Washington doesn't have the geology to store high-level nuclear wastes. Too much groundwater; too much risk of radioactivity spreading into aquifers and the Columbia River.
Such was the verdict of the scientists and policymakers who rejected Hanford as a nuclear waste dump more than 20 years ago. But President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are fast reversing that verdict.
Their goal is to kill a planned permanent nuclear waste repository in Nevada, not create one in Washington. But it's the same difference.
Hanford , the nuclear reservation in Eastern Washington, is already saddled with thousands of tons of intensely radioactive reactor-core byproducts. All of it was supposed to be buried in bone-dry caves under Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Terminate the Yucca Mountain project, and you eliminate what was supposed to be the destination of Washington's reactor wastes as well as wastes from more than 100 other reactor complexes across the United States.
If all goes according to plan, Florida Power & Light later this year will begin building a storage facility for nuclear waste more than two stories above ground at the Turkey Point nuclear power plant. Under the plan, the company would house in dry storage 16 cubic feet of radioactive waste-the equivalent of some 2 million pounds accumulated since the first reactor fired up in 1972.
Plans for the dry cask storage facility have sparked controversy because the project has not been aired at public hearings. Instead, the project was moved along quickly and quietly, with the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) granting certification on May 18, roughly six weeks after receiving FPL's application and without an opportunity for public input. Without fanfare, the approval slipped the notice of interested parties such as the Sierra Club, the Tropical Audubon Society and Clean Water Action. Miami-Dade County officials and environmentalists maintain the utility company and the regulatory agency did an end run to avoid public scrutiny.
It is among the most toxic substances on earth: 28,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste left over from the building of the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal.
And as the administration and the leader of the Senate move to close down a proposed repository for it in Nevada, the Idaho National Laboratory, along with the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, could become the de facto dump sites for years.
After spending $10 billion to $12 billion studying a dump site at Yucca Mountain outside of Las Vegas, President Barack Obama is fulfilling a campaign promise by killing it. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada also stands to benefit as he faces a difficult re-election fight next year.
It is among the nastiest substances on earth: more than 14,000 tons of highly radioactive waste left over from the building of the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal.
As the Obama administration and Senate leaders move to scuttle a proposed repository for the waste in Nevada, the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state - along with federal facilities in Idaho and South Carolina - could become the de facto dump sites for years to come.
After spending $10 billion to $12 billion over the past 25 years studying a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, President Barack Obama is fulfilling a campaign promise to kill it as a site for the repository. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada also stands to benefit, as polls show he could be in a tough fight for re-election next year, and Nevada residents adamantly oppose a the waste site.
A panel of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has recognized councils of the Shoshone and Paiutes as having standing for the purpose of being a party to the Yucca Mountain case.
The NRC's Atomic Safety Licensing Board Panel Construction Authorization Board found that Native Americans will be directly affected by the proposed waste dump for high level wastes and are therefore entitled to be parties to the case.
The tribes have been opposed to the dump on grounds that it would be built on Native American lands. The Board found this a "viable" claim that the tribes can argue in the case.
A West German provincial leader placed a nuclear waste dump near the border with communist East Germany out of revenge for the East Germans doing the same on their side of the border. So claims a retired geology professor involved in the 1970s search for a salt deposit to be made a nuclear dump.
Gerd Lüttig told the ddp news agency that's how Gorleben came to be chosen in 1977 by the Conservative premier of Lower Saxony state, Ernst Albrecht. Out of 100 salt deposits investigated, all of them in northern Germany, Gorleben was in the final shortlist of eight.
Lüttig says Albrecht wanted a location near the border because the East Germans "got us into hot water with their final repository at Morsleben".
Gorleben and Morsleben are about 95 kilometres apart as the crow flies, by road Morsleben is 120 kms south of Gorleben. Both villages were close to the border that separated the two Germanies at time when the communist regime still killed people trying to escape across what was regarded as the world's deadliest border.
Despite Gov. Jim Gibbons' objections, the Board of Examiners voted Tuesday to give a Washington law firm another $10 million to continue the legal fight against a high-level nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain.
The governor pointed out that Egan Fitzpatrick & Malsch already had received $27 million to fight Yucca Mountain, which, according to news accounts, is dead.
"Why should we give them $10 million for a dead project?" Gibbons asked.
But the other board members, Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Secretary of State Ross Miller, disagreed. They argued that the legal fight must continue until the U.S. Department of Energy drops its effort to secure Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing for Yucca Mountain.
The $34.3-billion energy measure would also allow water transfers to help California farmers suffering from severe drought conditions. Similar legislation has been approved by the House.
Associated Press
July 30, 2009
Washington -- The Senate on Wednesday passed a $34.3-billion energy spending bill that backs up President Obama's promise to close the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada.
The bill, passed by a 85-9 vote, also covers water transfers to help farmers in California and hundreds of water projects by the Army Corps of Engineers.
* Schwarzenegger proclaims that California is in a drought
Schwarzenegger proclaims that California...
The House passed a similar bill two weeks ago. Once the measures are reconciled, the bill will go to the president for his signature.
The $34.3-billion energy measure would also allow water transfers to help California farmers suffering from severe drought conditions. Similar legislation has been approved by the House.
Associated Press
July 30, 2009
Washington -- The Senate on Wednesday passed a $34.3-billion energy spending bill that backs up President Obama's promise to close the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada.
The bill, passed by a 85-9 vote, also covers water transfers to help farmers in California and hundreds of water projects by the Army Corps of Engineers.
The House passed a similar bill two weeks ago. Once the measures are reconciled, the bill will go to the president for his signature.
Yucca Mountain was supposed to be the answer to the U.S.'s nuclear waste problem, but after 22 years and $9 billion, that vision is dead. Now, some say that doing nothing in the near term may be the smartest solution
Nearly 300 of the world's top experts from 21 countries in dealing with subterranean nuclear waste issues are meeting this week at the Three Rivers Convention Center in Kennewick.
They are sharing science and trying to better understand how to deal with the legacy of radioactive materials.
The Migration '09 conference has booked the convention center all week. That means the Kennewick Public Facilities District Board of Directors must hold its monthly meeting Thursday across the parking lot at the Toyota Center.
"This is the most important conference (in the world) relating to the science behind the solutions," said Thomas Fanghanel, a researcher from Germany who is chairman of the conference.
LAST week Germany's nuclear waste storage site, which has so far cost nearly $2 billion, was pronounced 'dead' by the Environment Minister, and he was backed by the Federal Office for Radiation Protection.
German newspapers had been reporting that the conservative government of the 1970s, led by Chancellor Kohl, had altered a scientists' report that came to the conclusion that the location in Lower Saxony was not suitable for long-term storage of nuclear waste, so that Gorleben could indeed be chosen.
Notice of Extension of Public Comment Period for the Revised Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Decommissioning and/or Long- Term Stewardship at the West Valley Demonstration Project and Western New York Nuclear Service Center, DOE/EIS-0226D (Revised) AGENCY: Department of Energy. ACTION: Notice of extension of public comment period.
SUMMARY: This notice announces an extension of the public comment period initially published in the December 5, 2008 Notice of Availability (73 FR 74160) for the Revised Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Decommissioning and/or Long-Term Stewardship at the West Valley Demonstration Project and Western New York Nuclear Service Center [DOE/EIS-0226-D (Revised)] (referred to as the ``Draft Decommissioning and/or Long-Term Stewardship EIS'' or ``Draft EIS.''). The comment period will now close on September 8, 2009.
U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday debated amendments for a bill that would establish a national commission to study options for disposal of radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants.
With the Obama administration essentially shelving the long delayed nuclear waste dump site at Yucca Mountain, the bill would set up an 11 member federal advisory panel that would conduct a two-year analysis and recommend alternatives to Congress for managing nuclear waste.
Earlier this year, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said he planned to create a blue ribbon panel to come up with a comprehensive plan to handle nuclear waste.
The Native Community Action Council (NCAC) is prepared to provide oral arguments to support a Petition to Intervene and Contentions before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on the Department of Energy (DOE) License Application to construct a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, NV. The NCAC filed one of twelve petitions along with contentions in response of the NRC's Notice of Hearing October 22, 2008. The twelve parties presented 319 contentions, to which the DOE has responded are all invalid. Licensing hearings begin March 31, 2009 in Las Vegas, NV on the Petitions to Intervene.
According to Margene Bullcreek, President of the NCAC, "We are a vulnerable population and need representation of our contentions in licensing." Ms. Bullcreek added, "We fought against the monitored retrievable storage site for nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Indian Reservation to protect the land and people…and, we are doing the same here."
One thousand years from now, there may not be a state of New York, a United States of America or anyone who could even read all the paperwork dealing with the Western New York Nuclear Services Center in West Valley.
What probably will be here is Lake Erie, a number of rivers that feed into it, people who depend on water from that lake and those rivers and, unless federal officials decide to do the right thing now, a large collection of highly toxic nuclear waste buried in-or leaking from-a 1,030-year-old dump site south of Buffalo.
The Castor Transport protests that took place in November 2008 were not only about the transport of nuclear waste to the Gorleben temporary disposal site - they were also meant to highlight the still unsolved problem regarding the final disposal of Germany's, and the world's, nuclear wastes. In Gorleben itself there are several nuclear facilities: a temporary disposal site for low- and medium-level radioactive waste, a temporary disposal site for high level radioactive waste, an experimental conditioning facility, and a salt mine currently referred to as a "research" final disposal site for radioactive waste - however this site is almost certainly going to become one of the German government's official final disposal sites.
The renaissance of the nuclear power industry appears to be in a holding pattern. The two big problems: Lack of funding for the expensive construction of the reactors, and public skepticism about nuclear waste.
EE News attended a two-day nuclear energy conference last week and reported that Ute Blohm-Hieber, head of nuclear energy and waste management at the European Commission, agreed that waste is the "Achilles' heel of the nuclear industry." What's interesting is that the news org didn't have any word from the conference of workable solutions to the problem.
The Obama administration's decision to drop a plan to store nuclear power plant waste in an underground repository in Nevada has renewed consideration of alternative ways to dispose of the highly radioactive material, the Salt Lake Tribune reported yesterday (see GSN, March 13).
Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced this month that the administration would create a blue-ribbon commission to offer waste storage solutions besides the two-decade-old plan to put it in Yucca Mountain (see GSN, March 12).
Alternative plans include reprocessing the waste to remove its plutonium, which could then be used again in nuclear power reactors. Environmental and nonproliferation activists have historically opposed reprocessing, arguing that it creates new, more dangerous waste and produces weapon-usable materials. U.S. Senator Robert Bennett (R-Utah), however, told the Tribune that he believes reprocessing can be conducted safely.
"The Pacific Sandpiper, a specially built cargo ship with safety features far in excess of those found on conventional vessels, left Britain's Barrow port bound for Japan the other day.
The security surrounding its departure on Jan. 21 indicates that something out of the ordinary is aboard. The Pacific Sandpiper and several sister ships make no port calls on their voyages between Europe and Japan because they carry potentially lethal nuclear material.
In the Pacific Sandpiper's hold on this journey to Japan via the Panama Canal is only one item of cargo - a giant cylinder weighing more than 100 tons."
"The politically-independent Nuclear Waste Council is not convinced of the safety of a planned storage scheme for Sweden's nuclear waste. TT reports that the committee questions the durability of the copper capsules set to hold the waste and the quality of the bentonite mud that is to surround the containers.
The debate about what to do with Sweden's nuclear waste has especially divided residents of Östhammar, the place where the waste would be stored under the scheme. The leftover nuclear products would be kept in copper barrels surrounded by a layer of protective bentonite mud, all of it buried 500 meters inside a rock mountain. SKB, the Swedish company with plans to build the storage center, has told the Council that the waste would be safely stowed for 100,000 years."
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