Mayor, environmentalists declare victory of people power over nuclear power

Sarnia Mayor Mike BradleyAs reported by the Sarnia Observer, the Mayor of Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, Mike Bradley (photo, left), has declared victory in a years-long campaign to block the shipment of radioactive steam generators, by boat on the Great Lakes, from Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Kincardine, Ontario, across the Pacific, to Sweden. 

“It's a real testament to citizen power,” said Bradley, who has been a vocal critic of the move, along with a growing list of Ontario mayors, coalition groups, environmental activists, and U.S. Senators. “We're fighting a very large and powerful organization.”

First Nations, including the Mohawks, as well as hundreds of municipalities in Quebec representing millions of citizens along the targeted shipment route, made the difference for the resistance.

Kay Cumbow, the nuclear power watchdog in Michigan who first discovered the risky shipping scheme through her research, then warned and activated others, has said "Thanks to everyone who wrote letters, signed petitions and helped get the word out about the dangers of this scheme that would have put the Great Lakes at risk, endangered workers as well as communities enroute, and would have put radioactive materials into the global recycled metal supply."

Maude Barlow, national chairwoman of the Council of Canadians, was quoted by the Ottawa Citizen: "This is a huge victory for communities around the Great Lakes...The Great Lakes belong to everyone and communities have a right to say 'no' to any projects that will harm them."

As indicated by Mayor Bradley in a separate Sarnia Observer article, the next big fight against "nuclear madness" brewing at Bruce involves proposals by Ontario Power Generation, the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to bury all of Ontario's so-called "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes -- from 20 atomic reactors across the province -- within a mile of the Lake Huron shoreline. Several communities near Bruce, largely populated by Bruce nuclear workers and in effect company towns, have also volunteered to be considered for a national Canadian high-level radioactive waste dump (for 22 reactors).

Irradiated nuclear fuel storage pool fires risk catastrophic radioactivity releases

Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar, Institute for Policy StudiesThe U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has recently published a draft study, which concludes that the risk of a catastrophic irradiated nuclear fuel storage pool fire is vanishingly low. This conclusion seems to starkly contradict earlier NRC findings that pool storage risks are real, and should be dealt with.

The NRC draft study focuses on the risk of a severe earthquake impacting a General Electric Mark I boiling water reactor storage pool (specificially, at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in PA). Ironically enough, NRC's draft conclusion clearly contradicts a warning issued a decade ago by its own current agency Chairwoman, Dr. Allison Macfarlane, who knows a thing or two about seismic risks: she is an internationally recognized Ph.D. geologist, who has long focused on radioactive waste risks. See below.)

NRC has granted the public a short 30 days to comment on this new 369 page draft. Deadline for public comments is currently Friday, August 2nd. Beyond Nuclear, and its environmental allies, are racing to meet this arbitrarily short deadline, to prepare comments which individuals and groups can endorse, or use to write their own. Watch for this in the near future.

However, there are strong voices who disagree with NRC's flip assurances of safety. Robert Alvarez (photo, left), a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, and a former senior advisor to the Energy Secretary during the Clinton administration, published a report in late June, commissioned by Friends of the Earth (FOE), entitled Reducing the hazards of high-level radioactive waste in Southern California: Storage of nuclear waste from spent fuel at San Onofre. The report appeared a couple weeks after Edison International announced the permanent shutdown of San Onofre Units 2 & 3, under intense pressure from FOE and a widespread grassroots environmental network, due to the $2.5 billion, defective steam generator replacement boondoggle, which had put 8 million Southern Californians within a 50-mile radius at radiological risk. Alvarez concludes that the risk of catastrophic radioactivity releases from a high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) storage pool fire at San Onofre, such as caused by a severe earthquake suddenly draining away the pool cooling water supply, are high. A large region downwind could be severely contaminated with radioactive Cesium-137 fallout, including lethal doses to thousands of people within a 10-mile radius.

Alvarez's study follows a 2003 report he and others (including the current NRC Chairwoman, Dr. Allison Macfarlane) co-authored, warning of the catastrophic risks of HLRW pool fires, and calling for the unloading of pools into not-risk-free, but safer, dry casks. Alvarez also published a report in May 2011, documenting the nationwide risk of storage pool fires, in light of the still-unfolding Fukushima catastrophe, which began a couple months earlier.

Just today, the New York Times and Agence France Press/Jiji have reported that steam at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3 could either be due to a nuclear criticality in the molten core, or, as Alvarez (and Fairewinds Associates, Inc's Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen) have hypothesized, could be due to a nuclear criticality in the ruined HLRW storage pool itself.

Beyond Nuclear and a nationwide coalition of hundreds of environmental groups, representing all 50 states, have long advocated Hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS). HOSS calls not only for catastrophically risky pools to be emptied, but for dry cask storage safety, security, and environmental protection to be dramatically upgraded. Dry casks are currently badly designed, poorly fabricated, and not even required to withstand terrorist attacks.

What can you do about HLRW storage pool risks? Contact President Obama and your Senators and Representative (via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121), and urge HOSS as an interim alternative to a recently introduced Senate bill which would make matters worse, by rushing "Mobile Chernobyls" onto the roads, rails, and waterways, in a race for senseless "centralized interim storage" parking lot dumps targeted at already radiologically-burdened DOE sites and nuclear power plants, or, as an act of blatant environmental injustice or radioactive racism, Native American reservations.

"A little Hope" for stopping the Great Lakes radioactive waste DUD!

Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump billboard, seen by hundreds of thousands of Toronto commuters dailyThe struggle against the Canadian nuclear establishment's proposal(s) to bury so-called "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes from 20 reactors across Ontario, and perhaps even high-level radioactive wastes from 22 reactors across Canada, on the Lake Huron shore at or near the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, can be most daunting. Bruce "hosts" 9 reactors (8 operable reactors, 4 each at Bruce A and Bruce B, plus 1 pilot plant -- Douglas Point -- permanently shutdown), one of the single biggest nuclear power plants in the world. Bruce has also quietly incinerated most or all of Ontario's "low" level radioactive wastes for 40 years, with untold radiological emissions. All this, just 50 miles across Lake Huron from Michigan, and upstream from tens of millions of Americans, Canadians, and First Nations/Native Americans who draw their drinking water from the Great Lakes. In terms of the vast fortunes being made by Bruce Nuclear, as well as the harmful radiological releases occurring and radioactive wastes piling up, Bruce is making a killing, while getting away with murder.

Canadian federal decisionmakers have just closed the opportunity to register to speak out in opposition to the proposed "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive waste DGR (Deep Geologic Repository, or, more aptly, DUD -- Deep Underground Dump), and environmental assessment hearings will be held in September and October. As insane as this proposal is (would YOU bury poison next to your well?!, as the group Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump asks -- see photo, above left), the nuclear utility Ontario Power Generation (OPG), the nuclear utility comprised Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), and the Canadian Nuclear Safety (sic) Commission (CNSC) are racing, full steam ahead, to bury their forever deadly radioactive wastes within a mile of the Lake Huron shoreline.

But an antidote to such "nuclear madness" (à la Helen Caldicott's classic title) is at hand! In a recently published book, Tom Lawson of Port Hope, Ontario has shown that such insanity canbe stopped dead in its tracks. Crazy Caverns: How one small community challenged a technocrat juggernaut...and won! tells the inspiring story of a years-long struggle to prevent Canadian provincial and federal government decision makers from allowing Eldorado/Cameco's dumping of uranium processing wastes on the Lake Ontario shoreline.Tom has generously made the book available for free online -- simply click on the link to enjoy your free copy!

Tom has dedicated his "little book" to his wife Pat, as well as "to all those who accept responsibility as citizens in a free society, who agree that the best government is the one kept constantly on its toes by ordinary citizens with the courage to trust their common sense rather than the reassurances of the 'experts.' The experts do not know better than we know what is good for us."

Together, Tom and Pat Lawson, and their friends, neighbors, and colleagues in their tiny, picturesque, but badly contaminated community, have resisted the "biased bafflegab" of the "Pirates of Port Hope" headquartered in their town (Eldorado/Cameco, "Canada's National Uranium Company," as dubbed by Robert Bothwell's company-financed, dubious historical celebration of the firm, and the company's governmental henchmen). Together, this "small group of thoughtful, committed citizens" (à la Margaret Mead) did change the world for the better, by blocking the burial of "a million tons of radioactive and toxic waste 'out of sight, out of mind' under Port Hope's downtown waterfront."

Their important victory can inspire us now, as we struggle to resist OPG's, NWMO's, and CNSC's insane proposal(s) on the Lake Huron shore (more recently, incredibly, the vague specter of yet another DUD, this time for radioactive decommissioning wastes, has also reared its ugly head). In fact, Pat Lawson has spoken out strongly in recent years against the Bruce DUD(s), traveling in the nearby Georgian Bay, where her family has roots extending back many decades.

What can YOU do, right now, to help stop the Bruce DUDs?! Start by signing the Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump petition, and urge your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, etc. to do the same!

Paducah uranium enrichment facility suffers radioactive contamination incident 4 weeks after permanently shutting down

Paducah (uranium enrichment) Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Photo credit: U.S.E.C./U.S. Department of EnergyDespite being permanently shutdown on June 1st, the Paducah facility experienced a radioactivity contamination accident on June 28th, according to a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) incident report dated July 2nd. The radioactivity contamination accident stemmed from a water leak. Given the mountain of radioactive materials at Paducah, such radioactive contamination risks to the facility, the environment beyond, and the people who live there (some directly across dirt roads from the fence line, in a community already showing signs of significantly elevated cancer incidence and death rates) will continue far into the future, despite the facility's welcome permanent shutdown.

In a very real sense, the entire Paducah complex is a radioactive waste -- and toxic chemical -- site that now needs to be dealt with.