Fourth coronavirus case confirmed at Savannah River Site

As reported by the Aiken Standard.

SRS is a major U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons complex facility in South Carolina.

Tweet >> Here we have more shameless exploitation by the nuclear industry and its minions of the coronavirus pandemic ...

Thank you to Scott Stapf of the Hastings Group for this tweet:

https://twitter.com/stapf/status/1247554886545354753

Here we have more shameless exploitation by the nuclear industry and its minions of the coronavirus pandemic. Thanks for showing us your true colors by twisting fear about death & disease to advance your craven, lucre-driven agenda of soulless greed. https://nypost.com/2020/04/06/a-pandemic-is-the-wrong-time-to-shut-down-nycs-top-source-of-electricity/

Update on April 8, 2020 by admin

Some great news from our friends and colleagues at AGREE (Alliance for a Green Economy) in New York:

New research from @PhySciEng shows Indian Point nuclear plant is on track to be replaced by 100% renewable energy and energy efficiency in NY. The plant’s first reactor shuts down this month and will be completely shut down by April 2021. https://www.psehealthyenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PSE-Research-Brief_-Indian-Point-_4_6_20.pdf #IPShutDown

On-site work on nuclear waste disposal in NW Ontario suspended due to coronavirus pandemic concerns

As reported by TBNewsWatch.com.

The site, midway between Ignace, Ontario and the Wabigoon Ojibway First Nation, is being targeted for Canada's high-level radioactive waste dump. It is "in competition" with South Bruce, Ontario, very near the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station as well as the Saugeen Ojibwe First Nation, for the dubious distinction.

During Honor the Earth concert tours nearly two decades ago, Ojibwe environmental activist Winona "No Nukes" LaDuke said on stage that "The best minds in nuclear science have been hard at work for fifty years for a solution to the nuclear waste problem, and they finally got one: haul it down a dirt road and dump it on an Indian reservation."

At the time, she was referring to U.S. nuclear power industry and U.S. government schemes to dump high-level radioactive waste on the Skull Valley Goshutes Reservation in Utah (a so-called "consolidated interim storage facility"), as well as permanent disposal at Yucca Mountain, Nevada on Western Shoshone land.

But her words apply equally well today, re: the Canadian government and nuclear industry's attempt to dump high-level radioactive waste in Anishinaabe aki, Ojibwe country.

In recent months, the Saugeen Ojibwe Nation voted -- by an 86% to 14% margin -- against a proposed "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive waste dump, also targeted at their homeland.

See a 2013 map by Anna Tilden of IICPH (International Institute of Concern for Pubilc Health) showing the radioactive hot spots on the Great Lakes Basin, including (inset, upper right), the two-dozen sites then under consideration for Canada's high-level radioactive waste dump. That has now been whittled down to Ignace/Wabigoon Ojibway First Nation in extreme w. Ontario (150 miles from Lake Superior), and South Bruce/Saugeen Ojibwe Nation in s. Ontario (on the Lake Huron shore).

"I firmly believe TMI Unit 2 is the most radiologically contaminated facility in our nation outside of the Department of Energy’s weapons complex."

So wrote the State of Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Secretary, Patrick McDonnell, to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairwoman, Kristine Svinicki. The DEP secretary wrote the NRC chair expressing many concerns regarding the recently announced intention by EnergySolutions of Utah to take over the Three Mile Island Unit 2 site from current owner GPU Nuclear, for rapid decommissioning, despite still lingering high radioactivity contamination risks resulting from the March 28, 1979 reactor meltdown there.

The DEP secretary's concerns include environmental and safety impacts, cost of clean-up and financial responsibility, and radioactive waste handling.

See the letter posted at the NRC website here.

Contractor at nuclear power plant tests positive for COVID-19

As reported by The Times-Tribune, re: the Susquehanna nuclear power plant in PA.