EDF's 1,650-megawatt Flamanville 3 nuclear reactor was already two years behind schedule and $2.4 billion over budget before Wednesday's announcement, in which the utility says it needs to carry out tougher safety inspections in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
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New French nuke plant beset by more delays [22Jul11] - 0 views
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Citing "structural and economic reasons" for the new delays, the state-owned company sent notice its flagship plant's costs will increase to $9 billion due to the new requirements while its opening has been pushed back to 2016.
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The latest cost overruns and delays are a blow to the French company and its hopes for the worldwide commercialization of a new type of nuclear reactor, known as a European Pressurized Reactor, manufactured by the French nuclear group Areva.
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Progress on its new EPR is being closely monitored because of its plans to build four identical ones in Britain, the New Civil Engineer trade magazine reported.
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The Flamanville EPR and another in Finland -- which is also facing delays and cost overruns -- were the targets of criticism
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Steve Kirsch: Ten Lessons From Fukushima [25Jul11] - 0 views
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The world is in serious trouble with carbon emissions.
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We now can update our statistics on public deaths due to nuclear power over the last 50 years by adding 0 deaths affecting the general public at large. As we expected, nuclear is still by far the safest way to generate power (fewest deaths per MwH generated).
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We learned it is a bad idea to put generators in the basement of a plant near a large body of water subject to tsunamis.
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We learned that 40 years ago, people didn't design reactors as safely as we do today.
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We've always known that having a reactor shutdown process that is dependent upon electricity is a bad idea.
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It shows that 40-year-old designs are not perfect, yet nuclear is still the safest form of power.
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We've learned, once again, that people are irrational. When 8 members of the public died in a natural gas explosion in a town near where I live (San Bruno), there was not a single editorial or protest calling for the end of natural gas.
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No member of the public died from nuclear radiation in the Japan quake. Unsafe buildings caused untold thousands of deaths in the same disaster.
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As far as I know, the death toll at Fukushima was 4 people.
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Smoking Gun - Jan Lundberg antinuclear activist & heir to petroleum wealth [18Jul11] - 0 views
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A ‘smoking gun’ article is one that reveals a direct connection between a fossil fuel or alternative energy system promoter and a strongly antinuclear attitude. One of my guiding theories about energy is that a great deal of the discussion about safety, cost, and waste disposal is really a cover for a normal business activity of competing for market share.
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This weekend, I came across a site called Culture Change that provides some strong support for my theory about the real source of strength for the antinuclear industry. According to the information at the bottom of the home page, Culture Change was founded by Sustainable Energy Institute (formerly Fossil Fuels Policy Action), a nonprofit organization.Jan Lundberg, who has led the organization and its predecessor organizations since 1988, grew up in a wealthy family with a father who was a popular and respected petroleum industry analyst.
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Lundberg tells an interesting story about his initial fundraising activities for his new non-profit group.Setting out to become a clearinghouse for energy data and policy, we had a tendency to go along with the buzzword “natural gas as a bridge fuel” — especially when my previous clients serving the petroleum industry until 1988 included natural gas utilities. They were and are represented by the American Gas Association, where I knew a few friendly executives. Upon starting a nonprofit group for the environment with an energy focus, I met with the AGA right away. I was anticipating one of their generous grants they were giving large environmental groups who were trumpeting the “natural gas is a bridge fuel” mantra.
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Before entering into the non-profit world, he entered into the family business of oil industry analysis and claims to have achieved a fair amount of financial success. As Lundberg tells the tale, he stopped “punching the corporate time clock” in 1988 to found Fossil Fuels Policy Action.I had just learned about peak oil. Upon my press conference announcing the formation of Fossil Fuels Policy Action, USA Today’s headline was “Lundberg Lines up with Nature.” My picture with the story looked like I was a corporate fascist, not an acid-tripping hippie. The USA Today story led to an invitation to review Beyond Oil: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades, for the quarterly Population and Environment journal. In learning for the first time about peak oil (although I had questioned long-term growth in petroleum supplies), I was awakened to the bigger picture as never before. Natural gas was no answer. And I already knew that the supply crisis to come — I had helped predict the 1970s oil shocks — was to be a liquid fuels crisis.
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As Oil Guru, Dan [Lundberg, my father] earned a regular Nightly Business Report commentary spot on the Public Broadcasting System television network in the early and mid-1980s. I helped edit or proof-read just about every one of those commentaries, and we delighted in the occasional opportunity to attack gasohol and ethanol for causing “agricultural strip mining” (as we did in the Lundberg Letter).
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I slept on it and decided that I would not participate in this corrupt conspiracy. Instead, I had fun writing one of Fossil Fuels Policy Action’s first newsletters about this “bridge” argument and the background story that the gas industry was really competing with fuel oil for heating. I brought up the AGA’s funding for enviros and said I was rejecting it. I was crazy, I admit, for I was starting a new career with almost no savings and no guarantees. So I was not surprised when my main contact at AGA called me up and snarled, “Jan, are you on acid?!
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Here is a quote from his July 10, 2011 post titled Nuclear Roulette: new book puts a nail in coffin of nukesCulture Change went beyond studying the problem soon after its founding in 1988: action and advocacy must get to the root of the crises to assure a livable future. Also, information overload and a diet of bad news kills much activism. So it’s hard to find reading material to strongly recommend. But the new book Nuclear Roulette: The Case Against the “Nuclear Renaissance” is must-have if one is fighting nukes today.
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He goes to say the following:The uneconomic nature of nuclear power, and the lack of energy gain compared to cheap oil, are two huge reasons for society to quit flirting with more nuclear power, never mind the catastrophic record and certainty of more to come. Somehow the evidence and true track record of dozens of accidents and perhaps 300,000 to nearly 1,000,000 deaths from just Chernobyl, are brushed aside by corporate media and most governments. So, imaginative means of helping to end nuclear proliferation are crucial, the most careful and reasonable-sounding ones being included in summary form in Nuclear Roulette.
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A little radiation can delay cancer until after you are dead anyway [16Jul11] - 0 views
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Jerry Cuttler, a tireless researcher on the topic of the health effects of low level radiation, sent me an article titled Toward Improved Ionizing Radiation Safety Standards from the July 2011 issue of Health Physics, a peer-reviewed journal about radiation safety. (Unfortunately, like many peer reviewed journals, Health Physics is not available for free online. It is possible to purchase individual articles or to gain access if you have a membership or access to a university or corporate library.)
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he article explains in clear, but scientific terms, how radiation at low average levels can result in increasing the latency period of cancer development past the end of a natural lifespan. We all have the potential for developing cancer, but we also have finite lives. Dr. Raabe’s research has led him to the conclusion that low average doses of radiation that might add up to a substantial cumulative dose do not kill off cancer cells, but they delay the ability of those cells to do any real damage until after their host organism is dead from other causes anyway.
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Clearly the development of a radiation-induced malignant tumor from either protracted ionizing radiation exposures or acute exposures is not the result of a single random interaction of the ionizing radiation with an isolated cell. Hence, the term stochastic as used by the ICRP (International Commission on Radiological Protection) is not appropriate. The following conclusions indicate that major revisions of the ICRP methodology and standards are needed, and other currently accepted ionizing radiation risk models should be improved to provide more meaningful and realistic estimates of ionizing radiation cancer risk: Cancer induction risk associated with protracted or fractionated ionizing radiation exposure is a non-linear function of lifetime average dose rate to the affected tissues and exhibits a virtual threshold at low lifetime average dose rates;
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Cumulative radiation dose is neither an accurate nor an appropriate measure of cancer induction risk for protracted or fractionated ionizing radiation exposure except for describing the virtual threshold for various exposures; and Cancer promotion risk for ongoing lifetime biological processes is a relative process as seen in the RERF (Radiation Effects Research Foundation) studies of the Japanese atomic bomb survivors for brief high dose-rate exposures to ionizing radiation. It cannot be used to estimate cancer induction risk from protracted or fractionated ionizing exposures over long times and at low dose rates.
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RecommendationsThe current ICRP radiation protection recommendations certainly provide a high level of safety and protection for radiation workers and the public. Radiation safety has been the most important goal of the ICRP, and their recommendations have met that goal with distinction. However, the ICRP risk estimates and response models for protracted or fractionated ionizing radiation exposures and long-lived internal emitters seriously overestimate the risks of low doses. Reasonably accurate cancer induction risk estimates are needed to avoid expensive over-regulation and to bolster the scientific foundation of radiation safety regulations and analysis. Many of the current environmental radiation safety standards are inappropriately low and prohibitively expensive to enforce.
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The current ICRP models of radiation carcinogenesis can be misleading. Revision of the radiation safety standards is needed that clearly distinguishes between radiation cancer promotion as observed in the atomic bomb survivor studies and radiation cancer induction as observed for long-lived internal emitters. In particular, the ICRP needs to revisit and revise the standards currently recommended for ionizing radiation-induced cancer. Recommended standards should be considered that are based on lifetime average dose rate to sensitive tissues in the case of internally-deposited, relatively long-lived radionuclides and other protracted or fractionated exposures rather than on cumulative or committed dose.
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There's also a video on the site called " Myth: Nuclear Energy is Dangerous
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Fast reactor advocates throw down gauntlet to MIT authors[24Jul11] - 0 views
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Near the end of 2010, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a summary of a report titled The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle as part of its MIT Energy Initiative. The complete report was released a few months ago. The conclusions published that report initiated a virtual firestorm of reaction among the members of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) Study group who strongly disagreed with the authors.
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the following quote from the “Study Context” provides a good summary of why the fast reactor advocates were so dismayed by the report.
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For decades, the discussion about future nuclear fuel cycles has been dominated by the expectation that a closed fuel cycle based on plutonium startup of fast reactors would eventually be deployed. However, this expectation is rooted in an out-of-date understanding about uranium scarcity. Our reexamination of fuel cycles suggests that there are many more viable fuel cycle options and that the optimum choice among them faces great uncertainty—some economic, such as the cost of advanced reactors, some technical such as implications for waste management, and some societal, such as the scale of nuclear power deployment and the management of nuclear proliferation risks. Greater clarity should emerge over the next few decades, assuming that the needed research is carried out for technological alternatives and that the global response to climate change risk mitigation comes together. A key message from our work is that we can and should preserve our options for fuel cycle choices by continuing with the open fuel cycle, implementing a system for managed LWR spent fuel storage, developing a geological repository, and researching technology alternatives appropriate to a range of nuclear energy futures.
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The group of fast reactor supporters includes some notable scientists and engineers whose list of professional accomplishments is at least as long as those of the people who produced the MIT report. In addition, it includes people like Charles Till and Yoon Chang who were intimately involved in the US’s multi-decade long fast reactor development and demonstration program that resulted in demonstrating a passively safe, sodium cooled reactor and an integral recycling system based on metallic fuel and pyroprocessing.
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That effort, known as the Integral Fast Reactor, was not just based on an out-dated concept of uranium availability, but also on the keen recognition that the public wants a clear solution to “the nuclear waste issue” that does not look like a decision to “kick the can down the road.”
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he Science Council for Global Initiatives produced a detailed critique of the MIT paper and published that on Barry Brook’s Brave New Climate blog at the end of May 2011. The discussion has a great deal of interest for technical specialists and is supporting evidence that belies the often asserted falsehood (by people who oppose nuclear technology) that the people interested in developing and deploying nuclear technology speak with a single, almost brainwashed voice.
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In recent days, however, the controversy has become more interesting because the IFR discussion group has decided to issue a public debate challenge and to allow people like me to write about that challenge in an attempt to produce some response.
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I think your team is dead wrong on your conclusion that we don’t need fast reactors/closed fuel cycle for decades.Your study fails to take into account the political landscape the competitive landscape the safety issue environmental issues with uranium miningIt is unacceptable to the public to not have a solution to the waste issue. Nuclear power has been around for over 50 years, and we STILL HAVE NO OPTION FOR THE WASTE today other than interim dry cask storage. There is no national repository. Without that, the laws in my state forbid construction of a new nuclear power plant.
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Other countries are pursuing fast reactors, we are not. Russia has 30 years of commercial operating history with fast reactors. The US has zero.We invented the best Gen IV technology according to the study done by the Gen IV International Forum. So what did we do with it? After spending $5B on the project, and after proving it met all expectations, we CANCELLED it (although the Senate voted to fund it).
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An average investment of $300M a year could re-start our fast reactor program with a goal of actually commercializing our best reactor design (the IFR according the GIF study).
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At least we’d have a bird in the hand that we know works, largely solves the waste problem, since the fast reactor waste needs only to be stored for a few hundred years at most, and doesn’t require electric power or any active systems to safely shut down.
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Investing lots of money in a project and pulling the funding right before completion is a bad strategy for technology leadership.
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MIT should be arguing for focusing and finishing what we started with the IFR. At least we’d have something that addresses safety, waste, and environmental issues. Uranium is cheap because we don’t have to pay for the environmental impact of uranium mining.
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Battling for nuclear energy by exposing opposition motives [19Jul11] - 0 views
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In the money-driven battle over our future energy supply choices, the people who fight nuclear energy have imagination on their side. They can, and often do, invent numerous scary tales about what might happen without the need to actually prove anything.
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One of the most powerful weapons in their arsenal is the embedded fantasy that a nuclear reactor accident can lead to catastrophic consequences that cannot be accepted. This myth is doubly hard to dislodge because a large fraction of the nuclear energy professionals have been trained to believe it. When you want to train large numbers of slightly above average people to do their job with great care and attention to detail, it can be useful to exaggerate the potential consequences of a failure to perform. It is also a difficult myth to dislodge because the explanation of why it is impossible requires careful and often lengthy explanations of occasionally complex concepts.
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The bottom lines of both Chernobyl and Fukushima tell me that the very worst that can realistically happen to nuclear fission reactors results in acceptable physical consequences when compared to the risk of insufficient power or the risk of using any other reliable source of power. The most negative consequences of both accidents resulted from the way that government leaders responded, both during the crisis stage and during the subsequent recoveries.
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Instead of trying to explain the basis for those statements more fully, I’ll try to encourage people to consider the motives of people on various sides of the discussion. I also want to encourage nuclear energy supporters to look beyond the financial implications to the broader implications of a less reliable and dirtier electrical power system. When the focus is just on the finances, the opposition has an advantage – the potential gains from opposing nuclear energy often are concentrated in the hands of extremely interested parties while the costs are distributed widely enough to be less visible. That imbalance often leads to great passion in the opposition and too much apathy among the supporters. Over at Idaho Samizdat, Dan Yurman has written about the epic battle of political titans who are on opposing sides of the controversy regarding the relicensing and continued operation of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Station. Dan pointed out that there is a large sum of money at stake, but he put it in a way that does not sound too terrible to many people because it spreads out the pain.
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In round numbers, if Indian Point is closed, wholesale electricity prices could rise by 12%.
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A recent study quoted in a New York Times article put the initial additional cost of electricity without Indian Point at about $1.5 billion per year, which is a substantial sum of money if concentrated into the hands of a few thousand victors who tap the monthly bills of a few million people. Here is a comment that I added to Dan’s post:Dan – thank you for pointing out that the battle is not really a partisan one determined by political party affiliation. By my analysis, the real issue is the desire of natural gas suppliers to sell more gas at ever higher prices driven by a shift in the balance between supply and demand.
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They never quite explain what is going to happen as we get closer and closer to the day when even fracking will not squeeze any more hydrocarbons out of the drying sponge that is the readily accessible part of the earth’s crust.The often touted “100 – year” supply of natural gas in the US has a lot of optimistic assumptions built in. First of all, it is only rounded up to 100 years – 2170 trillion cubic feet at the end of 2010 divided by 23 trillion cubic feet per year leaves just 94 years.
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Secondly, the 2170 number provided by the Potential Gas Committee report includes all proven, probable, possible and speculative resources, without any analysis of the cost of extraction or moving them to a market. Many of the basins counted have no current pipelines and many of the basins are not large enough for economic recovery of the investment to build the infrastructure without far higher prices.Finally, all bets are off with regard to longevity if we increase the rate of burning up the precious raw materia
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BTW – In case your readers are interested in the motives of a group like Riverkeepers, founded and led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., here is a link to a video clip of him explaining his support for natural gas.http://atomicinsights.com/2010/11/power-politics-rfk-jr-explains-how-pressure-from-activists-to-enforce-restrictions-on-coal-benefits-natural-gas.html
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The organized opposition to the intelligent use of nuclear energy has often painted support for the technology as coming from faceless, money-hungry corporations. That caricature of the support purposely ignores the fact that there are large numbers of intelligent, well educated, responsible, and caring people who know a great deal about the technology and believe that it is the best available solution for many intransigent problems. There are efforts underway today, like the Nuclear Literacy Project and Go Nuclear, that are focused on showcasing the admirable people who like nuclear energy and want it to grow rapidly to serve society’s never ended thirst for reliable power at an affordable price with acceptable environmental impact.
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The exaggerated, fanciful accident scenarios painted by the opposition are challenging to disprove.
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I just read an excellent post on Yes Vermont Yankee about a coming decision that might help to illuminate the risk to society of continuing to let greedy antinuclear activists and their political friends dominate the discussion. According to Meredith’s post, Entergy must make a decision within just a week or so about whether or not to refuel Vermont Yankee in October. Since the sitting governor is dead set against the plant operating past its current license expiration in the summer of 2012, the $100 million dollar expense of refueling would only result in about 6 months of operation instead of the usual 18 months.Meredith has a novel solution to the dilemma – conserve the fuel currently in the plant by immediately cutting the power output to 25%.
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Build baby build - new nuclear power plants[25Jul11] - 0 views
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CBS News aired a short piece titled US heat wave causes new look at nuclear energy that is worth a look. Though it includes the obligatory appearance of a professional antinuclear activist – in this case, Dr. Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists – the story provides some encouraging clips of the massive quantities of dirt being moved by thousands of workers who are making preparations for Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in eastern Georgia.
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The story also reminds people why some of us are so interested in building new nuclear power plants – we know how vital reliable electricity is. That knowledge is reinforced when power grids are stressed and when people die due to complications associated with heat exposure. We know that nuclear plants have a far better chance of being available when needed than the wind turbines that were AWOL during the heat wave because, darn it, when the heat domes hover, the air is still and muggy. If there was a reliable breeze we would not be so dependent on our air conditioners!
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a comment that I provided to CBS regarding their story:Nuclear power plants have proven that they are safe neighbors. In more than 50 years of commercial operation, the total number of deaths from exposure to radiation from nuclear power plants around the entire world is less than 100. In contrast, thousands of people die every year from exposure to the hazardous waste products that fossil fuel plants dump into our atmosphere as a routine part of their operation.I like having the ability to use electricity on demand. I like having clean air. I like the idea that building new nuclear plants that can operate reliably for 60-80 years is resulting in new jobs for thousands of American mechanics, electricians, construction workers, engineers and procedure writers. (Disclosure: I fall into that last category and am currently part of a large team that is designing another version of a reactor that can keep itself under control for at least three days without any sources of electricity.)
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Dr. Lyman is a professional antinuclear activist who has never actually operated a plant. He has a PhD in nuclear physics, but that does not mean that he ever studied anything about engineering or operations. It might not even mean that he studied anything about nuclear fuel.
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Radiation fallout poses growing threat: 2,600+ cattle contaminated; More vegetables at ... - 0 views
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Radiation fallout from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant poses a growing threat to Japan’s food chain as unsafe levels of cesium found in beef on supermarket shelves were also detected in more vegetables and the ocean. More than 2,600 cattle have been contaminated, Kyodo News reported July 23 [...] Japan has no centralized system to check for radiation contamination of food, leaving local authorities and farmers conducting voluntary tests. Products including spinach, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, tea, milk, plums and fish have been found contaminated with cesium and iodine as far as 360 kilometers from Dai-Ichi. [...]
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More aftershocks hit Japan as radiation picked up in Glasgow [25Jul11] - 0 views
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radiation from the damaged Fukushima power plant has been detected in Glasgow, the Evening Times reports. However, the paper notes: “The levels picked up in Glasgow are tiny and similar to those detected in other parts of Europe and officials stress there is no risk to public health.”
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Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Advancing The Nuclear Enterprise Through Better Computin... - 0 views
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In the area of nuclear energy, the Nuclear Modeling staff specializes in developing and applying computational methods and software for simulating radiation in order to support the design and safety of nuclear facilities, improve reactor core designs and nuclear fuel performance, and ensure the safety of nuclear materials, such as spent nuclear fuel. The Nuclear Modeling staff is internationally known for developing and maintaining SCALE, a comprehensive nuclear analysis software package originally developed for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with signature capabilities in the criticality safety, reactor physics and radiation shielding areas. In recent years, ORNL has placed an emphasis on transforming its current capabilities through high-performance computing, as well as the development of new and novel computational methods
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Scientists at the Nuclear Science and Technology Division of the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are merging decades of nuclear energy and safety expertise with high-performance computing to effectively address a range of nuclear energy- and security-related challenges.
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John Wagner, Technical Integration Manager for Nuclear Modeling within ORNL's Nuclear Science and Technology Division (NSTD), says one of the goals of his organization is to integrate existing nuclear energy and nuclear national security modeling and simulation capabilities and associated expertise with high-performance computing to solve problems that were previously unthinkable or impractical in terms of the computing power required to address them.
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"Traditionally, reactor models for radiation dose assessments have considered just the reactor core, or a small part of the core," Wagner says. "However, we're now simulating entire nuclear facilities, such as a nuclear power reactor facility with its auxiliary buildings and the ITER fusion reactor, with much greater accuracy than any other organization that we're aware of." More accurate models enable nuclear plants to be designed with more accurate safety margins and shielding requirements, which helps to improve safety and reduce costs. The technology that makes this sort of leading-edge simulation possible is a combination of ORNL's Jaguar, the world's fastest supercomputer; advanced transport methods; and a next-generation software package called Denovo
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Department of Energy Grants AREVA Joint Venture Permission to start Operational Testing... - 0 views
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The Portsmouth facility, and a sister plant under construction in Paducah, Kentucky, will convert 700,000 metric tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) into uranium oxide (UO2), the most benign waste form with the safest disposition options, and aqueous hydrogen fluoride (HF), which can be sold commercially
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Congressman Doc Hastings' Testimony To The U.S. Nuclear Blue Ribbon Commission [16Jul10] - 0 views
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My views on the approach this Administration has chosen to take when it comes to terminating Yucca Mountain and setting the mission of the Blue Ribbon Commission are well known. The Commission was formed so that the Obama Administration could put off decisions about nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel until after November, while at the same time illegally acting to shut down the national repository as quickly as possible
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Congressman Doc Hastings’ (WA-04) Legislative Director presented his testimony to members of the Blue Ribbon Commission in the Tri-Cities today. A complete copy of his testimony is attached below.
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Judge Throws Out Fed Decision For a Nuclear Spent Fuel Storage Facility in Utah [02Aug10] - 0 views
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Judge David M. Ebel vacated decisions by the U.S. Department of Interior that had blocked construction of the proposed Tooele County facility and remanded Private Fuel Storage's right-of-way application and lease of tribal land to for further consideration.
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The Goshute tribe had agreed to lease land to Private Fuel as a long-term solution. Private Fuel obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate the spent fuel storage facility near the U.S. Army's Dugway Proving Ground. The waste would be transported via railway and, for the last 24 miles, by "heavy haul" trucks onto the Goshute land, Ebel said. However, the Interior's Bureau of Land Management denied the consortium's request for a right-of-way access to the land.
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The Department of Interior's main concern was that Private Fuel would not be able to dismantle the storage facility after the lease was up. "There is no evidence in the administrative record that [Private Fuel] could not physically dismantle the site and decommission the facility," the judge's 36-page answer states
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Ebel called Interior's decision to block Private Fuel's request for right-of-way to build and operate a transport system on federal land "arbitrary and capricious, and an abuse of discretion."
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Ebel remanded both of Private Fuel's applications to the Department of Interior for reconsideration.
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Experts Say Federal Nuclear Waste Panel Overlooks Public Mistrust [13Aug10] - 0 views
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expert on technological risk and environmental change. Other contributors include fellow WSU sociologist James F. Short and Tom Leschine, director of the University of Washington School of Marine Affairs
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The lead author of the "policy forum" paper is Eugene Rosa, a Washington State University professor of sociology and a widely published expert
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Writing in the latest issue of the journal Science, 16 researchers from around the country say a special White House panel on high-level radioactive waste needs to focus more on the social and political acceptability of its solutions to succeed
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"While scientific and technical analyses are essential, they will not, and arguably should not, carry the day unless they address, substantively and procedurally, the issues that concern the public." Source: Washington State University A renewed federal effort to fix the nation's stalled nuclear waste program is focusing so much on technological issues that it fails to address the public mistrust hampering storage and disposal efforts.
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Their paper comes while a "nuclear renaissance" has more than 50 reactors under construction and another 100-plus planned over the next decade. Meanwhile, some 60,000 tons of high-level waste have accumulated in the United States alone as 10 presidential administrations have failed to develop a successful waste-disposal program
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President Obama is bolstering the nation's commitment to nuclear energy with $8.6 billion in loan guarantees to two new plants in Georgia and a 2011 budget request for tens of billions more. Meanwhile, he has appointed a 15-member Blue Ribbon Panel to review the storage, processing and disposal of nuclear materials
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The panel is dominated by science and technology experts and politicians, says Rosa. But disposing of nuclear waste, he says, "will ultimately require public acceptability. Current efforts by the administration, such as the composition of its Blue Ribbon Commission, indicate that this important element may be overlooked."
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Judge Puts Temporary Halt on Waste Control Specialists Expansion Decision [31Dec10] - 0 views
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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.
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EnergySoultions Contracts with Studsvik for Nuclear Waste Processing [10Feb11] - 0 views
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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.
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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.
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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.
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After processing at Studsvik's facility in Erwin, Tenn., the waste will be disposed of at EnergySolutions' plant in Tooele County, about 80 miles west of Salt Lake City.
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Officials say the final product doesn't exceed the low-level class A radioactivity limits that the EnergySolutions Utah facility is licensed to accept
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States Sue Over On-Site Waste Storage [16Feb11] - 0 views
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A spokesman for NRC defended the rule in the Wall Street Journal, pointing out that plants across the country have stored spent fuel rods safely for years.
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Attorneys general from New York, Connecticut and Vermont announced Tuesday that they plan to sue the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over a recent ruling on waste storage at nuclear plants
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Specifically, they object to an NRC rule issued in late December that allows plants to keep spent fuel on site for 60 years after they close, as opposed to 30 years under previous law.
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New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, who is leading the litigation, accused the agency of making its decision without environmental studies and other procedural steps required by federal law. In a statement issued by his office, Schneiderman singled out Entergy's Indian Point Plant in affluent Westchester County, N.Y., 25 miles from New York City. The plant long has been a target of nuclear energy opponents in the state, and the attorney general said waste storage at Indian Point could lower property values and pollute the area in the future
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“Before dumping radioactive waste at the site for at least 60 years after it’s closed, our communities deserve a thorough review of the environmental, public health and safety risks such a move would present,” Schneiderman said in the statement. The suit seeks a full environmental review and mitigation plan be drafted for every nuclear plant in the country that stores its own waste before the new rule could take effect.
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DOE Releases Draft EIS on Proposed Low-Level Nuclear Waste Sites, Disposal Methods [21F... - 0 views
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The Department of Energy on Friday issued a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) on low-level radioactive waste disposal, with public meetings set for April and May in cities near potential waste sites in Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Nevada, New Mexico and South Carolina. The EIS addresses greater-than-class-C (GTCC) low-level-radioactive waste (LLRW) as DOE considers new and existing storage facilities. GTCC waste comes from power plants, medical treatments, medical diagnostics and oil and gas exploration, as well as other industrial processes. The EIS and waste sites do not involve high-level waste like spent fuel.
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In a release, DOE estimates current GTCC and GTCC-like LLRW in storage at 1,100 cubic meters. The EIS estimates an additional 175 cubic meters of waste will be generated each year over the next six decades. In looking for places to store that waste, the EIS analyzes the potential environmental impacts of using both new and existing waste facilities. Disposal methods evaluated include deep geological repository, intermediate depth boreholes, enhanced near-surface trenches and above-grade vaults
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“disposal locations analyzed include the Hanford Site in Washington; Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho; the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) and the WIPP vicinity in New Mexico; the Nevada National Security Site (formerly the Nevada Test Site) in Nevada; and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The Draft EIS also evaluates generic commercial disposal sites in four regions of the U.S., as well as a no action alternative.”
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DOE has not yet identified a preferred alternative for waste disposal, but a preferred alternative or combination of alternatives will be identified in the final EIS. Before making a final decision on disposal method or location, the agency would need to submit its findings to Congress and wait for legislative action.
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Areva, TVA Discuss Use of Mixed-Oxide Nuclear Fuel From Retired Weapons [21Feb11] - 1 views
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French energy group Areva has entered tentative talks with the Tennessee Valley Authority that could pave the way for TVA’s nuclear plants to use fuel made from retired weapons. On Friday, the company announced it signed a letter of intent with TVA to initiate discussions on the use of fuel from the Department of Energy’s Mixed-Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. While it would not obligate TVA to use the fuel, the letter highlights the agency’s ongoing relationship with DOE in evaluating the fuel-from-weapons program
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Scheduled to begin operating in 2016, the mixed-oxide facility at DOE’s Savannah River site in South Carolina will blend plutonium from disassembled weapons with depleted uranium oxide, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration. Using the fuel in commercial reactors would make the plutonium unfit for explosives and help meet a commitment made by the United States and Russia in 2000 to dispose of 68 metric tons of surplus plutonium. Shaw Areva MOX Services Llc. holds the contract to build and operate the South Carolina facility
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According to NNSA, more than 30 commercial reactors currently use mixed-oxide fuel, including at plants in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium and Switzerland.
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“As the world leader in MOX fuel production, Areva has a long, successful history of producing reliable mixed-oxide fuel in Europe and has many satisfied customers around the globe. We look forward to partnering with TVA as it evaluates the potential use of MOX fuel in its nuclear plants,” Jacques Besnainou, CEO of Areva North America, said in a release
