear Waste
Nuclear waste has become on...
Items: 74 | Visits: 3315
Created by: Energy Net
-
Nuclear Fuel Cycle: Reprocessing
The reprocessing of spent-f...
Items: 51 | Visits: 1047
Created by: Energy Net
Highlighter, Sticky notes, Tagging, Groups and Network: integrated suite dramatically boosting research productivity. Learn more »
Join Diigo