Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman: The Threat of Nuclear Waste

Beyond Nuclear board of directors member Karl Grossman is the host of Enviro Close-Up, a television show produced by EnviroVideo for decades. The latest episode, "The Threat of Nuclear Waste," is an interview between Karl and Beyond Nuclear's radioactive waste specialist, Kevin Kamps. The interview focuses on the resistance to proposed high-level radioactive waste dumps targeted at New Mexico, Texas, Nevada, and Ontario's Great Lakes shoreline. Watch the 30 minute program, here.

(Please note a couple of needed corrections. At the 9 minute 58 second mark, Kevin misspoke -- the Ontario Power Generation radioactive waste dumps are targeted at the Lake Huron shoreline, not the Lake Michigan shoreline. And the full name of the Democratic New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands is Stephanie Garcia Richard. Also, the interview was recorded in September 2019, hence the discussion of Trump's Energy Secretary, Rick Perry. Perry resigned December 1st.)

Two earthquakes strike near Iran nuclear plant

As reported by CNN.

The Bushehr nuclear power plant, on the coast of the Persian Gulf in southwestern Iran, was under construction from 1975 to 2011. During the 1980s, the pre-operational construction site was repeatedly attacked by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Commercial electricity (and high-level radioactive waste) generation at Unit 1 began in 2011.

It is the first operational commercial atomic reactor in the Middle East (although there have long been several operational research reactors for a long time: two in Iraq, two in Israel, one in Syria and three in Iran).

The Russian government and nuclear industry was in charge of construction of the first unit beginning in 1995. It is now undertaking construction of two more full-scale commercial reactors at the site, and up to six more elsewhere in Iran.

Maryland Governor promotes nukes as “renewable energy”

Maryland.govOn December 17, 2019, Maryland’s Republican Governor Larry Hogan trumpeted his plan for a “Clean And Renewable Energy Standard” (CARES) which carves out state subsidies to expand nuclear power plant construction as a “renewable energy”.  Hogan’s plan proposes to create new “Clean Energy Resource Credits” available only to facilities in Maryland that generate electricity particularly through still non-existent small modular reactors, combined heat and power and natural gas or burning biomass that use carbon capture technology. Fracking gas and nuclear power are obviously not renewable energy. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines renewables as any energy source “replenished by natural processes at a rate that equals or exceeds its rate of use” to include wind, solar, tidal and geothermal. In fact, under Hogan’s plan, the real deal renewable energy projects will not be eligible for the new credit program. Instead Hogan is introducing a dangerous trojan house into energy portfolio standards policy. A controversial Maryland House Bill (HB 600) passed earlier in 2019 to author a study arguing nuclear power is a “renewable energy” for combating climate change is scheduled for release no later than January 1, 2020.  Maryland climate action activists and safe energy organizations have mobilized to oppose Hogan's diversion of state resources into a nuclear boondoogle. 

Trump gets his Space Force. Are nuclear reactors in space next?

"The U.S. House of Representatives last week passed the $738 billion military policy bill that gives Trump his sought-for Space Force as he moves for what he terms 'American dominance in space,'" writes Beyond Nuclear board member, Karl Grossman. The Senate will inevitably also pass it. The Space Force has serious implications for global security.

"The Trump administration and the U.S. military have been claiming that a Space Force is necessary because of Russia and China moving into space militarily but, in fact, Russia and China and U.S. neighbor Canada have been leaders for decades in pushing for an expansion of the Outer Space Treaty," Grossman writes. "It bans weapons of mass destruction in space. The Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) treaty that the three nations have sought to expand would prohibit the placement of any weapons in space." Read the full article on Counterpunch.

Uranium contaminated property collapsing into Detroit River

Michigan.govControversy continues to brew following revelations of repeated shoreline collapses into the Detroit River of a property contaminated with uranium, PCBs and other dangerous chemicals from an abandoned Manhattan Project contract facility in Detroit, Michigan. The most recent collapse into the river occurred on November 26 or 27, 2019 but was not reported until a week later with a tip off to the Windsor Star newspaper just across the river in Canada. A previous collapse into the river occurred in October 2011 did not apparently result in remediations. The old Revere Copper and Brass site, now known as Detroit Bulk Storage, was used in the 1940s to process more than a thousand tons of uranium that was rolled into fuel rods to make the fissionable material for the first atomic bombs at the end of World War II. The facility continued to operate as part of the nation’s atomic bomb assembly line well into the 1950s before winding down and eventually abandoned in 1984. It is considered just one of hundreds of nuclear weapons contractor sites that make up America’s forgotten nuclear “waste land.”

Of public concern, a 2011 assessment by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health  concluded the “potential exists for significant residual radiation” in the contaminated earth under the Revere Copper and Brass facility. Since the 2019 collapse, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) has been surveying the site  by taking radiation measurements in and around the broken ground and water samples from the Detroit River. All of the measurements are reporting "normal" radiation levels. These measurements do not reveal what might have been in the water more than a week earlier before the plume was carried down river.  Nevertheless, the international community on both sides of the Detroit Riveris remains disturbed that the November collapse went unnoticed and downriver communities were not alerted for seven days.  Both Detroit and Windsor have municipal drinking water intake and treatment facilities in proximity to the contaminated site but there are no real time radiation monitoring systems at the intakes that could alert public health officials.

Local environmentalists are pointing out that these recurring avalanches disturb river sediment and resuspend uranium and other hazardous materials into the river water. 

The State of Michigan's top drinking water protection official is offering assurance that the state is doing everything it can to safeguard public health. However, the obvious protective actions should be focusing on remediation of the contamination at the abandoned Revere Copper and Brass site.  State and Federal officials are meeting with Michigan residents already outraged and frigthened by the mass poisoning of the City of Flint, Michigan's drinking water system with another heavy metal, lead.