Antinuclear

Now Russia admits to “extremely high contamination” of radioactive Ruthenium-106 around Ural Mountains

Russia admits spike in radioactive ruthenium-106 over Ural Mountains amid fears of nuclear accident, ABC News, 22 Nov 17,  Russian authorities have confirmed reports of a spike in radioactivity in the air over the Ural Mountains.

But the suspected source of the leak, a nuclear fuel processing plant, denied it was the source of contamination.

The Russian Meteorological Service said in a statement on Tuesday it recorded the release of ruthenium-106 in the southern Urals in late September and classified it as “extremely high contamination”.

Russian authorities insisted, however, that the contamination posed no health risks.

France’s nuclear safety agency earlier this month said it recorded radioactivity in the area between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains from a suspected accident involving nuclear fuel or the production of radioactive material.

It said the release of the isotope posed no health or environmental risks to European countries.

Last month, when reports of a trace of ruthenium over Europe first appeared, Russia’s state-controlled Rosatom corporation denied any leak.

Rosatom reaffirmed on Tuesday that the ruthenium emission registered by the state meteorological service had not come from any of its facilities.

The corporation said it was working closely with international organisations to identify the potential source of the emission.

The Russian meteorological office’s report, however, noted high levels of radiation in residential areas near Rosatom’s Mayak plant.

The Mayak plant reprocesses nuclear fuel and produces radioactive material for industrial and research purposes. It accounts for half of Russian exports of radioactive isotopes.

Air samples in the town of Argayash in late September-early October, for example, showed levels nearly 1,000 times higher than those recorded in the previous months.

Mayak said it had not conducted any work on extracting ruthenium-106 from spent nuclear fuel “for many years”……..

Professor Paddy Regan at the University of Surrey said the fact that the ruthenium was found in isolation, rather than with other radioactive materials “suggests a leak from a fuel/reprocessing plant or somewhere they are separating the ruthenium” rather than a bigger nuclear accident.

“If it was a reactor leak or nuclear explosion, other radioisotopes would also be present in the plume and from the reports, they are not,” he said.

He added any health effect would be negligible.

Poor record of nuclear disasters

Mayak, in the Chelyabinsk region, saw one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents on September 29, 1957, when a waste tank exploded, contaminating 23,000 square kilometres and prompting authorities to evacuate 10,000 residents from neighbouring regions.

Some details of the disaster were first released to the public in 1989 as part of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s openness campaign, but the exact scope of its impact on the local population has remained unclear.

In 2004, it was confirmed that waste was being dumped in the local Techa River. Nuclear regulators say that no longer happens, but anti-nuclear activists say it is impossible to tell given the level of state secrecy.

In 2016, Associated Press reporters visited a village downstream from Mayak where doctors have for years recorded rates of chromosomal abnormalities, birth defects and cancers vastly higher than the Russian average.

A Geiger counter at the riverbank in the village of Muslyumovo showed measurements 80 to 100 times the level of naturally occurring background radiation.

A decades-long Radiation Research Society study of people living near the Techa River, conducted jointly by Russian and American scientists, linked radiation particularly to higher rates of cancer of the uterus and oesophagus………http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-22/russia-admits-ruthenium-106-spike-near-ural-mountains/9178446

November 22, 2017 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | 1 Comment

New arms race as USA ramps up a $1.25 trillion nuclear arsenal

Reuters reported in February that in a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump denounced the New START treaty and rejected Putin’s suggestion that talks begin about extending it once it expires in 2021.

Some former senior U.S. government officials, legislators and arms-control specialists – many of whom once backed a strong nuclear arsenal — are now warning that the modernization push poses grave dangers.

Special Report: In modernizing nuclear arsenal, U.S. stokes new arms race, Scot PaltrowWASHINGTON (Reuters), 21 Nov 17  – President Barack Obama rode into office in 2009 with promises to work toward a nuclear-free world. His vow helped win him the Nobel Peace Prize that year.

The next year, while warning that Washington would retain the ability to retaliate against a nuclear strike, he promised that America would develop no new types of atomic weapons. Within 16 months of his inauguration, the United States and Russia negotiated the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as New START, meant to build trust and cut the risk of nuclear war. It limited each side to what the treaty counts as 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads.

By the time Obama left office in January 2017, the risk of Armageddon hadn’t receded. Instead, Washington was well along in a modernization program that is making nearly all of its nuclear weapons more accurate and deadly.

And Russia was doing the same: Continue reading →

November 22, 2017 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment

Britain’s nuclear trade will grind to a halt, as UK leaves European Union and its nuclear regulatory agency

The consensus is clear: there is no upside to a nuclear Brexit, Guardian, Clare Moody, 21 Nov 17,  This government must heed the warnings – leaving the treaty on nuclear energy, Cabinet resignations, a government with no majority in the Commons, a make-or break-budget for the chancellor and a fast-approaching Brexit negotiating deadline means it is easy for issues to slip out of the public consciousness. Against this backdrop, Euratom and the UK’s future nuclear safeguarding regime risk being forgotten.

As the nuclear safeguards bill – one of the “Brexit bills” announced in the Queen’s speech – makes its way through the parliamentary process, nuclear experts were called to present evidence to MPs. The message from experts is unequivocal – there is no upside to the UK leaving the Euratom treaty.

Be it Prospect, the trade union representing civil nuclear experts, EDF Energy, or the Nuclear Industry Association (NIA), the sector is united in its message to the government: leaving Euratom is complicated, and the potential consequences could be disastrous for our country. Rupert Cowen, a nuclear expert at Prospect Law, claims the UK is “sleepwalking” to disaster: “If we do not get this right, business stops … no nuclear trade will be able to continue.”

This is not scaremongering. Analysis of the facts shows just how much is at risk by leaving Euratom, and how complex this process is, given the government’s unnecessary, self-imposed deadline. This government must start listening.

Euratom, among other things, provides safeguarding inspections for all civil nuclear sites in the UK. Inspectors are employed by Euratom and many are EU nationals. It takes five years to train a nuclear inspector and there is currently a limited pool of qualified inspectors from which to recruit. As Sue Ferns, deputy general secretary of Prospect, said in her evidence to the nuclear safeguards bill committee, “this is a highly skilled, very specialist area, which is why there is such a premium on this source of labour” and this is why we must question the wisdom of the government’s actions so far.

The government plans for the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to take over the role that Euratom currently carries out, but the ONR and the NIA have made clear that new arrangements will not be in place by the time we are due to leave Euratom in March 2019. Asked by MPs whether new arrangements could be put in place within the timeframe, Dame Sue Ion, chair of the Nuclear Innovation and Research Advisory Board, said: “I do not think it is possible.”

Should the UK fail to have its safeguarding regime in place by March 2019, nuclear trade would halt, as well as cross-nation technology sharing that some of our nuclear power stations rely on to function. Again, this is not an exaggeration of the problem, or political point-scoring. Put simply, if we don’t have our safeguarding regime in place, our nuclear industry will face major, potentially dangerous, disruptions…….. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/21/the-consensus-is-clear-there-is-no-upside-to-a-nuclear-brexit

November 22, 2017 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment

In UK, government and nuclear lobby soften up Cumbria citizens for nuclear waste dumping

Radiation Free Lakeland 19th Nov 2017, West Cumbria was ruled out as a site to bury nuclear waste 20 years ago because the geology was unsafe. The plan this time round is ten times as big and to include high level nuclear wastes, so not surprisingly Cumbria County Council said NO in January 2013.

However, in order to build new nuclear plants the industry and government need to be seen to have a
“final solution” to the problem, no matter if that “final solution” is dangerous to life in Cumbria and on planet earth. The ducks are being lined up.

To soften the public up in West Cumbria deep mining is once again being promoted as a “good thing” no matter that it is for coal, the mining expertise and infrastructure is being aggressively put into place
creating a “demand”. Companies like Eden Nuclear and Environment are sprouting up like toxic mushrooms and promoting their services: “Our team has undertaken work for a range of disposal facilities including the Geological Disposal Facility” (the one that is planned for Cumbria?)
https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/geological-dumping-of-nuclear-waste-where-why/

November 22, 2017 Posted by Christina Macpherson | General News | Leave a comment