"Cyber war" threatens radioactive waste facilities

Public Radio International's The World has reported that the U.S. military now recognizes "cyber war" as the "new fifth domain of war between states, after air, land, sea and outer space." It reported "the humanitarian consequences of a cyber attack could include damage to infrastructure like power grids and toxic waste facilities," which could, of course, include atomic reactors and high-level radioactive waste storage pools. Bennett Ramberg warned more than 25 years ago that reactors and radioactive waste could be targeted during war, in his book Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril. The Stuxnet computer worm, targeted at the Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, is rumored to have been launched by the U.S. and/or Israeli militaries, although no radioactivity releases to the environment from the resulting damage were reported.

NRC licensing board blocks State of Massachusetts bid to challenge Pilgrim license extension

NRC file photo of Pilgrim, located 38 miles southeast of Boston; its original 40 year operating license expires June 8, 2012The New York Times reports that a panel of three administrative law judges at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has rejected a bid by the State of Massachusetts to challenge the Pilgrim nuclear power plant's license extension by requiring "lessons learned" from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe to be applied. Both Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4 and Pilgrim share the same reactor design, the General Electric Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor. Beyond Nuclear's "Freeze Our Fukushimas" emergency enforcement petition to NRC calls for the immediate shut down of Pilgrim and 22 additional Mark 1s operating across the U.S. NRC has rubberstamped 71 reactor license extensions in the past 12 years. Mary Lampert at Pilgrim Watch has led the grassroots effort challenging the 20 year license extension at Pilgrim, keeping the proceeding alive for 6 years, a record.

Beyond Nuclear's "Freeze Our Fukushimas" emergency enforcement petition, joined by over 8,000 groups and individuals, also pointed out that Mark 1 pools are vulnerable to gradual boil downs or sudden drain downs which could result in catastrophic high-level radioactive waste fires, which very well may have occurred at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4, prompting NRC to order Americans to flee at least 50 miles away in the earliest days of the catastrophe. Pilgrim's pool contains all the high-level radioactive waste ever generated there over the past several decades, more than Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 to 4's pools combined.

The staggering costs of "cleaning up" Canada's mounting radioactive wastes

Pat McNamara writes in Nuclear Genocide in Canada (Part 4, "Nuclear Costs to Date"):

"The Canadian Government's estimate of projected cleanup costs [for radioactive wastes] has no basis in reality. They have allocated $240 million to clean up 3.5 million cubic metres of radioactive waste in Port Hope. By contrast, the Americans spent $4.4 billion on a similar sized, but far less complicated cleanup at the Fernald site in Ohio. 

Radioactive tailings from the 12 mines in Elliot Lake were dumped into ten lakes. All the lakes are dead and leaching contaminants into the watershed all the way to Lake Huron. The Serpent River watershed has been destroyed. There is no cost estimate to fix this disaster.

It will cost another $25 billion to dispose of spent reactor fuel currently being stored at reactor sites and probably $25 billion more to clean up Chalk River, Pinawa, Port Hope and other contaminated towns and mine sites."

Given the fact that many of Canada's 20 reactors are being "refurbished," to enable them to keep running and generating radioactive waste for years or even decades into the future, and that new reactors are proposed, the price tag for irradiated nuclear fuel management will only continue to climb.

What does radioactive waste have in common with basketball?!

USA Today on November 9th advertized on its front page "Aircraft carrier to host hoops: See how the USS Carl Vinson is turned into a basketball venue," and ran a large graphic in its sports section entitled "College basketball lands on the USS Carl Vinson." The President and First Lady are even reported to be attending the Veterans Day game between Michigan State and North Carolina. Interestingly, USA Today's coverage fails to mention that the carrier is nuclear powered.

This is not the only time basketball and nuclear power have mixed. Bob Pollard at Union of Concerned Scientists in his classic book The Nugget File reported one of the strangest nuclear accidents ever. Staff at a nuclear power plant decided to block shut a large diameter pipe with a basketball wrapped in duct tape to match the pipe's inner diameter, so they could perform repairs on the high-level radioactive waste storage pool. The pressure of the water shot the basketball out, risking a pool drain down and catastrophic radioactive waste fire. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's response? Advising that basketballs not be used for such purposes in the future!

In addition, the Utah Jazz NBA basketball team's arena is named after EnergySolutions, the largest radioactive waste company in the U.S. And the spherical Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA bears a strange resemblance to early General Electric atomic reactors such as Big Rock Point in Michigan!

TransCanada Pipelines is also a large-scale radioactive waste generator!

TransCanada is part owner of Bruce nuclear power plantCongratulations to environmental allies who have successfully pressured the Obama administration to postpone -- and hopefully ultimately cancel -- TransCanada Pipelines' proposed Keystone XL Pipeline for Canadian tar sands crude oil. But tar sands crude oil isn't the only "dirty, dangerous, and expensive" energy source TransCanada dabbles with. According to its website, it also owns 48.8% of the 3,000 Megawatt-electric (MW-e) Bruce A nuclear power plant, and 31.6% of the 3,200 MW-e Bruce B nuclear power plant. Bruce -- a 9 reactor and radioactive waste complex located in Ontario on the shore of Lake Huron just 50 miles from Michigan -- is the largest nuclear power plant in the Western Hemisphere, and the second biggest in the world. TransCanada entered the nuclear power business despite warnings by NIRS in late 2002 about serious financial and environmental risks.

A primary bone of contention over the Keystone XL pipeline is its proposed route over the irreplacable Ogallala Aquifer; the Waste Control Specialists radioactive waste dump in Texas also threatens the Ogallala. For its part, TransCanada's Bruce nuclear complex already comprises one of the biggest concentrations of radioactive waste in the world, embroiled in a raging controversy over proposed radioactive waste shipments on the Great Lakes, and targeted to become a permanent burial dump for "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes from a whopping 20 reactors across Ontario -- the "Deep Underground Dump," or DUD, as Greenpeace Canada's Dave Martin dubbed it. The DUD would be located just a half mile from the Lake Huron shoreline. The Great Lakes provide drinking water for 40 million people in the U.S., Canada, and numerous Native American First Nations.