The EPA will drill test holes looking for uranium-contaminated waste that villagers fear is a threat to their downstream springs.
A dump near Tuba City that has been leaching low levels of radioactive waste into the shallow aquifer finally is getting some federal attention, if not an actual cleanup yet.
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to fence off a remaining section of an old dump, near two Hopi villages, and test for hot spots of radioactivity close by. This includes one area where the agency says uranium levels in the water exceed what's federally considered safe for drinking water by eight times.
Local villagers who believe their downstream springs are threatened have long sought a total excavation of the dump.
Uranium-related waste found in the testing will be removed with heavy equipment beginning in October, and 263 new testing holes will be dug to search for more.
Despite having their own radioactive waste dump, three states have shipped millions of cubic feet of waste across the country this decade to a private Utah facility that is the only one available to 36 other states, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. Department of Energy records.
The shipments are stoking concerns that waste from Connecticut, New Jersey and South Carolina is taking up needed space in Utah, unnecessarily creating potential shipping hazards and undermining the government's intent for states to dispose of their own waste on a regional basis.
"It's clear that the low-level waste system in this country is broken when there are states with their own dump sites sending tons of radioactive garbage across the country for disposal in Utah," said Vanessa Pierce, executive director of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, an advocacy group. "The compact system, which was supposed to protect states from becoming the country's dumping ground, has been totally derailed."
Adams County wrongly spent $750,000 in fees from a hazardous waste dump to sue the state for allowing the dump to accept low-level radioactive material, a judge has ruled.
The judge said the county must return the money to a fund set up to offset costs associated with the dump.
Adams County District Judge John T. Bryan issued the order late Thursday.
"We have seen the decades of suffering by the Palestinian people at the hands of the apartheid government of Israel and yet little has been said about another unseen problem that lies buried beneath the ground.
Over a long period of time the Israeli Government has secretly been dumping highly radioactive waste from their Dimona Nuclear Facility on Palestinian land. What is ironic is the basis as to why they have dumped their waste at such locations.
Many years ago I started up an environmental action group to safeguard the region I was living in at the time. This would cover all aspects of potential pollution from Gas Turbine Power Stations - Agricultural Pesticides - Air and Water Quality etc."
THE State of Nevada is writing a letter to Cumbria County Council outlining why an underground nuclear dump in Cumbria should be opposed.
A new action group - Radiation Free Lakeland - has gained the support from the American state after the council expressed an interest to the government in hosting an underground dump.
Council leader Stewart Young wrote to Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband to offer Copeland as a site for a deep geological repository to store atomic waste.
The potent combination of President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid bodes well for Nevadans, the majority of whom don't want the nation's high-level nuclear waste dumped in this state. Both men have vowed to do everything in their power to see that a dump is never built at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
But until it is certain the dump plan is dead, Nevada has an obligation to its residents to continue fighting, through its Nuclear Projects Agency, the nuclear power industry-backed proposal. Because of the highly complex nature of the issue, it takes a fully staffed office to help research and prepare the state's arguments against a Yucca repository, which is under licensing review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Federal regulators took a first step Monday toward allowing a radioactive waste dump in Nevada, agreeing to formally review the government's license application for the dump.
It will still take the Nuclear Regulatory Commission up to four years to consider the Energy Department's 8,600-page application and decide whether to grant the federal government permission to build the 77,000-ton dump.
Although the Army Corps of Engineers is still working out the details for removal of 50,000 tons of radioactive debris from a dump along Route 66, they will do so one foot at a time.
The nuclear burial grounds, technically known as the Shallow Land Disposal Area (SLDA), were established in the late 1950s as a dump for radioactive and toxic chemical waste from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp., or NUMEC, with facilities in Apollo and Parks.
Within a few weeks the Energy Department is expected to file its application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a high-level nuclear waste dump in Nevada.
But approval is anything but a slam dunk - far from it. The Yucca Mountain project has been riddled by cost overruns, legal setbacks and doubts about its safety. A single nuclear waste dump clearly would create dangers, in both transporting the lethal waste and in its permanent storage in Nevada.
June 12, 2008: Plans to fast-track Australia's first nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory are a betrayal of a Labor election promise, activists say.
Resources Minister Martin Ferguson told Fairfax newspapers on Monday he wants to speed up a decision for a dump.
The Northern Territory is the most likely location for the dump, with four sites in the territory under consideration.
The Greens have tabled a letter in the Federal Senate from people who say they are the traditional owners of the Muckaty Land Trust calling for a meeting with the Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, about plans for a nuclear dump on their land.
The letter has been signed by 57 of the traditional owners who are opposed to the plan.
The Greens Senator Scott Ludlam says their views about a nuclear dump on their land have not been sought and they are keen to discuss the matter with the Minister.
The June 2-4 Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) congress passed a series of motions calling on the federal government to abandon plans to build a radioactive waste dump in the Northern Territory.
Four sites are currently under assessment by the government for such a dump. The sites are Mount Everard (40km north-west of Alice Springs), Harts Range (165km north-east of Alice Springs), Fishers Ridge (40km south-east of Katherine) and Muckaty (120km north of Tennant Creek).
The ACTU called for the Rudd government to end the assessment process for these sites and to honour a pre-election promise to repeal the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act.
The paper of record weighs in today on the Yucca Mountain debate, insisting the licensing process must go forward even if the dump is to be killed.
In an editorial in today's editions, the New York Times worries that President Barack Obama's proposed steep budget cuts to the nuclear waste repository project may leave the Energy Department unable to fully defend its application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license the facility.
Even with Obama's stated intention to terminate the Yucca Mountain endeavor and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saying the dump is dead, the paper reasons licensing should continue -- and Congress should make sure adequate funding is there to do so.
Ferguson firm on scrapping nuclear waste dump
Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson says the Commonwealth will keep its promise to repeal legislation that could force a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory.
But Mr Ferguson will not say when the law will be changed.
The Labor Party promised to repeal the legislation during the last federal election campaign.
A public meeting on April 21 organised by the Beyond Nuclear Initiative and the Sydney Nuclear Free Coalition, at the University of Sydney, attracted 100 people.
Traditional owners Diane Stokes, Mark Lane and Mark Chungaloo from Muckaty, near Tennant Creek, explained their opposition to federal government plans to build a nuclear waste dump on their lands.
Stokes said the community wanted "no waste dump on our beautiful land… We are the traditional owners. We want to let them know that we will challenge them."
The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act was passed into law in 2005 under the government of former PM John Howard. The act overrides NT laws banning nuclear waste dumps in the Territory.
"Dianne Stokes says the Rudd government's decision to push ahead with plans to dump nuclear waste on the red-soil land north of Tennant Creek has caused trouble in her Warlmanpa tribe. ''People have given away land that doesn't belong to them … now there is big trouble among us,'' she said.
For centuries, Aboriginal clans followed their dreaming across the low scrub land that became known last century by white people as Muckaty cattle station. Now, some members of one of those clans have agreed to allow Australia's first national waste dump to be established on 1.5 square kilometres of land they claim is theirs in return for $12 million, most of it in cash."
There are many reasons why it was a terrible idea for the federal government to designate Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a potential dumping ground for the nation's high-level nuclear waste. We can now add to that long list a report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office showing that it is far less expensive to store the radioactive waste where it is generated than to bury it in Nevada.
The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated it would cost as little as $10 billion to store on site the 70,000 metric tons of waste that has been generated in this country, versus a minimum $27 billion at Yucca Mountain. When factoring in the possibility of even more waste, the difference in cost widens.
The findings, prepared for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., are important because taxpayers would pay 20 percent of the costs of building a permanent dump. Nuclear utility ratepayers would be responsible for the balance.
There are many reasons why it was a terrible idea for the federal government to designate Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a potential dumping ground for the nation's high-level nuclear waste. We can now add to that long list a report released Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office showing that it is far less expensive to store the radioactive waste where it is generated than to bury it in Nevada.
The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, estimated it would cost as little as $10 billion to store on site the 70,000 metric tons of waste that has been generated in this country, versus a minimum $27 billion at Yucca Mountain. When factoring in the possibility of even more waste, the difference in cost widens.
The findings, prepared for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., are important because taxpayers would pay 20 percent of the costs of building a permanent dump. Nuclear utility ratepayers would be responsible for the balance.
'We don't think Utah should be the garbage dump for the rest of the world,' leaders say.
The community-building Alliance for Unity sees no reason for Utah to become a world dumping ground for low-level radioactive waste, and its members are urging state leaders to do what's necessary to prevent that from happening.
"We must do all in our power to protect Utah's image as a beautiful, safe and healthy place," said the statement, approved Dec. 8. "As we do so, we protect not only our economic future but also the well-being of our children and future generations unborn."
'We don't think Utah should be the garbage dump for the rest of the world,' leaders say.
The community-building Alliance for Unity sees no reason for Utah to become a world dumping ground for low-level radioactive waste, and its members are urging state leaders to do what's necessary to prevent that from happening.
"We must do all in our power to protect Utah's image as a beautiful, safe and healthy place," said the statement, approved Dec. 8. "As we do so, we protect not only our economic future but also the well-being of our children and future generations unborn."
"Traditional owners of land that could house a nuclear waste dump have protested against the plan, saying they were excluded from the process.
The federal government is considering Muckaty Station, near Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, for a facility that would store low and intermediate level radioactive waste.
The land was nominated by the Ngapa traditional owners, one of five family groups who are custodians of the land, however, others oppose the dump.
About 250 people including traditional owners and anti-nuclear campaigners marched in Tennant Creek on Saturday, directing their anger at both Resources Minister Martin Ferguson and the Northern Land Council (NLC) - who they say overlooked them."
"A measure intended to block a "back-door" method of dumping radioactive waste in Tennessee is headed for a vote in the state Senate after a key committee approved the bill Tuesday.
A Utah-based company, EnergySolutions, said it is requesting only to treat nuclear material at its Oak Ridge facility and then ship it out of state.
But state Sen. Andy Berke, D-Chattanooga, who sponsored the bill, said banning the practice of "downblending" nuclear material - which involves diluting radioactive waste with less toxic materials - is the only way to avoid becoming "the world's radioactive dumping grounds."
"This is about stopping this process that no one else does and has never been done commercially," Berke said."
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