Protest outside court house as judge weighs legality of radioactive mud dumping

A Cardiff, Wales judge on Monday adjourned a High Court court hearing for a week after being presented with inaccurate documentation by lawyers for an EDF subsidiary, NNB. NNB claims that the transfer of radioactive mud dredged from EDF’s Hinkley Point C nuclear construction site in England and dumped into Welsh waters did not require an environmental impact assessment (EIA) under European regulations. The defendants must now share additional documentation with the judge and plaintiffs before the case can resume. An injunction against the marine dumping, which is now underway just over one mile off the Cardiff coast, has been sought by Cardiff resident, Cian Ciaràn, keyboardist for the rock group, Super Furry Animals. Beyond Nuclear joined the protest outside the courthouse and attended the hearing. The injunction is intended to call a temporary — and ultimately a permanent —  halt to the dumping. No testing was done for plutonium or uranium in the mud using alpha spectrometry, although these isotopes are likely to be present given the now closed Hinkley Point A reactor was built and operated to manufacture plutonium for British nuclear warheads. The Hinkley site has experienced numerous leaks and fires over the years. A mid-1990s study found a higher risk of cancer mortality in an English seaside community downwind of the nuclear site living in close proximity to an offshore mud bank used as a repository for radioactive waste discharged from Hinkley Point. More

As sea levels rise, the future of nuclear power sinks deeper

Award-winning environmental journalist, John Vidal, has written a powerful piece about sea-level rise under climate change and how coastal nuclear power plants are likely to cope (or not) under these conditions. Are sea walls adequate? Does it make sense to build new nuclear plants on shorelines? Vidal found that at least 100 U.S., European and Asian nuclear power stations built just a few meters above sea level could be threatened by serious flooding caused by accelerating sea-level rise and more frequent storm surges. How many more Fukushimas are we likely to see? Read his article on the Beyond Nuclear International website.

Climate change is here and nuclear is not the answer

The climate crisis is upon us almost everywhere you look. The latest violent storms in the US once again threatened power outages and floods that can be fatal for nuclear power plants. Luck held this time but we cannot count on it forever. Meanwhile sea-levels are rising making coastal nuclear plants another madness. To answer all the questions about the (non-) role of nuclear power under climate change conditions, Beyond Nuclear has published the Climate change and why nuclear power can’t fix it chapter of our anti-nuclear handbook. Please feel free to read, download and/or reprint it. You can read more about why nuclear power hinders progress on climate change here.

Decision time for St. Louis’ radioactive waste

Kay Drey, Beyond Nuclear board presidentOp-ed by Kay Drey (photo, left), Beyond Nuclear's board president, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Also see Kay's pamphlets about the West Lake Landfill, "The Safety of St. Louis Drinking Water Depends on You!!" and "Remove the Radioactive Wastes NOW!!".

As Kay points out, the Manhattan Project radioactive wastes at the West Lake Landfill are among the very oldest of the Atomic Age, and all these decades later, we don't even know what to do with the first cupful! And as is so often the case, as shown in the tragic photo accompanying her op-ed above, as well as a Beyond Nuclear pamphlet, and palm card, it is children (and women, pregnant women and the fetus in the womb, and other highly vulnerable populations, including the elderly, immune-compromised, etc.) who very often bear the worst brunt of the radioactive health hazards.

As reflected in the op-ed above, as well as her cameo in the powerful documentary film "Atomic Homefront," Kay is the institutional memory of such nuclear watch-dogging as at West Lake Landfill. Her vigilance has persisted for 45 years.

Permanent shutdown of Oyster Creek, NJ atomic reactor: 1 down, 98 more to go

The oldest operating atomic reactor in the U.S., Oyster Creek, NJ, has finally, at long last, shut down, for good, after 49 years. The good news? No more risk of reactor meltdown at this Fukushima Daiichi twin design (a GE BWR Mark I); no more radioactive watse generation; and no more cooking of Barnegat Bay (once every six weeks, during operations, the entire water volume of the Bay was passed through Oyster Creek's cooling system, inflicting a half-century of untold ecological harm).

See links to news coverage.