Group items tagged

Assurances on disposition of spent nuclear fuel could be more important than guarantees of fresh fuel in convincing new nuclear countries to rely on international supply arrangements rather than pursuing their own uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing programs, according to a study released Tuesday by the US and Russian national science academies. For several years, there have discussions about establishing an international system so that countries starting or considering nuclear programs do not also embark on enrichment and reprocessing programs, since this could give countries the capability to produce material -- high-enriched uranium and plutonium, respectively -- that can be used in nuclear weapons.

After decades of debate and more than a year of construction, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. workers placed and sealed the first cask of spent nuclear fuel from the Humboldt Bay nuclear power plant into an underground container Friday. Over the next few months, PG&E will be moving five more stainless steel casks into the high-density concrete container designed to be unbreakable by a tsunami or a 9.3-magnitude earthquake. The six 80-ton casks will be sealed with 22,000-pound lids and will contain 390 spent fuel rods total, along with other radioactive waste currently stored in a pool of water on site.

Months of planning at the Monticello nuclear plant will be put into practice soon when spent nuclear fuel is moved to a new storage facility. Radioactive fuel rods will be moved in a process designed for safety and security from inside the plant to the above-ground storage.

It will be up to the Canadian people to decide where an underground nuclear waste storage facility will be built, a spokesman for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization said Tuesday. NWMO was formed in 2002 to come up with a solution for the fireplace log-sized bundles of used nuclear fuel that are building up at Canada's nuclear reactor sites. "If you were to take all of the used fuel bundles and stack them together like cordwood, they would fit into six hockey rinks from the ice surface to the top of the boards," said Mike Krizanc, NWMO communications manager. "The volume is not huge." The organization is working on a project that will see the two million bundles accumulated over the past 40 years end up in a safe and secure, deep geological repository that will contain and isolate the used fuel. NWMO is seeking public input into developing a process to find a site for the facility. A draft is to be complete by late spring.

Saying there are growing uncertainties about US nuclear waste policy, the governors of 19 states adopted a resolution Sunday that seeks to deter the Obama administration and private energy companies from building any interim storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel in the Western US. The resolution, adopted at a meeting of the Western Governors' Association in Park City, Utah, says it appears "increasingly likely" that the administration of US President Barack Obama will propose establishing one or more centralized interim storage facilities for spent fuel from US nuclear power plants. But the 19 western governors, many of whom staunchly oppose having nuclear waste sent to their states, said in their resolution that no such interim storage facility shall be built in a western state without the written consent of the governor. "The creation of interim storage sites would be a direct result of the federal government's failure to begin accepting spent fuel on schedule," the resolution says.

No community will be forced into becoming the site for a nuclear waste repository, says the organization struck to put in place a long-term plan for the used fuel. At an information session in Regina on Monday, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) asked for public input on the proposed process that will be used to select a potential location for underground storage of spent fuel. That process won't be finalized until sometime next year. But NWMO communications manager Michael Krizanc said one thing that's already certain is that only communities willing to host the project will be considered candidates.

No community will be forced into becoming the site for a nuclear waste repository, says the organization struck to put in place a long-term plan for the used fuel. At an information session in Regina on Monday, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) asked for public input on the proposed process that will be used to select a potential location for underground storage of spent fuel. That process won't be finalized until sometime next year. But NWMO communications manager Michael Krizanc said one thing that's already certain is that only communities willing to host the project will be considered candidates.

"Expanding our Nation's capacity to generate clean nuclear energy is crucial to our ability to combat climate change, enhance energy security, and increase economic prosperity. My Administration is undertaking substantial steps to expand the safe, secure, and responsible use of nuclear energy. These efforts are critical to accomplishing many of my Administration's most significant goals. An important part of a sound, comprehensive, and long-term domestic nuclear energy strategy is a well-considered policy for managing used nuclear fuel and other aspects of the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. Yet the Nation's approach, developed more than 20 years ago, to managing materials derived from nuclear activities, including nuclear fuel and nuclear waste, has not proven effective. Fortunately, over the past two decades scientists and engineers in our country and abroad have learned a great deal about effective strategies for managing nuclear material. My Administration is committed to using this advanced knowledge to meet the Government's obligation to dispose of our Nation's used nuclear material."

"Twenty concrete vaults sit side-by-side, like self-storage containers, next to the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant. These concrete tombs hold fuel cells, each containing 12-foot rods of enriched uranium. The rods are toxic and radioactive and were never intended to be stored here indefinitely, among Ocean County's 560,000 residents. Nationwide, about 70,000 tons of fuel rods wait for long-term storage - the very long term. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that spent fuel stored at New Jersey's four nuclear power plants will remain dangerous to humans for at least 10,000 years and harmful to the environment for 1 million years more. The industry generates about 2,200 tons more of the waste each year, and many companies have plans to expand nuclear power in the United States - PSEG wants to build a new plant in Salem County's Lower Alloways Creek Township."

Speculation about storing nuclear waste in the province is premature, said New Brunswick Energy Minister Jack Keir, even as a growing number of experts say the province has geology that may be suited to the task. '[The province] might be suitable and it might be possible to develop a repository'- Tom Al, UNB geologist The Nuclear Waste Management Organization was in New Brunswick this week meeting with people in various communities about its plan to build an underground storage site somewhere in Canada for spent nuclear fuel. The organization, which was formed in 2002 to be responsible for the long-term management of Canada's used nuclear fuel, seemed to catch the provincial government off guard on Thursday when a company official said that any of the four Canadian provinces involved in the nuclear industry - New Brunswick, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan - could be home to this proposed storage facility.

* Exelon Corp to buy Russian uranium directly in 2014-2020 * 4th such deal since "wall" to U.S. market broken last week * Rosatom subsidiary plans $3 bln bond to fund expansion By Simon Shuster MOSCOW, June 3 (Reuters) - Russia's state nuclear firm Rosatom sealed a uranium supply deal with U.S. utility Exelon Corp (EXC.N) on Wednesday and voiced plans to issue a 100 billion rouble bond as it intensifies its global expansion. Last week, the company said it had "broken down the wall" into the U.S. uranium market by striking three landmark deals to supply nuclear fuel worth more than $1 billion to U.S. power firms PG&E (PCG.N), Ameren Corp (AEE.N) and Luminant.

Rodney C. Ewing1 and Frank N. von Hippel2 The recent action to shelve Yucca Mountain as the potential geologic repository for U.S. "spent" (i.e., no longer usable) nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level nuclear waste (HLW) (1) brings to a close a 30-year effort to develop and implement a policy for nuclear wastes in the United States. Selection by Congress in 1987 of Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the only site to be investigated condemned the United States to pursue a policy that had no backup if Yucca Mountain failed politically or technically. 1 Department of Geological Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1005, USA. 2 Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08542-4601, USA. E-mail: rodewing@umich.edu E-mail: fvhippel@princeton.edu

Rodney C. Ewing1 and Frank N. von Hippel2 The recent action to shelve Yucca Mountain as the potential geologic repository for U.S. "spent" (i.e., no longer usable) nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level nuclear waste (HLW) (1) brings to a close a 30-year effort to develop and implement a policy for nuclear wastes in the United States. Selection by Congress in 1987 of Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the only site to be investigated condemned the United States to pursue a policy that had no backup if Yucca Mountain failed politically or technically. 1 Department of Geological Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1005, USA. 2 Program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08542-4601, USA. E-mail: rodewing@umich.edu E-mail: fvhippel@princeton.edu

"For 11 years, the federal government has been burying nuclear waste in New Mexican salt beds at a place called WIPP, or the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. It's waste from making atomic weapons. But now the government is looking for a place to put thousands of tons of spent fuel from reactors. These salt beds could be the place. New Mexicans, however, are faced with the prospect of becoming the nation's default nuclear waste dump. The former mayor of Carlsbad, N.M., is solidly on the "yes, bring it on" side. Say the word "salt," and he grins. "The biggest asset we have are those salt beds out here east of town," says Bob Forrest, as he sips iced tea in the restaurant of the Stevens Hotel. "They've been out there 250 million years, and they've just proven perfect to put this kind of waste to store it permanently, and that's the key to our success." The U.S. Department of Energy spends $235 million to run WIPP, and a lot of that comes to Carlsbad. That means jobs -- about 1,400 of them -- from mining engineers to safety officers. "

WASHINGTON -- State legislators are adding their voices to those who have grown impatient at slow progress in establishing nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain. The National Conference of State Legislatures is expected today to recommend the government identify one or two sites where used nuclear fuel can be stored temporarily until the proposed repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas is built and until fuel recycling can be made available.

The government affairs arm of the nuclear industry today called for President Barack Obama to convene a blue ribbon nuclear waste commission, a move that could be a first step toward forming alternatives to burying radioactive power plant fuel at Yucca Mountain. With the future uncertain for the Nevada project, the Nuclear Energy Institute is endorsing a fresh look at nuclear fuel management, an NEI official told an audience of state utility regulators. Under the proposal, the Department of Energy would be allowed to continue pursuing a license to build the Yucca repository while the study was being conducted over a 12- to 24-month period.

Standing on the end of Bailey Point, looking out on a cold, blue inlet of the Atlantic, you'd never know a nuclear power plant once stood here. The massive concrete containment dome, the spent fuel storage pool, and the six-story-high turbine hall were all torn down earlier this decade, leaving a rain-soaked meadow of grass. The engineers and technicians who tended the 900-megawatt reactor packed up and left town a decade ago, when the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Station stopped producing power. All that's left is radioactive waste: the remains of the plant's reactor vessel lining and the 1,435 spent fuel assemblies that passed through it over a quarter century of operations.

An armed cargo ship carrying recycled nuclear fuel from France reached Japan on Monday. Environmental group Greenpeace says the ship's load of plutonium would be enough to make 225 nuclear weapons. A small group of local residents and anti-nuclear activists protested at the ship's arrival. "Using the mixed oxide, MOX fuel at the nuclear plant here is suicidal," said local activist Yoshika Shiratori in Omoaezaki fishing port on Japan's Pacific coast. "Once a big earthquake hits, there is no doubt this entire bay, the Pacific Ocean and all the seas around Japan would become contaminated," he told the AFP news agency.

Tochmash, Russia's defense enterprise from the city of Vladimir, conducted successful tests of a special ampoule that was designed to store spent nuclear fuel of Russian nuclear power plants. The ampoule guarantees that the storage of toxic fuel will be ecologically secure. Russia develops special tube to store nuclear wastes Russia develops special tube to store nuclear wastes BREAKING NEWS Latin America creates new currency Train carrying deadly virus arrives in Moscow Relations between Russia and USA get into Cold War spirit again Pilot lands plane on school playground More... Engineers of the enterprise were working on Ampoule PT for eight years. "It is made of stainless steel, is not heavy at all and is equipped with a unique spring lock that does not let the lid open even under the impact of heavy pressure," a spokesperson for the enterprise said. The ampoule looks like a cylinder with a lid. The cylinder will not let fuel particles penetrate into the environment for over 50 years.

The first container carrying spent nuclear fuel rods has left the Chapelcross plant in southern Scotland. Over the next three years it is expected about 300 similar journeys will be undertaken to remove 38,000 spent rods in total. It is part of the £800m decommissioning process at the Annan plant which ceased energy production five years ago.

"President Obama has called for a world without nuclear weapons. As he prepares to whittle down America's arsenal, however, a crucial question remains: what to do with the bomb material? Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has decommissioned thousands of warheads-the explosive cores of which are in storage, pending a way to dispose of their plutonium. Leaving it intact is a potential security risk. But most of the alternatives (including launching it into the sun) have their own risks. While non-weapons-grade plutonium is used to fuel nuclear plants in Europe, it has never been processed out of a warhead and into a form for commercial reactors. That could change. The Department of Energy is building a South Carolina-based plant that can convert America's plutonium stockpile into fuel. And late last month, the Tennessee Valley Authority agreed to evaluate it for use in its reactors near Chattanooga and Athens, Ala. If the TVA ultimately accepts the fuel, which energy analysts expect it to, the final home of much of the U.S. arsenal could be the heart of Dixie-and lightbulbs throughout the nation."

"On an island in the Baltic Sea, Finland is building what it calls a permanent underground repository for spent nuclear fuel-but that depends on your definition of permanent. IEEE Spectrum writer Sandra Upson takes a trip to Olkiluoto Island to report on the construction of the Onkalo facility, bringing a science-literate but smartly skeptical view to her topic: Posiva, the Finnish company building an underground repository here, says it knows how to imprison nuclear waste for 100,000 years. These multimillennial thinkers are confident that copper canisters of Scandinavian design, tucked into that bedrock, will isolate the waste in an underground cavern impervious to whatever the future brings: sinking permafrost, rising water, earthquakes, copper-eating microbes, or oblivious land developers in the year 25,000. If the Finnish government agrees-a decision is expected by 2012-this site will become the world's first deep, permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel."