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ARTICLE ARCHIVE

Radioactive Waste

No safe, permanent solution has yet been found anywhere in the world - and may never be found - for the nuclear waste problem. In the U.S., the only identified and flawed high-level radioactive waste deep repository site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada has been canceled. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an end to the production of nuclear waste and for securing the existing reactor waste in hardened on-site storage.

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Entries by admin (643)

Tuesday
Nov092010

Give the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future your two cents worth!

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC for short), was created by President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu at the end of January, 2010. It was supposed to come up with "Plan B" for U.S. high-level radioactive waste management, now that they have so wisely and thankfully cancelled the geologically unsuitable and environmentally unjust Yucca Mountain, Nevada dumpsite proposal. Unfortunately, however, in its name, charter, membership, words, and actions, the BRC seems more devoted to the nuclear power industry's continuation, and even expansion, than it is to solving the radioactive waste problem.

Incredibly, the BRC will soon stop taking public comments. This is unacceptable, in that the BRC has existed for less than a year, and has only been open to public comment for less than nine months. The radioactive waste dilemma, with such high stakes for safety, security, health, and the environment for current, and countless future human generations to come, has defied solution for nearly 70 years now! Unfortunately, the BRC has busied itself by flirting with such dangerous and already failed ideas as reprocessing and "centralized interim storage," likely to be targeted at Department of Energy sites such as Savannah River, South Carolina and/or Native American reservations, despite the environmental injustice this would represent.

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps, along with Susan Corbett of the South Carolina Sierra Club, have been tapped by a coalition of grassroots radioactive waste watchdogs across the country to present before the BRC next Tuesday morning, November 16th. In their brief allotted time, Kevin and Susan will summarize the coalition's sign on statement. This statement reflects four key principles: no reprocessing; isolation of the waste from the biosphere for as long as it is a hazard; “stop making it”; and “hardened on-site storage” (HOSS), as well as better monitoring, where waste is stored now, as the first, temporary step to meet these goals.

Please sign your group onto the statement, by emailing Mary Olson at NIRS ( maryo@nirs.org ).  Mary needs your group name, contact name, city, state, website if you have one, and a concise list of nuclear sites/facilities/issues that you work on regularly. The sign on deadline is Saturday, November 13, 2010. (individuals can also endorse the statement -- watch for an email from NIRS on the way to do that later this week, or simply email Mary your desire as an individual to sign on, with complete contact information).

On Tuesday morning, November 16, you can watch Kevin and Susan present to the BRC. If you can make it to the meeting, it’s being held at the Washington Marriott Metro Center, 775 12th St. NW, Washington, DC. If not, you can watch the live webcast via the BRC's website at www.brc.gov. Kevin and Susan are scheduled to present from 8:45 am to 9:25 am. Public comments are scheduled from 11:15 am to 12:15 pm, during which time additional anti-nuclear activists may also speak. Here is the BRC's full two day schedule. More information about the BRC is available at its website above, or by calling Tim Frazier, the BRC Designated Federal Officer, at (202) 586-4243. 

Finally, despite its clear bias in favor of nuclear power (it's closely affiliated with the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, the mission of which is to promote atomic energy!), the BRC has called for comments from the public.* Time is drawing short, as, incredibly, the BRC is about to close the public comment opportunity and set to writing its draft recommendations by mid 2011, followed by its final report by early 2012. So, email your comments ASAP to the BRC via BRC@nuclear.energy.gov. For background information to help you with ideas on what to include in your comments, refer to the group sign on statement above, check out http://www.beyondnuclear.org/radioactive-waste/, http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/radwaste.htm, and http://www.ieer.org/webindex.html#waste, or look through already submitted comments to the BRC at http://www.brc.gov/comments.html. You can also contact Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear's Radioactive Waste Watchdog, via kevin@beyondnuclear.org or (301) 270-2209 ext. 1 for ideas.

*However, at a meeting of its Transportation and Storage Subcommittee in Chicago on November 1st and 2nd, BRC's competence at public participation left a lot to be desired. Not only was November 2nd Election Day, thus inappropriate for a public meeting because it conflicted with the civic duty of voting, but the BRC Subcommittee actually commenced and ended its public comment opportunity earlier than it had publicized in its Federal Register Notice! Concerned citizens arrived at the BRC meeting on time according to the published schedule, only to find out their opportunity to comment had passed and the meeting had been adjourned! In addition, concerned citizens in attendance that day who wished to make public comment were not informed they were required to sign up to do so in advance that morning, and then were not allowed to provide comments! If the BRC cannot even get the basics of public participartion right today, how can they even pretend to be able to protect future generations for the next million years or more from the hazards of high-level radioactive waste?!

Monday
Nov082010

50,000 come out to protest radioactive waste transport in Germany

Inspiring stories continue to flood in from Germany where 50,000 protesters turned out on Saturday in opposition to the highly radioactive waste transport that arrived from France's La Hague reprocessing facility. Germany has already been the scene of 100,000 in the streets of Berlin to oppose reactor license extension along with the 75-mile-long human chain last April.  Although 20,000 police were deployed during the waste transport protest, National Public Radio reports that the police were largely sympathetic to the protesters' point of view. Said the NPR report: "Police trade unions complained in unusually hard terms that they have been "scapegoated" by politicians, who "made a fatal mistake" when they extended nuclear plants life spans, and that citizens are right to protest." (Photo: Copyright Martin Leers).

Saturday
Nov062010

First footage of most radioactive transport ever as it leaves La Hague reprocessing site

In French but the pictures speak volumes. The CASTOR casks are on their way across the width of France to Germany, ultimately for the Gorleben site. Huge protests are on-going.


Convoi le plus radioactif de l'histoire : premières images
Uploaded by gpfrance. - Up-to-the minute news videos.

Sunday
Oct032010

Plan to dump radioactive waste on Goshute reservation may not be dead

"The federal government has decided not to fight a court ruling that might allow the Skull Valley Goshute Indians to revive their plans to store reactor waste on their Tooele County reservation", reports Judy Fahys in the Salt Lake Tribune. "Two months ago, U.S. District Judge David M. Ebel threw out a pair of U.S. Interior Department decisions that, in effect, led many Utahns to believe that the storage site plans were dead four years ago. Interior officials’ decision to pass up on an appeal by Friday’s deadline has angered Utah leaders, who had urged the agency to vigorously contest the ruling. With the feds’ inaction, the issues in dispute now return to the agency “for further consideration” in light of the judge’s ruling. A spokeswoman for Gov. Gary Herbert said he believes it is inappropriate to have high-level nuclear waste stored 50 miles from downtown Salt Lake City." Read the full article. (Pictured: Margene Bullcreek, one of the leading dump opponents).



Friday
Oct012010

7 Great Lakes States U.S. Senators object to radioactive waste shipment from Canada to Sweden

Seven U.S. Senators from Great Lakes States -- Russell Feingold (D-WI), Robert Casey Jr. (D-PA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Carl Levin (D-MI), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Richard Durbin (D-IL, Assistant Senate Majority Leader), and Charles Schumer (D-NY) -- have written to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) and the Canadian federal government, expressing serious concerns about a proposed shipment of 16 radioactive steam generators from Bruce Nuclear Power Plant in Ontario to Sweden for "recycling" into consumer products. The shipment, on board a single ship, would violate International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) limits for the quantity of radioactivity aboard a single vessel. The shipment would travel via Lake Huron to Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and connecting rivers (St. Clair, Detroit, the Welland canal, and St. Lawrence), and then across the Atlantic Ocean (see route map). Shockingly, Bruce Power's CEO, Duncan Hawthorne, has stated that there is no emergency plan for dealing with the sinking of the ship, stating there would be plenty of time to determine what to do once the ship sank. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, as well as the US DOT PHMSA, must approve permits for the shipment before it can commence. PHMSA has recently been the subject of severe criticism for oil pipeline leak and natural gas pipeline explosion disasters, as well as for the close ties between its leadership and companies involved in these disasters. Beyond Nuclear, along with a coalition of environmental groups, has called upon PHMSA to conduct a full environmental analysis on the proposed shipment, in order to fulfill its National Environmental Policy Act federal legal obligations, before permitting the shipment to enter U.S. territorial waters on the Great Lakes -- 20% of the world's surface fresh water, drinking supply for 40 million in the U.S., Canada, and numerous Native American/First Nations, and regional engine for one of the biggest economies on the planet.