The federal government did an analysis of the damage to determine if capping and sealing off the waste would stop more of it from getting out, and also, if more waste could be imported to the site to be buried along with the original waste. The analysis also shows that the U.S. energy department's plan to import low-level and midlevel radioactive waste from other sites to Hanford after 2022 poses "completely unacceptable" risks, [assistant director of the Oregon Department of Energy Ken] Niles said. Washington is also raising concerns about importing more waste. […] Health risks from Hanford's contamination are long-term, not immediate. They're expressed in terms of cancer cases after a lifetime of drinking well water from the site, with a one in 10,000 risk considered high. But many of the contaminant levels at the site exceed health benchmarks by wide margins.

There wasn't much of a Yucca Mountain-type plan here, as the Oregonian states, “Some of the waste was dumped directly into ditches, some was buried in drums and some was stored in 177 huge underground tanks, including 149 leak-prone single-walled tanks.”

Some radioactive contaminants at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation will threaten the Columbia River for thousands of years, a new analysis projects, despite the multibillion-dollar cleanup efforts by the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Energy projections come from a new analysis of how best to clean up leaking storage tanks and manage waste at Hanford, a former nuclear weapons production site on 586 square miles next to the Columbia in southeastern Washington.

Oregon officials say the results, including contamination projections for the next 10,000 years, indicate the federal government needs to clean up more of the waste that has already leaked and spilled at Hanford instead of capping and leaving it, a less-expensive alternative.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) has issued a revised total cost estimate for the planned national used nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.    Yucca Mountain (Image: DOE) The latest estimate puts the cost of research, construction and operation of the geologic repository over a 150 year period - from when work started in 1983 through to the facility's expected closure and decommissioning in 2133 - at $96.2 billion (in 2007 dollars). This is a 67% increase on the previous published estimate in 2001 of $57.5 billion. Excluding inflation, the new estimate increased 38% to $79.3 billion.   The new estimated cost of $96.2 billion includes some $13.5 billion that has already spent on the project; $54.8 billion for the construction, operation and decommissioning of the repository; $19.5 billion for transportation of the used fuel; and, $8.4 billion for other program activities.  

The Department of Energy (DOE) has been trying to close the Yucca mountain storage site, but South Carolina and Washington, both facing the challenges of storing growing numbers of spent nuclear fuel rods, have tried almost everything to maintain access to the dump.

On Friday, the US Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. threw out their case, ruling that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is the ultimate the authority on deciding the fate of the storage facility.

Like a recent Supreme Court decision about the role of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in implementing greenhouse gas emissions policies, the Friday ruling reaffirmed the role of federal regulators--in this case the NRC--to call the shots on energy policy. But, similar to the EPA case, the judicial ruling added that states do have the right to take federal agencies to court when they believe regulators there have failed to do their job. "We will not permit an agency to insulate itself from judicial review by refusing to act," the court said in its ruling.

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy was sued Friday by state utility regulators who challenge whether consumers should continue paying into a $30 billion government nuclear waste fund if a Yucca Mountain repository is no longer in the plans.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, or NARUC, asked judges to suspend collection of the fees until a new review of whether the money still is needed.

President Barack Obama has moved to terminate the behind-schedule Yucca Mountain storage project in Nevada, and has formed a blue ribbon panel to study alternatives and report within two years.

A Department of Energy fee that costs nuclear power utilities some $750 million a year should be suspended because a nuclear-waste program the fee is designed to pay for does not exist, opponents said in a new court filing.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the Nuclear Energy Institute, a policy organization for the industry, urged a Washington DC appeals court to order the DOE to stop collecting the fee for the federally mandated Nuclear Waste Fund which grows by about $1 billion a year and is expected to total $28.3 billion by the end of fiscal 2012.

The fund was intended to pay for the development and maintenance of a planned repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a long-delayed program that was effectively killed when the Obama administration cut off funding and support for it.

The Yucca project, which would have transported more than 70,000 tons of high level nuclear waste for storage and eventual burial in the mountain 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, prompted more than 20 years of legal and political battles between the state and the Department of Energy. President Barack Obama canceled the effort after he took office.

Meanwhile, Clark County is preparing to release a hundred-page report on its experience with Yucca Mountain, according to county emergency manager Irene Navis. A 46-minute video segment of the report can been seen online at www.youtube.com/ watch?v=omMIEQl7p5U. Navis said county leaders wanted to memorialize studies of how the nuclear waste project would affect Southern Nevada, and the strategies they formed to inform the public about it. The road map, of sorts, is intended to guide local officials if the Yucca program or something like it resurfaces. "Because we don't know if we are going to have to address it again, we wanted to leave something behind for future program managers who may have to deal with oversight of a Yucca Mountain-like program in the future," Navis said.

by IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano

I greatly value the experience and expertise of the World Association of Nuclear Operators and I welcome your decision to devote this biennial general meeting to the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. Together, WANO and the IAEA will play a key role in ensuring that the right lessons are learned from the accident and that the necessary improvements in nuclear operating safety are actually put into practice everywhere.

We have been good partners since WANO was created in 1989. In the aftermath of Fukushima Daiichi, I believe our partnership must be deepened and intensified.

A committee of the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC) is considering extending the area around nuclear plants where the authorities should be prepared to offer shelter in case of emergency.Currently at about 10 kilometer around the plants, the safety area may be increased to 30 kilometer.Seven months after the beginning of the nuclear crisis, the committee is reviewing the consequences of the March 11 quake and tsunami, in an effort to learn valuable lessons. Japan faced strong criticism for the slow reaction it showed in dealing with the current nuclear crisis.

Another measure which the committee is now considering is to ask the local authorities to be ready to provide iodine tablets to the population on a 50-km radius from plants, to help prevent thyroid cancers from radiation.A draft document with final recommendations will be finalized next month. But it could take years until the guidelines are fully revised, according to an official of the NSC.Around 80,000 people were forced to leave their homes in a 20-km radius area from the Fukushima plant. Some more 30,000 people left from the recommended evacuation zone, between 20 and 30 kilometers around the plant.

Japan on Sunday said cesium that is generating significant radioactivity at a location in China prefecture had likely been released from the damaged Fukushima atomic facility, the Japan Times reported (see GSN, Oct. 21). The six-reactor power plant was damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 20,000 people missing or dead in Japan. Radiation releases on a level not seen since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster forced the evacuation of about 80,000 residents from a 12-mile ring exclusion zone surrounding the site in Fukushima prefecture. A Sunday inspection by Japanese Science Ministry and Kashiwa city authorities located an area to which rainwater had likely been carrying contaminants from the plant. The city had previously played down the likelihood that the radioactive material had originated from the nuclear facility (Japan Times, Oct. 24). Fukushima prefecture on Thursday said two boys between 4 and 7 years old had received the highest levels of internal radiation contamination out of roughly 4,500 locals tested, Kyodo News reported. The contamination would amount to roughly three millisieverts of radiation over their lives and would not produce dangerous effects, officials said (Kyodo News/Mainichi Daily News, Oct. 21). The Japanese Forestry Agency indicated that as soon as November it would begin to test pollen from cedar flowers located in the evacuation zone for cesium contamination, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Monday (Yomiuri Shimbun, Oct. 24). The government's Science Ministry and Fisheries Agency are set to ramp up and broaden testing for radioactive materials in ocean water and marine produce, the Asahi Shimbun reported on Saturday (Asahi Shimbun, Oct. 22).

IN a first for the UK, the two Magnox reactors at the decommissioned Berkeley nuclear power plant have been placed in "safestore". It means they will remain sealed and in a passive state until the site on the banks of the Severn estuary is finally cleared in about 65 years' time.

Berkeley was the first UK nuclear power plant to produce electricity and its two natural uranium-fuelled reactors came into service in 1962.

It was also the first to be decommissioned 20 years ago. Placing the two reactors in safestore is a first for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority which now owns the site and the UK nuclear industry. NDA head of programme Sara Johnston said: "This is a hugely significant achievement, not just for the site but for the UK nuclear industry as a whole, demonstrating the progress being made in decommissioning.

The tiny Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians Reservation in Utah is targeted for a very big nuclear waste dump. Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a limited liability corporation representing eight powerful nuclear utilities, wants to "temporarily" store 40,000 tons of commercial high-level radioactive waste (about 80% of the commercial irradiated nuclear fuel in the U.S. as of the end of 2004) next to the two-dozen tribal members who live on the small reservation. The PFS proposal is the latest in a long tradition of targeting Native American communities for such dumps. But there is another tradition on the targeted reservations as well–fighting back against blatant environmental racism, and winning.

NIRS, joining with allies such as Indigenous Environmental Network and Honor the Earth, has been privileged and honored to assist tribal members opposing dumps targeted at their communities for well over a decade. Of 60 Indian communities directly targeted by the nuclear power establishment, 59 have fended off the threat. But the Skull Valley proposal has advanced further than any other before, and could be granted an operating license by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission sometime in early 2005. NIRS and Skull Valley Goshute tribal opponents to this environmental racism – and threat of irradiated fuel trains by the hundreds rolling through dozens of U.S. states as early as 2007 – need YOUR help today!

Babcock has been awarded a framework contract for the management of intermediate-level waste (ILW) at all of the UK's Magnox plant sites.

It and five other companies will bid for portions of a £300 million ($480 million) work program.

to retrieve and process the various waste streams for storage in self-shielding waste containers for final disposal

The tiny Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians Reservation in Utah is targeted for a very big nuclear waste dump. Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a limited liability corporation representing eight powerful nuclear utilities, wants to "temporarily" store 40,000 tons of commercial high-level radioactive waste (nearly the total amount that presently exists in the U.S.) next to the two-dozen tribal members who live on the small reservation.

At the same time, the nuclear power industry contributed large sums to Congressional and Presidential campaigns, and lobbied hard on Capitol Hill to establish a "temporary storage site" at the Nevada nuclear weapons test site, not far from the proposed federal permanent underground dump for high-level atomic waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Both these proposed "temporary" and permanent dump sites would be on Western Shoshone land, as affirmed by the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. Yucca Mountain is sacred to the Western Shoshone, and their National Council has long campaigned to prevent nuclear dumping there.

Having lost its bid to "temporarily" store its deadly wastes on Western Shoshone land near Yucca Mountain, nuclear utilities have re-focused their hopes for "interim" relief on Nevada’s neighbor, Utah. PFS must have done its homework: it would be hard to find a community more economically and politically vulnerable than the Skull Valley Goshutes to the Faustian bargain of getting "big bucks" in exchange for hosting the nation’s deadliest poisons.

It has been two years since Mohamed ElBaradei stepped down as head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, but the Nobel peace laureate still has nuclear technology very much on his mind.

But Mr. ElBaradei doesn't subscribe to the widely held view that Fukushima has killed off the nuclear industry for the foreseeable future. In fact, he argues countries exiting nuclear-power generation are the exception rather than the rule. "There will be, in the short term, a slowdown in some countries. But others like France, India or China [won't see] an impact on their [nuclear] programs," he says.

He also points to some nuclear newcomers, such as the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.

India has become a reprocessing hub for waste from around the world. But the regulation is lax, leading to concerns radioactive material may be in the products exported back to the world.

a scrap metal dealer had been admitted to the hospital and was showing symptoms of radiation exposure.

Deepak Jain, a 27-year-old had been rushed to the hospital after a high fever hadn't subsided for seven days and the skin on his hand started peeling off.

"Despite Yucca Mountain being the law and $14.5 billion in taxpayer dollars spent to develop it, the Obama administration has taken several steps, without the consent of Congress, to terminate all operations," Hastings said. "Unfortunately, some are following his lead and playing political football with this critical issue to Washington and other states with nuclear repositories."

"They have yet to provide a compelling alternative to Yucca Mountain," he said. "Rep. McMorris Rodgers believes it's time to get to work." In the Senate, Democrat Patty Murray of Washington has been one of the most vocal opponents of shutting down the Yucca site, referring to it recently as a "misguided path."

At the debate Tuesday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia was the only candidate who defended the Yucca dump, noting that scientists had studied waste-storage sites exhaustively and concluded that the Nevada site was the best option without major safety threats. "We have to find some method of finding a very geologically stable place, and most geologists believe that, in fact, Yucca Mountain is that," Gingrich said.

SROI stands for Sustainable Return on Investment (p.65). “SROI determines the full value of a project by assigning monetary values to all costs and benefits—economic, social and environmental” says HDR Inc, a design and engineering firm that invented and perfected SROI.

The organism under consideration in this case is Geobacter, a bacterial type that shows presence in the soil. This bacterium has appendages, or small mobile parts outside its cellular body, also known as nanowires.

But in Geobacter, these appendages act as organs for cleaning up nuclear waste and formulators of electricity.

To boost the process, researchers have also given birth to an advanced strain of the bacteria which would contain greater number of appendages, thus fastening the process of clearing up nuclear wastes.

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.