“When using fast reactors in a closed fuel cycle, one kilogram of nuclear waste can be recycled multiple times until all the uranium is used and the actinides — which remain radioactive for thousands of years — are burned up. What then remains is about 30 grams of waste that will be radioactive for 200 to 300 years,” said Mikhail Chudakov, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy.
Fast reactors were among the first technologies deployed during the early days of nuclear power, when uranium resources were perceived to be scarce. However, as technical and material challenges hampered development and new uranium deposits were identified, light water reactors became the industry standard. However, efforts are underway in several countries to advance fast reactor technology, including in the form of small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors (MRs).
Five fast reactors are now in operation: two operating reactors (BN-600 and BN-800) and one test reactor (BOR-60) in the Russian Federation, the Fast Breeder Test Reactor in India and the China Experimental Fast Reactor. The European Union, Japan, the United States of America, the United Kingdom and others have fast reactor projects tailored to a variety of aims and functions underway, including SMRs and MRs. Russia’s Pilot Demonstration Energy Complex, which is under construction in Seversk, brings together a lead-cooled BREST-OD-300 fast reactor, a fuel fabrication and refabrication plant, and a plant for reprocessing mixed nitride uranium–plutonium spent fuel. A deep geological waste repository will also be built. The importance of this pilot project is not only to demonstrate the making of new fuel, irradiate it, and then recycle it, but to do so all on one site.
“Having the whole closed fuel cycle process on one site is good for nuclear safety, security and safeguards,” said Amparo Gonzalez Espartero, Technical Lead for the Nuclear Fuel Cycle at the IAEA. “It should also make more sense economically as the nuclear waste and materials do not need to be moved between locations — as they are currently in some countries — thereby minimizing transportation and logistical challenges.”
Projects are advancing in other countries. China is constructing two sodium cooled fast reactors (CFR-600) in Xiapu County, Fujian province. The first unit is under commissioning and is expected to be connected to the grid in 2024. In the USA, a fast reactor project backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is under development; it will not operate in a closed fuel cycle, although the country is renewing efforts to work on closed nuclear fuel cycles and use its existing nuclear waste to develop its own supply of fuel. In Europe, the MYRRHA project in Belgium is aimed towards building a lead-bismuth cooled accelerator driven system by 2036 to test its ability to break down minor actinides as part of a future fully closed fuel cycle.
Excerpts from Lucy Ashton, When Nuclear Waste is an Asset, not a Burden, IAEA, Sept., 2023
European scientists are developing a breed of battery for space missions that is powered by nuclear waste. The European Space Agency (ESA) hopes that the technology will, by the end of the decade…Ministers at ESA’s ministerial council meeting in Paris on 22 and 23 November, 2022 agreed to fund a €29-million (US$30-million) program called European Devices Using Radioisotope Energy (ENDURE). This aims to develop long-lasting heat and electricity units powered by the radioactive element americium-241, in time for a series of ESA Moon missions in the early 2030s.
Americium, a by-product of plutonium decay, has never been used as a fuel. For missions in which solar power would not suffice — either because of shade or because of distance from the Sun — ESA has relied on US or Russian partners, which have used plutonium-238 batteries to power missions since the space race.
The lack of a power source has long restricted the solo missions that European scientists propose, and limited others. The agency felt its lack of radioisotope power keenly in 2014, when its comet-landing Philae probe was operational for less than three days because it ended up in a shaded spot where its solar panels were useless. “For years, European scientists have been saying that if you want to go far, or to dark and cold places, there is no other way,” says Coustenis.
Americium’s big advantage over plutonium is that it is cheaper and more abundant, repurposing waste that would otherwise be useless…Americium has a longer half-life than plutonium-238, which means it lasts longer but packs less power per gram. But because americium is more readily available, producing one watt of power costs about one-fifth as much as it does using plutonium…
Excerpts from Elizabeth Gibney, How Nuclear Waste Will Help Spacecraft Explore the Moon and Beyond, Nature, Dec. 6, 2022
According to a new study, the world’s push for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors to address climate change will generate more radioactive waste than the larger, existing reactors, and its chemical complexity will make it more difficult to manage.
Published in the peer-reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences, the study compared designs for three small modular reactors (SMRs) with a standard pressurized-water reactor… It concluded that most SMR designs will “entail a significant net disadvantage for nuclear waste disposal” and will produce wastes that aren’t compatible with existing disposal practices and facilities…
Traditional reactors have been capable of generating up to 1,000 or more megawatts of electricity, and are water-cooled; their spent fuel is highly radioactive and must be isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. SMRs by definition produce less than 300 megawatts, and would be cooled by novel substances such as molten salt or helium, producing different wastes…The smaller a reactor is, the more neutrons tend to escape the core and affect other components. That will create more radioactivity in the materials used in the reactor vessel which will have to be accounted for as a waste product. The researchers also determined that fuels from some SMRs would likely need processing to make them suitable for underground disposal.
The researchers found the SMRs would produce between double and 30-fold the volumes of waste arising from a typical reactor. They estimated spent fuel would contain higher concentrations of fissile materials than that from traditional reactors. That means the fuel could be at risk of renewed fission chain reactions if stored in high concentrations, meaning it would need to occupy more space underground. Such assertions contradict marketing claims from many SMR vendors…
In 2021, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report that concluded many proposed SMRs would require new facilities to manage their wastes. It called claims that SMRs could burn existing waste “a misleading oversimplification.” The report found that reactors can consume only a fraction of spent fuel as new fuel – and that requires reprocessing to extract plutonium and other materials that could be used in weapons, thus raising what the organization described as an “unacceptable” risk.
Excerpt from MATTHEW MCCLEARN,The world’s push for small nuclear reactors will exacerbate radioactive waste issues, researchers say, Globe and Mail, June 3, 2022
Germany is to shut down its last nuclear reactors in 2022. However, the country still has no place to store the 27,000 cubic meters of highly radioactive material it has already produced, with the amount set to grow as power stations are decommissioned and dismantled. German authorities have set a deadline of 2031 to find a permanent storage location – but for now, the waste is being stored in temporary locations, much to the anger of local residents.
On October 19, 2020, China urged the Japanese government to “cautiously” consider whether to release treated radioactive water in the sea from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. China’s remarks came days after it was reported by Japanese media that an official decision on the discharge of the water from the nuclear plant may be made by the end of October 2020. The water has been treated using an advanced liquid processing system, or ALPS, to remove most contaminants other than the relatively less toxic tritium and is stored in tanks on the facility’s premises.
But space is expected to run out by the summer of 2022, with contaminated water increasing by about 170 tons per day. As of September 2020, the stored water totaled 1.23 million tons and continues to grow.
China urges Japan to cautiously consider nuclear plant water release, Japan Times, Oct. 19, 2020
In the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, [UN Special Rapporteurs have] consistently raised concerns about the approaches taken by the government of Japan. UN Special Rapporteurs have been concerned that raising of “acceptable limits” of radiation exposure to urge resettlement violated the government’s human rights obligations to children.
UN Special Rapporteurs have been concerned of the possible exploitation of migrants and the poor for radioactive decontamination work. Their most recent concern is how the government used the COVID-19 crisis to dramatically accelerate its timeline for deciding whether to dump radioactive wastewater accumulating at Fukushima Daiichi in the ocean
The communities of Fukushima, so devastated by the tragic events of March 11, 2011, have expressed their concerns and opposition to the discharge of the contaminated water into their environment. It is their human right to an environment that allows for living a life in dignity, to enjoy their culture, and to not be exposed deliberately to additional radioactive contamination. Those rights should be fully respected and not be disregarded by the government in Tokyo. The discharge of nuclear waste to the ocean could damage Japan’s international relations. Neighboring countries are already concerned about the release of large volumes of radioactive tritium and other contaminants in the wastewater.
Japan has a duty under international law to prevent transboundary environmental harm. More specifically, under the London Convention, Japan has an obligation to take precaution with the respect to the dumping of waste in the ocean.
Indigenous peoples have an internationally recognized right to free, prior and informed consent. This includes the disposal of waste in their waters and actions that may contaminate their food. No matter how small the Japanese government believes this contamination will be of their water and food, there is an unquestionable obligation to consult with potentially affected indigenous peoples that it has not met…The disaster of 2011 cannot be undone. However, Japan still has an opportunity to minimize the damage…There are grave risks to the livelihoods of fishermen in Japan and also to its international reputation. Again, I urge the Japanese government to think twice about its legacy: as a true champion of human rights and the environment, or not.
Excerpts from, Baskut Tuncak [UN Rapporteur], Fukushima nuclear waste decision also a human rights issue, Kyodo News, July 8, 2020
A shipment of 14 containers with spent nuclear fuel from Andreeva Bay to Atomflot in Murmansk, Russia took place in December 2019 but it was paid by Norway. Unloading the 40-years old spent uranium fuel elements from the rundown storage tanks and repacking them to transport containers came with a price-tag of 5 million kroner (€500 000), while the shipment from Andreeva Bay to Murmansk will cost additional 2,5 million kroner (€250 000).
The December 2019 shipment was the fourth that year, but the first one paid by Norway. In Andreeva Bay, only 65 kilometers from the border to Norway, the Soviet navy packed away its lethal leftovers. Without too much thought for the costs of future clean up. In Norway, like in Russia, the demand for action came out of fears for possible radioactive leakages that could have potentially negative impact on the important fisheries in the Barents Sea. So far, isotopes contamination has only been discovered in the sediments in the near proximity off the shore and not further out in the bay.
Concerns of nuclear accidents and radioactive leakages are also why Norwegian authorities have granted hundres of millions kroner in aid to secure and clean up the site. After 25 years of cooperation to improve the situation in Andreeva Bay, the Norwegian experts argue that direct financing of practical work is the best way to gain an insight into how Russia deals with the clean up.
By the end of Soviet times, in the late 1980s, a total of 22,000 spent nuclear fuel elements, equal to about 100 reactor cores from submarines, had accumulated at the run-down storage facilities. In addition came thousands of cubic meters of solid radioactive waste stored outdoor in rusty containers and hundreds of cubic meters of liquid radioactive waste in tanks.
The two first decades of international cooperation concentrated on improving the infrastructure. Buildings were erected to cover three concrete tanks holding the spent nuclear fuel, both to keep out rain and snow, but also to make sure the removal- and repacking work could take place in safe conditions. The quay by the shore was rebuilt, a new special crane for lifting transport casks where put in place. Even a new on-purpose designed ship was built, paid by Italy.
In 2017, the first load of containers with spent nuclear fuel left Andreeva Bay towards Murmansk, from where it go by rail to Mayak, Russia’s reprocessing plant north of Chelyabinsk east of the Ural Mountains. So far in 2019, three shipments paid by Russia and one shipment paid by Norway have left Andreeva Bay. “25% of the original amount of spent nuclear fuel is now removed,” says Per-Einar Fiskebeck…
The remaining waste, tank 3A holds numerous rusty, partly destroyed steel pipes where concrete of poor quality was filled in the space between. Some of those fuel assemblies are stuck in the canisters, while some of the canisters are stuck in the cells. This is high level nuclear waste with radiation levels close to the uranium fuel comparable to the melted fuel rods inside the ill-fated Chernobyl reactor.
Another groundbreaking milestone in the clean up work took place earlier this fall when the retrieval of six abandoned, highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel assemblies from the bottom of Building No. 5 were successfully completed. Building No. 5 is a former pool storage, where several elements fell to the floor following a water-leakages in 1982. Traces of uranium and other radionuclides remained in the sludge at the bottom of the pool.
Thomas Nilsen,Norway helps pay for transporting old Russian navy nuclear waste, Barents Observer, Dec. 20, 2019
A salty substance called “brine,” is a naturally occurring waste product that gushes out of America’s oil-and-gas wells to the tune of nearly 1 trillion gallons a year, enough to flood Manhattan, almost shin-high, every single day. At most wells, far more brine is produced than oil or gas, as much as 10 times more. Brine collects in tanks, and workers pick it up and haul it off to treatment plants or injection wells, where it’s disposed of by being shot back into the earth…
The Earth’s crust is in fact peppered with radioactive elements that concentrate deep underground in oil-and-gas-bearing layers. This radioactivity is often pulled to the surface when oil and gas is extracted — carried largely in the brine…
Radium, typically the most abundant radionuclide in brine, is often measured in picocuries per liter of substance and is so dangerous it’s subject to tight restrictions even at hazardous-waste sites. The most common isotopes are radium-226 and radium-228, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires industrial discharges to remain below 60 for each. Some brine samples registered combined radium levels above 3,500, and one was more than 8,500. “It’s ridiculous that those who haul brine are not being told what’s in their trucks,” says John Stolz, Duquesne’s environmental-center director. “And this stuff is on every corner — it is in neighborhoods. Truckers don’t know they’re being exposed to radioactive waste, nor are they being provided with protective clothing.
“Breathing in this stuff and ingesting it are the worst types of exposure,” Stolz continues. “You are irradiating your tissues from the inside out.” The radioactive particles fired off by radium can be blocked by the skin, but radium readily attaches to dust, making it easy to accidentally inhale or ingest. Once inside the body, its insidious effects accumulate with each exposure. It is known as a “bone seeker” because it can be incorporated into the skeleton and cause bone cancers called sarcomas. It also decays into a series of other radioactive elements, called “daughters.” The first one for radium-226 is radon, a radioactive gas and the second-leading cause of lung cancer in the U.S. Radon has also been linked to chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
Oil fields across the country — from the Bakken in North Dakota to the Permian in Texas — have been found to produce brine that is highly radioactive. “All oil-field workers,” says Fairlie, “are radiation workers.” But they don’t necessarily know it.
The advent of the fracking boom in the early 2000s expanded the danger, saddling the industry with an even larger tidal wave of waste to dispose of, and creating new exposure risks as drilling moved into people’s backyards. “In the old days, wells weren’t really close to population centers. Now, there is no separation,” says City University of New York public-health expert Elizabeth Geltman. In the eastern U.S. “we are seeing astronomically more wells going up,” she says, “and we can drill closer to populations because regulations allow it.” As of 2016, fracking accounted for more than two-thirds of all new U.S. wells, according to the Energy Information Administration. There are about 1 million active oil-and-gas wells, across 33 states, with some of the biggest growth happening in the most radioactive formation — the Marcellus. …
There is little public awareness of this enormous waste stream, the disposal of which could present dangers at every step — from being transported along America’s highways in unmarked trucks; handled by workers who are often misinformed and underprotected; leaked into waterways; and stored in dumps that are not equipped to contain the toxicity. Brine has even been used in commercial products sold at hardware stores and is spread on local roads as a de-icer…
But a set of recent legal cases argues a direct connection to occupational exposure can be made… Pipe cleaners, welders, roughnecks, roustabouts, derrickmen, and truck drivers hauling dirty pipes and sludge all were exposed to radioactivity without their knowledge and suffered a litany of lethal cancers. An analysis program developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined with up to 99 percent certainty that the cancers came from exposure to radioactivity on the job, including inhaling dust and radioactivity accumulated on the workplace floor, known as “groundshine.”
“Almost all materials of interest and use to the petroleum industry contain measurable quantities of radionuclides,” states a never-publicly released 1982 report by the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s principal trade group, passed to Rolling Stone by a former state regulator. Rolling Stone discovered a handful of other industry reports and articles that raised concerns about liability for workers’ health. A 1950 document from Shell Oil warned of a potential connection between radioactive substances and cancer of the “bone and bone marrow.” In a 1991 paper, scientists with Chevron said, “Issues such as risk to workers or the general public…must be addressed.”
“There is no one federal agency that specifically regulates the radioactivity brought to the surface by oil-and-gas development,” an EPA representative says. In fact, thanks to a single exemption the industry received from the EPA in 1980, the streams of waste generated at oil-and-gas wells — all of which could be radioactive and hazardous to humans — are not required to be handled as hazardous waste. In 1988, the EPA assessed the exemption — called the Bentsen and Bevill amendments, part of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act — and claimed that “potential risk to human health and the environment were small,” even though the agency found concerning levels of lead, arsenic, barium, and uranium, and admitted that it did not assess many of the major potential risks. Instead, the report focused on the financial and regulatory burdens, determining that formally labeling the “billions of barrels of waste” as hazardous would “cause a severe economic impact on the industry.”…
There is a perception that because the radioactivity is naturally occurring it’s less harmful (the industry and regulators almost exclusively call oil-and-gas waste NORM — naturally occurring radioactive material, or TENORM for the “technologically enhanced” concentrations of radioactivity that accumulate in equipment like pipes and trucks.”…
In Pennsylvania, regulators revealed in 2012 that for at least six years one hauling company had been dumping brine into abandoned mine shafts. In 2014, Benedict Lupo, owner of a Youngstown, Ohio, company that hauled fracking waste, was sentenced to 28 months in prison for directing his employees to dump tens of thousands of gallons of brine into a storm drain that emptied into a creek that feeds into the Mahoning River. While large bodies of water like lakes and rivers can dilute radium, Penn State researchers have shown that in streams and creeks, radium can build up in sediment to levels that are hundreds of times more radioactive than the limit for topsoil at Superfund sites. Texas-based researcher Zac Hildenbrand has shown that brine also contains volatile organics such as the carcinogen benzene, heavy metals, and toxic levels of salt, while fracked brine contains a host of additional hazardous chemicals. “It is one of the most complex mixtures on the planet,” he says…
“There is nothing to remediate it with,” says Avner Vengosh, a Duke University geochemist. “The high radioactivity in the soil at some of these sites will stay forever.” Radium-226 has a half-life of 1,600 years. The level of uptake into agricultural crops grown in contaminated soil is unknown because it hasn’t been adequately studied.
“Not much research has been done on this,” says Bill Burgos, an environmental engineer at Penn State who co-authored a bombshell 2018 paper in Environmental Science & Technology that examined the health effects of applying oil-field brine to roads. Regulators defend the practice by pointing out that only brine from conventional wells is spread on roads, as opposed to fracked wells. But conventional-well brine can be every bit as radioactive, and Burgos’ paper found it contained not just radium, but cadmium, benzene, and arsenic, all known human carcinogens, along with lead, which can cause kidney and brain damage.
Brine as dust suppressant
Ohio, because of its geology, favorable regulations, and nearness to drilling hot spots in the Marcellus, has become a preferred location for injection wells. Pennsylvania has about a dozen wells; West Virginia has just over 50. Ohio has 225. About 95 percent of brine was disposed of through injection as of 2014. Government scientists have increasingly linked the practice to earthquakes, and the public has become more and more suspicious of the sites. Still, the relentless waste stream means new permits are issued all the time, and the industry is also hauling brine to treatment plants that attempt to remove the toxic and radioactive elements so the liquid can be used to frack new wells.
Excerpts from America’s Radioactive Secret, Rolling Stone Magazine, Jan. 21, 2020
Russian environmental activists and residents are sounding the alarm (in December 2019) over government plans to build a motorway near a Soviet-era radioactive waste site in southeast Moscow that they fear could spew dangerous particles into the air. The 34-km (21-mile) road, which city authorities say is safe and will help ease traffic, is set to pass the Moscow Polymetal Plant and a fenced-off site where it disposed of radioactive substances decades ago. Vasily Desyatkov, a senior city construction official, said surface and underground tests carried out where the foundations of the road were due to be laid had turned back normal readings that show there is no risk.
But that has not placated activists who have led a series of protests in recent months. “It could lead to the release of radionuclides contained in the soil which will be dispersed with the dust. They will be spread everywhere – on people’s feet, car wheels, anything,” said Igor, a protester.
The site, the Moscow Polymetals Plant’s slag heap, is Just 13 kilometers from the Kremlin and steps from Kolomenskoye Park, a popular spot for Muscovites to ski in winter and picnic in summer, the Moskvorechye-Saburovo hill is the most contaminated of the bunch, according to Radon, a government agency tasked with locating and clearing radioactive waste. A legacy of a rushed Soviet effort to begin nuclear research as the race to build an atomic bomb gained steam in the 1930s, the hill is one of many contaminated sites across Russia …
Moskvorechye-Saburovo District Moscow
It contains tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste left over after the extraction of thorium and uranium from ore. The factory ceased production of metals in 1996 for “environmental reasons,” according to its website — it now produces weapons and military equipment — and the dump is now a hill half a kilometer wide sloping down to the banks of the Moscow River. City officials had been considering a full-scale clean-up for years, but never rubber-stamped a plan due to the risky location of the site near a source of water for Moscow’s southern suburbs.
“Operations in such an environment are a serious engineering challenge — one incautious step, and radioactive soil gets into the river,” said Alexander Barinov, Radon’s chief engineer for Moscow…. “Full decontamination by removing all of the radioactive waste is simply impossible,” he added, noting that Radon every year conducts “a kind of therapy” to ensure the site’s safety — in short, dumping dirt on top of the waste to keep it buried after topsoil runoff each spring.
Excerpts from Russians protest over plans to build road near Soviet-era radioactive waste site, Reuters, Dec. 10, 2019; Will a Road Through a Nuclear Dumping Ground Result in ‘Moscow’s Chernobyl’?, Moscow Times, July 16, 2019
What to do with the enormous amount of radioactive water, which grows by around 150 tons a day at Fukushima, is a thorny question, with controversy surrounding a long-standing proposal to discharge it into the sea, after extensive decontamination. The water comes from several different sources: Some is used for cooling at the plant, which suffered a meltdown after it was hit by a tsunami triggered by a massive earthquake in March 2011. Groundwater that seeps into the plant daily, along with rainwater, add to the problem.
A thousand, towering tanks have now replaced many of the cherry trees that once dotted the plant’s ground. Each can hold 1,200 tons, and most of them are already full. “We will build more on the site until the end of 2020, and we think all the tanks will be full by around the summer of 2022,” said Junichi Matsumoto, an official with the unit of plant operator TEPCO in charge of dismantling the site.
TEPCO has been struggling with the problem for years, taking various measures to limit the amount of groundwater entering the site. There is also an extensive pumping and filtration system, that each day brings up tons of newly contaminated water and filters out as many of the radioactive elements as possible.
The hangar where the decontamination system runs is designated “Zone Y” — a danger zone requiring special protections. All those entering must wear elaborate protection: a full body suit, three layers of socks, three layers of gloves, a double cap topped by a helmet, a vest with a pocket carrying a dosimeter, a full-face respirator mask and special shoes. Most of the outfit has to burned after use.
“The machinery filters contain radionuclides, so you have to be very protected here, just like with the buildings where the reactors are,” explained TEPCO risk communicator Katsutoshi Oyama. TEPCO has been filtering newly contaminated water for years, but much of it needs to go through the process again because early versions of the filtration process did not fully remove some dangerous radioactive elements, including strontium 90.
The current process is more effective, removing or reducing around 60 radionuclides to levels accepted by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for water being discharged. But there is one that remains, which cannot be removed with the current technology: tritium.
Tritium is naturally present in the environment, and has also been discharged in its artificial form into the environment by the nuclear industry around the world. There is little evidence that it causes harm to humans except in very high concentrations and the IAEA argues that properly filtered Fukushima water could be diluted with seawater and then safely released into the ocean without causing environmental problems.
But those assurances are of little comfort to many in the region, particularly Fukushima’s fishing industry which, like local farmers, has suffered from the outside perception that food from the region is unsafe.
Karyn Nishimura, At Fukushima plant, a million-ton headache: radioactive water, Japan Times, Oct. 7, 2019
Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) are relatively small and flexible: they have a power capacity of up to 300 MW(e) and their output can fluctuate in line with demand. This makes them particularly attractive for remote regions with less developed grids, but also for use as a complement to renewables and for non-electric applications of nuclear power. SMRs can be manufactured and then shipped and installed on site, so they are expected to be more affordable to build.
The Rolls Royce SMR is small enough to be transported by truck.
Globally, there are about 50 SMR designs and concepts at different stages of development. Three SMR plants are in advanced stages of construction or commissioning in Argentina, China and Russia, which are all scheduled to start operation between 2019 and 2022…Some SMR designs have features that could reduce the tasks associated with spent fuel management. Power plants based on these designs require less frequent refuelling, every 3 to 7 years, in comparison to between 1 and 2 years for conventional plants, and some are even designed to operate for up to 30 years without refuelling. Nevertheless, even in such cases, there will be some spent fuel left, which will have to be properly managed.
Excerpts from Small Modular Reactors: A Challenge for Spent Fuel Management? IAEA News, Aug. 8, 2019
In August 2019, Tepco projected that storage of radioactive water at the Fukushima nuclear plant would reach full capacity by around summer 2022 even after the expansion — the first time it has issued such a precise estimate. According to Tepco, the Fukushima No. 1 plant had 960 massive tanks containing 1.15 million tons of treated water as of July 18, 2019. Water that has touched the highly radioactive melted fuel debris has been cleaned up through water treatment machines and is stored in the tanks, but the high-tech treatment machines are able to remove most radionuclides except tritium. The plant currently sees an increase of contaminated water by 170 tons a day, Tepco says.
Releasing tritium-tainted water into the sea in a controlled manner is common practice at nuclear power plants around the world, and it was generally considered the most viable option as it could be done quickly and would cost the least. The head of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, Toyoshi Fuketa, has long said that releasing the treated water into the sea is the most reasonable option, but people in Fukushima, especially fishermen, fear it will damage the region’s reputation.
Addressing those concerns, the government panel, launched in November 2016, has been looking for the best option in terms of guarding against reputational damage. Injecting it into the ground, discharging it as steam or hydrogen, or solidification followed by underground burial have all been on the table. Under the current plan, Tepco is set to increase the tank space to store 1.37 million tons of water a total, but estimates show that will only last until summer 2022. But the more space it creates, the bigger the decommissioning headache becomes.
Excerpts from KAZUAKI NAGAT, Fukushima nuclear plant to run out of tanks to store tritium-laced water in three years, Tepco says, Japan Times, Aug. 9, 2019 BY KAZUAKI NAGATA
The Trump administration is asking Congress for money to resume work on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage in Nevada. But that may not end local opposition or a longstanding political stalemate. And in the meantime, nuclear plants are running out of room to store spent fuel….As the waste piles up, private companies are stepping in with their own solutions for the nation’s radioactive spent fuel. One is proposing a temporary storage site in New Mexico, and another is seeking a license for a site in Texas.
Most experts agree that what’s needed is a permanent site, like Yucca Mountain, that doesn’t require humans to manage it. “Institutions go away,” says Edwin Lyman, acting director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “There’s no guarantee the owner will still be around for the duration of time when that waste remains dangerous, which is tens or hundreds of thousands of years.”
A California company says it has a viable plan for permanent storage. Deep Isolation wants to store spent fuel in holes drilled at least 1,000 feet underground in stable rock formations. The company says the waste would be separate from groundwater and in a place where it can’t hurt people. “I like to imagine having a playground at the top of the Deep Isolation bore hole where my kids and I can go play,” says CEO Elizabeth Muller. In November 2018, Muller’s company conducted a test north of Austin, Texas. Crews lowered an 80-pound canister into a drilled hole. It was a simulation, so no radioactive substances were involved. The goal was to determine whether they could also retrieve the canister. The test was successful, and that’s important. Regulators require retrieval, because new technology could develop to better deal with the spent fuel. And the public is less likely to accept disposal programs that can’t be reversed, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Proving the waste can be retrieved may be the easy part. The bigger challenge is federal law, which doesn’t allow private companies to permanently store nuclear waste from power plants. Current law also says all the waste should end up at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. By contrast, Deep Isolation’s technology would store waste at sites around the country, likely near existing nuclear power plants.
Jeff Brady, As Nuclear Waste Piles Up, Private Companies Pitch New Ways To Store It, NPR, Apr. 30, 2019
Gerard Mourou—one of the three winners of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physics—claims that the lifespan of radioactive waste could potentially be cut to minutes from thousands of years. Although Mourou, 74, is quick to say that the laser option for nuclear waste that he and Irvine, California-based Professor Toshiki Tajima are working on may be years away, its promise has created a flurry of excitement for the sector in France.
Environmental group Greenpeace estimates that there’s a global stockpile of about 250,000 tons of toxic spent fuel spread across 14 countries, based on data from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Of that, 22,000 cubic meters—roughly equivalent to a three-meter tall building covering an area the size of a soccer pitch—is hazardous, according to the IAEA. A 2015 report by GE-Hitachi put the cost of disposing nuclear waste—outside of China, Russia and India—at well over $100 billion. France produces more nuclear waste per-capita than any other country. With almost 72 percent of its electricity coming from nuclear energy—the most in the world—it generates 2 kilograms of radioactive waste per person each year. And although only a fraction of that is highly toxic, more than 60 years after getting into nuclear energy, the country still has no definitive way to cope with it.
In April 2019, France opened its third national debate on nuclear waste, bringing together policy makers, advocacy groups and scientists to discuss handling an estimated 10,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste collectively produced by the country’s 58 reactors over their lifespan. And that doesn’t include atomic material generated by the military and medical sectors.
The most toxic parts are stored right now in short-term facilities in La Hague in Normandy, in Marcoule and Cadarache in southern France and in Valduc, near Dijon. At the facility in La Hague, an hour’s drive from the D-Day beaches, specially designed robots cast the most radioactive nuclear waste into glass casings before putting them in inox containers. Already the world’s largest facility for processing atomic waste, it is constantly being expanded—making a long-term solution urgent.
State-controlled nuclear entities Electricite de France SA and Orano SA, charged with nuclear waste management, and CEA, France’s Atomic Energy Agency, have spent billions on the toxic material. At least another 25 billion euros ($28 billion) is set to be plowed into an underground maze of tunnels near the village of Bure in northeastern France that could be the final resting place for the highly toxic waste starting in 2025. Like with other deep storage sites in place, under construction or being considered in countries including the U.S., Japan, Finland and Sweden, the Bure plan has drawn protests. Greenpeace has pointed to several risks, not least of which being the chance of the toxic material seeping into the groundwater or a fire releasing radioactive gases.
Enter Mourou, with his high-intensity laser option. The physicist’s work has paved the way for the shortest and most-intense laser pulses ever created. In his Nobel Lecture on Dec. 8, Mourou laid out his vision for using his “passion for extreme light” to address the nuclear-waste problem. The process he and Tajima are working on is called transmutation, which involves changing the composition of an atom’s nucleus by bombarding it with a laser. “It’s like karate—you deliver a very strong force in a very, very brief moment,” said Mourou…Transmutation research has been going on for three decades, with efforts in the U.K., Germany, Belgium, U.S. and Japan either failing or in various stages of study…“I can imagine that the physics might work, but the transmutation of high-level nuclear waste requires a number of challenging steps, such as the separation of individual radionuclides, the fabrication of targets on a large scale, and finally, their irradiation and disposal,” said Rodney C. Ewing, a professor in nuclear security and geological sciences at Stanford University. A radionuclide is an atom that has excess nuclear energy, making it unstable.
Excerpts from Zapping Nuclear Waste in Minutes Is Nobel Winner’s Holy Grail Quest, Bloomberg, Apr. 2, 2019
A Greenpeace report details how plans to discharge over 1 million tonnes of highly contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean was proposed by a Japanese government task force. According to Greenpeace.
“The decision not to develop water processing technology that could remove radioactive tritium was motivated by short term cost cutting not protection of the Pacific ocean environment or the health and livelihoods of communities along the Fukushima coast,” said Kazue Suzuki, Energy Campaigner at Greenpeace Japan. “ The report concludes that the water crisis remains unresolved, and will be for the foreseeable future. The only viable option to protect the environment and the communities along the Fukushima coast being long term storage for the contaminated water.
The discharge option for water containing high levels of radioactive tritium was recommended as least cost by the Government’s Tritiated Water Task Force and promoted by Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA). The Task Force concluded in 2016 that “sea discharge would cost 3.4 billion yen (US$30 million) and take seven years and four months to complete. It concluded that this was cheapest and quickest of the five methods.” However, technical proposals for removing tritium were submitted to the same Government Task Force by multiple nuclear companies with estimated costs ranging from US$2-US$20 billion to US$50-US$180 billion depending on the technology used. These were dismissed as not viable but without detailed technical consideration.
TEPCO has claimed since 2013 that its ALPS technology would reduce radioactivity levels “to lower than the permissible level for discharge.” However, in September 2018 TEPCO admitted that the processing of over 800,000 tons of contaminated water in 1000 storage tanks, including strontium, had failed to remove radioactivity to below regulatory limits, including for strontium-90, a bone seeking radionuclide that causes cancer. TEPCO knew of the failure of the technology from 2013. The Greenpeace report details technical problems with the ALPS system.
The Fukushima Daiichi site, due its location, is subject to massive groundwater contamination which TEPCO has also failed to stop. Each week an additional 2-4000 tonnes of contaminated water is added to the storage tanks.
Excerpts from Technical failures increase risk of contaminated Fukushima water discharge into Pacific, Greenpeace Press Release, Jan. 22, 2019
The Soviet Union during the 1960s and 70s dumped several hundred containers with solid radioactive waste in the Blagopoluchie Bay in Novaya Zemlya. Back then, these waters were covered with ice overwhelming parts of the year. Today, that is quickly changing. The bay located in the northern part of the Russian Arctic archipelago is now ice-free increasing parts of the year. With the retreating ice follow new species.
Researchers from the Russian Shirshov Institute of Oceanology have comprehensively studied the eco system of the bay for several years. Among their key findings is a quickly growing number of snow crabs. In this year’s research expedition to the remote waters, the researchers were overwhelmed by the numbers. According to the institute, the crab invasion can be described «as avalanche».
The number of crabs in the area is now estimated to almost 14,000 per hectare, the institute informs. With the help of underwater photo and video footage, the researchers have studied how the crab expansion is leading to a other reduction in other marine life on the sea bottom. A further spread in the other parts of the Kara Sea is imminent, and the Russian Fisheries Agency (Rosrybolovstvo) believe that the Kara Sea will ultimately become an area with commercial crab fishing.
But Kara seas is a major nuclear waste dump…No major leakage from the radioactive materials have so far been registered. Soviet authorities are believed to have dumped about 17,000 containers with solid radioactive wastes in Arctic waters and primarily in the Kara Sea. More than 900 containers are located on the bottom of the Blagopoluchie Bay. Also a number of reactor compartments were dumped, as well as three nuclear subs and other nuclear materials.
Exceprts from Atle Staalesen, Arctic crab invasion comes to nuclear waste graveyard, the Barents Observer, Nov. 26, 2018
As the world increasingly buries its nuclear waste, a growing number of experts are trying to come up with a way to warn future generations of what, exactly, will be lying under their feet. Deciding where to create nuclear waste storage sites, demarcating them clearly and then writing it all down seems like the obvious solution. After all, mankind started writing down its history 5,500 years ago and the likelihood of us stopping to do so seems slim. But the question then becomes: what should we write this crucial piece of information on? Stone and paper deteriorate. USB sticks and servers do, too. Some government entities, like ANDRA, the French National Agency in charge of managing radioactive waste, have started to record their archive on permanent paper. Also known as acid-free paper due to its composition, it can remain chemically and physically stable for a long period of time — unlike traditional paper, which starts to yellow and decay over time when exposed to light or heat.
The agency has also built sapphire discs, made out of sapphire and etched with platinum on one side. These can contain up to 40,000 pages of pictures and text and could, theoretically, last for some two million years. Language, after all, is a living, changing entity. That’s why it took us decades to decode Egyptian hieroglyphs and why you might have gotten a headache reading Shakespeare’s Old English masterpieces in class. So who’s to say that French scientists 1,000 years from now will be able to understand la langue de Moliere’s current form? The OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has since created a working group whose task it is to set the best practices on Radioactive Waste Repository Metadata Management so that all the information is not only stored properly but is also easily accessible as national nuclear waste programmes evolve…
In a report, the researchers led by Thomas Sebeok of the University of Indiana recommended the creation of a nuclear priesthood, inspired by the Catholic Church, which would relay information down the generations through “a mixture of iconic, indexical and symbolic elements” and “a high degree of redundancy of messages.”..
The problem with art, explained Peter Galison, professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University and author of the Containment documentary, is that if a message is too artistic, then it might not be properly understood as different people may have different interpretations of it….For instance, you know for sure what the skull pictogram means. If you’re thinking death, you’re right. Yet this symbol, Blanquer said, “comes from alchemists.” “The skull represents Adam and the crossing bones the promise of resurrection,” he revealed. So in the span of just a few centuries this particular pictogram has evolved from meaning resurrection to meaning death.
As waste can be buried either near or deep under the surface, the signal should be seen both above but also under the ground. The researchers employed by the US Department of Energy in the mid-1980s (who came up with the nuclear priesthood, remember!), had also envisioned different monuments to get the point across: fields of pikes, threatening statues of thunderbolts, or enormous blocs of granite positioned into a tight grid….
The Finnish project of Onkalo took the problem completely differently: what if we came up with a way that would allow us to simply not tell future generations? Its solution? Digging a deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel. “The entire concept of Posiva (the company which manages the project), is that 100 to 120 years after it’s been closed, the site will not be signalled. The 500 meters to the storage site in the geological layer will be filled with rock and the entire thing will be isolated and invisible in the natural landscape.”
Excerpts from What will a nuclear waste warning look like in 100,000 years’ time?, Euronews, Nov. 16, 2018
Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station (PNPS) is the only nuclear power plant operating in Massachusetts. …On October 13, 2015, plant owners announced that it would close by June 1, 2019, citing “market conditions and increased costs,” which would have included tens of millions of dollars of necessary safety upgrades.
Up to 2015,all of the nuclear reactor fuel rods from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station were submerged in a deep pool of water, which was running out of space. In 2015, the company started to use casks to store the waste. Cask storage is used at many nuclear plants in the United States to deal with excess nuclear reactor waste. The casks, 18 feet tall and 11 feet wide, are designed to withstand a truck bomb or a tornado-borne projectile moving at 360 miles per hour.
The plant in 2018 had 17 steel-reinforced concrete cylinders filled with the radioactive waste on a concrete pad about 25 feet above sea level and about 200 feet from shore. It announced it was planning to move these 360,000-pound casks to a new pad on an existing parking lot that’s about 75 feet above mean sea level and 700 feet from shore to avoid risks associated with sea-level rise due to climate change.
More than 60,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel is stored on the shores of four of the five Great Lakes at the Border between United States and Canada — in some cases, mere yards from the waterline — in still-growing stockpiles…It remains on the shorelines because there’s still nowhere else to put it…
The nuclear power industry and its federal regulator, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, point to spent nuclear fuel’s safe on-site storage over decades. But the remote possibility of a worst-case scenario release — from a natural disaster, a major accident, or an act of terrorism — could cause unthinkable consequences for the Great Lakes region. Scientific research has shown a radioactive cloud from a spent fuel pool fire would span hundreds of miles, and force the evacuation of millions of residents in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Toronto or other population centers, depending on where the accident occurred and wind patterns.
For five years, Michigan residents, lawmakers, environmental groups and others around the Midwest have, loudly and nearly unanimously, opposed a planned Canadian underground repository for low-to-medium radioactive waste at Kincardine, Ontario, near the shores of Lake Huron. Meanwhile, spent nuclear fuel, vastly more radioactive, sits not far from the shores of four Great Lakes — Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario — at 15 currently operating or former nuclear power plant sites on the U.S. side. In Michigan, that includes Fermi 2; the Donald C. Cook nuclear plant in Berrien County; the Palisades nuclear plant in Van Buren County, and the former Big Rock Point nuclear plant in Charlevoix County, which ceased operation in 1997 and where now only casks of spent nuclear fuel remain.
Neither the U.S. nor the Canadian government has constructed a central collection site for the spent nuclear fuel. It’s not just a problem in the Great Lakes region — more than 88,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, an amount that is rising, is stored at 121 U.S. locations across 39 states.
Spent nuclear fuel isn’t only radioactive, it continues to generate heat. It requires storage in pools with circulating water for typically five years before it can be moved into so-called dry-cask storage — concrete-and-steel obelisks where spent fuel rods receive continued cooling by circulating air.In practice, however, because of the high costs associated with transferring waste from wet pools to dry casks, nuclear plants have kept decades worth of spent fuel in wet storage. Plant officials instead “re-rack” the pools, reconfiguring them to add more and more spent fuel, well beyond the capacities for which the pools were originally designed.
Only in recent years have nuclear plants stepped up the transition to dry cask storage because there’s no room left in the wet pools. Still, about two-thirds of on-site spent nuclear fuel remains in wet pools in the U.S….That’s a safety concern, critics contend. A catastrophe or act of terrorism that drains a spent fuel pool could cause rising temperatures that could eventually cause zirconium cladding — special brackets that hold the spent fuel rods in bundles — to catch fire. Such a disaster could be worse than a meltdown in a nuclear reactor, as spent nuclear fuel is typically stored with nowhere near the fortified containment of a reactor core.
At Fukushima…what almost happened — at the plant’s Unit 4 spent-fuel pool that gives nuclear watchdogs nightmares. A hydrogen explosion four days into the disaster left the building housing the Unit 4 spent-fuel pool in ruins. The pool was seven stories up in a crumbling, inaccessible building. It “was so radioactive, you couldn’t put people up there,” von Hippel said. “For about a month after Fukushima, people didn’t know how much water was in the pool. They were shooting water up there haphazardly with a hose, trying to drop it by helicopter.” Two weeks after the earthquake and tsunami, the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission secretly conducted a worst-case scenario study of the ongoing disaster. The biggest fear that emerged: that a self-sustaining fire would start in the Unit 4 spent fuel pool, spreading to the nearby, damaged reactors. That, they found, would release radiation requiring evacuations as far away as 150 miles, to the outskirts of Tokyo and its more than 13.4 million residents. “That was the devil’s scenario that was on my mind,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said during a special commission’s 2014 investigation of the accident.“Common sense dictated that, if that came to pass, then it was the end of Tokyo.” What kept the spent fuel rods covered with water in Unit 4 was a miraculous twist of fate: The explosion had jarred open a gate that typically separated the Unit 4 spent fuel pool from an adjacent reactor pool. “Leakage through the gate seals was essential for keeping the fuel in the Unit 4 pool covered with water,” a 2016 report on the Fukushima accident by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded. “Had there been no water in the reactor well, there could well have been severe damage to the stored fuel and substantial releases of radioactive material to the environment.”
The U.S. nuclear industry sees Fukushima differently — in some ways as a success story. “At Fukushima, you not only had a tsunami, you blew up the buildings … and you still did not drain the pool,” said Rod McCullum, senior director for fuel and decommissioning at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association for nuclear utilities in the U.S. “Those pools and those casks withstood explosions and earthquakes and tsunamis, all on the same day.” A scenario where a fire can occur by the draining of water from a spent-fuel pool “has never been demonstrated,” McCullum said. He noted safety measures added in the U.S. since Fukushima include the ability to provide extra pumps and water supplies, in minutes or hours, should a spent fuel pool become breached and lose water — even if the disaster required that the resources be brought in by air from farther away….
Because nuclear power is much more widely used in Canada — the province of Ontario alone has 20 nuclear reactors at three plants — it also generates much more nuclear waste. In Ontario, nearly 52,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel is stored on-site at nuclear plants along Lakes Huron and Ontario.“There’s a huge amount of high-level, radioactive waste stored right along the water,” said Edwards, the president of the nonprofit Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility Like the U.S., Canada is seeking a long-term storage solution that will involve a central underground repository. Unlike the U.S., the Canadian government is seeking willing hosts, promising jobs and economic activity. …Even if a central repository is one day approved, another complication arises — how to get two generations of the most dangerous industrial waste man has ever created from sites all over the country to one point….
Germany, in the 1980s, tried using an abandoned salt and potash mine to store barrels of nuclear waste over 30 years, the Asse II mine. It’s now prompting a cleanup that may take 30 years and cost nearly $12 billion U.S. dollars. The government has disputed the contention of workers at the mine that they were exposed to excessive levels of radiation, causing an unusual number of cancers….Nuclear power is projected to drop as a percentage of the world’s power generation mix from 10 percent in 2017 to just 5.6 percent by 2050, a report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency this summer found…
If central repository solutions aren’t found, within years, the re-licensing of some early dry-cask storage facilities will come into play, as they meet a lifespan they were never expected to reach. “The age of nuclear power is winding down, but the age of nuclear waste is just beginning,” Edwards said.
Excerpts from Keith Matheny, 60,000 tons of dangerous radioactive waste sits on Great Lakes shores, Detroit Free Press, Oct. 19, 2018
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has helped remove 27 disused highly radioactive sources from five South American countries in a significant step forward for nuclear safety and security in the region. It was the largest such project ever facilitated by the IAEA. The material, mainly used for medical purposes such as treating cancer and sterilizing instruments, was transported to Germany and the United States for recycling. Canada, where some of the sources were manufactured, funded the project upon requests for IAEA support from Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
The sealed Cobalt-60 and Caesium-137 sources pose safety and security risks when no longer in use…
“Some of these sources were stored at hospitals for more than 40 years,” said César José Cardozo Román, Minister, Executive Secretary, Radiological Nuclear Regulatory Authority of Paraguay. “With this action, a problematic situation has been solved, improving safety for the public and environment and reducing the risk of malicious use and possible exposure to radioactive material.”
In recent years, the IAEA has assisted Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, Costa Rica, Honduras, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia and Uzbekistan in the removal of disused sources. The South American operation was the largest the IAEA has so far coordinated in terms of both the number of highly radioactive sources and countries involved.
Excerpts from IAEA Helps Remove Highly Radioactive Material from Five South American Countries, IAEA Press Release, Apr. 30, 2018
Most of radioactive waste arising from nuclear applications consists of disused sealed radioactive sources (DSRS). Radioactive sources are used in different devices in medical, industrial and agricultural facilities. They have to be accounted for and when they are no longer usable, they have to be recovered, dismantled, stored and, as the case may be, prepared for transportation. Therefore, countries with or without nuclear power programmes have to make sure they have the ability to properly manage them. The IAEA is supporting capacity building in both regulatory framework and operation and can support removal operations. The IAEA is also developing tools (mobile tool kits, mobile hot cells, transport packages) and supporting the strengthening of regional capabilities.
In an effort to scale up the safe and secure management of disused sealed radioactive sources (DSRS), the IAEA on September 19, 2017 introduced a new concept of Qualified Technical Centres.
“At the IAEA we receive a large number of requests for assistance in characterization, conditioning and removal of all categories of DSRS,” said Christophe Xerri, Director of the IAEA Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology, Xerri, Director, IAEA Division of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology “The idea behind this initiative is to increase the worldwide capability to manage DSRS by encouraging countries with well-equipped centres and trained personnel to provide technical services for the management of DSRS, within their countries and regionally.”…
The IAEA regularly dispatches expert missions to Member States to provide advice and guidance for the recovery and conditioning of DSRS. The most recent missions include recovery and conditioning of DSRS in Honduras in July, in Ghana in August and in Malaysia in September 2017…
During the event, experts from several Member States highlighted recent projects and activities related to DSRS management. Participants learned details of a South American Source Removal Project, with 29 sources to be removed from five countries. The event also included presentations on national regulatory infrastructure for inventories of radioactive sources and progress made on the integration of mobile hot cell with borehole disposal system.
Excerpts from IAEA Announces Concept of Qualified Technical Centres for the Management of Disused Sealed Radioactive Sources, IAEA Department of Nuclear Energy, Sept. 19, 2017
Plutonium capable of being used in a nuclear weapon, conventional explosives, and highly toxic chemicals have been improperly packaged or shipped by nuclear weapons contractors at least 25 times from 2012 to 2107 according to government documents.While the materials were not ultimately lost, the documents reveal repeated instances in which hazardous substances vital to making nuclear bombs and their components were mislabeled before shipment. That means those transporting and receiving them were not warned of the safety risks and did not take required precautions to protect themselves or the public, the reports say.
The risks were discovered after regulators conducted inspections during transit, when the packages were opened at their destinations, during scientific analysis after the items were removed from packaging, or – in the worst cases – after releases of radioactive contaminants by unwary recipients, the Center for Public Integrity’s investigation showed. Only a few, slight penalties appear to have been imposed for these mistakes.
In the most recent such instance, Los Alamos National Laboratory – a privately-run, government-owned nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico – admitted five weeks ago that in June 2017 it had improperly shipped unstable, radioactive plutonium in three containers to two other government-owned labs via FedEx cargo planes, instead of complying with federal regulations that required using trucks to limit the risk of an accident… According to the initial explanation Los Alamos filed with the government on June 23, 2017 the lab used air transport because one of the other labs – located in Livermore, California ― needed the plutonium urgently.
The incident – which came to light after a series of revelations by the Center for Public Integrity about other safety lapses at Los Alamos ― drew swift condemnation by officials at the National Nuclear Security Administration in Washington, D.C., which oversees U.S. nuclear weapons work. It provoked the Energy Department to order a three-week halt to all shipments in and out of Los Alamos, the largest of the nuclear weapons labs and a linchpin in the complex of privately-run facilities that sustains America’s nuclear arsenal.
In total, 11 of the 25 known shipping mistakes since July 2012 involved shipments that either originated at Los Alamos or passed through the lab. Thirteen of the 25 incidents involved plutonium, highly-enriched uranium (another nuclear explosive), or other radioactive materials. Some of the mislabeled shipments went to toxic waste dumps and breached regulatory limits on what the dumps were allowed to accept, according to the reports.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which arguably has more experience with the handling and transport of radioactive materials than any other government entity, has no jurisdiction over nuclear weapons-related work by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) or its contractors. Instead, the Energy Department (of which the NNSA is a semi-autonomous part) regulates all the sites on its own, as well as the contractors that manage them.
Excerpts from Patrick Malone, Nuclear weapons contractors repeatedly violate shipping rules for dangerous materials, Center for Public Integrity, Aug. 1, 2017
Several options are available to immobilise waste resulting from nuclear fuel reprocessing. One of these is vitrification – a mature technology which has been used for high-level nuclear waste immobilization for over 50 years…Argentina is considering vitrification as a viable option for dealing with its high-level nuclear waste. The Argentine National Programme for Radioactive Waste Management aims to build capacities to implement vitrification processes for radioactive waste….
The vitrified radioactive waste is extremely durable, and ensures a high degree of environmental protection. Although the process of vitrification requires a high initial investment and then operational costs, waste vitrification has important advantages: it significantly reduces the volume of waste, and allows simple and cheap disposal possibilities. The overall cost of vitrified radioactive waste is usually lower than alternative options when transportation and disposal expenses are taken into account. For this reason, the process is very attractive for sates seeking effective and reliable immobilisation solutions for their radioactive waste stocks.
Excerpts from Taking a Closer Look at Vitrification: How the IAEA Helps Countries Utilise Advanced Immobilisation Technologies, IAEA Press Release, Mar. 24, 2017
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is the federal government agency for scientific research in Australia.
CSIRO faces a $30 million clean up bill after barrels of radioactive waste at a major facility were found to be “deteriorating rapidly” and possibly leaking.
An inspection found “significant rusting” on many of the 9,725 drums, which are understood to contain radioactive waste and other toxic chemicals. Much of the radioactive waste was trucked to Woomera from Sydney in the mid 1990s. CSIRO flagged a $29.7 million budget provision for “remediation works” at a remote location in its latest annual report.
Almost 10,000 drums of radioactive waste are stored at a CSIRO facility in Woomera, South Australia. The Woomera facility is currently one of Australia’s largest storage sites for low and intermediate-level radioactive waste. A damning report of the Woomera facility was issued by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) after an inspection in April 2016. “Evidence was sighted that indicates the drums are now beginning to deteriorate rapidly,” read the report, seen by Fairfax Media. “Significant rust on a number of the drums, deterioration of the plastic drum-liners and crushing of some stacked drums was observed.”
Tests confirmed the presence of radioactive isotopes at one location and inspectors said there was a possibility the drums were leaking.”Although unlikely, there is the possibility that the presence of deceased animals such as rodents and birds may indicate that some of the drums, which contain industrial chemicals, may be leaking into the environment.” The mixture of water and concentrated radioactive material inside some of the drums also had the potential to produce explosive hydrogen gas, inspectors found.
They also noted CSIRO had little knowledge of what was inside many of the barrels, some of which are believed to date back more than 50 years. “Without full knowledge [of] the contents of the drums, risks cannot be fully identified and risk controls cannot be appropriately implements to protect people and the environment,” inspectors noted in the report.
Many of the drums are understood to contain contaminated soil generated by government research into radioactive ores at Melbourne’s Fishermans Bend throughout the 1940s and 1950s. The toxic soil was discovered by the Department of Defence in 1989, who sent it to Sydney’s Lucas Heights facility before it was palmed off to Woomera in 1994.
The country’s other major radioactive waste storage facility at Lucas Heights, Sydney, is rapidly approaching full capacity.
Coupled with issues at the CSIRO site, the revelations highlighted the urgent need for a national radioactive waste storage solution, experts said.
Excerpts from Rusted barrels of radioactive waste cost CSIRO $30 million, Sydney Morning Herald, Mar. 13, 2017
Professor Ashutosh Goel at Rutgers University is the primary inventor of a new method to immobilize radioactive iodine in ceramics at room temperature and six glass-related research projects …Developing ways to immobilize iodine-129 found in nuclear waste,...is crucial for its safe storage and disposal in underground geological formations. The half-life of iodine-129 is 15.7 million years, and it can disperse rapidly in air and water, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. If it’s released into the environment, iodine will linger for millions of years. Iodine targets the thyroid gland and can increase the chances of getting cancer.
Among Goel’s major funders is the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which oversees one of the world’s largest nuclear cleanups following 45 years of producing nuclear weapons. The national weapons complex once had 16 major facilities that covered vast swaths of Idaho, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington state, according to the DOE.
The agency says the Hanford site in southeastern Washington, which manufactured more than 20 million pieces of uranium metal fuel for nine nuclear reactors near the Columbia River, is its biggest cleanup challenge. Hanford plants processed 110,000 tons of fuel from the reactors. Some 56 million gallons of radioactive waste – enough to fill more than 1 million bathtubs – went to 177 large underground tanks. As many as 67 tanks – more than one third – are thought to have leaked, the DOE says. The liquids have been pumped out of the 67 tanks, leaving mostly dried solids…
“What we’re talking about here is highly complex, multicomponent radioactive waste which contains almost everything in the periodic table,” Goel said. “What we’re focusing on is underground and has to be immobilized.”
One of his inventions involves mass producing chemically durable apatite minerals, or glasses, to immobilize iodine without using high temperatures. A second innovation deploys synthesizing apatite minerals from silver iodide particles. He’s also studying how to immobilize sodium and alumina in high-level radioactive waste in borosilicate glasses that resist crystallization.
Excerpt from Professor Ashutosh Goel Invents Method to Contain Radioactive Iodine, Rutgers School of Engineering Press Release, Nov. 2016
Russia’s nuclear energy giant Rosatom’s subsidiary RosRAO has created a prototype water decontamination plant for use at Tokyo Electric Power Co. Holdings’ Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station — the site of Japan’s largest nuclear disaster in March 2011. The scrubbing facility, unveiled in June 2014, is capable of removing tritium, or radioactive hydrogen, from nuclear-tainted water, something beyond the capabilities of the Fukushima plant’s current cleanup equipment. Distillation and electrolysis isolate and concentrate the isotope, which is then locked away in titanium. Experiments under conditions similar to those on the ground reportedly show the technology cutting wastewater’s radioactive material content to one-6,000th the initial level, making it safe for human consumption or release into the ocean.
Duplicating the facility near the Fukushima site and running it for the five years necessary to process 800,000 cu. meters of contaminated water would cost around $700 million in all. Companies in Japan and the U.S. are at work on their own facilities for tritium disposal, but the Russian plan’s cost and technological capability make it fully competitive, according to the project’s chief.
Rosatom has made other overtures to Japan. Executives from a mining and chemical unit have visited several times this year for talks with Japanese nuclear companies, aiming to cooperate on decommissioning the Fukushima plant and upgrading a reprocessing plant in Aomori Prefecture for spent nuclear fuel. Russia has amassed a wealth of expertise dealing with damaged nuclear reactors in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, and would like Japan to draw on that knowledge, the subsidiary’s chief executive said.
Revving up nuclear technology exports is essential to re-energizing Russia’s domestic industry and breaking free of dependence on the resource sector, Moscow has decided. The nuclear business, along with the space industry, is one of the few tech-intensive sectors where the country is internationally competitive. President Vladimir Putin has leaned more heavily on leaders in Europe and emerging countries in recent years to agree to deals with Russia’s nuclear companies.
In Japan, the public has grown wary of nuclear energy since the accident, leaving demand for new plants in the country at next to nil. Yet Japan has more than 10 reactors slated for decommissioning, creating a market worth up to 1 trillion yen ($9.42 billion) by some calculations. Russia aims to use cooperation on the Fukushima plant to crack the broader market and grow its influence, a source at a French nuclear energy company said…
But Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nevertheless visited Russia in May 2016 for top-level talks despite U.S. objections, eager to make progress on territorial disputes over islands north of Hokkaido. Preparation is underway for another summit in the far-eastern city of Vladivostok in September 2016, as well as a visit by Putin to Japan before the year is out.
Excerpts from TAKAYUKI TANAKA, Japan nuclear cleanup next target in Russian economic offensive, Nikkei Asian Review, July 24, 2016
A workforce of around 2,500 people is finishing a massive steel enclosure that will cover Chernobyl’s reactor 4, where the radioactive innards of the nuclear plant are encased in a concrete sarcophagus hastily built after the disaster. If all goes to plan, the new structure—an arch more than 350 feet high and 500 feet long—will be slid into place late next year over the damaged reactor and its nuclear fuel, creating a leak-tight barrier designed to contain radioactive substances for at least the next 100 years.
The project, known as the New Safe Confinement, is a feat of engineering. [see also the Chernobyl Gallery] It will take two or three days to slide the 36,000-ton structure into place. The arch, which looks something like a dirigible hangar, is large enough to cover a dozen football fields. “You could put Wembley Stadium underneath here, with all the car parks,” said David Driscoll, the chief safety officer for the French consortium running the construction site.
Three decades ago, an army of workers scrambled to build a concrete sarcophagus around Chernobyl Reactor 4, which released a radioactive plume after a reactor fire and explosion on April 26, 1986. At least 30 people died as an immediate result of the accident, which contaminated parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and sent radioactive dust and debris over Europe. Pripyat, the company town of 50,000, was completely evacuated.
Emergency workers and evacuees received doses of radiation significantly above natural background levels, according to the World Health Organization. Researchers acknowledge high levels of thyroid cancer among people who were children at the time of the accident, from exposure to radioactive iodine…
Nicolas Caille, project director for Novarka, the consortium of Vinci SA and Bouygues SA, the French contractors running the project, said about 1,000 people work on a typical shift at the construction site, keeping to a schedule of 15 days in and 15 out….
A new facility to safely and securely store spent nuclear rods is being built at the nuclear power complex. The Interim Spent Fuel Storage Facility, or ISF2, is intended to store spent fuel rods for a minium of 100 years…..The Liquid Radioactive Waste Treatment Plant in Chernobyl…retrieves highly active liquids from their current tanks, processes them into a solid state and moves them to containers for long-term storage. …
Wildlife has flourished in the forest [surrounding Chernobyl], which is largely off limits to humans. Officials say species such as lynx, wild boar, wolves, elk, bear and European bison have rebounded.
Excerpts from Nathan Hodge, 30 Years After Chernobyl Disaster, an Arch Rises to Seal Melted Reactor, Wall Street Journal, Apr. 25, 2016
As Prime Minister Shinzo Abe moves to reopen Japanese nuclear plants that were all shut after the disaster on March 11, 2011, a distrustful public is pushing back. A court on March 9, 2016ordered Kansai Electric Power Co. to halt two of the four reactors that have been restarted, saying the utility had failed to show the public they were safe. The utility called the ruling “unacceptable” and said it would appeal….However, near the ruined Fukushima reactors……Growing swaths of land are covered with black bags full of slightly radioactive soil.
The hardest parts of the cleanup haven’t even begun. Tepco, as Tokyo Electric is known, has yet to draw up plans for removing highly radioactive nuclear fuel that melted through steel containment vessels and now sits at the bottom of three Fukushima reactors.The company estimates that the nearly $20 billion job of decommissioning the plant could take another three or four decades. That is not counting damages and cleanup costs expected to reach some $100 billion or more, including about $50 billion paid to evacuees. Legal wrangling over the disaster continues. In February 2016, three former Tepco executives were charged with professional negligence.
Tepco also is working to reduce a total 400 tons of rain and groundwater that breach the plant’s defenses daily, becoming contaminated and requiring treatment and storage. But a wall of frozen earth meant to reduce the flow has run into resistance from regulators.On large parts of the site, workers can now walk around without full-face shields or hazmat suits, using simple surgical masks for protection.Fukushima was once a prized post for elite engineers and technicians in Japan’s nuclear heyday. Now, unskilled laborers make up the bulk of a workforce of about 6,000 workers, down from a peak of 7,450 in 2014. “There’s a constant stream of people who can’t find work elsewhere,” said Hiroyuki Watanabe, a Communist city councilman in Iwaki, about 30 miles away. “They drift and collect in Fukushima.”…
Looking ahead, the biggest issue remains the reactors. No one knows exactly where the molten nuclear debris sits or how to clean it. Humans couldn’t survive a journey inside the containment vessels, so Tepco hopes to use robots guided by computer simulations and video images. But two attempts had to be abandoned after the robots got tripped up on rubble.“The nature of debris may depend on when the nuclear fuel and concrete reacted,” said Pascal Piluso, an official of France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. “We are talking about extremely varied and complex debris.”….A government panel recently questioned Tepco’s ability to tackle the daunting task of decommissioning while seeking profit for its shareholders. The disaster nearly pushed the company to bankruptcy, prompting the government to buoy it with ¥1 trillion ($9 billion (really????) in public money and pledge government grants and guarantees to help Tepco compensate victims.”…
Excerpts from Fukushima Still Rattles Japan, Five Years After Nuclear Disaster, Wall Street Journal, Mar. 8, 2016
The study’s authors, who include Robert Alvarez, a former senior Energy Department official in the Clinton administration, said they gathered more than 200 samples of soil and sediments from a roughly 75-square-mile area around the landfill. Dozens of the samples contained levels of radioactive lead that exceeded a cleanup standard used in the past by the federal government, the study said. With West Lake being the largest known nearby repository of radioactive material, the findings are “strong evidence” of the landfill being the primary source, the study concluded. Radon gas is likely escaping from the site and decaying into radioactive lead, said the study. Some of the highest levels were found in dust samples from several homes, said Mr. Alvarez. Those locations ” deserve further attention,” he said. Mr. Alvarez, who has been critical of many federal nuclear policies, said some of the contamination, particularly in the homes, could be residue from old above-ground weapons-waste storage sites that were in the area until the early 1970s, when what was left was buried at West Lake.
For instance, as previously reported, federal surveys have found yards of some homes near a tainted creek that runs through the area to be contaminated with low levels of radioactive material, mainly thorium…..
Excerpt from John R. Emshwiller Study Finds Radioactive Waste at St. Louis-Area Landfill Has Migrated Off-Site, Nasdaq, Jan. 2, 2016
In Asia, plans have been delayed but not derailed. China and India, between them, have almost 50 nuclear plants in operation and are building even more. In Southeast Asia, Vietnam could have its first power reactors by 2020. Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia have also made plans.
“Southeast Asia is quasi-completely dependent on fossil fuels,” said Professor Arnoud De Meyer, President of Singapore Management University….Nuclear-based energy can add security and stability to the region’s source of energy. For Singapore, 95 per cent of its electricity comes from natural gas powered plants. Its cost is tied to oil prices. Experts say Singapore’s choice, although the cleanest among fossil fuels, is also an expensive choice….This is because the cost associated with importing natural gas to run Singapore’s power plants is also higher….
In 2010, Singapore embarked on an extensive study of whether nuclear-based electricity could be added to its energy mix. Two years later, it concluded that nuclear risks for Singapore outweighed the benefits. “It was all to do with size,” said Professor Tim White, co-director of Nanyang Technological University’s Energy Research Institute. “The first factor was that we did not really need a very large single nuclear reactor. Singapore just does not have that need for energy. So we would have had to look at modular designs, but none of those designs are actually operating at the moment – at least for power. So Singapore did not want to be the first one off the rack to take these new designs.
“The other concern was that after Fukushima, it was realised that the exclusion zone around the reactor was in fact as large as Singapore. So that meant one Fukushima accident in Singapore and that’s the end of the country. …But the study also concluded that Singapore needs to build up its nuclear knowledge and capability. In 2014, the government announced it would set aside S$63 million over five years for the Nuclear Safety Research and Education Programme. The programme would train local scientists and engineers in three key areas – radiochemistry, radiobiology and risk assessment
“Even if Singapore would never have electricity generation by nuclear sources, countries around us will do it, or may well do it,” said Prof De Meyer. “But nuclear radiation is not something that stops at borders. If there is an accident or a problem, Singapore will be automatically influenced by it.,,,
But first, one expert says ASEAN needs a regulatory framework to address transboundary issues such as the management of nuclear fuel, waste and risk management….“If something happens, for example, in Indonesia’s nuclear facility, which will be built very close to Singapore, it will affect the whole country,” said Associate Professor Sulfikar Amir from NTU’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Excerpts from Monica Kotwani, Singapore must be prepared to handle nuclear developments: Experts, Channel NewsAsia, 27 Sep 2015
More than 80 firefighters and 20 fire trucks were involved in the work to extinguish the fire [that occurred on nuclear submarine the “Oryol”], at around 2PM Moscow time during works on the submarine, at Zvezdochk, shipyard in Severodvinsk Russia. The first information that the fire had been put out, came at around 5PM, but this information turned out to be false. The fire was not extinguished until 00:57 Moscow time, after the dock with the submarine had been flooded. The vessels reactor had been shut down and the fuel had been unloaded before the repairs started. The submarine had no weapons onboard
One of many accidents
This accident that occurred on April 7, 2015 was the latest in a series of accidents that have occurred at Zvezdochka and other ship repair yards in Northwest-Russia during the last years.
On December 29, 2011 a fire broke out on the nuclear-powered Delta IV-class submarine “Yekaterinburg” while it was in a floating dock at the naval yard Roslyakovo just north of the town of Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula. According to the first official reports the fire only harmed the outer rubber coating of the submarine, and all the missiles had removed from the vessel before going in dock. Later Northern Fleet officials admitted that the submarine had both missiles and torpedoes on board. “Yekaterinburg” was re-launchedin June 2014, after two years of repairs.
In March 2014, during decommissioning work on the Oscar-II class nuclear submarine “Krasnodar” at the Nerpa naval yard north of Murmansk, the rubber on the outer hull of the submarine caught fire. There were no radioactive leakages, and no one was hurt in the accident.
Tuesday’s accident was the seventh at Zvezdochka in ten years, according to RIANovosti. The other accidents were:
February 19 2010: Fire during dismantling of the Akula-class nuclear submarine K-480 “Ak Bars”. No casualties. Cause of fire: violation of fire safety during hot works. December 11 2009: Leak of two cubic meters of liquid radioactive waste from a broken pipeline. No casualties, no radioactive waste leaked into the environment. October 6 2009: Fire during dismantling of the Yankee-class nuclear submarine K-403 “Kazan”. The fire occurred during use of gas-flame cutter. Workers evacuated, no casualties. March 25 2009: Fire during dismantling of the Yankee-class nuclear submarine K-411 “Orenburg”. The rubber coating of the vessel caught fire during hot works. No casualties. July 26 2007: The main ballast tank of a nuclear submarine in dry dock was punctured as a result of excess air pressure. No casualties. August 1 2005: Two people died in a fire during dismantling of an Akula-class nuclear submarine. Cause of the fire was ignition of vapors of fuel and lubricants during hot works.
Excerpts from Trude Pettersen, Fire-struck nuclear submarine to be repaired, Barents Observer, Apr. 8, 2015
Britain’s nuclear weapons base has suffered from a dozen serious nuclear safety failures in recent years, according to official records. Over the last six years HM Naval Base Clyde, where Britain’s Trident nuclear submarine fleet is based, suffered from nearly 400 “widespread” nuclear safety events relating to a “poor safety culture”.
In 12 of these cases the problems involved an “actual or high” risk of unplanned exposure to radiation or contained release of radiation within a building or submarine, according to information released by ministers in the last week. Last year the number of nuclear safety events involving nuclear propulsion nearly doubled, from 57 in 2013 to 99 in 2014. In one incident in 2012, contractors working on the base were exposed to radiation while repairing submarine equipment.
The 12 most serious events at the base, classified by the Ministry of Defence as “Category B”, are ones in which there is an “actual or high potential for a contained release [of radiation] within building or submarine or unplanned exposure to radiation”. According to the Ministry’s own criteria, this classification is used for safety events that involve a “major failure in administrative controls or regulatory compliance”.
Other serious nuclear safety events included the unsafe operation of a crane on a jetty handling explosives, faulty radiation testing, and low-level radioactive contamination around a pipe that dumps supposedly decontaminated waste into the sea. Despite the problems, the base has not recently suffered from any of the most serious category of safety failures – ‘Category A’ – which would have involved release into the environment in the surrounding area.
Excerpt from JON STONE,Britain’s nuclear weapons base suffers from ‘serious’ nuclear safety incidents and ‘poor safety culture, Independent, Mar. 2, 2015
/The International Energy Agency (IEA) said late in 2014 (pdf) that almost 200 of the 434 reactors in operation around the globe would be retired by 2040, and estimated the cost of decommissioning them at more than $100 billion. But many experts view this figure as way too low, because it does not include the cost of nuclear waste disposal and long-term storage and because decommissioning costs – often a decade or more away – vary hugely per reactor and by country…. The IEA’s head of power generation analysis, Marco Baroni, said that even excluding waste disposal costs, the $100 billion estimate was indicative, and that the final cost could be as much as twice as high. He added that decommissioning costs per reactor can vary by a factor of four.Decommissioning costs vary according to reactor type and size, location, the proximity and availability of disposal facilities, the intended future use of the site, and the condition of the reactor at the time of decommissioning….
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates that the cost of decommissioning in the United States – which has some 100 reactors – ranges from $300 million to $400 million per reactor, but some reactors might cost much more. France’s top public auditor and the nuclear safety authority estimate the country’s decommissioning costs at between 28 billion and 32 billion euros ($32-37 billion). German utilities – such as E.ON, which last month said it would split in two, spinning off power plants to focus on renewable energy and power grids – have put aside 36 billion euros. . Britain’s bill for decommissioning and waste disposal is now estimated at 110 billion pounds ($167 billion) over the next 100 years, double the 50 billion pound estimate made 10 years ago. Japanese government estimates put the decommissioning cost of the country’s 48 reactors at around $30 billion, but this is seen as conservative. Russia has 33 reactors and costs are seen ranging from $500 million to $1 billion per reactor.
Excerpt, Global nuclear decommissioning cost seen underestimated, may spiral, Reuters, Jan, 19, 2015
Sweden may be facing the phase out of nuclear power following agreement by the country’s Social Democrats and their junior coalition partner, the Green Party, to set up an energy commission tasked with achieving a 100% renewable electricity system….The parties said in separate, but identical statements that nuclear power should be replaced with renewable energy and energy efficiency. The goal, they said, should be at least 30 TWh of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. A goal for 2030 has yet to be set, they added. Support for offshore wind and solar power are needed “in addition”, they said.
Nuclear power “should bear a greater share of its economic cost”, they said. “Safety requirements should be strengthened and the nuclear waste fee increased.” Waste management in Sweden is undertaken by SKB while safety regulations are set by the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority. Both of these operate independently of government. State-owned utility Vattenfall’s plan to build a new nuclear power plant has been “interrupted”and the company will lead the country’s energy system towards a higher share for renewable energy, they said.
Excerpt from Sweden faces future without nuclear, World Nuclear Association, October 12014
American firms have urged the US Congress to ratify the Vietnam-US cooperation agreement in the nuclear sector in order to create more jobs, and Russia and Japan have signed nuclear cooperation agreements with Vietnam…. [T]he Vietnamese and US representatives signed a Vietnam-US nuclear cooperation agreement in Hanoi on May 6, 2014 (Agreement 123)….
The US Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) and the US nuclear energy firms have unanimously urged the US Congress to ratify the agreement soon, emphasizing that the strengthened cooperation with Vietnam in the sector would help boost exports and create more jobs. The US firms can expect to earn $10-20 billion from the deals with Vietnam.
Vietnam plans to produce 10,000 MW of nuclear electricity by 2030. It is believed to be the second largest nuclear power market in East Asia following to China, while market value is expected to reach $50 billion in the next two decades. According to the World Nuclear Association (WNA), rapid modernization in Vietnam has led to a sharp increase in the demand for electricity, estimated to increase by 10-15 percent per annum. David Durham from GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GHE) has warned that if the US Congress does not ratify the agreement, US firms will lose the lucrative market of Vietnam.
Excerpts from Vietnam nuclear power market eyed by three major countries, VietNamNet Bridge, Sept. 7, 2014
The [Japanese] government picked three overseas companies to participate in a subsidized project to determine the best available technology for separating radioactive tritium from the toxic water building up at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Tokyo Electric Power Co. is currently test-running a system it says is capable of removing 62 types of radioactive substances from the contaminated water, but not tritium. Thus tritium-laced water is expected to accumulate at the plant in the absence of any method to remove the isotope.
The three firms chosen from 29 applicants are U.S. firm Kurion Inc., which offers technologies to treat nuclear and hazardous waste; GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Canada Inc., a joint venture of Hitachi Ltd. and U.S. firm General Electric Co.; and Federal State Unitary Enterprise RosRAO, a Russian radioactive waste management firm.
The government will provide up to ¥1 billion for each examination of the technologies and running costs, and consider whether any of them can be applied to treat the water at Fukushima No. 1, the industry ministry said. The three companies are to conclude their experiments by the end of March 2016, a ministry official said. The official cautioned there is no guarantee that any of the technologies will be put to practical use.
Three firms picked to help tackle toxic water at Fukushima No. 1, Japan Times, Aug. 26, 2014
In January 2014 it was made public that a total of 875 terabecquerels (2.45 g) of tritium are on the site of Fukushima Daiichi,and the amount of tritium contained in the contaminated water is increasing by approximately 230 terabecquerel (0.64 g) per year. According to a report by Tepco “Tritium could be separated theoretically, but there is no practical separation technology on an industrial scale.” See Wikipedia
Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory [Australia] was nominated in early 2007 as a site to store low and intermediate radioactive waste under a deal negotiated with the Aboriginal Ngapa clan.
While Australia does not use nuclear power, it needs a site to store waste, including processed fuel rods from the country’s only nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, on the outskirts of Sydney,…..Opponents have fought against the dump for years, with a trial starting in the Federal Court in Melbourn in June 2014 alleging Muckaty’s nomination was invalid due to a failure of the government and the land council to obtain the consent of all Aboriginal owners. “What we’re here to say is ‘no more’ and that this process was so legally flawed that it is invalid,” Ron Merkel, who is representing traditional owners, told the court. “The opposition is in no small part based on a spiritual affiliation to the land and that radioactive waste will poison the land,” he said in comments cited by Australian Associated Press
In Australian Federal Court, Aborigines continue the fight against radioactive waste dumping on their land, Agence France Presse, June 3, 2014
Scotoil Services Ltd, a company which disposes of radioactive waste from the North Sea oil industry, inadvertently pumped dangerous particles into Aberdeen Harbour over several months. The pollution included materials such as lead-210, radium-226 and radium-228, which both glow blue in the dark, and polonium-210, which was used to poison the former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko. An investigation by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) found one “gross” breach and several “major” breaches of the firm’s operating conditions.
However, the public was never told about the leak, which continued unchecked from November 2011 until April 2012, and it also appears that the Scottish Government was not informed either. While Scotoil had installed equipment to remove solid material from their liquid effluent, in April 2012, they informed Sepa that a final filter they were using had potentially failed Sepa said in a statement.
Scotoil has long been at the centre of concerns about radioactive particles washing up on the southern end of Aberdeen Beach, known as Foot Dee. Drilling for oil and gas causes Naturally-Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) to build up on offshore equipment – an estimated 50 to 100 tonnes each year from the North Sea alone. For years, Scotoil and other operators could allow small particles of NORM to be discharged into the sea with the water they used to clean the drills and other pieces of essential kit.
However, tighter restrictions brought in from October 2011 mean that all particles must now be screened out and sent to secure landfill sites in sealed drums, along with the bulk of the solid waste. Following a Freedom of Information request by this newspaper, it emerged that Sepa became aware of the potential Scotoil leak in April, 2012. The company contacted Sepa to report “that particles of NORM have been discharged in their liquid effluent to the marine environment… Scotoil’s view is that the filters failed allowing the solid material into the environment”.
Excerpt from, Ben Borland, Scots kept in the dark over radiation leak into harbour at Aberdeen, Scottish Express, Apr. 26, 2014
The word “Gorleben” brings up some negative images in the minds of many Germans. It’s the name of a municipality in Lower Saxony and the site of a controversial nuclear waste disposal facility located there, currently used as an intermediate storage facility but intended to become permanent. For more than 30 years, nuclear energy opponents have been trying to stop the site from being turned into a deep geological repository. And now it looks like they will be getting their way, with Germany’s federal and state governments agreeing on draft a new law to regulate the search for a final repository.
While only a portion of Germany’s radioactive waste is currently temporarily stored away in Gorleben, the situation in neighboring countries does not look much better. Meanwhile, pressure is increasing around the world to find a permanent solution, but according to geologist Stefan Alt from the Institute for Applied Ecology in Darmstadt “it will still be at least another 20 years before this happens, optimistically speaking.”
Nevertheless, the EU has called on its member states to draw up plans by 2015 outlining how and where they are planning to store nuclear waste. The search for suitable sites is becoming frantic, but in some countries it is even more difficult than in others.
“While Germany has salt, granite and clay deposits that nuclear waste can be stored in, the options in countries like France and Switzerland are more limited,” said Alt. He added that France has been searching nearly exclusively for clay soil and has apparently managed to find something suitable. In the village of Bure in eastern France, close to the German border, the government is examining the rock layers with the help of an underground laboratory, with a view to creating a permanent repository there by 2025., Unlike in Germany, there is no major public resistance against the project. “In France there hasn’t traditionally been any large anti-nuclear movement,” said Alt. “However, people who live in the direct vicinity of the repository site see the situation a bit differently, of course.”
In Switzerland, public discussion on the matter has been lively. “The more precise the suggestion for a location, the more heated the debate becomes,” said Alt. Since 2008, six potential sites have beenpinpointed in the country. Germany has been allowed to provide its input in regards to those located near the German border. A referendum on the issue is being considered for 2019.
In Belgium, 55 percent of power is sourced from nuclear energy. “But Belgium is a very small country with few possibilities for permanent nuclear waste storage,” Alt said. “There is a research facility in the town of Mol, but the problem is that the clay deposits there are too small for a storage site.” The Netherlands faces a similar problem.
“The situation in the Czech Republic hasn’t been transparent for months,” There is also opposition in the country towards the government’s plans to create nuclear storage facilities Only the Nordic region has made significant progress in the search for permanent waste storage sites. In Finland, the first facility is already under construction on the island of Olkiluoto. “The acceptance level among the residents is a lot higher than in Germany and neighboring countries,” said Alt. “But this is not surprising because technological awareness is very high there and there is already a nuclear power plant on the island.”
Aside from that, nuclear energy attracts very different associations in Finland than in Germany…is seen as a source of affluence and jobs. Still, the construction of the Olkiluoto facility is facing some hurdles. Several investigations are being conducted that could potentially halt the process. At this stage it is also not clear when the facility could realistically begin operations. “A facility like this doesn’t appear overnight.”The Konrad temporary storage facility in Germany was only finished after 20 years, and the preceding considerations and planning took 30 to 40 years.
Excerpts, Christian Ignatzi, NUCLEAR POWER: Europe searches for nuclear waste storage sites, Deutsche Welle, Apr. 14, 2014
Russia could be moving closer to shutting down its infamous and highly contaminated Mayak Chemical Combine– Russia’s only spent nuclear fuel reprocessing facility – as the government builds a new pilot spent fuel storage and reprocessing facility in the closed city of Zheleznogorsk, near Krasnoyarsk, called RT-2. The Zheleznogorsk facility was once home to one of Russia’s 13 weapons grade plutonium production reactors…The pilot facilities at Zheleznogorsk – known as Krasnoyarsk-26 during the Soviet era – fall under the purview of an industry division called the National Operator, as established by Russia’s 2011 law “On handling spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. The law further stipulates that all spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste produced prior to 2011 is the government’s financial responsibility, where beyond 2011, the bills go to individual nuclear power plants.
Alexander Nikitin, Chairman of the Environmental Right’s Center (ERC) Bellona in St. Petersburg, who has visited the Zheleznogorsk site twice this year, said after the AtomEco conference held late last month in Moscow that the facility is designed to hold and reprocess two of Russia’s thorniest types of spent nuclear fuel: that produced by VVER-1000 reactors and the spent fuel that comes from RBMKs [Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosti Kanalniy], “High Power Channel-type Reactor” is a class of graphite-moderated nuclear power reactor designed and built by the Soviet Union.] Russia has neither been able to store or reprocess fuel from the Chernobyl-type RBMK – one of the oldest, and most fatally flawed reactor lines in Russia’s civilian line up.
The Zheleznogorsk facility will also be capable of storing spent fuel from VVER-1000 reactors in wet storage. The spent RMBK fuel will be held at RT-2 in dry storage. Spent VVER-1000 fuel is already arriving at Zheleznogorsk from reactors at the Balakovo, Kalinin, Novovoronezh and Rostov nuclear power plants. RBMK fuel will come from the Leningrad, Kursk, and Smolensk plants.
In all, RT-2 is designed to hold some 50,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. Russia currently hosts some 23,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, the majority of it stored on site at the reactors that produced it.
The reclamation of fuel from Soviet built reactors in former Soviet satellite states, which Russia is obligated to take back and either reprocess or store, is also slowing down… In the case of Hungary, for example, the local government has found it more economical to store the fuel itself than to repatriate it to Russia, easing up somewhat the amount of foreign spent fuel flowing to the country.
But Russia’ state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, has finally – and publically – reached the conclusion that Mayak and its legacy of overwhelming radiological pollution is no longer viable…
Nikitin, was told during his visits to RT-2 that the pilot facilities are slated to push through their first batches of reprocessed VVER 1000 and RBMK fuel – while producing no residual radioactive waste – by 2018. If the test runs prove successful, RT-2 could move on to industrial scale storage and reprocessing But Nikitin and Rosatom have their doubts about the rosy predictions of the National Operator. For one, Nikitin is skeptical of the value of reprocessing RMBK fuel..
Charles Digges,New spent nuclear fuel storage and reprocessing site in Siberia could end contamination from Mayak, Bellona, Nov. 14, 2013
Eletrobras Eletronuclear has awarded a contract to Areva to complete the construction of the Angra 3 nuclear reactor, located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Under the €1.25bn contract, the company will supply engineering services and components, as well as the digital instrumentation and control system for the reactor. Additional responsibilities include provision of assistance in the supervision of the installation works and the commissioning activities.
Areva president and CEO Luc Oursel said the contract continues the company’s partnership with Eletrobras that started with the construction and the supply of reactor services for the Angra 2 reactor. ”The completion of Angra 3 confirms Brazil’s engagement in an ambitious nuclear program and illustrates the relevance of this energy source as a solution for sustainable economic development,” Oursel added.
Initiated in 2006, the construction of the 1,405 MWe Angra 3 pressurized water reactor is expected to help the Brazilian government meet the country’s increasing energy demand, and balance the energy mix. Besides featuring the latest enhancements made to currently operational reactors, especially in terms of safety, the Angra 3 design also responds to the guidelines of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Brazilian nuclear safety authority’s post-Fukushima standards. Connected to the grid in 1985 and 2001, the Angra 1 and Angra 2 reactors have an output of 640Mwe and 1,350MWe, respectively.
Areva to support third Angra 3 nuclear reactor construction, EBR Staff Write, Nov. 8, 2013
A lead factory in the Aegean province of İzmir has been fined for 5.7 million Turkish Liras ($2.9 million) over allegations of burying high levels of radioactive waste in the land. The penalty imposed on Aslan Avcı Casting Industry lead factory is the highest environment fine imposed in Turkey to date, Environment and Urban Planning official Mehmet Emin Birpınar told Anadolu Agency Oct. 28.
The site was brought to public attention when reports of the burying of radioactive waste under the ground surfaced, with over 10,000 tons of earth being placed on top of the waste. The radioactivity levels called for proper containment of the waste, however, despite later reports by Turkey’s Atomic Energy Commission (TAEK), assuring normal levels of radioactivity in the area, the controversy continued to generate public debate. Recently, new reports have emerged saying the color of the land covering the waste was becoming black, suggesting the radioactive wastes’ continuing to spread in environment through wind and rainfall.
Record fine imposed for radioactive waste burial in Turkey’s Aegean district, Hurriyet Daily News, Oct. 28, 2013
How nuclear waste accumulated in the factory? “Prof. Tolga Yarman from Okan University Faculty of Engineering explains the case: “This product is a nucleus called Europium 152 isotope. It is difficult to understand how this element can be found in Turkey. This is the major question. This product cannot be here just by itself; it must have come with other waste materials, especially with nuclear rods. But why and how can nuclear rods be here in Turkey? Who brought them? This is what we need to know. In addition, what did they melt in the factory together with the waste? They say it was unintentional, but it does not seem possible. This means that it is possible to imagine that the factory used radioactive material for its production. In that case, it is necessary to take under surveillance the production process. We are also facing a potential hazard caused by the products distributed from that company. We should immediately test some of the batteries produced in that factory.”
Several environmental groups on Aug. 6, 2013 sued state regulators over the cleanup of a former nuclear research lab, saying low-level radioactive waste was improperly shipped to landfills. Consumer Watchdog, along with other groups, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Sacramento County Superior Court against the Department of Public Health and Department of Toxic Substances Control, which oversees the cleanup at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Located about 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles, Santa Susana was once home to nuclear research and rocket engine tests. In 1959, one of the reactors suffered a partial nuclear meltdown. Responsible parties including Boeing Co., NASA and the U.S Energy Department have been working with state officials to meet a 2017 deadline to rid the nearly 2,900-acre site of contaminated soil.
In their complaint, the groups contend that materials from several buildings that were demolished were sent to landfills and metal recycling shops that are not licensed to accept radioactive waste. They also sought a temporary restraining order to stop Boeing from tearing down a plutonium fuel fabrication building on the hilltop complex….Officials at the toxic control agency rejected the allegations, saying that debris sent offsite posed no threat to human health or the environment.
Stewart Black, a deputy director at DTSC, said the state followed the rules in the demolishing and disposal of old buildings. During the Cold War, workers at the site tested thousands of rockets and experimented with nuclear reactors, which were operational until 1980. And by the time the rest of the lab closed in 2006, a toxic legacy of radioactive and chemical contamination had been left. Former workers and residents in nearby neighborhoods have blamed the lab for a variety of health problems.
Groups sue to block demolition at ex-nuclear site, Associated Press, Aug. 6, 2013
The operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant on Monday admitted for the first time that radioactive groundwater has leaked out to sea, fuelling fears of ocean contamination…Earlier this month Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said groundwater samples taken at the battered plant showed levels of possibly cancer-causing caesium-134 had shot up more than 110 times in a few days.
TEPCO did not know the exact reasons for the increased readings but had maintained the toxic groundwater was likely contained at the current location, largely by concrete foundations and steel sheets. “But now we believe that contaminated water has flown out to the sea,” a TEPCO spokesman said Monday (July 22, 2013). However, the spokesman insisted that the impact of the radioactive water on the ocean would be limited. “Seawater data have shown no abnormal rise in the levels of radioactivity.”
Radioactive substances released by the meltdowns of reactors at the plant in the aftermath of the huge tsunami of March 2011 have made their way into underground water, which usually flows out to sea. Environment experts warn that such leakage may affect marine life and ultimately impacting humans who eat sea creatures.
Excerpt, TEPCO admits radioactive water leaked into sea at Fukushima, AFP, July 22, 2013
After an earthquake and tsunami created a creeping nuclear catastrophe two years ago the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) said it would get the country out of nuclear energy by 2040. Although it quickly backtracked, almost all of Japan’s 50 commercial reactors are still lying idle.
In February this year (2013), Shinzo Abe, leader of the then incoming Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), said the new government would restart reactors after they passed a forthcoming set of new safety tests. The country’s “nuclear village”, a cosy bunch from industry and government, cheered. But now the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is starting to alarm the public once more. On April 15th, 2013 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN body, flew in to investigate a series of dangerous incidents.
A power outage in March (2013) left four underground pools that store thousands of the plant’s nuclear fuel rods without fresh cooling water for several hours. A rat, it later emerged, had gnawed through a cable. Workmen laying down rat-proof netting caused another outage. Then this month regulators discovered that thousands of gallons of radioactive water had seeped into the ground; the plant’s operator had installed a jerry-rigged system of plastic sheeting, which sprang leaks. The quantity of contaminated water has become a crisis in its own right, the manager has admitted. And now the pipes used to transfer water to safer storage containers are leaking too.
Experts who examined the causes of the 2011 catastrophe reckon the LDP has paid too little attention to what went wrong. Kiyoshi Kurokawa, the chairman of a parliamentary investigation, says the country may be moving “too hastily back towards nuclear power, without fully regaining the trust of the Japanese public and the international community”. Yoichi Funabashi, a former editor of Asahi Shimbun newspaper who headed a private-sector investigation, says it is unfortunate that the 2012 election, which brought the LDP back to office, did not include a proper debate about the future of nuclear energy.
Now the set of policies known as “Abenomics” is making a return to nuclear power ever more pressing. The LDP is expected to push hard to restart plants if it wins a crucial election for the upper house of parliament this summer. Mr Abe’s focus on the economy has given greater say to the voice of business, including the big utilities whose plants are idle. Smaller firms clamour for cheaper power too.
Japan’s broader economic future may be at stake… [the deterioration of overall current-account balance] could affect Japan’s ability to keep funding its huge public debt domestically. A big cause is the cost of energy imported to fill the gap left by nuclear power. A weaker yen, the result of the central bank’s radical loosening of monetary policy, is further pushing up the price of imported oil and gas…[T]he public is still afraid of nuclear power. A nationwide poll in February 2013 found that around 70% of respondents wanted either to phase out all the plants, or to shut them down immediately. Opposition is likely to be strongest at the local level, as regions move to switch their reactors back on. This week an Osaka court ruled on a suit brought by local residents to have Japan’s only two operating reactors, at the Oi plant in Fukui prefecture, shut down. They lost, but their suit looks like only the first of many battles
A bipartisan quartet of senators dropped a draft of a long-awaited bill on April 25, 2013 that would change how the United States stores nuclear waste. The draft bill would enable the transfer of spent nuclear fuel currently housed at commercial nuclear facilities to intermediate storage sites. It also would allow states and local governments to apply to host the nation’s long-term waste repository.It also proposes creating a new federal agency to manage nuclear waste, taking that responsibility from the Energy Department (DOE). The president would appoint the head of that agency, which would be subject to Senate confirmation…The bill largely implements findings by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, an expert panel convened by President Obama in 2010. Some of the suggestions that made it into the draft bill will likely run into opposition.
Chiefly, Republicans will not be keen on moving nuclear waste to interim storage sites before a permanent repository has been identified. The draft legislation calls for a pilot project to take in waste from high-risk areas — such as waste stored near fault lines — by 2021. After that, any nuclear waste could be sent to interim storage units so long as “substantial progress” is being made to site and select a permanent repository. An alternative proposal by Feinstein and Alexander would require proposals for the pilot program to be submitted no later than six months after the bill becomes law. But GOP lawmakers worry that interim storage sites would turn into de facto permanent ones without identifying a permanent facility. They point to the recent flap regarding the Yucca Mountain site as a cautionary tale. Obama pulled the plug on Nuclear Regulatory Commission reviews of DOE’s application to use the Nevada site in 2009.
Republicans viewed it as a political move — Obama campaigned on shuttering Yucca, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) opposes the site. They also said it was illegal because federal law identifies Yucca as the nation’s lone permanent repository. Republicans, therefore, want to ensure a permanent site is selected before transporting waste to interim facilities to avoid a similar political kerfuffle. GOP lawmakers might also oppose the draft bill’s call for a “consent-based” process that lets states and local governments apply to host the nation’s permanent repository. Again, they say it’s a legal issue. Since a 1982 federal law fingers Yucca as the nation’s sole permanent nuclear waste dump, some Republicans argue there can be no others. That’s the line House Republicans have taken. They say any legislation coming over from the Senate that doesn’t identify Yucca as the nation’s permanent repository won’t move. And Senate legislation has almost no chance of including such a component considering Reid’s virulent opposition to Yucca.
Murkowski and the bill’s other backers have tried to minimize the Yucca issue by contending that more than one permanent storage site is likely necessary to handle the nation’s volume of nuclear waste. The Alaska Republican has said she doesn’t want to give up on Yucca, but that she wants to do something about nuclear waste. She said the matter is urgent, pointing to leaking nuclear waste containers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state….
Zack Colman, Senators float nuclear waste storage draft bill, The Hill, April 25, 2013
North Korea’s weapons program is not the only nuclear headache for South Korea. The country’s radioactive waste storage is filling up as its nuclear power industryburgeons, but what South Korea sees as its best solution — reprocessing the spent fuel so it can be used again — faces stiff opposition from its U.S. ally. South Korea fired up its first reactor in 1978 and since then the resource-poor nation’s reliance on atomic energy has steadily grown. It is now the world’s fifth-largest nuclear energy producer, operating 23 reactors. But unlike the rapid growth of its nuclear industry, its nuclear waste management plan has been moving at a snail’s pace.
A commission will be launched before this summer to start public discussion on the permanent storage of spent nuclear fuel rods, which must be locked away for tens of thousands of years. Temporary storage for used rods in spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants is more than 70 percent full. Undeterred by the Fukushima nuclear disaster or recent local safety failings, South Korea plans to boost atomic power to 40 percent of its energy needs with the addition of 11 reactors by 2024. South Korea also has big ambitions to export its nuclear knowhow, originally transferred from the U.S. under a 1973 treaty that governs how its East Asian ally uses nuclear technology and explicitly bars reprocessing. The treaty also prohibits enrichment of uranium, a process that uranium must undergo to become a viable nuclear fuel, so South Korea has to get countries such as the U.S. and France to do enrichment for it.
That treaty is at the heart of Seoul’s current dilemma. It wants reprocessing rights to reduce radioactive waste and the right to enrich uranium, which would reduce a hefty import bill and aid its reactor export business. The catch: The technologies that South Korea covets can also be used to develop nuclear weapons. Accommodating Seoul’s agenda would run counter to the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and also potentially undermine its arguments against North Korea’s attempts to develop warheads and Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program. South Korea, with its history of dabbling in nuclear weapons development in the 1970s and in reprocessing in the early 1980s, might itself face renewed international suspicion.
“For the United States, this is a nonproliferation issue. For South Korea, this is the issue of high-level radioactive waste management and energy security,” said Song Myung Jae, chief executive officer of state-run Korea Radioactive Waste Management Corp. “For a small country like South Korea, reducing the quantity of waste even just a little is very important.”
Newly elected President Park Geun Hye made revision of the 38-year-old treaty one of her top election pledges in campaigning last year. The treaty expires in March 2014 and a new iteration has to be submitted to Congress before the summer. The two sides have not narrowed their differences on reprocessing and enrichment by much despite ongoing talks. South Korea also argues that uranium enrichment rights will make it a more competitive exporter of nuclear reactors as the buyers of its reactors have to import enriched uranium separately while rivals such as France and Japan can provide it. It is already big business after a South Korean consortium in 2009 won a $20 billion contract to supply reactors to the United Arab Emirates. Former President Lee Myung Bak set a target of exporting one nuclear reactor a year, which would make South Korea one of the world’s biggest reactor exporters.
Doing South Korea a favor would be a huge exception for the U.S. Congress, which has never given such consent to non-nuclear weapon states that do not already have reprocessing or enrichment technology. “It is not the case that we think Korea will divert the material. It’s not a question of trust or mistrust,” Sharon Squassoni, director of the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said on the sidelines of the Asian Nuclear Forum in Seoul last month. “It’s a question of global policies.”
Nuclear waste storage is highly contentious in densely populated South Korea, as no one welcomes a nuclear waste dump in their backyard. Temporary storage for spent nuclear fuel rods at South Korea’s nuclear plants was 71 percent full in June, with one site in Ulsan — the heartland of South Korea’s nuclear industry — set to hit full capacity in 2016.
To accommodate the 100,000 tons of nuclear waste that South Korea is expected to generate this century, it needs a disposal vault of 20 sq. km in rock caverns some 500 meters underground, according to a 2011 study by analyst Seongho Sheen published in the Korean Journal of Defense Analysis. “Finding such a space in South Korea, a country the size of the state of Virginia, and with a population of about 50 million, would be enormously difficult,” it said.
The country’s first permanent site to dump less-risky, low-level nuclear waste such as protective clothes and shoes worn by plant workers will be completed next year after the government pacified opposition from residents of Gyeongju city, South Korea’s ancient capital, with 300 billion won ($274 million) in cash, new jobs and other economic benefits for the World Heritage city. The 2.1 million sq. meter dump will eventually hold 800,000 drums of nuclear waste. “Opponents were concerned that the nuclear dump would hurt the reputation of the ancient capital,” said Kim Ik Jung, a medical professor at the Dongguk University in Gyeongju.
To make its demands more palatable to the U.S., South Korea is emphasizing a fledgling technology called pyroprocessing that it hopes will douse concerns about proliferation because the fissile elements that are used in nuclear weapons remain mixed together rather than being separated. South Korea’s Atomic Energy Research Institute said pyroprocessing technology could reduce waste by 95 percent compared with 20 to 50 percent from existing reprocessing technology.
The U.S. has agreed to conduct joint research with South Korea on managing spent nuclear fuel, including pyroprocessing, but some scientists say the focus on an emerging technology that may not be economically feasible is eclipsing the more urgent need to address permanent storage of spent nuclear fuel. “Even under the most optimistic scenario, pyroprocessing and the associated fast reactors will not be available options for dealing with South Korea’s spent fuel on a large scale for several decades,” said Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, Miles Pomper and Stephanie Lieggi in a joint report for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monetary Institute of International Studies. “With or without pyroprocessing, South Korea will need additional storage capacity.”
But for South Korea, researching and developing the technology is a bet worth making. “The U.S. does not need nuclear energy as desperately as South Korea,” said Sheen, a professor at Seoul National University.
YOUKYUNG LEE, Pact stifles South as nuke waste piles up, Japan Times, Mar. 27, 2013
In what organizers called the largest anti-nuclear protest in Taiwan, an estimated 200,000 people took to the streets in several parts of the island on March 9, 2013 to call for the scrapping of nuclear power plants. The protest was held simultaneously in northern, central, southern and eastern Taiwan just two days before the second anniversary of the meltdown of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant in the wake of the big earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.
The march participants demanded that the government not allocate any more funding for the construction of Taiwan’s fourth nuclear power plant in New Taipei City. Construction of the plant has stretched over 14 years and has so far costed taxpayers US$10 billion. It is scheduled to be completed later this year. But there are increasing concerns over safety, especially given several flooding incidents at the plant being built by the state-run Taipower. Protesters urged the government not to allow fuel rod filling at the new power plant. More than 6.5 million people, including the residents of Taipei, live within just 80 kilometers of the plant.
Protesters also demanded the speedy decommissioning of Taiwan’s first, second and third nuclear power plants now under operation. All three plants are around three decades old. In addition, protesters called for the removal of stored nuclear waste from Taiwan’s outlying Orchid Island immediately, as well as a review of the government’s policy to eventually phase out the use of nuclear power, and the government’s implementation of “zero growth for electricity demands.”
A spokeswoman for the Presidential Office said President Ma Ying-jeou was willing to have dialogues with anti-nuclear groups and listen to their suggestions on how Taiwan can find alternatives for nuclear power.Garfi Li cited Ma as saying that the government’s nuclear power policy is based on the premises of “no shortage of electricity, reasonable electricity prices, and honoring the promise to cutting carbon emission to the international community.”…
Previously, the economics ministry, which oversees Taiwan’s state-owned Taipower — the operator of the nuclear power plants — has said Taiwan needs nuclear power so as to avoid being overdependent on imported energy raw material and rising international prices for them. The economics minister has also warned of an energy shortage if the fourth plant is not put into operation….Most importantly, protesters argued that safety, rather than carbon emission reduction and cheap energy prices, should be top priority. They argue that Taiwan’s power plants are among the most dangerous in the world — they are located near fault lines and in densely populated areas, much more densely populated than Fukushima.said they were adamantly opposed to the increase of thermal power, adding that Taichung should increase the use of solar and wind power instead….
In Taitung, eastern Taiwan, the protesters called for nuclear waste to be removed from their area. More than 2,000 people took part in that protest, the largest mass movement in years in Taitung.”We have to take to the streets for the good of the next generation,” one organizer said.Following Orchid Island off the Taitung County, Nantien village in the county’s Dajen township has been slected as one of the possible nuclear waste storage site
200,000 TAKE PART IN TAIWAN’S ANTI-NUCLEAR PROTEST. Focus Taiwan News Channel, Mar. 9, 2013
Federal officials are looking to ship some 3 million gallons of radioactive waste from Washington state to New Mexico, giving the government more flexibility to deal with leaking tanks at Hanford Nuclear Reservation…The Department of Energy said its preferred plan would ultimately dispose of the waste in a massive repository – called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant – near Carlsbad, N.M, where radioactive materials are buried in rooms excavated in vast salt beds nearly a half-mile underground.
The federal proposal was quickly met with criticism from a New Mexico environmental group that said the state permit allowing the government to bury waste at the plant would not allow for shipments from Hanford, the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., said WIPP specifically prohibits waste from Hanford and any proposal to modify permit language in this case would need “strong justification and public input.” “WIPP has demonstrated success in its handling of defense TRU waste,” Udall said in a statement. “With regard to Hanford waste, I urge all parties involved to exhibit caution and scientific integrity to ensure that DOE is abiding by the law and that the waste classifications are justified.” The waste near Carlsbad includes such things as clothing, tools and other debris.
The transfer from Washington would target so-called transuranic waste, which is less radioactive than some of the sludge at Hanford, and accounts for a fraction of the roughly 50 million gallons of waste there currently. Federal officials have identified six leaking tanks, and five of the leakers contain transuranic waste, said Tom Fletcher, assistant manager of the tank farms for the Energy Department. Dave Huizenga, head of the Energy Department’s Environmental Management program, said the transfer would not impact the safe operations of the New Mexico facility. “This alternative, if selected for implementation in a record of decision, could enable the Department to reduce potential health and environmental risk in Washington State,” said Huizenga.
Don Hancock, of the Albuquerque-based watchdog group Southwest Research and Information opposing the transfer to New Mexico, said this is not the first time DOE has proposed bringing more waste to the plant near Carlsbad. “This is a bad, old idea that’s been uniformly rejected on a bipartisan basis by politicians when it came up in the past, and it’s been strongly opposed by citizen groups like mine and others,” Hancock said. “It’s also clear that it’s illegal.”
Disposal operations near Carlsbad began in March 1999. Since then, more than 85,000 cubic meters of waste have been shipped to WIPP from a dozen sites around the country. Any additional waste from Hanford would have to be analyzed to ensure it could be stored at the site because a permit issued by the New Mexico Environment Department dictates what kinds of waste and the volumes that can be stored there…
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee says the proposal is a good start in the process of getting rid of Hanford’s waste… He also said a system is in place to treat the groundwater should contamination from the leaks reach it. In the meantime, Inslee plans to push Congress to fully fund this proposal, saying “every single dollar of it is justified.”
South-central Washington’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation is home to 177 underground tanks, which hold toxic and radioactive waste left from decades of plutonium production for the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal…In a letter to Inslee, the Department of Energy estimated it will have to eliminate $92 million for its Office of River Protection, which oversees efforts to empty the tanks and build a plant to treat the waste. The cuts will result in furloughs or layoffs impacting about 2,800 contract workers, the agency said…. [Currently]The U.S. government spends some $2 billion each year on cleanup at Hanford – one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally….
Excerpts, Austin Reed Federal proposal for nuclear waste problem in Washington State, Associated Press, Mar. 8, 2013
United States: Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee got a disturbing call Friday (Feb. 15, 2013) from Energy Secretary Steven Chu: Nuclear waste is leaking out of a tank in one of the most contaminated nuclear waste sites in the U.S. Inslee released a statement, saying a single shell tank at Hanford Nuclear Reservation is slowly losing between 150 and 300 gallons of radioactive waste each year. All of the liquid was removed from the tank in February 1995; what’s left is toxic sludge. According to Inslee “The leaking tank was built in the 1940’s and was stabilized in February 1995, when all pumpable liquids were removed by agreement with the State. The tank currently contains approximately 447,000 gallons of sludge, a mixture of solids and liquids with a mud-like consistency. This is the first tank which has been documented to be losing liquids since interim stabilization was completed in 2005. There are a total of 177 tanks at the Hanford site, 149 of which are single shell tanks.”
Inslee said “Fortunately, there is no immediate public health risk. The newly discovered leak may not hit the groundwater for many years, and we have a groundwater treatment system in place that provides a last defense for the river. However, the fact that this tank is one of the farthest from the river is not an excuse for delay. It is a call to act now.”
Northwest News Network reporter Anna King, who’s tracking the Hanford site, found activists who say there’s a worse problem than the leak: Now that the tank is breached, where will officials put the toxic waste? “Tom Carpenter heads the Seattle-based watchdog group Hanford Challenge. He says Friday’s news highlights the fact that there’s little space to move highly radioactive waste to. So Carpenter asks, ‘If you have another leak, what do you do? You don’t have any strategy for that.’ And the Hanford Advisory Board and the state of Washington and Hanford Challenge and others have been calling upon the Department of Energy to build new tanks. That call has been met with silence.”
Hanford has been in existence since the 1940s, when the site was used to prepare plutonium for bombs….Federal officials have spent many years and billions of dollars cleaning up the reservation, including efforts to protect the nearby Columbia River. There are 177 tanks holding nuclear waste at the Hanford site; Gov. Inslee says 149 are single shelled, like the leaking one. Worse, they’ve outlived their 20-year life expectancy.
The waste mitigation work now faces a predicament with the impending sequester, the automatic across-the-board federal spending cuts that are set to take effect March 1 unless Congress reaches a different arrangement on a spending plan. Inslee says this will mean layoffs at Hanford and could even stop work there. He termed the combination of the leak and the budget cuts the “perfect radioactive storm,” according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Excerpts from KORVA COLEMAN, Nuclear Waste Seeping From Container In Hazardous Wash. State Facility, NPR, Feb. 16, 2013 and from Governor Inslee’s statement on news of Hanford leak Feb 15, 2013
The government’s long-term hopes of burying nuclear waste in the UK has suffered a major blow after Cumbria county council voted against plans for a £12bn underground site. Three local authorities – Cumbria county council, Allerdale borough council and Copeland borough council – were set to vote on the search for a site, which would have been the first of its kind in the UK.
Copeland borough councillors voted six-to-one in favour of moving to onto the next stage of the search process. But Cumbria county council took an opposing view, rejecting the proposals by seven votes to three, and in the process ending the county council’s four-year formal involvement in the consultation process. “As a decision to continue with the process needed the agreement of both the district and county councils, Cumbria county council’s decision has removed both districts from consideration,” councillors said in a statement. The vote triggered huge cheers from environmental campaigners outside the council chamber in Carlisle.
Ed Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, said the decision was “disappointing”….
More than 32,000 people had signed a petition against the £12bn underground storage facility.However, the issue of how to handle nuclear waste remains live in Cumbria. Sellafield’s nuclear storage facilities remain the largest in the UK, and the ten members of the county council’s cabinet also agreed that the council will encourage the Government to invest in improvements to the existing surface storage facilities at the site while a permanent solution for the country’s higher activity radioactive waste is found.
Campaigners {West Cumbria Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace) argued the underground dump would harm the Lake District national park and its tourism industry. They also claim that studies show Cumbria’s geology is unlikely to be safe for radioactive waste.
According to the Oeko Institute, a non-profit association: The facility for refining Australian ore concentrate rich in rare earth metals of Lynas Corporation in Malaysia has several deficiencies concerning the operational environmental impacts. The environment is affected by acidic substances as well as from dust particles, which are emitted into the air in substantially larger concentrations than would be state-of-the-art in off-gas treatment in Europe. The storage of radioactive and toxic wastes on site does not prevent leachate from leaving the facility and entering ground and groundwater. For the long-term disposal of wastes under acceptable conditions concerning radiation safety a sustainable concept is still missing. These are the results of a study of Oeko-Institute on behalf of the Malaysian NGO SMSL.
In its facility in Kuantan/Malaysia Lynas refines ore concentrate for precious rare earth metals. These strategic metals are applied for example to produce catalysts…The ore concentrate to be refined in Malaysia additionally contains toxic and radioactive constituents such as Thorium. The NGO commissioned Oeko-Institute to check whether the processing of the ore leads to hazardous emissions from the plant or will remain as dangerous waste in Malaysia.
Storage of wastes insufficient
The storage of wastes, that are generated in the refining process, shall be stored in designated facilities on the site, separately for three waste categories. According to chemist and nuclear waste expert Gerhard Schmidt, there will be problems with the pre-drying of wastes that is of a high Thorium content. “Especially in the wet and long monsoon season from September to January, this emplacement process doesn’t work”, says Schmidt. “The operator has not demonstrated how this problem can be resolved without increasing the radiation doses for workers”.
Additionally the storages are only isolated with a one-millimeter thick plastic layer and a 30 cm thick clay layer. This is insufficient to reliably enclose the several meters high and wet waste masses. “For the long-term management of these wastes Lynas has urgently to achieve a solution”, claims Gerhard Schmidt, and adds: “in no case those wastes should be marketed or used as construction material, as currently proposed by the operator (Lynas) and the regulator (AELB/MOSTI). According to our calculations this would mean to pose high radioactive doses to the public via direct radiation”.
One of the most serious abnormalities is that in the documents relevant data is missing, which prevents reliably accounting for all toxic materials introduced”, says project manager Gerhard Schmidt. “So it is not stated which and to what amount toxic by-products, besides Thorium, are present in the ore concentrate. Also in the emissions of the facility via wastewater only those constituents are accounted for that are explicitly listed in Malaysian water regulation, but not all emitted substances.” The salt content of the wastewater is as high that it is comparable to seawater. This is discharged without any removal into the river Sungai Balok.
The scientists at Oeko-Institute evaluate the detected deficiencies as very serious. Those deficiencies should have been already detected in the licensing process, when the application documents were being checked. However the operator received a construction license in 2008 and a temporary operating license in 2012.
Especially for the safe long-term disposal of the radioactive wastes a suitable site that meets internationally accepted safety criteria has to be selected urgently. A consensus has to be reached with the affected stakeholders, such as the local public and their representatives. “If it further remains open how to manage those wastes in a long-term sustainable manner, a future legacy associated with unacceptable environmental and health risks is generated”, considers Schmidt. “The liability to prevent those risks and to remove the material is so shifted to future generations, which is not acceptable.”
Rare earths are important metals that are used in future technologies such as efficient electro motors, lighting and catalysts. In its study from 2011 “Study on Rare Earths and Their Recycling” Oeko-Institute showed that no relevant recycling of these metals is performed so far. Albeit recent positive developments in this direction: satisfying the prognosticated global requires the extension of the worldwide primary production.
Rare earth refining in Malaysia without coherent waste management concept, Oeko Institute Press Release, Jan. 28, 2013
Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. said Thursday that 28 canisters of high-level radioactive waste produced through the reprocessing of spent Japanese nuclear fuel in Britain will arrive in Aomori Prefecture in the latter half of February. The 28 canisters of vitrified radioactive waste include 14 for Kansai Electric Power Co. and seven each for Chubu Electric Power Co. and Chugoku Electric Power Co.
The freighter Pacific Grebe carrying the waste left the port of Barrow on Wednesday Jan, 9, 2013) and will travel to Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, via the Panama Canal, Japan Nuclear Fuel said. It will be the third time that vitrified radioactive waste will be brought to Japan from Britain.
Japan has received 104 canisters of such waste from Britain and plans to receive around 800 more. The 104 canisters have been stored at a facility in the village of Rokkasho.
Reprocessed nuclear waste to arrive in Aomori from Britain in late February, The Japan Times, Jan. 11, 2012
Cleanup crews in Fukushima Prefecture have dumped soil and leaves contaminated with radioactive fallout into rivers. Water sprayed on contaminated buildings has been allowed to drain back into the environment. And supervisors have instructed workers to ignore rules on proper collection and disposal of the radioactive waste. Decontamination is considered a crucial process in enabling thousands of evacuees to return to their homes around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and resume their normal lives. But the decontamination work witnessed by a team of Asahi Shimbun reporters shows that contractual rules with the Environment Ministry have been regularly and blatantly ignored, and in some cases, could violate environmental laws. “If the reports are true, it would be extremely regrettable,” Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato said at his first news conference of the year on Jan. 4. “I hope everyone involved will clearly understand how important decontamination is to the people of Fukushima.”
He called on the Environment Ministry to investigate and present a clear report to the prefectural government. The shoddy practices may also raise questions about the decontamination program itself–and the huge amounts of money pumped into the program. The central government initially set aside 650 billion yen ($7.4 billion) to decontaminate areas hit by radioactive substances from the March 11, 2011, accident at the Fukushima plant. Since last summer, the Environment Ministry has designated 11 municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture for special decontamination work. Work has already begun in four municipalities to remove radioactive substances from areas within 20 meters of buildings, roads and farmland. The Environment Ministry itself does not have the know-how to decontaminate such a large area, so it has given contracts to joint ventures led by major construction companies to do the work.
A contract worth 18.8 billion yen to decontaminate the municipality of Naraha was awarded to a group that includes Maeda Corp. and Dai Nippon Construction. A 7.7-billion-yen contract for Iitate was signed with a group that includes Taisei Corp., while a 4.3-billion-yen contract for Kawauchi was given to a group led by Obayashi Corp. A consortium that includes Kajima Corp. was awarded a 3.3-billion-yen contract to clean up Tamura. In signing the contracts, the Environment Ministry established work rules requiring the companies to place all collected soil and leaves into bags to ensure the radioactive materials would not spread further. The roofs and walls of homes must be wiped by hand or brushes. The use of pressurized sprayers is limited to gutters to avoid the spread of contaminated water. The water used in such cleaning must be properly collected under the ministry’s rules.
A special measures law for dealing with radioactive contamination of the environment prohibits the dumping of such waste materials. Violators face a maximum prison sentence of five years or a 10-million-yen fine. From Dec. 11 to 18, four Asahi reporters spent 130 hours observing work at various locations in Fukushima Prefecture.At 13 locations in Naraha, Iitate and Tamura, workers were seen simply dumping collected soil and leaves as well as water used for cleaning rather than securing them for proper disposal. Photographs were taken at 11 of those locations.
Excerpt, CROOKED CLEANUP (1): Radioactive waste dumped into rivers during decontamination work in Fukushima, THE ASAHI SHIMBUN, Jan. 4, 2012
In documents filed Wednesday (Jan. 2, 2012) with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a wide range of national and grassroots environmental groups said it would be impossible for the NRC to adequately conduct a court-ordered assessment of the environmental implications of long-term storage of spent nuclear reactor fuel in the two short years the federal agency envisions for the process.
In June 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated the NRC’s 2010 Waste Confidence Decision and Temporary Storage Rule and remanded them to the agency for study of the environmental impacts of storing spent fuel indefinitely if no permanent nuclear waste repository is licensed or if licensing of a repository is substantially delayed. Spent nuclear fuel remains highly dangerous for prolonged periods. It has long-lived radioactive materials in it that can seriously contaminate the environment and harm public health if released. Additionally, spent nuclear fuel contains plutonium-239, a radiotoxic element that can be used to make nuclear weapons if separated from the other materials in the fuel. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of over 24,000 years.
In their filings, the 24 groups said a full review of the three issues outlined in June 2012 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit – long-term storage risks for spent nuclear fuel, spent fuel pool fire risks, and spent fuel pool leakage risks – would take at least the seven years originally projected by the NRC staff, and likely considerably longer. Current federal law requires that the NRC conduct a comprehensive environmental impact statement (EIS) study before issuing a revised Waste Confidence Decision; the 24 groups submitted their comments about the appropriate “scoping” of the EIS.
In the absence of an adequate EIS review, the NRC has “no choice but to continue to suspend all licensing and re-licensing actions” for U.S. nuclear reactors, according to the 24 organizations. All licensing and re-licensing actions were previously suspended by the NRC until an EIS and revised Waste Confidence Decision have been issued. The 24 groups jointly filing the comments today with the NRC are the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, Beyond Nuclear, Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, Center for a Sustainable Coast, Citizens Allied for Safe Energy, Citizens Environmental Alliance, Don’t Waste Michigan, Ecology Party of Florida, Friends of the Earth, Georgia Women’s Action for New Directions, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Missouri Coalition for the Environment, New England Coalition, Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, NC WARN, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Nuclear Watch South, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Public Citizen, Riverkeeper, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, SEED Coalition, Sierra Club Nuclear Free Campaign, and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
The expert declarations were made by: Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research; Dr. Gordon Thompson, executive director for the Institute for Resource and Security Studies; and Phillip Musegaas, Esq., Hudson River program director for Riverkeeper, Inc.
Highlights of the 24-group filings include the following:
•The “hurry-up” two-year timeframe for environmental review falls far short of the 2019 estimate of NRC’s own technical staff for data collecting and analysis on the impacts of long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel. The NRC currently lacks sufficient information to reach scientifically, well-founded conclusions about the impacts of such storage. The agency also lacks information regarding the impacts associated with the eventual disposal of spent nuclear fuel. According to Dr. Makhijani, the NRC will not be able to gather this information within its truncated, self-imposed two-year timeframe.
•The short timeframe provided for environmental review will also not permit post-Fukushima information about U.S. reactors to be fully collected and evaluated. Under the schedule established by the NRC staff in March 2012, reactor licensees are not due to supply post-Fukushima seismic information until September 2013 for reactor sites in the eastern and central U.S. and March 2015 for western reactor sites. According to the groups’ filing with the NRC today: “Given the significant role played by seismic events in accidents ranging from spent fuel pool leaks to pool fires and their potential effects on long-term storage sites, this information is crucial to the NRC’s ability to take a ‘hard look’ at all three topics remanded by the Court.”
•Despite the Court’s order to consider impacts associated with the failure to ever establish a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel, the NRC proposed only to consider the impacts associated with failing to secure a repository by the end of this century. Dr. Makhijani and Dr. Thompson argue that the NRC should consider the environmental impacts of failing to establish a repository until 2250, requiring approximately 300 years of onsite storage.
•The NRC should consider alternatives to minimize the risks of storage of spent nuclear fuel and high level waste, including placement below ground level, elimination of the current practice of high-density storage of spent fuel in pools, and more robust designs for storage casks.
•The environmental impact statement should assess the radiological risk arising from a range of conventional accidents or attacks, including those conducted by terrorists.
An application to build a Finnish repository for spent nuclear fuel was filed Friday (December 28, 2012), the government and the company planning to build the storage site said. The planned location is at Olkiluoto in south-western Finland where two of the country‘s four reactors operate and a fifth is being built. Company Posiva, owned by energy groups TVO and Fortum, said the envisaged site was to store 9,000 tonnes of spent uranium fuel. “The construction licence application is based on more than 30 years of research and development work, carried out ever since the commissioning of the existing nuclear power plants,” said Reijo Sundell, president of Posiva. The waste is to be stored in bedrock at a depth of 400-450 metres. The waste would be cached in canisters that would be able to withstand corrosion, the company said.
The Ministry of Employment and the Economy said it would invite other ministries, authorities and organizations to provide views on the plans, as well as private citizens and the municipality of Eurajoki where Olkiluoto is located. The Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority is to assess safety. The process is expected to run until the end of 2014 when the government is to consider the construction licence application.
A similar review is underway in neighbouring Sweden where the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) opted for the municipality of Osthammar, 150 kilometres north of Stockholm, for an envisaged repository to store Swedish waste for 100,000 years. Osthammar, with some 23,000 inhabitants, is home to three reactors at the Forsmark plant and earlier applied to house the storage site.
Application filed for Finnish nuclear waste repository, Europe Online, Dec. 28, 2012
The Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology on Thursday (December 20, 2012) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the European Union (EU) to build a $2.6 million landfill for dumping radioactive nuclear waste, according to a ministry statement. During a joint press conference with Iraqi Science and Technology Minister Abdul Karim al-Sammarae, the head of the EU Delegation to Iraq, Ambassador Jana Hybášková, said the memorandum will complete joint activities and programmes that began in 2008.
The grant allocates money to design and prepare a landfill and train Iraqi scientists in the field, she said. Al-Sammarae said the MoU is slated to take effect for a maximum of three years, during which all destroyed nuclear facilities are to be liquidate
EU to build $2.6 million radioactive waste landfill for Iraq, http://www.al-shorfa.com, Dec, 21, 2012
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More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels or radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found. Areas in and near Iraq’s largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years. The joint study by the environment, health and science ministries found that scrap metal yards in and around Baghdad and Basra contain high levels of ionising radiation, which is thought to be a legacy of depleted uranium used in munitions during the first Gulf war and since the 2003 invasion.
The environment minister, Narmin Othman, said high levels of dioxins on agricultural lands in southern Iraq, in particular, were increasingly thought to be a key factor in a general decline in the health of people living in the poorest parts of the country. “If we look at Basra, there are some heavily polluted areas there and there are many factors contributing to it,” she told the Guardian. “First, it has been a battlefield for two wars, the Gulf war and the Iran-Iraq war, where many kinds of bombs were used. Also, oil pipelines were bombed and most of the contamination settled in and around Basra. “The soil has ended up in people’s lungs and has been on food that people have eaten. Dioxins have been very high in those areas. All of this has caused systemic problems on a very large scale for both ecology and overall health.”…
Ten of those areas have been classified by Iraq’s nuclear decommissioning body as having high levels of radiation. They include the sites of three former nuclear reactors at the Tuwaitha facility – once the pride of Saddam Hussein’s regime on the south-eastern outskirts of Baghdad – as well as former research centres around the capital that were either bombed or dismantled between the two Gulf wars.
Bushra Ali Ahmed, director of the Radiation Protection Centre in Baghdad, said only 80% of Iraq had so far been surveyed. “We have focused so far on the sites that have been contaminated by the wars,” he said. “We have further plans to swab sites that have been destroyed by war. “A big problem for us is when say a tank has been destroyed and then moved, we are finding a clear radiation trail. It takes a while to decontaminate these sites.”
Scrap sites remain a prime concern. Wastelands of rusting cars and war damage dot Baghdad and other cities between the capital and Basra, offering unchecked access to both children and scavengers.
Othman said Iraq’s environmental degradation is being intensified by an acute drought and water shortage across the country that has seen a 70% decrease in the volume of water flowing through the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. “We can no longer in good conscience call ourselves the land between the rivers,” she said. “A lot of the water we are getting has first been used by Turkey and Syria for power generation. When it reaches us it is poor quality. That water which is used for agriculture is often contaminated. We are in the midst of an unmatched environmental disaster.”
Excerpts from Martin Chulov, Iraq littered with high levels of nuclear and dioxin contamination, study finds, Guardian, Jan. 22, 2010
Amid growing public concern about the discovery of radioactive waste buried at an abandoned factory in Izmir (Turkey), experts have pointed out to the possibility that there could be other sites with nuclear waste imported illegally into Turkey from foreign companies that operate nuclear plants.Public concerns about radioactive and other toxic waste began after a news report appeared in the Radikal daily last week about the discovery of highly radioactive waste buried at a defunct factory on Akçay Street, the main thoroughfare running through Izmir’s Gaziemir district. The Turkish Atomic Energy Agency (TAEK), which was assigned to test the plant on Tuesday, stated that the radioactive level at the site did not constitute a dangerous situation, but they didn’t address concerns about a radioactive material that might have been brought into Turkey illegally. The factory, situated on more than 70 acres, used old batteries and scrap lead to produce cast lead until just a few years ago.
In relation to the inspection, a former senior manager of the Izmir factory, speaking on condition of anonymity to Radikal on Thursday, confirmed the fact that the toxic waste of the factory was buried on the site in an effort to save money by not sending the waste for proper disposal. However, he didn’t comment on the possibility of nuclear materials being brought in illegally. It was also reported that locals, particularly children playing in the vicinity, had access to the plant as the wire fencing around the factory had corroded over time.
Radikal reported that TAEK had examined the site of the factory in 2007. A radioactive substance called europium, an illegally imported element used in nuclear reactor control rods, found on the site is thought to be the source of the radioactivity, a report from TAEK showed. A nuclear engineer at Okan University, Tolga Yarman said the radioactive element could have entered the country along with other nuclear waste, as it was illegal to keep this substance in Turkey. In fact, other sites where nuclear waste was buried have been discovered. A similar case was reported in 1987 by Professor Ahmet Yüksel Özemre, a former general director of TAEK and Turkey’s first nuclear engineer….”The ministry should have ideal staffing levels to work more closely on the detection of nuclear waste cases by complying with European Union standards, and a control mechanism should be part of this improvement,” said Ministry of Environment and Urban Planning Deputy Undersecretary Mustafa Öztürk. Professor Öztürk warned about tons of toxic waste which is illegally buried at many other plants in different provinces around Turkey. “Toxic waste can only be kept on site at a plant for six months provided that plant authorities take the necessary environmental precautions, and the waste should be moved to disposal centers at the end of the period stated by law. However, plants keep running while their waste is buried in the soil without taking any precautions. This is the case for many provinces, including Istanbul, Samsun, Hatay, Kayseri and Mersin,” answered Öztürk to a question about the legal regulations regarding the conservation and disposal of toxic waste.
A similar case was reported in 1987 by Professor Özemre, who received an anonymous tip that 1,150 tons of radioactive waste, which were imported from Germany, had been buried on the site of the Göltas cement factory in Isparta, a province in southwest Turkey. Özemre had also asserted, in a written document and on several television news programs, that a flour factory in Konya had burned 800 tons of toxic waste on its site in order to generate energy. He further noted that he would not have given credit to this anonymous tip about the nuclear waste cases in Isparta and Konya if he himself had not received a similar proposal from a German firm who offered him 40 million Deutsche Mark in return for burying 4,000 tons of radioactive waste while he served as the director of TAEK. Özemre asserted that when he did not accept the German firm’s proposal, stating that he “would not let Turkey turn into a nuclear landfill,” the firm told him that the toxic waste would be buried in Turkey one way or another.
A research commission was assigned by the Turkish Parliament to check into the claim that illegal nuclear waste was buried around Isparta and had been burned in Konya. The conclusion of the commission, published in the form of general meeting minutes in 1997, showed that the factory sites did not include radioactive elements.
South Korea’s ambitious nuclear energy program is under intensive scrutiny and criticism after the discovery of microscopic cracks in the structure of a nuclear power plant and forgery of quality certificates vouching for thousands of components in at least two reactors. Officials in all three major agencies responsible for monitoring the program said Friday there’s no danger to nuclear safety, but the government ordered the shutdown of the two reactors with the uncertified parts. At the same time, the head of the state company overseeing the program, Korea Electric Power Corp. has resigned for what he said were personal reasons.
A sequence of problems at a nuclear power plant on the southwestern coast fueled rising doubts about a program that’s been a centerpiece of the government’s energy policy since the first reactors went on line more than 30 years ago. Korea counts on nuclear energy for 30 percent of its electrical power, but critics are now demanding the government shut down some of the older plants and pull back from plans to build enough reactors to fulfill half the country’s power needs. “I am worried about safety standards,” says Lee Chang-choon, who served as South Korea’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency during his long diplomatic career. “I do not have confidence and trust in the care of sensitive machinery operations.”
The trouble seemed to begin at the nuclear power plant at Yeonggwang where inspectors this week reported thousands of “noncore components” were installed on the basis of fraudulent quality certificates. The Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Corporation, which operates Korea’s four nuclear power plants, including 23 reactors, promised to replace all the parts by the end of the year while asking prosecutors to investigate alleged bribery.
Compounding the difficulties at the Yeonggwang plant, the ministry also reported the discovery of microscopic cracks in passages linking control rods to one of the reactors. An official at the Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Corporation said the cracks affected warning signals on control panels but not operation of the reactors…
The underlying problem, however, is that South Korea has virtually no oil or natural gas deposits and is running out of coal. Nuclear power has long been seen as the only way to meet the demands of a growing industrial economy. Hong Suk-woon, Korea’s knowledge and economy minister, warned of severe power cuts that might affect industry and individual consumers as a result of shutdown of the two Yeonggwang reactors….
Others are still more critical. Yun Sun-jin, a professor who teaches courses on energy policy at Seoul National University, accuses the Korea Hydro Nuclear Power Corporation of placing higher priority on output with reduced emphasis on safety. “They are decreasing the time for periodic overhaul of reactors,” she says. “They think a high operation rate means a more competitive strategy.” She agrees with the view of the nongovernmental Korea Federation for the Environment that the government should shut down older plants and cancel plans to build new ones. “We cannot believe nuclear power plants are safe,” says Yang-yi Won-young, in charge of the organization’s “nuclear phase-out” campaign. “The government says nuclear energy is the cheapest and cleanest, but they don’t take account of the cost of getting rid of nuclear waste.”…An official at the ministry of knowledge and economy listed 60 forged quality certificates since 2003 including more than 7,600 components, 98.4 percent of which, he says, were for the Yeonggwang plant. “These are noncore parts,” he says, including fuses, switches, and resistors that cannot be used for the core safety-related facility” and therefore “posing no threat of radiation leakage.” The government, he adds, “will prepare and implement a comprehensive package of measures as soon as possible starting later this month to cope with the possible power shortages during this winte
Excerpts, By Donald Kirk, Cracks at South Korean nuclear plant raise safety concerns, Reuters, Nov. 9, 2012
After California regulators refused to allow the U.S. Air Force to label residue from radioactive aircraft instruments as “naturally occurring” – declaring it unsuitable for a Bakersfield-area dump – the military turned to Idaho with the same story. There, military officials met with success. The Air Force is now sending radioactive waste from Sacramento County’s McClellan Air Force Base to a Grand View, Idaho, hazardous waste landfill.
This solution involved a bit of legal semantics rejected in California despite 10 months of Air Force lobbying: The military claimed radium dust left over from glow-in-the-dark aircraft instruments actually was naturally occurring, putting it the same relatively lax regulatory category as mine tailings, according to government memos obtained by California Watch through a public records request. Larry Morgan, a health physicist with the California Department of Public Health, disagreed with that characterization. Radioactive paint does not “meet the definition” of naturally occurring waste, he wrote in a September 2011 memo.
The Idaho facility’s permit allows it to accept materials defined as natural without notifying state regulators, leaving the state’s hazardous waste manager in the dark. “I’m not familiar with this particular waste stream. I intend to find out now that you’ve contacted me,” Robert Bullock, hazardous waste permits manager for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, said during an October interview. The redefinition of the waste as natural might not even have been necessary, given Idaho’s different standards for waste containing trace amounts of radium.
Days after the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality told California Watch that the agency was unaware of the Air Force waste, an official went out to inspect the landfill. Interviewed after that visit, engineer Dennis Meier said the dumping was legal because of the low concentration of radium in the soil, despite the source. “It’s not waste that has to go to a radioactive waste facility,” he said. “The concentration is way below what we would accept.”
Nonetheless,California health officials and environmental activists accused the Air Force of bending the truth to get its way. “Illuminated instrument dials do not naturally occur,” said Daniel Hirsch, a lecturer on nuclear policy at UC Santa Cruz who leads the environmental group Committee to Bridge the Gap. “I can’t dig into the soil and discover naturally occurring radium instrument dials.”
The radioactive dirt in question hails from the former McClellan Air Force Base northeast of Sacramento,now a commercial development site.“At least 24 sites” on the base “all have low levels of radium mixed in with the soil, and there are many thousands of cubic yards” of contaminated soil, according to Philip Mook, Western region senior representative for the Air Force Civil Engineer Center, which is in charge of cleanups at Air Force installations. “A little bit of radium goes a long way.” The Air Force has sent 22,000 tons of radioactive dirt from McClellan out of state so far, according to Charlotte Fadipe, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.
According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, if significant radium is inhaled or ingested, it can increase the risk of diseases such as lymphoma, bone cancer and leukemia. While the concentrations in the McClellan soil are low, they are above limits the federal government has set to protect human health. Before these medical effects became evident, aircraft dials and gauges were painted with glowing radium so pilots could see them better at night. Air Force officials speculate that the radium became dispersed in the soil at McClellan “probably in cleanup water, like mop water or solvents that were used to clean the equipment or to clean up spills of radium,” Mook said. Although radium paint wasn’t used on the base after the 1950s, items contaminated with it remained…
Stephen Woods, chief of the California Department of Public Health’s Division of Food, Drug and Radiation Safety, argued in a Nov. 4, 2011, letter that the dirt should be sent to “a licensed low-level radioactive waste disposal facility.” The Idaho facility where the soil is now going does not meet that criteria. Neither do any California waste disposal facilities. That’s partly because of vocal opposition from local Kern County residents and environmental groups. “Hazardous waste landfills in low-income communities of color in California aren’t the right places for” nuclear waste, said Caroline Farrell, executive director of the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, which for almost two decades has fought to limit the Buttonwillow landfill’s expansion and impact on local residents.
But in the past, the landfill has accepted nuclear waste. In 1998 and 1999, the Army Corps of Engineers sent residue from the Manhattan Project, the World War II-era research and development program that produced atomic bombs dropped in Japan, to the landfill. The move outraged civilian officials. Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer testified before a Senate committee on July 25, 2000: “When I learned that the Corps had disposed of 2,200 tons of radioactive waste at an unlicensed hazardous waste facility in Buttonwillow, California, I was shocked. The facility sits atop aquifers that supply water to the Central Valley of California.” Since the Manhattan Project controversy, the facility’s permit has been tightened. Yet the landfill’s current permit states that it may accept naturally occurring radioactive materials at low concentrations….
US Ecology, which operates the hazardous waste landfill in Grand View, Idaho, seemed to accept the terminology. Steve Welling, senior vice president of sales and marketing for US Ecology, said in an interview that “state law and our permits” allowed the facility to accept the waste that the Air Force had characterized as naturally occurring.
Katharine Mieszkowski and Matt Smith, Air Force Ships Calif. Radioactive Waste To Idaho Landfill, NBC, Nov. 9, 2012
Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant is struggling to find space to store tens of thousands of tonnes of highly contaminated water used to cool the broken reactors, the manager of the water treatment team has said.About 200,000 tonnes of radioactive water, enough to fill more than 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools, are being stored in hundreds of gigantic tanks built around the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
Operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) has already chopped down trees to make room for more tanks and predicts the volume of water will be more than tripled within three years. “It’s a time-pressing issue because the storage of contaminated water has its limits, there is only limited storage space,” the water-treatment manager, Yuichi Okamura, told the AP news agency in an exclusive interview this week. The Yotukura fishing village was one of the areas devastated by the Mar. 11, 2011 tsunami that caused the nuclear plant meltdown.
Dumping massive amounts of water into the melting reactors was the only way to avoid an even bigger catastrophe after the meltdown at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactor, caused by the Mar. 11, 2011 tsunami. Okamura remembers frantically trying to find a way to get water to spent fuel pools located on the highest floor of the 50m high reactor buildings. Without water, the spent fuel likely would have overheated and melted, sending radioactive smoke for miles and affecting possibly millions of people.
But the measures to keep the plant under control created another huge headache for the utility: What to do with all the radioactive water that leaked out of the damaged reactors and collected in the basements of reactor buildings and nearby facilities. “At that time, we never expected high-level contaminated water to turn up in the turbine building,” Okamura said. He was tasked with setting up a treatment system that would make the water clean enough for reuse as a coolant, and was also aimed at reducing health risks for workers and at curbing environmental damage. At first, the utility shunted the tainted water into existing storage tanks near the reactors.
Meanwhile, Okamura’s 55-member team scrambled to get a treatment unit up and running within three months of the accident, a project that would normally take about two years, he said. Using that equipment, TEPCO was able to circulate reprocessed water back into the reactor cores. But even though the reactors now are being cooled exclusively with recycled water, the volume of contaminated water is still increasing, mostly because groundwater is seeping through cracks into the reactor and turbine basements….
Masashi Goto, a nuclear engineer and university lecturer, said the contaminated water build-up posed a major long-term threat to health and the environment. He said he was worried that the radioactive water in the basements may already be getting into the underground water system, where it could reach far beyond the plant via underground water channels, possibly reaching the ocean or public water supplies. “There are pools of some 10,000 or 20,000 tonnes of contaminated water in each plant, and there are many of these, and to bring all of these to one place would mean you would have to treat hundreds of thousands of tonnes of contaminated water which is mind-blowing in itself,” Goto said. “It’s an outrageous amount, truly outrageous,” Goto added.
The plant will have to deal with contaminated water until all the melted fuel and other debris is removed from the reactor, a process that will easily take more than a decade.
Japan Struggling to Store Nuclear Water, Inter Press Service, Oct. 25, 2012
An Entergy Corp. unit sued the U.S. for $100 million alleging the government breached a contract for disposal of nuclear waste at two plants in Michigan. Entergy Nuclear Palisades LLC, owner of the Palisades Nuclear Plant and the Big Rock Point plant, alleged yesterday that the Energy Department collected fees under a 1983 contract without ever starting to dispose of the radioactive material. The suit is in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington. Entergy and a previous owner of the shuttered Big Rock Point plant “have fully complied with all their fee payment obligations under the contract,” according to the complaint. “The government, however, has failed to perform its reciprocal obligation to dispose of spent nuclear fuel, and currently has no plan to meet these obligations.”
Entergy’s lawsuit is the latest legal challenge stemming from the federal government’s failure to create a central, long- term facility to store nuclear waste. Most nuclear-plant owners continue to store spent nuclear fuel onsite despite contributing for decades into a fund meant to finance a central waste depository.
Entergy Corp., based in New Orleans, is the second-largest owner of nuclear plants in the U.S. Through June 30, Entergy and Consumers Energy Co., the former owner of Big Rock Point, have paid about $274 million into the fund under the contract, the company said. Charles Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The case is Entergy Nuclear Palisades LLC v. U.S., 12-cv- 1641, U.S. Court of Federal Claims (Washington).
By Tom Schoenberg and Julie Johnsson, Entergy Sues U.S. for Failure to Dispose of Nuclear Waste, Bloomberg, Sep 27, 2012
Lynas Corporation, an Australian based mining company are constructing a rare earth processing plant, known as the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP) in Gebeng industrial estate in Kuantan, Malaysia. The LAMP will process lanthanide concentrate which will be trucked from the mine site in Mt Weld Western Australia to the Port of Fremantle where it will be shipped to Malaysia. This report provides an assessment of the emissions from the LAMP plant rather than Lynas Corporation‟s activities in Western Australia. The LAMP plant will have significant atmospheric, terrestrial and waterborne emissions of toxic chemicals and radionuclides including uranium, thorium and radon gas.
A Malaysian high court put on hold until October 4 a temporary operating license granted to Lynas Corp Ltd’s controversial rare earth plant near the eastern city of Kuantan, prompting an 8 percent fall in the Australian firm’s shares on Tuesday (Sept. 24, 2012). The rare earth plant – the world’s biggest outside China – has been ready to fire up since early May, but the company has been embroiled in lengthy environmental and safety disputes with local residents since construction began two years ago [regarding the handling of radioactive waste at the plant].
The plant is considered important to breaking China’s grip on the processing of rare earths, which are used in products ranging from smartphones to hybrid cars.
Lynas confirmed the Kuantan High Court’s decision on Tuesday, but said it would not affect production at the plant and that it plans to strongly assert its rights at the next court hearing…Lynas shares plunged more than 8 percent after the court order to A$0.795, their lowest close in almost three weeks as investors closely track each move in the sensitive case. Earlier this month they rose up to 50 percent when Malaysia approved the license.
Activists linked to the environmental group, Save Malaysia Stop Lynas, want the court to suspend the temporary license until two judicial review cases challenging the government’s decision allowing the plant to operate are heard. “It’s a small victory, but there is still a long way to go,” Tan Bun Teet, a spokesman for the group, told Reuters after the court decision. “We will fight tooth and nail. We have a lot at stake,” he added. The group’s previous attempts to legally stop the plant had failed.
Lynas received a temporary operating license for its long-delayed $800 million rare earth plant earlier this month, enabling it to start production as early as October. The Malaysian Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB) issued the permit following an earlier recommendation from a government committee. Protests over possible radioactive residue have drawn thousands of people and the project has become a hot topic ahead of an election that must be held by early next year.
Sources
Lee Bell, Rare Earth and Radioactive Waste: A Preliminary Waste Stream Assessment of the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant, Gebeng, Malaysia, National Toxics Network. April 2012
Siva Sithraputhran, Malaysian court puts license on hold for Lynas rare earth plant, Reuters, Sept. 25, 2012
Since the 1960s, Canada’s nuclear power plants have generated more than two million bundles of highly radioactive used fuel. And they’re all still stored on the sites of the plants that produced them.But the pace of finding a site to store Canada’s most potent radioactive waste permanently is about to pick up. Twenty Canadian communities have said they’ll consider volunteering to host the storage site. That list is about to close. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, whose job it is to find and build the site, will stop taking new names on Sept. 30, 2012. The impending cut-off is ratcheting up the pressure on the technocrats charged with selecting a site; on the boosters who want to snare the multi-billion-dollar repository for their community; on the activists who harbour deep suspicions about safety; and on the aboriginal leaders who say they’ve been cut out of the process….
A fuel bundle for a Candu nuclear power reactor is about the size of a fireplace log. As of June 30, 2011, Canada had 2,273,873 used fuel bundles stored at its nuclear plants in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick. Another 85,000 or so have been added since then. In total, they’d fill about six NHL hockey rinks, stacked up as high as the boards.
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, formed by the three electric utilities that run nuclear reactors, wants to bury the waste deep underground in caverns excavated from stable rock, where it can lie undisturbed forever. The depth will probably depend on the site’s geology. A facility proposed to hold less-potent radioactive waste at the Bruce nuclear site near Kincardine will be 680 metres deep. By comparison, the CN Tower is 553 metres tall. The NWMO is looking for a “willing” community to agree to take the $16-to-$24-billion project. The host community itself will decide how to define “willing.” Candidate communities will have multiple opportunities to withdraw if they get cold feet, the NWMO says. As it moves through a nine-stage selection process, the NWMO hopes to have narrowed the field to one or two communities by 2015, then spend until about 2020 deciding on a specific site within the chosen community. After that, it will take three to five years to do an extensive environmental assessment of the site. The proponents will also have to satisfy the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission that their plan makes sense, and obtain a license to construct and operate the facility. Then, it will take six to 10 years to build. The NWMO doesn’t expect the first bundles to be stored until 2035. The plan is to seal the waste in sturdy, radiation-proof containers and store it deep in a stable rock formation where — even if the containers were to crack and leak — there’s be no danger of contaminating groundwater used by humans. (Although that’s the current strategy, the NWMO says it would consider a different plan if compelling evidence emerged that another technique is superior.)
Current designs call for surface buildings and facilities to cover about 100 hectares (250 acres), says the NWMO’s Michael Krizanc. “As well, there may be a need to limit activities in the immediate area surrounding the surface facilities in order to meet regulatory or other requirements.” Underground, the excavated caverns will cover an area of about 2.5 kilometres by 1.5 kilometres. That’s 375 hectares, or 930 acres. “The NWMO would need to have rights to the land above the repository,” says Krizanc, but “alternative uses could be considered, with the community, for portions of the land.”….
Meanwhile in Saugeen Shores, a lively battle is under way as members of a citizens group dubbed save Save Our Saugeen Shores, or SOS, fights what they see as an attempt to impose the waste site on their community on the shore of the Great Lakes….SOS also worries that U.S. power plants might be able to force Canada to take U.S. nuclear waste in a Canadian waste site, through terms of the free trade agreement between the countries…..Up in Elliot Lake, contractors Stephen Martin and Marc Brunet can’t wait for the project to start….Elliot Lake has been identified with uranium since its founding, he shrugs: “We’re the uranium capital of the world…. This thing will be a tourist attraction. I think it’s the best thing that could happen.”
John Spears, Nuclear waste seeks a home, Toronto Star, Sept. 1, 2012
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has helped remove 27 
Several options are available to immobilise waste resulting from nuclear fuel reprocessing. One of these is vitrification – a mature technology which has been used for high-level nuclear waste immobilization for over 50 years…Argentina is considering vitrification as a viable option for dealing with its high-level nuclear waste. The Argentine National Programme for Radioactive Waste Management aims to build capacities to implement vitrification processes for radioactive waste….
Law-In-Action 