Nuclear workers plagued by leukaemia, cancers and other illnesses
Some workers developed cancer, leukemia and other illnesses. The same held true for workers at other nuclear facilities across the nation.
The number of potentially eligible workers across the nation is uncertain. Likewise, the number of employees potentially affected at West Valley could be in the thousands when accounting for temporary workers.
“This was particularly troubling if the same workers were hired repeatedly as temporaries and received high doses each time,”
In addition, the exposure of growing numbers of individuals increased the possibility of genetic consequences for the entire population.”
Cancer plagues West Valley nuke workers https://www.investigativepost.org/2021/03/01/cancer-plagues-west-valley-nuke-workers/
“What we were doing was insane. We were dealing with so much radiation,” he told Investigative Post from his home in New Hampshire.
“I’ve got absolutely no joints left in my knees — my knees are gone, my ankles are gone and my hips are gone,” he said.
“I wonder if it’s from working in that bathtub full of radiation.”
Pyles was one of about 200 full-time employees who operated the former Nuclear Fuel Services reprocessing facility five decades ago in the hamlet of West Valley, where the company partnered with the federal government to recycle used radioactive fuel. Other workers were hired to contain and dispose of the dangerous waste the operation left behind.
Some workers developed cancer, leukemia and other illnesses. The same held true for workers at other nuclear facilities across the nation. As a result, Congress established the Energy Employees Occupational Illness and Compensation Program in 2000.
An Investigative Post review of the program found the government has paid $20.3 million over the last two decades in cases involving at least 59 people who worked at the West Valley site.
In all, individuals have submitted claims involving 280 employees who worked at the bygone reprocessing facility or during the ongoing $3.1 billion taxpayer-funded cleanup. An undetermined number of claims have been denied; the rest are being adjudicated.
Pyles said he was unaware of the program. He isn’t alone.
The Department of Labor’s Office of the Ombudsman has repeatedly criticized outreach efforts in its annual oversight reports. Most of it has been in the form of events held near former sites. Given the passage of time and people’s movement, reaching more eligible workers is a challenge.
The workforce at West Valley involved more than full-timers. About 1,000 temporary laborers were hired by the company in any given year, according to government and media reports from the time.
The use of temporary workers was a common labor practice at the time, but few operations needed to “raise quite so large an army” as Nuclear Fuel Services, according to a Science Magazine report from the era.
The industry had a nickname for them: “sponges.”
They were hired to “absorb radiation to do simple tasks,” according to Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, a radiological waste consultant who co-authored a study of West Valley.
While working at a site like West Valley does not guarantee later illnesses or genetic complications for offspring, each exposure to radiation increases the likelihood of cancer, Resnikoff said.
“It’s what I guess I would call a meat grinder,” he said.
Exposure to radiation
Nuclear Power’s Prospects Cool a Decade After Fukushima Meltdowns
Nuclear Power’s Prospects Cool a Decade After Fukushima Meltdowns
Disaster at the Japanese reactors marked a turning point for an industry that once promised to give the world a nearly unlimited source of energy WSJ, By Peter Landers, March 3, 2021
OMAEZAKI, Japan—At a seaside nuclear-power plant here, a concrete wall stretching a mile along the coast and towering 73 feet above sea level offers protection against almost any conceivable tsunami. Two reactors are ready to start splitting atoms again to heat water into steam and generate power, the operator has told regulators.
Yet despite safety measures set to cost nearly $4 billion, the Hamaoka plant hasn’t produced a single kilowatt since May 2011, and it has no target date to restart. The paint on billboards is fading and an old “no trespassing” sign outside the barbed wire lies on the ground—signs of creeping neglect.
Even a local antinuclear leader, Katsushi Hayashi, said he spent more time these days fighting an unrelated rail line in the mountains, confident that regulators and public opinion wouldn’t let the plant open any time soon. “Fukushima gave us all the proof we need. It’s dangerous,” Mr. Hayashi said.
The triple meltdowns at Japanese nuclear reactors in Fukushima after the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami marked a turning point in an industry that once dreamed of providing the world with nearly unlimited power.
A decade after Fukushima, just nine reactors in Japan are authorized to operate, down from 54 a decade ago, and five of those are currently offline owing to legal and other issues. All of Fukushima prefecture’s reactors are closed permanently or set to do so. Chubu Electric Power Co. , owner of the Hamaoka plant, declined to make an executive available for comment. It has formally applied to reopen two reactors at the plant and told regulators that new measures such as the wall, mainly completed in 2015, make them safe to operate…… (subscribers only) https://www.wsj.com/articles/nuclear-powers-prospects-cool-a-decade-after-fukushima-meltdowns-11614767406
Fukushima’s Olympic makeover: Will the ‘cursed’ area be safe from radioactivity in time for Games?
 Fukushima’s Olympic makeover: Will the ‘cursed’ area be safe from radioactivity in time for Games? VIDEO, https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20200626-fukushima-s-olympic-makeover-will-the-cursed-area-be-safe-from-radioactivity-in-time 26/6/ 20
The Olympic Games, dubbed the “reconstruction Olympics”, should allow Japan to move on from the Fukushima tragedy. The region, a symbol of the 2011 disaster, has officially been cleaned up but many problems remain, such as radioactivity and “forbidden cities”. Over the course of several months, our reporters followed the daily lives of the inhabitants of this “cursed” region.
In recent months, Japanese authorities have been working hard to finish rebuilding the Fukushima region in time for the Summer Games. This huge reconstruction and decontamination project is never-ending and is expected to cost nearly €250 billion. Although the work undertaken over the past 10 years is colossal and the region is partly rebuilt, it’s still not free from radioactivity. The NGO Greenpeace has detected radioactive hotspots near the Olympic facilities. And at the Fukushima power plant, Tepco engineers continue to battle against radioactive leaks. They also face new issues such as contaminated water, which is accumulating at the site and poses a new-fangled problem for Japan. Our reporters were able to visit the notorious nuclear power plant. They bring us a chronicle of daily life in Fukushima, with residents determined to revive their stricken region. |
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Nuclear Free And Independent Pacific Day 2021
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Nuclear Free And Independent Pacific Day 2021Monday, https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2103/S00005/nuclear-free-and-independent-pacific-day-2021.htm 1 March 2021,
Peace Movement Aotearoa Today, 1 March, is Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day – the 67th anniversary of the ‘Bravo’ nuclear bomb detonation by the United States close to the surface of Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands, which blasted out a crater more than 200 feet deep and a mile across. Particles of radioactive fallout from the blast landed on the island of Rongelap (100 miles away) to a depth of one and a half inches in places, and radioactive mist appeared on Utirik (300 miles away). The US navy did not send ships to evacuate the people of Rongelap and Utirik until three days after the explosion. Fallout from this one nuclear weapon detonation spread over more than 7,000 square miles, and traces were detected throughout the Pacific, in India, Japan, the United States and Europe. The Marshallese, and other Pacific peoples subjected to more than 300 full scale nuclear bomb detonations in the Pacific – conducted by Britain, France and the US – were used as human guinea pigs in an obscene experiment to ‘progress’ the insane pursuit of nuclear weapons supremacy. Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day is a day to remember that the arrogant colonial mindset which allowed, indeed encouraged, this horror continues today – the Pacific is still neither nuclear free nor independent. Much of the Pacific remains under foreign control, from military or illegal occupation to dependence on a coloniser state for international representation, including ‘American’ Samoa, Cook Islands, French-Occupied Polynesia, Guam, Hawai’i, Kanaky, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Marianas, Pitcairn Island, Rapa Nui, Tokelau, Uvea mo Futuna, and West Papua. The voices of these Pacific peoples, along with the voices of ngā hapū o Aotearoa and indigenous Australians, are not heard directly in the UN General Assembly and other international forums where so many decisions on crucial issues affecting our region are made – not only on nuclear weapons and other disarmament priorities, but also on social and economic justice, human rights, protection of natural resources and the environment, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate justice and demilitarisation. The Pacific is one of the regions that is being, and will continue to be, most impacted by climate change and extreme weather events which are affecting low-lying islands and Pacific peoples who are dependent on natural resources for food, clothing and shelter, and on water sources that are vulnerable to salinisation by rising sea levels and high seas. Yet the overwhelming majority of fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions do not come from the Pacific island nations. The Pacific is also one of the most highly militarised regions in the world – but only four Pacific island nations have armed forces. The overwhelming majority of militarisation in the Pacific comes from outside the region – military bases, military training exercises, and military occupation by the armed forces of Indonesia, France and the United States, in particular, along with Australia, Britain, China, New Zealand, Russia and others. Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day is a day to think about the many faces of colonisation – physical, cultural, spiritual, economic, nuclear, military – past and present; the ongoing issues of independence, self-determination and sovereignty here in Aotearoa New Zealand and the other colonised and occupied countries of the Pacific; and the ability of Pacific peoples to stop further nuclearisation, militarisation and economic exploitation of our region. It is a day to acknowledge and remember those who have suffered and died in the struggle for independence around the Pacific; those who have opposed colonisation in its many forms and paid for their opposition with their health and life; and those who have suffered and died as a result of the nuclear weapons states’ use of the Pacific for nuclear experimentation, uranium mining, nuclear bomb blasts and nuclear waste dumping. It is a day to celebrate the courage, strength and endurance of indigenous Pacific peoples who have maintained and taken back control of their lives, languages and lands to ensure the ways of living and being which were handed down from their ancestors are passed on to future generations. It is the day to pledge your support to continue the struggle for a nuclear free and independent Pacific, as the theme of the 8th Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Conference said: “No te parau tia, no te parau mau, no te tiamaraa, e tu, e tu – For justice, for truth and for independence, wake up, stand up!” |
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Ordinary people do not get truthful information from the government on the Kimba nuclear waste plan
Ex-PMs Kan, Koizumi urge Japan to quit nuclear power generation
 Ex-PMs Kan, Koizumi urge Japan to quit nuclear power generation https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2021/03/6b3c5a6b5519-ex-pms-kan-koizumi-urge-japan-to-quit-nuclear-power-generation.html1 Mar 21, KYODO NEWS – Former prime ministers Naoto Kan and Junichiro Koizumi on Monday urged Japan to stop using nuclear power, saying the country should learn from the Fukushima crisis a decade ago and turn to renewable energy.
“Japan has so much natural sources of energy like solar power, hydropower and wind power. Why should we use something that’s more expensive and less safe?” said Koizumi, a maverick reformist who held office from 2001 to 2006, at a joint press conference. Kan, who led the response to the disaster at the time, criticized Yoshihide Suga’s vow to reduce Japan’s net carbon emissions to zero by 2050, calling it a pretense to restart nuclear reactors across the country, most of which have been halted as utilities wait to clear tougher regulations imposed after the Fukushima crisis. While the former prime ministers come from opposite ends of the political spectrum — Koizumi led the center-right Liberal Democratic Party while Kan headed the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan, which leaned left — they said opposing nuclear energy was a nonpartisan stance. The main obstacle to shifting toward renewable energy is structural, Kan said, stemming from the entrenched interests of utility companies, government agencies and academics who constitute the “nuclear power village.” “They know it would be too expensive to build new plants, or that there’s no way to properly dispose of nuclear waste. But there are a lot of stakeholders and they want to keep it that way,” said Kan, now a member of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan. Regarding tritium-laced water at Fukushima Daiichi quickly filling up tanks, Koizumi said in the press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan that plans to release the water into the sea were fiercely opposed by local fishermen and that further research into other options was needed. Japan got 76 percent of its electricity from thermal power in fiscal 2019, compared with 18 percent from renewable energy and 6 percent from nuclear energy, according to preliminary data from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Under Suga’s “Green Growth Strategy,” the country is aiming to increase renewable energy to 50-60 percent while thermal power and nuclear energy is to constitute a combined 30-40 percent. |
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Small Nuclesar Reactors – not all they’re cracked up to be
Small Nuclear Reactors, There has of late been a lot of promotion of the idea of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) of a few tens or hundreds of megawatts, which it is claimed will be cheaper than conventional gigawatt scaled plants since they can benefit from economies of mass production in factories. Much has been promised for SMRs, including the delivery of power at £40-60/MWh, but there is still some way to go before any project actually goes ahead and we can see if the promises hold upon practice.
stage. But it is claimed that one of the more novel design, the Natrium fast reactor system, proposed by Terrapower and backed by Bill Gates, will be on line this decade. Given that this makes use of liquid sodium and molten salt heat storage, that is quite a claim. So is the idea, also being pursued by Terrapower, that reactors can be run with molten salt fluoride as both reactant medium and reaction coolant. It has even been claimed that reactors like this, with suitable fast spectrum neutron fluxes, can burn nuclear waste. That has yet to be proven. But certainly, if they are to use thorium as a fuel, they will need an input of plutonium or some other neutron source, since thorium is not fissile, so in that sense they do recycle something. Though we still have to have uranium reactor, possibly fast breeders, to make the plutonium.
As can be seen, there are many possible problems ahead for SMRs. Perhaps the central one is safety. Working with high radiation fluxes in small confined spaces is not easy. Even in the case of molten salt systems, which avoid the need for control rods, the super-hot corrosive fluids have to be pumped around for heat and waste extraction. It may not be easy to design compact systems that can do this reliably long-term.The safety issue interacts with the other key issues for SMRs- location. If they are going to be economically viable, some say that SMRs will have to be run in Combined Heat and Power ‘Cogen’ mode, supplying heat for local used, as well as power for the grid. That implies that they will have to sited in or near large heat loads i.e. in or near urban areas. Will local residents be keen to have mini-nuclear plants near by? That issue is already being discussed in the USA, with some urban resistance emerging.
A key issue in that context is that it has been argued that since they allegedly will be safer, SMRs will not need to have such large evacuation zones as is the norm for standard reactors, most of which are sited in relatively remote area. Indeed, unless that requirement was changed, operation in cities could be impossible- they could not easily be evacuated fast if there was an accident, or perhaps a security threat. On the basis of this view, SMRs will only ever be relevant for remote sites, and of course there are plenty of such locations where local power generation might be welcome, although arguably, renewable sources might be easier, safer and cheaper to use. Indeed, that might be said of all locations.
The debate over safety, security and location will continue to unfold, with folksy mini-nuke designs emerging for remote rural locations, but concerns also growing over the many unknowns, not least the costs and market potential. There are SMR programmes in the US and UK and elsewhere, but there are big doubts about whether there would be a viable market for this technology.
That is despite the fact that there is some dual use/expertise overlap between civil and military nuclear, and, more specifically, that mini reactors are used for submarine propulsion. While that may be one reason why companies like Rolls Royce are pushing for SMRs, on its own military submarine use is a relatively small market.
There is no shortage of promotional enthusiasm for SMRs for a variety of reasons, including, it is claimed, defence-related, and some arguably extravagant claims on comparative investment costs have been made. However, there have also been some strong critiques and gloomy prognoses. At best, they say, SMRs may have a role to play in some remote locations and, as with nuclear generally, perhaps for heat production and hydrogen production, for example for industrial purposes. It has also been claimed that SMRs could produce synthetic aircraft fuel as substitute for kerosene, although ‘at around about twice the price’.
That all seem to be a long shot, with many unknowns, and in terms of energy supply of whatever type, renewables may have the edge in most contexts. However, it is just conceivable that SMRs could be used to back up renewables. Some types of SMR may be able to run more flexibly than can large conventional reactors, so that they could play a role in balancing variable renewables. That is still very uncertain, in operational and cost terms, and there are many other arguably simpler, safer and cheaper options for grid balancing. Though, evidently keen to try their luck, a UK developer has talked of using NuScale units in a hybrid wind-SMR system.
So what’s the bottom line? For the moment, although being pushed in the US and UK and elsewhere, SMRs are some way off, with very mixed prospects. But technology can move fast, and although there will no doubt be local resistance, and they may not pop up near you for a while, we may yet see fission-based SMRs emerge for some remote applications within in a decade or two. Can the same be said for fusion? Some very optimistically are talking about the arrival soon of mini fusion! That seems unlikely, and my guess is that, if fusion SMRs are ever possible, their main use will be off-planet. Same possibly for most fission SMRs! Back on this planet, we’ve got plenty of renewables to get on with, and in that context, arguably, small nuclear, of whatever sort, does not really offer anything different from big nuclear. Just another costly distraction from getting on with renewables
Dr Helen Caldicott on Independent Australia tells The Truth About Nuclear Power
 HELEN CALDICOTT: The truth about nuclear power — neither clean nor green https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/hthe-truth-about-nuclear-power–neither-clean-nor-greenelen-caldicott-,14837
By Helen Caldicott | 26 February 2021, While nuclear power is considered clean by many, there are several harmful and long-lasting consequences resulting from its use, writes Dr Helen Caldicott.
AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT of fossil fuel is used to mine and mill uranium, to enrich and fashion the nuclear fuel rods, to build the enormous concrete reactor, let alone decommission the radioactive mausoleum at the end of its active life of 40-60 years. Finally, but not least, to transport millions of tons of intensely radioactive waste to some as-yet-to-be-constructed storage site in the U.S. to be kept isolated from the ecosphere for one million years according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We all know to our detriment that the combustion of oil, gas and coal creates CO2, the main global warming gas. According to a definitive study by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith titled ‘Nuclear Power: the Energy Balance’, the use of nuclear power causes, at the end of the road, approximately one third as much CO2 as gas-fired electricity production. The rich uranium ores required for this reduction are limited and the remaining poorer ores in reactors would produce more CO2 than burning fossil fuels directly. Nuclear reactors are best understood as complicated expensive and inefficient gas burners. Setting aside the above energetic costs and accepting the nuclear industry’s claim that it is clean and green, and assuming a 2% growth in global demand, all present-day reactors – 440 – would have to be replaced by new ones. Half the electricity growth would be provided by nuclear power and half the world’s coal fire plants replaced by nuclear plants requiring the construction over 50 years of 2,000 to 3,000 1,000-megawatt reactors — one per week for 50 years. The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates already there are 370,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste in the world awaiting disposal, containing over 100 radioactive elements such as:
Dr John Gofman MD, the discoverer of uranium-233, estimated that if 400 reactors operated for 25 years at 99 per cent perfect containment, caesium loss would be equivalent to 16 Chernobyls. A half-life is multiplied by ten or 20 to give the total dangerous radiological life. There is no containment that lasts 100 years let alone one million. As these radioactive elements inevitably escape and leak into the environment, they will concentrate at each step of the food chain tens to hundreds of times, for instance through algae, then crustaceans, then small fish, then big fish, then us. They are tasteless, invisible and odourless. Once deposited in human or animal organs, they irradiate a small volume of cells over many years inducing mutation of regulatory genes which control the rate of cell division, thus inducing uncontrolled cell division which is cancer. Leukemia takes five to ten years to appear post contamination, solid cancers 15 to 80 years. Genetic abnormalities will take generations to manifest. Animals and plants are similarly affected. In effect, by creating more and more nuclear waste, we humans will be inducing random compulsory genetic engineering for the rest of time. That’s what clean, green nuclear power means. You can follow Dr Caldicott on Twitter @DrHCaldicott. Click here for Dr Caldicott’s complete curriculum vitae. |
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The media revels in rockets to Mars, ignores the horrible risk of plutonium pollution
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Plutonium, Perseverance and the Spellbound Press https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/24/2017916/-Plutonium-Perseverance-and-the-Spellbound-Press
With all the media hoopla last week about the Perseverance rover, frequently unreported was that its energy source is plutonium—considered the most lethal of all radioactive substances—and nowhere in media that NASA projected 1-in-960 odds of the plutonium being released in an accident on the mission. “A ‘1-in-960 chance’ of a deadly plutonium release is a real concern—gamblers in Las Vegas would be happy with those odds,” says Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. Indeed, big-money lotteries have odds far higher than 1-in-960 and routinely people win those lotteries. Further, NASA’s Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the $3.7 billion mission acknowledges that an “alternative” power source for Perseverance could have been solar energy. Solar energy using photovoltaic panels has been the power source for a succession of Mars rovers. For an accident releasing plutonium on the Perseverance launch—and 1 in 100 rockets undergo major malfunctions on launch mostly by blowing up—NASA in its SEIS described these impacts for the area around the Cape Kennedy under a heading “Impacts of Radiological Releases on the Environment.” Continue reading |
Summary of the risks of uranium mining
Greg Phillips, 25 Feb 21, This is a very good summary of the risks of Uranium mining:/catalog/13266/uranium-mining-in-virginia-scientific-technical-environmental-human-health-and
American uranium/nuclear lobbyists fund campaigns of climate sceptics/deniers
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Campaign contributions, including from a Utah operator, preceded creation of federal uranium stockpile, Salt Lake Tribune, Zak Podmore Feb. 23, 2021
“………….Funding climate skeptics Energy Fuels executives, including Moore, who sits on the board of Friends of Arches and Canyonlands Parks, often promote the important role nuclear energy plays in combating climate change.
A recent sustainability report released by the company states, “The materials that Energy Fuels responsibly produces and recycles are helping to address some of the most daunting health and environmental issues facing the world today: air pollution and climate change.”
But campaign contributions from uranium executives have funded the campaigns of climate change skeptics in Congress. Barrasso opposed the Obama administration decision to sign onto the Paris climate agreement in 2016, and as recently as 2019, he declined to concede human use of fossil fuels is the leading cause of climate change in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
Other recipients of campaign contributions — including then-President Trump, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., and Gosar — have been even more outspoken in their climate change skepticism.
Moore said the contributions skewed heavily toward the GOP because Republicans are most likely to represent districts where the company has uranium operations, and noted that several Democrats have also received donations. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, for example — a conservative Democrat who last year fended off a high-profile primary challenge from left-wing immigration attorney and climate activist Jessica Cisneros — received $1,000 from an Energy Fuels executive during the primary…… https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/02/20/campaign-contributions/
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NuScale’s small nuclear reactor dream – dead on arrival?
Even with new technology, we will need to mine uranium—a process that has leached radioactive waste into waterways—and find somewhere to put the spent fuel. (The current practice, which persists at Trojan and will be employed at NuScale’s plants, is to hold waste on-site. This is intended to be a temporary measure, but every attempt to find a permanent disposal site has been stalled by geological constraints and local opposition.)
NuScale was making “an end run around [voters] in their quest for corporate profit.” He also noted the company’s ties to the Fluor Corporation. Fluor has invested $9.9 million in campaign contributions over the past 30 years, with nearly two-thirds going toward Republican candidates. (Fluor is currently under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission due to allegedly sloppy accounting practices.)
A decade ago, NuScale suggested it might have a plant in operation by 2018. Now construction won’t begin until 2025 at the earliest. The plant at Idaho National Laboratory won’t be fully 
operational until 2030.
in order to make advanced reactors accessible within the next few decades—even relatively simple reactors, like NuScale’s—the government would need to provide hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies …… the nuclear dream looks dead on arrival….
Biden’s Other Nuclear Option, Smaller nuclear reactors might be the bridge to a carbon-free economy. But are they worth it? Mother Jones, 22 Feb 21, BOYCE UPHOLT ”………..
But are these investments worth the money—and the risks? New designs or not, nuclear plants face daunting issues of waste disposal, public opposition, and, most of all, staggering costs. We must ramp up our fight against climate change. But whether nuclear is a real part of the solution—or just a long-shot bid to keep a troubled industry alive—is a debate that will come to the fore in the short window we have to overhaul the nation’s energy portfolio.
Few issues divide us as cleanly as nuclear power. According to a 2019 Pew Research Center poll, 49 percent of Americans support opening new plants, while 49 percent are opposed.
The popular argument against nuclear power can be summed up in a few names: Chernobyl. Fukushima. Three Mile Island. Nuclear dread is palpable. Some formerly pro-nuclear countries, like Germany, began phasing out plants in the wake of the 2011 disaster in Japan. The dangers begin well before nuclear fuel arrives at a plant, and persist long afterward; the rods that fuel today’s plants remain radioactive for millennia after their use. How to ethically store this waste remains a Gordian knot nobody has figured out how to cut.
The argument in favor of nuclear power boils down to the urgent need to combat climate change. [Ed, but nuclear does not really combat climate change.]
But if nuclear power is going to help us mitigate climate change, a lot more reactors need to come online, and soon. Eleven nuclear reactors in the United States have been retired since 2012, and eight more will be closed by 2025. (When nuclear plants are retired, utility companies tend to ramp up production at coal- or natural gas–fired plants, a step in the wrong direction for those concerned about lowering emissions.) Since 1970, the construction of the average US plant has wound up costing nearly three-and-a-half times more than the initial projections. Developers have broken ground on just four new reactor sites since Three Mile Island. Two were abandoned after $9 billion was.. sunk into construction; two others, in Georgia, are five years behind schedule. The public is focused on risks, but “nuclear power is not doing well around the world right now for one reason—economics,” says Allison Macfarlane, a former commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Continue reading
What would go into the Chalk River Mound? — Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area
December 2020 Canadian taxpayers are paying a consortium (Canadian National Energy Alliance) contracted by the federal government in 2015, billions of dollars to reduce Canada’s $16 billion nuclear liabilities quickly and cheaply. The consortium is proposing to construct a giant mound for one million tons of radioactive waste beside the Ottawa River upstream of Ottawa-Gatineau. […]
What would go into the Chalk River Mound? — Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County and Area
There is considerable secrecy about what would go into the mound; the information that follows has been derived from the proponent’s final environmental impact statement (EIS) (December 2020) which lists a partial inventory of radionuclides that would go into the gigantic five-to-seven story radioactive mound (aka the “NSDF”). The EIS and supporting documents also contain inventories of non-radioactive hazardous materials that would go into the dump.
Here is what the consortium says it is planning to put into the Chalk River mound (according to the final EIS and supporting documents)
1) Long-lived radioactive materials
Twenty-five out of the 30 radionuclides listed in Table 3.3.1-2: NSDF Reference Inventory and Licensed Inventory are long-lived, with half-lives ranging from four centuries to more than four billion years.
To take just one example, the man-made radionuclide, Neptunium-237, has a half-life of 2 million years such that, after 2 million years have elapsed, half of the material will still be radioactive. At the time of emplacement in the mound, the neptunium-237 will be giving off 17 million ( check, 1.74 x 10 to the 7th) radioactive disintegrations each second, second after second.
The mound would contain 80 tonnes of Uranium and 6.6 tonnes of thorium-232.
2) Four isotopes of plutonium, one of the most deadly radioactive materials known, if inhaled or ingested.
John Gofman MD, PhD, a Manhattan Project scientist and former director of biomedical research at the DOE’s Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, stated that even one-millionth of a gram of plutonium inhaled into the lung, will cause lung cancer within 20 years. Sir Brian Flowers, author of the UK Royal Commission Report on Nuclear Energy and the Environment, wrote that a few thousands of a gram, inhaled into the lungs, will cause death within a few years because of massive fibrosis of the lungs, and that a few millionths of a gram will cause lung cancer with almost 100% certainty.
The four isotopes of plutonium listed in the NSDF reference inventory are Plutonium-239, Plutonium-240, Plutonium-2441 and Plutonium-242. According to Table 3.3.1-2 (NSDF Reference Inventory and Licensed Inventory) from the EIS, The two isotopes 239 and 240 combined will have an activity of 87 billion Bq when they are emplaced in the dump. This means that they will be giving off 87 billion radioactive disintegrations each second, second after second.
3) Fissionable materials
Fissionable materials can be used to make nuclear weapons.
The mound would contain “special fissionable materials” listed in this table (avove) extracted from an EIS supporting document, Waste Acceptance Criteria, Version 4, (November 2020) Continue reading
Fukushima – radioactive water into the sea – a nightmare for fishermen
I won’t lie — I was a little nervous heading inside the destroyed nuclear plant at the centre of Japan’s 2011 nuclear accident.
It was a rare opportunity to look at how the clean-up effort was going 10 years on.
But weighing on my mind as I headed inside and took a look around was that this was of the most radioactive places on earth right now.
I’ve been inside Fukushima’s no-go zones, where the radiation levels are so high it’s unliveable and overgrown weeds entangle anything in their way — from abandoned homes, cars and even vending machines.
It is always an eerie experience seeing entire towns frozen in time and the stories from those who once called it home are equally chilling.
This is the first time I’ve been in the place responsible for it……..
It’s been 10 years since Japan’s worst nuclear accident, which was triggered by the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the country and a massive tsunami that wiped out everything in its path.
Yet the aftershocks from the devastating March 11 disaster continue to rattle these parts — the most recent occurring only a week ago.
Japan’s nuclear disaster site is still a hive of activity
When the tsunami hit the nuclear plant in 2011, it cut power and consequently cooling to three operational reactors.
At that point, only flooding the reactors with seawater could have cooled them quickly enough to avoid a meltdown.
But that decision was delayed because of fears it would permanently destroy the reactors.
By the time the government ordered the seawater to be used, it was too late. The nuclear fuel overheated and melted down.
Some of the reactors exploded and the twisted wreckage of the blast is still exposed today.
When I arrived at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, I was given a radiation dosimeter and handed a plastic bag containing gloves, a mask and three pairs of socks.
I had been given specific instructions to put on one after the other.
The idea was to prevent any radioactive material from getting onto my pants — if it does, the officials jokingly told me, I’ll have to leave them there.
Once I’m ready, I follow an official through a maze-like path to the Whole Body Counter room.
That’s where I have a scan that measures the existing radiation levels inside my body so they can check how much I have been exposed to throughout the day.
It’s a bustling hive of activity — there are thousands of workers here and as we pass by many say ‘otsukaresama deshita’, a Japanese phrase that loosely translates to ‘thank you for your service’.
We’re accompanied and guided by several officials from the plant’s operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO)……….
The long process of removing 800 tones of radioactive fuel
TEPCO has spent the last 10 years trying to cool and stabilise the three reactors so that they can eventually start to remove the molten fuel debris that sits inside them.
As we pull up to the destroyed reactors, which contain more than 800 tonnes of highly radioactive molten nuclear fuel, we can see many workers in full protective equipment heavily involved in the decontamination effort.
In the space of just a few steps, radiation levels spike from 80 microsieverts an hour to 100. At the same time, my radiation alarm goes off to tell me I’ve accumulated 0.02 millisieverts of radiation while at the plant.
It’s about the same as a chest x-ray and nothing to be worried about at this stage — but our minders tell us we shouldn’t spend too much more time here.
It’s estimated the full clean-up effort will take another 30-40 years, though some experts feel this is optimistic.
The company was hoping to start removal of the highly radioactive debris this year, but the coronavirus pandemic will prevent that from happening.
“We are planning to remove the fuel debris from Unit 2 using a robot arm and the plan was to make the arm and carry out a performance test in the UK,” TEPCO’s Yoshinori Takahashi told me.
“But because of the coronavirus, the manufacturing process and testing has been delayed.”
The delay could be up to 12 months. But that is not the most pressing issue facing TEPCO.
How do you remove a million tonnes of contaminated water?
All of the water that touches the highly radioactive molten fuel also becomes contaminated.
The water is processed to remove more than 60 different types of radioactive materials from it, but the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) doesn’t completely purify the water.
The radioactive element, tritium, remains inside all of the stored water, albeit at “low” levels, according to TEPCO.
Currently, 1.2 million tonnes of contaminated water is stored in more than 1,000 tanks spanning the entire power plant facility. But by the end of next year, the tanks and the site will be full.
The Japanese government is now weighing up what to do next.
A panel of experts has recommended disposing of it in the ocean as the most practical option as opposed to releasing it into the air, which TEPCO said would be more difficult to monitor.
Mr Takahashi said tritium was a weak form of radiation and that the water would be released in such limited quantities over such a long period that it would be safe.
But for those who make their living from the part of the ocean where TEPCO is proposing to dump its contaminated water, they fear the damage this poses to their reputation.
That includes Haruo Ono, who has been fishing in Fukushima’s waters for 50 years.
Fisherman worried about what water release will mean for their livelihoods
Although most fishermen are receiving compensation payments from TEPCO to cover their revenue shortfalls, he fears that if contaminated water is released into the ocean, it will finish off the industry for good.
“They say it’s OK to release tritium, but what do consumers think? We can’t sell fish because the consumers say no,” he said.
The 70-year-old is opposed to the scheme and says he’s hoping to watch the decommissioning first-hand over the next 30-40 years…………… https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-21/a-tour-inside-fukushimas-nuclear-plant-10-years-after-accident/13158976
New books on climate change; Michael Mann versus (nuclear promoter) Bill Gates
Bill Gates’s faith in a technological fix for climate change is typical of privileged men who think they can swoop in and solve the problems others have spent decades trying to fix.
Alongside Gates’s book comes The New Climate War, by Michael Mann, a well-known American climate scientist. Mann is the genuine article. He started in the field in the early 1990s as a graduate student at Yale University and has never left it. He is less than convinced by Gates’s relatively late conversion to the climate cause.Gates is a classic example of a “first-time climate dude”, believes Mann. This phenomenon is “the tendency for members of a particular, privileged demographic group (primarily middle-aged, almost exclusively white men) to think they can just swoop in… and solve the great problems that others have spent decades unable to crack”. The result is a mess, “consisting of fatally bad takes and misguided framing couched in deeply condescending mansplaining”.
Antinuclear 