Nuclear establishment's backlash begins against recent radioactive waste victories

The tragic, fatal coal train derailment in Ellicott City, MD has raised the specter of severe accidents involving rushed high-level radioactive waste shipments.The anti-nuclear and environmental movement have won some recent victories against the nuclear power industry's carte blanche permit to make as much forever deadly high-level radioactive waste as it wishes. In June, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) "Nuclear Waste Con Game" was null and void, preventing finalization of any new reactor construction and operation license or any old reactor license extension, until NRC fulfills its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) duty to carry out an environmental assessment of the impacts of long-term or even permanent on-site storage in pools and dry casks.

And of course, the Obama administration, as well as U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), have remained determined to end the proposed Yucca Mountain Project, targeting Western Shosone Indian land in Nevada with the nation's high-level radioactive waste dump, by zeroing out its funding.

However, the expected backlash has begun. This month, another three judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, breathing new life into the Yucca dump zombie that will not die, ruled that a panel of three administrative law judges at NRC (the Atomic Safety and Licening Board panel running the Yucca dump licensing proceeding) can tell the President of the United States what to do -- not the other way around. The appeals court ordered the Obama administration and NRC to resume the Yucca Mountain dump licensing proceeding, even if there is no funding to do so. The court's ruling effectively holds that the States of Washington and South Carolina's desire to be rid of high-level radioactive wastes from the Hanford and Savannah River Site (SRS) nuclear weapons complexes, trumps the State of Nevada's right to decline to become the nation's radioactive waste dump. The results of the presidential and U.S. Senate elections on November 6th will make a big difference on the Yucca dump issue, of course, as on so many others.

Meanwhile, this month, retiring U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, introduced legislation (S. 3469, the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2012) to enact the recommendations of President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC), which released its final report last January. Bingaman's bill, which even its author acknowledges will not become law this year, would nonetheless law the groundwork for quick action in 2013. It would expedite "centralized" or "consolidated interim storage," parking lot dumps for high-level radioactive waste that could easily become de facto permanent. Ironically, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, NM is at the top of the target list for a parking lot dump, after retired U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), appointed by Chu to the BRC, volunteered the site countless times for not only "consolidated interim storage," but even permanent burial of high-level radioactive waste at a facility that is currently legally limited to plutonium-contaminated military wastes.

Of course, parking lot dumps -- whether targeted at WIPP, NM; SRS, SC; the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation, UT; Dresden nuclear power plant, IL; and/or somewhere else -- would launch unprecedented numbers of "Mobile Chernobyls," "dirty bombs on wheels," and "Floating Fukushimas" onto our country's roads, rails, and waterways. They would be at risk of severe accidents, such as high speed collisions, high-temperature long-duration fires, and underwater submersions, a specter revived by a tragic, fatal train derailment in Ellicott City, Maryland in recent days (see photo, above left). Such risks extend to intentional attacks, as by anti-tank missile, as high-level radioactive waste trucks and trains roll through major metro centers, or barges enter major ports.

Bingaman's bill would also create a new, single-purpose agency, to take radioactive waste management out of the U.S. Department of Energy's discredited hands. It also prioritizes finding "consenting" communities which are "willing" to "host" "temporary" or even permanent radioactive waste dumps. But "consent" is ill-defined, and the illogic -- and danger -- of supposedly "consenting" communities at scientifically unsuitable sites is being ignored, despite the peril.

Bingaman has scheduled a full committee hearing on his radioactive waste bill for September 12th.

Please take action. Contact the White House and urge President Obama to stand strong in his opposition to the Yuccca Mountain dump, but also not to rush the transport risks that would accompany parking lot dumps. Also contact your two U.S. Senators (as by calling them via the U.S. Congressional Switchboard, at 202-224-3121), urging them to oppose restored funding for the Yucca proposal, as well as to oppose Bingaman's bill. Offer Hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS) as a better alternative for wastes that already exist. A first step for HOSS would be removal of high-level radioactive waste from vulnerable pools, where it is at risk of catching fire and unleashing catastrophic amounts of deadly radioactivity into the environment. Urge a nuclear power phase out as the only real solution to this problem: stop the generation of any more high-level radioactive waste!

Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds Associates: "Can Spent Fuel Pools Catch Fire?"

Fairewinds Associates Chief Engineer Arnie GundersenReproduced verbatim from the Fairewinds Associates website: "In this Fairewinds’ feature, Fairewinds Associates Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen [pictured, left] analyzes a US government national laboratory simulation video that shows nuclear spent fuel rods do catch fire when exposed to air. This simulation video proves Fairewinds’ assertions that nuclear fuel rods can catch fire when exposed to air, and Arnie discusses the ramifications of this phenomena if the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent fuel pool were to lose cooling water. 

The Sandia National Laboratories video in its entirety can be seen here."

"Ukrainian environmentalist brutally beaten to death"

Volodymyr GoncharenkoEJOLT (Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade) reports the horrific news that, four days after conducting a press conference to warn that 180 tons of dangerous chemical and radioactive industrial waste had arrived at the city of Kryvyi Rih (in the Dnipropetrovsk area of Ukraine), which was likely to be "recycled" into the consumer product stream, 57 year old Volodymyr Goncharenko (photo, left) was brutally beaten to death. He was the Chairman of Social Movement of Ukraine: For the Rights of Citizens to Environmental Security.

As reported by EJOLT, "According to Goncharenko, during the past several years, scavengers have removed from the Chernobyl exclusion zone 6 million metric tons of scrap metal that was subsequently smelted at metallurgical combines and reprocessed into new metal. While in theory each metallurgical combine should be equipped with radiation-monitoring equipment to check all incoming scrap, financial shortfalls have meant this was rarely the case. In 2007 Ukraine ranked eighth in global steel production and steel is Ukraine’s leading export. One can only guess how much radioactive scrap metal has ended up in exported steel."

Pavlo Khazan of the Ukrainian Green Party stated: “We collaborated with Volodymyr for 15 years in professional and public areas. The Ukrainian Green Party has no doubt that the murder was linked to his professional activities.” Although the Ukrainian police have opened an investigation into Goncharenko's murder, Khazan feels that to deliver justice in this case, international attention and pressure will be needed.

Please contact the Embassy of Ukraine, urging a thorough investigation of Goncharenko's murder, as well as for an end to the "recycling" of radioactive metals and other materials into the consumer product stream. In the U.S., the Embassy of Ukraine can be written at 3350 M Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20007, faxed at (202) 333-0817, or phoned at (202) 349-2920. Embassies and Consulates of Ukraine elsewhere in the U.S., or in other countries, can also be contacted.

Thanks to Nuclear Energy Information Service in Illinois for alerting us to this story.

Click here to learn more about anti-nuclear resistance to attempts at "radioactive recycling" in North America.

Beyond Nuclear scores win for licensing hearings on “no confidence” in nuclear waste management

In response to petitions filed by Beyond Nuclear and twenty-three other environmental organizations to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) affecting a total of 36 reactors in new licensing and relicensing proceedings, the Commission granted the petitioners’ requests to hold all final licensing decisions in abeyance until the question of what is to be done with the nation’s growing mountain of nuclear waste is resolved.   Beyond Nuclear offered comments in a nationally distributed joint press release.

On June 18, 2012, Beyond Nuclear and the other organizations filed requests to reopen federal licensing hearings on new reactor construction and old reactor license extensions following the safe energy communities’ victory in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals which struck down the agency’s  long standing “Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision.” The so-called “confidence rule” had held that the public was denied environmental impact hearings on continued nuclear waste generation from  new reactor construction and 20-year license extensions on expiring 40-year operating licenses in the absence of a scientifically-accepted and license-approved nuclear waste management plan. The federal regulatory agency responsible for licensing these essentially nuclear waste factories held that it had “confidence” that someday, somewhere, somebody would come up with an acceptable plan.   In particular, the June 8, 2012 federal court ruling struck down the agency denial of public hearings based on NRC “assurance” that approval of a long term geological repository for high-level radioactive waste would be available “when necessary” and that high-level nuclear waste (tens of thousands of tons of irradiated nuclear fuel) can be stored indefinitely  in temporary water filled pools or in combination with onsite and offsite dry storage casks.

The August 7, 2012 NRC Order essentially accepts all of the petitioners’ requests to:   1) suspend any final decisions in reactor licensing cases, pending completion  of action on the remanded  Waste Confidence proceeding; 2) provide opportunity for public comment under the National Environmental Policy Act in Environmental Assessment and Environment Impact Statements and; 3) provide at least 60 days for public interventions in individual licensing cases of any site specific  concerns relating to the remanded nuclear waste proceedings.

Yucca Mountain dump: zombie back from the dead?!

In addition to being scientifically unsuitable for high-level radioactive waste disposal, Yucca Mountain is sacred, and belongs, to the Western Shoshone Indian Nation by treaty rights. This photo by Gabriela Bulisova shows Yucca framed by a ceremonial sweat lodge.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the second highest court in the land just below the U.S. Supreme Court, indicated in a six page ruling on Friday, as reported by the New York Times, that, whether or not Congress appropriates the needed funds, it will order the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to resume the licensing proceeding for the proposed high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

The Obama administration moved to cancel the Yucca Mountain dump proposal upon taking office, the fulfillment of a campaign pledge to Nevadans. Energy Secretary Chu moved to withdraw the license application from the proceeding already under way at NRC, and to zero out the budget for the project. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who has devoted his political career to stopping the dump ever since being on the receiving end of the "Screw Nevada Bill" in 1987 as a rookie Senator, has ensured that $0.00 has been appropriated toward the dump since 2010.

Another wild card in this high stakes poker game? The recently confirmed NRC chairwoman, Dr. Allison Macfarlane, a geologist, literally wrote (well, edited) the book on why Yucca is scientifically unsuitable as a geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste. It is entitled Uncertainty Underground.

What can you do to help make sure the zombie that is the Yucca dump remains in the grave, rather than rising again? Contact the White House, Energy Secretary, and Senate Majority Leader Reid, thank them for their opposition to the Yucca dump, and encourage them to keep doing everything they can to block its coming back from the dead.

Want to learn more about the current state of affairs with high-level radioactive waste? Attend a telephone conference call briefing session, sponsored by NIRS, featuring NRDC's Geoff Fettus, Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force's Steve Frishman, and Southwest Research and Information Center's Don Hancock on August 23rd.