Radioactive Waste
No safe, permanent solution has yet been found anywhere in the world - and may never be found - for the nuclear waste problem. In the U.S., the only identified and flawed high-level radioactive waste deep repository site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada has been canceled. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an end to the production of nuclear waste and for securing the existing reactor waste in hardened on-site storage.
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The Swedish town of Osthammar will house the country's first high-level radioactive waste repository. But, as Sam King writes in the Financial Times, "nuclear waste is short on what most people consider winning qualities." His article describes in clear, lay terms, the deadly dangers of long-lived radioactive waste and the strange journey taken by two Swedish towns vying to host it.
In response to the nuclear power establishment's current push to revive commercial high-level radioactive waste reprocessing in the U.S. for the first time in 37 years, Beyond Nuclear and Physicians for Social Responsibility have revised and updated the 2006 "Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Waste at Reactors." Beyond Nuclear and PSR recently invited organizations to sign the revised Principles. Please sign your group onto these revised Principles as soon as possible by emailing Morgan Pinnell at PSR, mpinnell@psr.org. Individuals can help by sharing this alert with groups they are associated with, as well as contacting their own U.S. Senators and Representative, to urge "hardened on-site storage" as an interim alternative to such high-risk proposals as commercial reprocessing. For more background on the "Principles", see here. (Image from Dr. Gordon Thompson's 2003 report, "Robust Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel: A Neglected Issue of Homeland Security," commissioned by Citizens Awareness Network)
In the Sept. issue of the "Takoma Voice" newspaper, Kevin Kamps praised the City of Takoma Park, Maryland for seeking efficiency and renewable alternatives to nuclear electricity. He also thanked its Nuclear-Free Zone Committee for its years of watchdogging efforts against high-level radioactive waste trains from Calvert Cliffs, MD and North Anna, VA being run through the Takoma Metro Station on the CSX railway.
On August 31, 2009, Beyond Nuclear appealed to the NRC to reconsider an ASLB ruling rejecting our standing to intervene against dry cask storage of high-level radioactive waste at the 21-year-old Fermi 2 reactor. On August 21, 2009, the ASLB had rejected our standing, thus dismissing our intervention request for a hearing on the merits of our concerns. Beyond Nuclear's initial intervention, detailing security-related concerns regarding dry cask storage of high-level radioactive waste at Fermi 2 on the Lake Erie shore, was filed on May 7, 2009. Detroit Edison's and NRC Staff's challenges to Beyond Nuclear's intervention petition were filed on June 1st. Beyond Nuclear responded to those challenges on June 9th.
The Monroe Evening News highlighted Beyond Nuclear's efforts in a Sept. 3rd article, and supported our efforts to upgrade security in a Sept. 6th editorial.
For nearly a decade, nuclear industry whistleblower Oscar Shirani (who passed away last year) warned that Holtec casks, like those proposed at Fermi, are of questionable structural integrity due to major quality assurance violations in their design and manufacture. Now retired Nuclear Regulatory Commission dry cask storage inspector, Dr. Ross Landsman, shares Shirani's concerns.
September 22, 2009