Radioactive tomb in Pacific about to leak

The Runit Dome in the Marshall Islands is effectively a radioactive "tomb." As the Los Angeles Times writes, it "holds more than 3.1 million cubic feet — or 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools — of U.S.-produced radioactive soil and debris, including lethal amounts of plutonium. Nowhere else has the United States saddled another country with so much of its nuclear waste, a product of its Cold War atomic testing program."

The radioactive waste is there because, reports the Times, "Between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear bombs on, in and above the Marshall Islands — vaporizing whole islands, carving craters into its shallow lagoons and exiling hundreds of people from their homes."

The Marshallese have been clamoring for years about the risk posed by the "Tomb", given it is poorly fortified to begin with. Now climate change is adding to the peril. Continues the Times:

"Now the concrete coffin, which locals call 'the Tomb,' is at risk of collapsing from rising seas and other effects of climate change. Tides are creeping up its sides, advancing higher every year as distant glaciers melt and ocean waters rise."

There have been flurries of news stories in recent months about the Runit Dome. On our magazine website, Beyond Nuclear International, we have been posting stories about the scandal in the Marshall Islands, where the US has effectively abandoned those afflicted by the atomic tests to a life of poverty, over-crowding and squalor. See Vlad Sokhin's powerful photo essay, and Darlene Keju's courageous story. Read about the US veterans who were treated as guinea pigs and then also neglected, and John Pilger's searing article. And watch Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner's powerful video poem about the Tomb. (Photo above of Runit Dome, Wikimedia Commons).

Read the full LA Times article.

As climate crisis worsens, nuclear plants get more dangerous

A new report looks at the increasing risks faced by nuclear power plants around the world as the manifestations of the climate crisis worsen. Here is the abstract:

Nuclear power—a source of low-carbon electricity—is exposed to increasing risks from climate change. Intensifying storms, droughts, extreme precipitation, wildfires, higher temperatures, and sea-level rise threaten supply disruptions and facility damage. Approximately 64 percent of installed capacity commenced operation between thirty and forty-eight years ago, before climate change was considered in plant design or construction. Globally, 516 million people reside within a fifty mile (80 km) radius of at least one operating nuclear power plant, and 20 million reside within a ten mile (16 km) radius, and could face health and safety risks resulting from an extreme event induced by climate change. Roughly 41 percent of nuclear power plants operate near seacoasts, making them vulnerable to increasing storm intensity and sea-level rise. Inland plants face exposure to other climate risks, such as increasingly severe wildfires and warmer water temperatures. No entity has responsibility for conducting risk assessments that adequately evaluate the climate vulnerabilities of nuclear power and the subsequent threats to international energy security, the environment, and human health. A comprehensive risk assessment by international agencies and the development of national and international standards is necessary to mitigate risks for new and existing plants. More

New report decries unsolved and "incalculable" risks of radioactive waste

A landmark new report on radioactive waste was released on November 11 in Berlin. The World Nuclear Waste Report, with multiple authors, was commissioned primarily by the Heinrich Böll Foundation which relased it on Monday. The report is the brain-child of former German Green Party/ Alliance 90 MEP, Rebecca Harms – a forty year campaigner against nuclear power –  and independent Paris-based international energy consultant, Mycle Schneider, the team behind the now internationally respected and encyclopedically comprehensive annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report.

The WNWR concludes “The final disposal of high-level radioactive waste presents governments worldwide with major challenges that have not yet been addressed, and entails incalculable technical, logistical, and financial risks.”

Ellen Ueberschär, President of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, stated:

"The numerous unsolved problems in dealing with nuclear waste show that nuclear power has no future. At the same time, the report makes clear that phasing out nuclear power is not enough. Insufficient financial provisions for disposing of nuclear waste must not undermine the care and safety of decisions for interim storage and final disposal."

Read the full report.

New Mexico state legislators, and All Pueblo Council of Governors, speak out against Holtec CISF

The Santa Fe New Mexican has reported on NM state legislators taking a stand against the Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) targeted at their state. The article reports: Pending federal approval, Holtec would store some 10,000 200-ton canisters underground on a 1,000-acre desert facility "35 miles from the nearest human habitat," according to the company's website. The drums of waste would come to New Mexico by train. (emphasis added) That's an odd thing for Holtec to say. Beyond Nuclear's members and supporters, who have provided legal standing for our intervention in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing proceeding, live and work within just a few, to several, miles of the targeted site for Holtec's CISF; one lives just a mile away. In addition, countless millions of Americans, in most states, live along the road, rail, and/or waterway transport routes that would be used to ship high-level radioactive wastes (HLRWs) to southeastern NM. On Sept. 5, 2019, the former head of Environmental Justice (EJ) at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Mustafa Ali, warned on Democracy Now! that such HLRW trucks, trains, and/or barges, would themselves be yet another EJ violation, as they pass through countless low income, people of color communities. Such shipments would go on for not years, but decades. It seems that for Holtec, certain people just don't count, when there are many billions of dollars to be made -- albeit, yet again, at public expense! (Not to mention risk, and liability!) But it's not just NM state legislators opposed to Holtec's CISF. In June 2019, NM's governor, public lands commissioner, and U.S. Rep., Deb Haaland (a Democrat, one of the first two Native American women ever elected to Congress, in 2018), all spoke out strongly against Holtec. In addition, the All Pueblo Council of Governors did so as well, against Holtec as well as the Interim Storage Partners CISF at Waste Control Specialists in Texas, on October 21, 2019.

MORE, including what you can do!

Exelon Nuclear's corrupt lobbying activities, seeking massive public bailouts, lead to multiple federal investigations, as radioactive risks mount

Exelon is not only the largest nuclear utility in the U.S., it is the biggest electric utility in the country. As reported by Midwest Energy News, multiple federal investigations, including by the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as a U.S. Attorney's Office and grand jury, have been launched into Exelon Nuclear's lobbying activities involving Illinois state legislators and Chicago officials.

In the past several years, Exelon lobbyists have secured large-scale bailouts for its dangerously age-degraded atomic reactors in New York ($7.6 billion over 12 years; an Exelon lobbyist brazenly bragged, at a dirty energy industry conference, about the 750% return on investment!), Illinois ($2.35 billion over 10 years), and New Jersey. Its "nuclear hostage taking" tactic, as longtime Exelon watchdog Dave Kraft of Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS) of Chicago calls it, is to "threaten" to close reactors by date certain, unless massively bailed out.

The threat is to the workers' jobs at the nuclear power plants, but also to local tax revenues, once reactors close for good. NEIS, Beyond Nuclear, and our allies say "yes please!" to the reactor closures (thereby averting core meltdowns, stopping high-level radioactive waste generation and worsening contamination levels), but have simultaneously long called for just transitions, for both the workforce, as well as the host communities. In September, Exelon did close Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Pennsylvania for lack of a bailout; it is using that to try to leverage bailouts at its several other decrepit atomic reactors across the Keystone State. Exelon is also seeking bailouts for reactors in Maryland, and elsewhere. MORE.