Federal health officials agree radioactive waste in St. Louis area may be linked to cancer

As reported by CBS News.

RT's Ashlee Banks interviewed Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps about this news.

After the ATSDR report was published, Beyond Nuclear did a post going into more detail on the Cold Water Creek and West Lake Landfill radioactive contamination disaster in metro St. Louis, MO.

These radioactive wastes are among the very oldest of the Atomic Age, generated by the processing of Belgian Congo uranium ore in the earliest days of the Manhattan Project, in the early 1940s.

Lost art from Hiroshima's children is rediscovered

Two years after the Hiroshima bombing, children from a church in Washington, DC, sent art supplies to their counterparts in Hiroshima. Those children drew surprising visions of joy, then sent the pictures back to DC as a gift. Forgotten for decades, the pictures were recently rediscovered, and now form part of a moving new film -- Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard. Read more at Beyond Nuclear International.

Hiroshima survivor who helped get the nuclear ban and Nobel Peace Prize

Setsuko Thurlow is perhaps the world's best known Hibakusha -- a survivor of the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. When she speaks there is rarely a dry eye in the house. Beyond Nuclear has reprinted her moving testimony, which helped get the UN Ban Treaty and, in turn, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for ICAN. She was 13 and at school when the bombing happened, and was one of the few survivors and when she crawled out of the wreckage, helped by a rescuer, a horrific sight met her eyes.

"Streams of stunned people were slowly shuffling from the city centre toward nearby hills. They were naked or tattered, burned, blackened and swollen. Eyes were swollen shut and some had eyeballs hanging out of their sockets. They were bleeding, ghostly figures like a slow-motion image from an old silent movie. Many held their hands above the level of their hearts to lessen the throbbing pain of their burns. Strips of skin and flesh hung like ribbons from their bones. Often these ghostly figures would collapse in heaps never to rise again."

Read her story. (Photo: Paul Saviano for Hibakusha Stories.) 

New nuclear plans invariably involve a creek, but no paddle

The misadventures of a planned three-reactor site in Cumbria's UK just worsened (or improved, from our perspective) as project owner, Toshiba, appeared to dismiss its latest in a long line of departing partners, Kepco. Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment's Martin Forwood has been watchdogging this latest new nuclear train wreck for years. With struggling Toshiba -- still clinging to its non-existent consortium name of NuGen and whose American partner Westinghouse went bankrupt -- left in sole charge, the UK unions are pressing for the government to foot the bill. But the whole project is far more likely to hit the rocks. Read more at Beyond Nuclear International.

Company to decommission US reactors has corruption history

The New Jersey-based company Holtec International has agreed to purchase three soon-to-close U.S. nuclear power stations to try out its new rapid decommissioning strategy. Pending U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approval, Chicago-based Exelon and New Orleans-based Entergy announced sale agreements for the Oyster Creek (NJ), Pilgrim (MA) and Palisades (MI) nuclear power stations to a fledgling company, Comprehensive Decommissioning International (CDI), formed by the 2018 merger of parent companies Holtec International and SNC-Lavalin (SNCL). CDI is offering that its prompt decommissioning strategy for commercial power reactors and site restoration can be completed inside of eight years. But Lavalin is embroiled Canadian Crown federal charges for fraud, embezzelment and bribery and blacklisted from doing business with the World Bank's global contracts.

However, closer scrutiny of these companies raises some serious red flags. While every effort needs to be made to decommission nuclear plants promptly, close attention needs to be paid to exactly who is doing it and where the money stream -- along with the radioactive waste stream -- is going.

When Oyster Creek shuts down, Exelon has set up Plan A to sell the 47-year reactor site and its high-level nuclear waste to Holtec International, headquartered in Camden. Pending approval by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the sale of the “possession only” license, Exelon will transfer the power plant’s estimated $982 million decommissioning trust fund to Holtec, which will in turn contract the job out to CDI. CDI is a limited liability corporation formed in a 2018 merger of Holtec International and the Canadian engineering giant SNC Lavalin based in Montreal, Quebec.

SNC Lavalin is a long-established global energy development corporation spanning the oil, gas, nuclear and renewable power industry. But that history to date arrives with serious allegations and findings of corruption and fraud in the corporation’s business dealings that now need airing with regard to the pending Oyster Creek nuclear decommissioning deal and several others also on CDI’s new agenda.  

According to Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper, SNC Lavalin Group Inc. is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Canada in September or October over federal corruption and fraud charges. The Crown prosecutor has combined two cases against SNC that focus on the embezzlement of funds, bribery and wrongdoing for lucrative contracts in Libya between 2001 and 2011. A former senior executive is named in one case and SNC and several subsidiaries are named in the other.

SNC has acknowledged wrongdoing with assurances that sweeping ethics changes are now in place. The SNC former executive has already been found guilty of bribery in a Swiss federal criminal court. In a separate criminal case and pending trial, another former SNC chief executive officer faces charges of fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud and using forged documents for a SNC contract to build new $1.3-billion super-hospital in Montreal.

In ongoing findings of SNC Lavalin corruption, the World Bank debarred the corporation and 100 of its affiliates in 2013 for 10 years from further Bank contracts. This followed misconduct involving conspiracy to pay bribes and bidding misrepresentations involving Bank-financed contracts in Bangladesh and Cambodia in violation of procurement guidelines. The SNC Lavalin sanction from 2013 to 2023 is the longest-running financially punitive action taken by the World Bank. According to the Bank’s related press release, “This case is testimony to collective action against global corruption.” 

Given the still uncertain cost and a limited trust fund to do the Oyster Creek decommissioning right, every effort needs to be made to take precaution with financial safeguards from the very beginning. The State of New Jersey would be wise to authorize the establishment of a Nuclear Decommissioning Citizen Advisory Panel, as was legislated in Vermont and Massachusetts, to watchdog their nuclear power stations, to focus squarely on making the business of decommissioning and site restoration more transparent and accountable.