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EnergySolutions Inc. is making a deal with a Sweden-based competitor, Studsvik, to dispose of solid nuclear waste in Utah. The Deseret News of Salt Lake City reported Tuesday that EnergySolutions signed a contract in December with Studsvik Inc. That's a U.S. subsidiary of Sweden's Studsvik Holding.

The plan is to use the company's THOR (Thermal volume/Weight Reduction Technology) to process nuclear power plant waste into solid form rather than a mix of powdery, radioactive resins.

Studsvik's patented technology features a pyrolysis / steam reforming system to volume and mass reduce organic waste streams to a non-reactive waste form for efficient Disposal or On-site Storage. Bead Resins, Powdered Filter Medias, Sludges, Activated Charcoal, Non-Metal Filter Cartridges, and Dry Active Wastes (DAW) all have been successfully processed. This entire process is referred to as Thermal Organic Reduction or THOR.

when the Ministry of the Environment decides on the base plan after it runs the plan with the so-called experts that the ministry relies on (i.e. rubber-stamp).when the Ministry of the Environment decides on the base plan after it runs the plan with the so-called experts that the ministry relies on (i.e. rubber-stamp). Great leap forward in recovery and reconstruction. From Yomiuri Shinbun

From Yomiuri Shinbun

On August 10, the Ministry of the Environment made public the base plan for the ashes from burning the debris and sludge that contain radioactive materials from the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant accident. The plan would technically allow all the ashes to be buried.

ScienceDaily (July 3, 2010) — after Fukushima, it is now imperative to redefine what makes a successful nuclear energy–from the cradle to the grave. If the management of nuclear waste is not considered by the authority, the public in many countries reject nuclear energy as an option, according to a survey appearing in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, published by SAGE.

According to Allison Macfarlane, Associate Professor of environmental science and policy at George Mason University and a member of the Blue Ribbon for nuclear future of America, resulting in storage for nuclear waste, which is still a last-minute decision to a number of countries outside of Japan. It is surprisingly common for reactor sites for overburdened with spent nuclear fuel without any clear plan. In South Korea, for example, saving to four nuclear power stations in the nation is filled, leading to a crisis within the storage potential of the next decade.

United Arab Emirates broke the ground for the first of four nuclear reactors on 14 March 2011, but has not set the precedence of storage. Hans Blix, former head of the International Atomic energy Agency and current President of the UAE’S International Advisory Council, noted: “it is still an open question of a draft final disposal and greater attention should be spent on deciding what to do.”

We are basically recreating Fukushima all over again -Arnie Gundersen, nuclear engineer Rubble from quake- and tsunami-hit areas to be disposed in Tokyo, Mainichi, September 29, 2011: [Emphasis Added] [...] Tokyo decided to process rubble from disaster-hit areas after detecting only 133 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram of ash generated after rubble was incinerated [...] [D]ue to radiation fears, little progress has been made in efforts to dispose of such waste. [...] The metropolitan government intends to transport approximately 500,000 metric tons of rubble to facilities in the capital and dispose of them over a 2 1/2-year period from this coming October to March 2014. [...] The waste will be separate into burnable and unburnable items. Burnable waste will be incinerated [...] Tokyo Metropolitan Government will regularly measure the amount of radiation in the incinerated ash [...]

See also: “We are basically recreating Fukushima all over again” — Clouds of radiation continue across to Pacific Northwest (VIDEO): At 7:30 in (Transcript Summary) Arnie Gundersen, chief nuclear engineer at Fairewinds Associates: US would be burying 8,000 Bq/kg radioactive waste underground for thousands of years Lots of serious ramifications from burning of nuclear waste Material from Fukushima that was on the ground is now going airborne again Towns now getting cesium redeposited on them by the burning of nuclear material Clouds of radiation recontaminating areas deemed clean or low Continues across to the Pacific Northwest We are basically recreating Fukushima all over again >> Have your voice be heard. Visit the discussion thread: What should be done about Japan burning radioactive debris until at least March 2014? <<

Three months after the start of full-scale water circulation system operations at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, high-level radioactive waste has kept piling up amid no clear indications of its final disposal destination. As of Sept. 27, plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) had accumulated about 4,700 drums of radioactive waste after three months of cesium decontamination operations initially using U.S. and French equipment which was later joined by Toshiba Corp.’s “Sally” system in August. Since the start of October, TEPCO has conducted the plant’s water circulation operations using the Sally system alone while relegating its U.S. and French counterparts built by Kurion Inc. and Areva SA, respectively, to backups. The Kurion and Sally systems are designed to purify decontaminated water through an absorption unit called a “vessel” that contains zeolites. The vessel is changed every few days and the used vessels become radioactive waste. End Extract

nergySolutions is once again asking for the State of Utah’s permission to accept another vagrant bunch of radioactive waste. It plans to blend, or dilute, Class B and Class C waste with less radioactive waste until it just meets the Class A waste levels its license allows at its Clive disposal site. Think of it as kind of a radioactive smoothie.

This blended waste is a unique waste stream: something unforeseen and unknown to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) when it developed its low-level waste regulations in 1981. While the commission is currently trying to develop coherent new guidance on this, its rules state that it is only OK to intentionally mix wastes “as long as the classification is not altered.” Utah does not have such a regulation.

At present there are no disposal sites that accept Classes B and C low level waste, but that will change in about a month when a Texas disposal site opens and starts accepting these materials, without any of the hazards incurred in actually putting these things in the blender. The public understands how corporations often use regulatory loopholes to their own benefit.

Work to dispose of debris from the quake-ravaged city of Miyako, Iwate Prefecture, began Thursday in Tokyo with about 30 tons arriving on a train at Tokyo Freight Terminal, the first load from Iwate to be accepted by a local government outside the Tohoku region.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government plans to accept a total of 11,000 tons of debris from Miyako by next March, as part of plans to dispose of a combined 500,000 tons of debris from both Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, the areas hit hardest by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, by fiscal 2013. At the terminal in Shinagawa Ward, debris containers were transshipped onto trucks to be carried to a crushing facility in Ota Ward, from where combustibles will be taken to an incinerator in Koto Ward.

Resulting ash and incombustibles are to be used as landfill in Tokyo Bay. In light of radiation fears among residents, the metropolitan government plans to monitor and release data weekly on radiation levels in the air at the edge of the crushing premises and once a month on crushed waste, ash and exhaust gas, it said. Its four crushing facilities, incinerator and landfill site are all located in an industrial zone facing Tokyo Bay.

With mounting evidence linking hundreds of small earthquakes from Oklahoma to Ohio to the energy industry's growing use of fracking technology, scientists say there is one way to minimize risks of even minor temblors. Only, it costs about $10 million a pop.

A thorough seismic survey to assess tracts of rock below where oil and gas drilling fluid is disposed of could help detect quake prone areas.

The more expensive method will be a hard sell as long as irrefutable proof of the link between fracking and earthquakes remains elusive. "If we knew what was in the earth we could perfectly mitigate the risk of earthquakes," said Austin Holland, seismologist at the Oklahoma Geological Survey. "That is something that we don't have enough science to establish yet." A 4.0 New Year's Eve quake in Ohio prompted officials to shut down five wells used to dispose of fluid used in the hydraulic fracturing process. That comes less than a year after Arkansas declared a moratorium due to a surge in earthquakes as companies developed the Fayetteville Shale reserve.

An electric car owner would have to drive at least 129,000km before producing a net saving in CO2. Many electric cars will not travel that far in their lifetime because they typically have a range of less than 145km on a single charge and are unsuitable for long trips. Even those driven 160,000km would save only about a tonne of CO2 over their lifetimes.

The British study, which is the first analysis of the full lifetime emissions of electric cars covering manufacturing, driving and disposal, undermines the case for tackling climate change by the rapid introduction of electric cars.

The Committee on Climate Change, the UK government watchdog, has called for the number of electric cars on Britain's roads to increase from a few hundred now to 1.7 million by 2020.

At least two dozen countries around the globe get energy from nuclear power, yet not one has been able to pull off a permanent disposal site. Finding communities willing to live with such dangerous stuff has been a big sticking point. But in Sweden, two communities have stepped up, and are willing to take the country's waste. Like many countries, Sweden has had its share of political meltdowns over nuclear power. Protests stirred an uproar in the early 1980s when the Swedish nuclear industry simply decided where to begin testing for a possible geologic disposal site.

But today, instead of deflecting protesters, the nuclear industry shuttles visitors by the busloads for guided tours of facilities. More than 1,100 feet below the surface, exotic machinery and copper tubes wide enough to fit two men fill an underground cavern carved from crystalline bedrock. In this working lab in eastern Sweden, a private nuclear waste company tests methods for permanently storing used fuel. It plans to encase the fuel rods in copper capsules, then bury them 1,500 feet down in bedrock where it is supposed to sit for the next 100,000 years.

how did nuclear waste in Sweden go from a toxic topic to a field trip? People in the area said the industry needed to start over with things like public participation, a transparent, predictable process and trust. The industry took these lessons to heart. "We know that we have to meet people and communicate what we want to do, why we want to do it and how we will find a place for it," says Inger Nordholm, a spokeswoman for the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company, or SKB.

A Texas judge has temporarily halted plans for Waste Control Specialists WCS to begin allowing radioactive waste to be disposed at their facility. State District Judge Jon Wisser sided with environmentalists as he signed a temporary restraining order yesterday against the Texas Low-level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission. The injunction was issued in the judge's courtroom late Thursday morning, shortly after environmentalists filed the request, with nobody there representing the commission. A few minutes later, shocked lawyers from the Texas Attorney General's Office - which hadn't been officially notified of the pending court action - showed up and persuaded the judge to order a new hearing on the injunction.

The Department of Energy and General Electric will spend $2 million over the next two years to remove naturally occurring radioactive materials from the fracking fluids produced by America’s booming shale-gas industry. The New York State Department of Health has identified Radium-226 as a radionuclide of particular concern in the Marcellus Shale formation deep beneath the Appalachian Mountains. In hydraulic fracturing operations, drillers force water and a mixture of chemicals into wells to shatter the shale and free natural gas. The brine that returns to the surface has been found to contain up to 16,000 picoCuries per liter of radium-226 (pdf). The discharge limit in effluent for Radium 226 is 60 pCi/L, and the EPA’s drinking water standard is 5 pCi/L.

Uranium and Radon-222 have also been found in water returning to the surface from deep shale wells. In Pennsylvania, produced water has been discharged into streams and rivers from the state’s 71,000 wells after conventional wastewater treatment but without radiation testing, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The New York Times, which drew attention to the radioactive contamination earlier this year after studying internal EPA documents: The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe for these treatment plants to handle. via The New York Times

GE’s Global Research lab in Niskayuna, NY has proposed removing radioactive elements from produced waters and brine using a membrane distillation system similar to conventional reverse osmosis, but designed specifically to capture these radioactive materials. GE will spend $400,000 on the project and DOE will supply $1.6 million. The Energy Department announced the project Monday. The process will produce concentrated radioactive waste, which will be disposed of through conventional means, which usually means storage in sealed containers for deep geological disposal. The government is seeking to address environmental concerns without stemming a boom in cheap gas unleashed by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in shale formations.

Extract KASHIWA, Chiba (majirox news) — A waste disposal plant at Kashiwa City in Chiba prefecture has been shut down for the foreseeable future after incinerator ash registered excessively high radiation levels, the Kashiwa Municipal Government said Sept. 30. Chiba Prefecture is located directly east of Tokyo, and bordered by Ibaraki prefecture to the north. Kashiwa became the first case in Japan where a waste disposal plant was shut down due to high radioactivity, with 78,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram detected in incinerator ash from the plant in June. End Extract http://www.majiroxnews.com/2011/10/01/chiba-city-halts-waste-plant-following-radiation-contamination/

Radioactive waste piles up at Fukushima nuclear plant as disposal method remains in limbo, Mainichi, October 3, 2011: [... A]t the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, high-level radioactive waste has kept piling up amid no clear indications of its final disposal destination. [...] 4,700 drums of radioactive waste after three months of cesium decontamination [...] TEPCO has been unable to fully grasp the details such as the types and the concentration of nuclear materials. Professor Akio Koyama at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute says, “The density of high-level decontaminated water is believed to be a maximum 10 billion becquerels per liter, but if it is condensed to polluted sludge and zeolites, its density sometimes increases by 10,000 times [100 trillion Bq/L]. The density cannot be dealt with through conventional systems.”

Dust and ashes containing cesium beyond the legal limit of 8,000 becquerels per kilogram has been found at six industrial waste incinerators in Iwate, Fukushima and Chiba prefectures, the Environment Ministry said Thursday.

Samples from 110 industrial waste disposal facilities in 16 prefectures from east to northeast Japan have revealed cesium readings ranging from 10,800 to 144,200 becquerels at four incinerators in Fukushima Prefecture, 23,000 becquerels at a facility in Iwate Prefecture and 11,500 becquerels at an incinerator in Chiba Prefecture, the ministry said. Similar tests in late August found that ashes from nonindustrial incinerators contained more than 8,000 becquerels of cesium per kilogram in Tokyo and six other prefectures. A worker exposed to 8,000 becquerels of cesium a day for some amount of time would still come in below the annual radiation limit of 1 millisievert. At the end of August, the ministry issued a guideline advising local authorities to solidify incinerated dust and ashes containing between 8,000 to 100,000 becquerels of cesium per kilogram with cement, wrap it in watertight sheeting and bury it in landfills. The ministry earlier decided to allow waste containing up to 8,000 becquerels per kilogram to be buried in waste disposal sites, provided that no residences are built at the sites in the future.

Related Story Content Story Sharing Tools Share with Add This Print this story E-mail this story Related Related Links Japan PM feared nuclear disaster worse than Chornobyl Special Report: Disaster in Japan Japan ignored own radiation forecasts FAQ: Radiation's health effects Timeline of events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex FAQ: Nuclear reactorsAccessibility Links Beginning of Story Content TOKYO –

 Related Story Content Story Sharing Tools Share with Add This Print this story E-mail this story Related Related Links Japan PM feared nuclear disaster worse than Chornobyl Special Report: Disaster in Japan Japan ignored own radiation forecasts FAQ: Radiation's health effects Timeline of events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex FAQ: Nuclear reactors Accessibility Links Beginning of Story Content TOKYO –  The scars of Japan’s March 11 disaster are both glaringly evident and deceptively hidden. Six months after a tsunami turned Japan’s northeast into a tangled mess of metal, concrete, wood and dirt, legions of workers have made steady progress hauling away a good portion of the more than 20 million tonnes of debris covering ravaged coastal areas. The Environment Ministry says it expects to have it all removed by next March, and completely disposed of by 2014. 'I think Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), as well as the Japanese government, made many mistakes.' —Shoji Sawada, theoretical particle physicist But a weightless byproduct of this country’s March 11 disaster is expected to linger for much longer.  The Japanese learned a lot about the risks posed by radiation after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Now, once again, they are facing this invisible killer. This time, the mistake is of their own making. "I’m afraid," says Shoji Sawada, a theoretical particle physicist who is opposed to the use of nuclear energy .  Sawada has been carefully monitoring the fallout from the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. “I think many people were exposed to radiation. I am afraid [they] will experience delayed effects, such as cancer and leukemia.” Evacuation zone Japan's government maintains a 20-kilometre evacuation zone around the Fukushima Daiichi plant, with no unauthorized entry allowed. The government has urged people within a 30-km radius of the plant to leave, but it's not mandatory. Some people say the evacuation zone should include Fukushima City, which is 63 km away from the plant. At the moment, the roughly 100,000 local children are kept indoors, schools have banned soccer and outdoor sports, pools were closed this summer, and building windows are generally kept closed. A handful of people argue the government should evacuate all of Fukushima prefecture, which has a population of about 2 million.  Sawada dedicated his career to studying the impact radiation has on human health, particularly among the survivors of Japan’s atomic bombings. His interest is both professional and personal. When he was 13 years old, his mother urged him to flee their burning home in Hiroshima. She died, trapped beneath rubble . “I think Tokyo Electric Power Company [TEPCO], as well as the Japanese government, made many mistakes,” he says. Those mistakes have been clearly documented since the earthquake and tsunami triggered meltdowns and explosions at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi, some 220 kilometres northeast of Tokyo. Warnings to build a higher tsunami wall were ignored; concerns about the safety of aging reactors covered up; and a toothless nuclear watchdog exposed as being more concerned with promoting atomic energy than protecting the public

The scars of Japan’s March 11 disaster are both glaringly evident and deceptively hidden. Six months after a tsunami turned Japan’s northeast into a tangled mess of metal, concrete, wood and dirt, legions of workers have made steady progress hauling away a good portion of the more than 20 million tonnes of debris covering ravaged coastal areas. The Environment Ministry says it expects to have it all removed by next March, and completely disposed of by 2014.

The UAE is weighing options for the long-term storage of nuclear waste from the country's proposed US$20 billion (Dh73.45bn) nuclear power plant.

One option under discussion is an underground cave to be shared with other nations from the region that could hold radioactive uranium and plutonium for thousands of years.

The UAE has not yet held formal talks with other Gulf nations on investing in a shared storage site, but there could be room for negotiation ahead as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait lay the groundwork for their own civil nuclear programmes.

Consultants Parsons Brinckerhoff and Gardiner & Theobald have won a four-year contract with the nuclear Decommissioning Agency to help develop plans for a long-term “geological” storage facility for nuclear waste.

The contract to provide technical support for the planned multi-billion pound facility has been awarded to the Orchid Group,

The Geological Disposal Facility will be designed to keep radioactive materials isolated from the environment for thousands of years at a UK location that has yet to be chosen. Engineers on the project will have to create, for the first time, a facility to last for millennia.

The government must establish long-term plans for a new generation of nuclear power plants so future generations are not left dealing with its legacy, experts urged on Thursday.Ministers must work with the industry to create a "holistic" strategy which deals effectively with reprocessing and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and does not treat it simply as "an afterthought", they warned.The new build programme must also take into account the UK's stockpile of civil plutonium - the largest in the world - created as a waste fuel from nuclear reactors but which can potentially be reprocessed into new nuclear fuel.

The warning comes as the government pushes ahead with a new generation of nuclear power stations in a bid to meet electricity demand and cut carbon emissions from the energy sector.In a report from the Royal Society, the group of experts said the handling of nuclear fuel throughout its working cycle must be considered to reduce security risks and the danger of proliferation of nuclear weapons.Research and development programmes are needed from the outset of the new build project to ensure fuel is managed properly, they added.Roger Cashmore, chairman of the Royal Society working group and head of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, said: "The last time any UK government articulated a coherent long-term plan for nuclear power was in 1955.

"We need to ensure that government and industry work together now to develop a long-term, holistic strategy for nuclear power in the UK."This must encompass the entire nuclear fuel cycle, from fresh fuel manufacture to disposal. Indeed, spent fuel can no longer be an afterthought and governments worldwide need to face up to this issue."He added: "While the government has made some positive moves towards an integrated approach to nuclear power, more must be done."The call comes after the energy secretary, Chris Huhne, signalled that a new generation of nuclear power plants would go ahead after a government-ordered review into the Fukushima disaster in Japan found no reason to curtail the use of reactors in the UK.