Group items tagged

"A year since US President Barack Obama effectively killed the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository - and his 2011 budget is expected to barely keep the lights on as the Energy Department clears out the offices - the administration and the energy department have so far failed to launch the blue-ribbon panel promised some nine months ago to study alternative nuclear waste proposals. Charles Digges, 19/01-2010 Meanwhile, 60,000 metric tons of US civilian and military waste continue to pile up, and high-level nuclear observers from the non-governmental sector are getting a little nervous. The build up of waste may also land the US government in hot water with the industry as Yucca Mountain has, for the past 20 years, been the Congressionally mandated end of the road for US spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. "

"Germany has been looking for a permanent storage site for its nuclear waste for over 30 years. The history of the Gorleben salt dome, a potential nuclear repository, is one full of deception and political maneuvering. And if opponents to the plans have their way, the search might even have to start again from scratch. The ride down into the Gorleben salt dome takes less than two minutes. When the elevator stops at 840 meters (2,755 feet) below ground, the folding gates open onto a scene that looks like it could be in a modern art museum. A sculpture made of old soft drink cans and other scrap metal welcomes visitors as they step out of the elevator. The artwork is meant to symbolize society's unresolved waste disposal problem."

"While President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget proposal is expected to sound a death knell for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, the administration has so far failed to launch the blue-ribbon commission it promised almost a year ago to decide on a waste-disposal alternative. Hanging in the balance is 60,000 metric tons of commercial and defense nuclear waste."

"A Blue Ribbon Commission was named Friday to recommend what the nation should do not only with its spent commercial nuclear fuel but also weapons waste, such as the glassified high level waste from Hanford's vitrification plant. The waste was expected to go to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository until President Obama said last year said the Nevada site was not suitable. The nation has spent $10 billion to $12 billion over the last 25 years to study the site. The commission will look at options for storing, processing and disposing of the waste, which are expected to include reprocessing commercial nuclear fuel that now is used just once in U.S. reactors. "

"Washington state announced Monday it would intervene in the federal government's decision to withdraw its license application for a Nevada nuclear waste repository. The move marks the latest show of the state's angst over the Obama administration's decision to abandon the Yucca Mountain project as an option for permanently storing high-level radioactive waste. Waste and spent nuclear fuel from south-central Washington's Tri-Cities, site of the highly contaminated Hanford nuclear reservation and the Northwest's only commercial nuclear plant, had long been intended to go to Yucca Mountain."

"The moment that Nevadans had awaited for decades arrived in a flash. There, popping up on computer screens in offices in Washington and Carson City, was the news that a slim, 15-page legal document had been filed, taking the biggest step yet - one in a series of giant leaps this year - in dashing long-running government plans for a nuclear waste dump in the desert 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. "The United States Department of Energy hereby moves ... to withdraw its pending license application for a permanent geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.," reads the opening line."

"More than 100 people have attended a public meeting in Tennant Creek about a proposed nuclear waste dump near the Northern Territory town. Muckaty Station, 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek, is the only site currently under consideration to be Australia's radioactive waste repository. Ngapa traditional owners signed an agreement with the previous federal government to nominate the site in exchange for about $12 million in compensation."

"With Nevada's Yucca Mountain facility apparently out of the picture as a nuclear waste repository, government nuclear experts say interim measures might be needed for a very long time. NRC In a speech Tuesday delivered to about 2,700 industry executives, nuclear regulators and other experts gathered for a nuclear energy conference in Washington, Gregory B. Jaczko, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that his agency needed to determine just how many centuries such fuel can be safely stored above ground, and that it should come up with a policy that would not require amendment for many years."

"After decades of research and debate, Nevada's Yucca Mountain will not become the country's long-term nuclear waste storage facility. By long-term, I mean for the next million years or so. Due to the high radioactivity of some of the waste, the Supreme Court has ruled that any nuclear repository must be certified geologically stable for one million years."

"With a Yucca Mountain waste storage plan all but dead and President Barack Obama pushing hard on nuclear energy, the question of what to do with nuclear waste is more radioactive than ever. Especially for Tennessee. Waste from TVA's Sequoyah, Watts Bar and Brown's Ferry nuclear plants continues to pile up at the facilities. Like all of the 104 operating nuclear reactors around the country, tons of the plants' highly radioactive waste was supposed to eventually be transported to the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nev., underground resting place to wait out its 50,000-year decay. The Volunteer State has an additional and little-known stake in the demise of Yucca Mountain, the ridge of volcanic rock that until a few months ago was the main focus of a controversial $10.4 billion search for a permanent nuclear waste repository."

"Germany's plan to develop a site to store its most dangerous radioactive waste may require 25 more years before a decision can be made, the environment minister said. An initial phase of the plan will look into safety issues at Gorleben, a proposed repository for high-level radioactive waste from power plants, as well as the necessary approvals required from state and regulatory bodies, Norbert Roettgen said today at a briefing in Berlin. Germany, like the U.S., has struggled to find how to dispose of cancer-causing wastes from its 17 nuclear power plants. The country has said it may extend operation of some of its newest nuclear plants that produce yet more radioactive material. "

"What To Do With Nuclear Waste President Barack Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future will have its first meeting this week. The commission, formed after Obama cancelled the Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel repository in January, is tasked with rebooting the country's five-decade-plus effort to manage its high-level radioactive waste. The problems the commission will consider are far from new. In 1957 the National Academy of Sciences warned that "[t]he hazard related to radioactive waste is so great that no element of doubt should be allowed to exist regarding safety." In that same year the academy recommended that the U.S. government establish deep geologic disposal as the best solution to the problem. In 1982, after embarrassing failures by the Atomic Energy Commission (the predecessor of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Energy Department) to select a waste site on its own, Congress enacted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which began the selection process for multiple sites throughout the United States. This process was scrapped five years later due to eastern states derailing the selection process. At that time Congress voted to make Yucca Mountain the only site to be considered. Yet Yucca's proposed opening date slipped by more than 20 years as the project encountered major technical hurdles and fierce local and state opposition."

"Agency Aims To Raise Limit On Allowable Carbon Tetrachloride Leaks CARLSBAD, N.M. -- The Department of Energy plans to ask the state of New Mexico to raise the limit it allows on the level of hazardous vapors leaking from waste drums at the federal government's nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad. The Energy Department plans to ask the New Mexico Environment Department by the end of the month for an increase on the limit carbon tetrachloride at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, known as WIPP."

"The Nuclear Review, Issue# 7 : Nuclear Constructions, Waste Management, More, March 29, 2010, by Arn Specter, Phila. 1.Managers Warned Against Bungling Los Alamos Lab Construction project 2.Costs Climb for Los Alamos Research Site 3.Project Estimates Go Up and Up, 4.Secretary Chu, NNSA Administrator and the Tennessee Congressional Delegation Join Local Officials in Dedicating Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility at Y-12 5.A recent uranium mining ruling could lead to NM nuke renaissance 6.Need for an Information Repository in the Española Valley as part of NMED Hazardous Waste Permit for LANL 7.Under the Nuclear Shadow 8.Los Alamos scientists write in Physics Today about enabling largest superfund cleanup to date, 9. Australian Prime Minister's Russia Meltdown, 10. IAEA Could Acquire Russian Uranium for Fuel Bank, 11. House Members Criticize Proposal to Halt work on Yucca Mountain"

"In its final days, and with no fanfare, the Bush Administration signed 21 contracts with nuclear power companies promising to store high level radioactive waste from plants that had not yet been built, even though no federal repository for such waste exists, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER). At least one of the contracts is dated January 22, 2009 -- two days after President Barack Obama had been sworn into office."

"President Obama's new Blue Rib­bon Commission on America's Nuclear Future has a mission that nobody else has been able to do: Find a long-term storage solution for America's growing mountain of radioactive nuclear waste. Earlier this month, Steven Chu, secretary of the US Department of Energy (DOE), filed papers to finally end the agency's nearly 30-year quest to make Nevada's Yucca Mountain the main US repository for spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste. That leaves the United States without a permanent storage site."

"While those of us in Nevada certainly sympathize with people in the Tri-Cities and in other areas (like South Carolina) over concerns about radioactive waste continuing to be stored at federal facilities in your neighborhoods, your March 14 editorial, "Joining forces against Yucca Mountain decision," is just plain wrong in asserting that there is no technical justification for U.S. Department of Energy's decision to terminate the Yucca Mountain repository project. Yucca Mountain is a terrible site for a high-level nuclear waste disposal facility. The technical and scientific problems are legion, ranging from a highly corrosive subsurface environment, rapid groundwater flows through the subsurface, a highly fractured and seivelike host rock, evidence of geologic recent volacnic activity, its location in a major eqrthquake area, and many other problems. Yucca was selected in 1987 for purely politial reasons in spite of know technical deficiencies. "

"The amount of plutonium in high-level waste converted to glass at Savannah River Site will nearly triple this year as a consequence of the U.S. Energy Department's decision to abandon its Yucca Mountain waste repository. The SRS-based Defense Waste Processing Facility uses a process called vitrification to convert liquid radioactive wastes into a solid glass form suitable for long-term storage and permanent disposal. Plutonium is among many dangerous materials in the 36 million gallons of waste left behind at SRS by decades of nuclear weapons production. In 2008, as the department prepared its application to license the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada -- where vitrified waste was to be buried -- SRS lowered plutonium levels in vitrified waste from 2,500 grams per cubic meter to 897 grams per cubic meter."

"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, reversing a decision not to act until the courts have, issued an order today that says it will rule on the DOE's motion to withdraw the Yucca Mountain repository license application. The order is at right."

"The Department of Energy and its regulators have agreed to new legally binding environmental cleanup deadlines for radioactive waste that has been temporarily buried at central Hanford since 1970. The proposed new package of deadlines would allow more time for some work but also add new deadlines DOE must meet. They include the first-ever deadlines for when some of the waste must be shipped to a national repository in New Mexico and a final cleanup deadline for some of the most difficult-to-handle solid waste, which Hanford now lacks the capabilities to prepare for disposal. "We've come up with a change package that satisfies the interest of DOE, Ecology and the public," said Deborah Singleton, project manager for the Washington State Department of Ecology. The state and the Environmental Protection Agency are Hanford regulators. "