tagged w/ Nuclear Waste
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The Japan Times...
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Friday, Nov. 4, 2011
Disposal of quake debris begins
Kyodo
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Work to dispose of debris from the quake-ravaged city of Miyako, Iwate Prefecture, began Thursday in Tokyo with about 30 tons arriving on a train at Tokyo Freight Terminal, the first load from Iwate to be accepted by a local government outside the Tohoku region.
PHOTO: Put to the test: Workers check the radiation levels of tsunami debris from Iwate Prefecture that arrived in Tokyo on Thursday morning. Officials said the results were well below the legal limit of 0.01 microsievert per hour. KYODO PHOTO
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The Tokyo Metropolitan Government plans to accept a total of 11,000 tons of debris from Miyako by next March, as part of plans to dispose of a combined 500,000 tons of debris from both Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, the areas hit hardest by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, by fiscal 2013.
At the terminal in Shinagawa Ward, debris containers were transshipped onto trucks to be carried to a crushing facility in Ota Ward, from where combustibles will be taken to an incinerator in Koto Ward.
Resulting ash and incombustibles are to be used as landfill in Tokyo Bay.
In light of radiation fears among residents, the metropolitan government plans to monitor and release data weekly on radiation levels in the air at the edge of the crushing premises and once a month on crushed waste, ash and exhaust gas, it said.
Its four crushing facilities, incinerator and landfill site are all located in an industrial zone facing Tokyo Bay.
Miyako is located 260 km north of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, while Tokyo is roughly 220 km southwest of the plant.
Tepco denies criticality
Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday the detection of radioactive xenon at its stricken Fukushima No. 1 power plant, indicating recent nuclear fission, was not the result of a sustained nuclear chain reaction known as a criticality, as feared, but a case of "spontaneous" fission.
When it revealed Wednesday that it had detected at its crisis-hit No. 2 reactor xenon-133 and xenon-135, which are typically generated by nuclear fission and have relatively short half-lives, it touched on the possibility that melted fuel inside the reactor may have temporarily gone critical.
Tepco has been analyzing the phenomenon, which did not raise the reactor's temperature or pressure, with support from the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.
The nuclear crisis at the plant, the world's worst in 25 years, erupted in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and resulted in the meltdown of nuclear fuel in the six-reactor power complex's reactors 1, 2 and 3.
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FROM DR HELEN CALDICOTT (on Facebook)...
Dr Helen Caldicott
The waste arrives for burning from contaminated areas, accompanied by a reassuring photo of a small pile of rubble that is pointedly NOT setting off the radiation monitors. But what of the rest of the 30 tons of contaminated waste to be crushed, burned, and dumped in the Tokyo Bay area. It seems unlikely they would show photos of all the waste that will set off alarms.
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.The Japan Times...
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Friday, Nov. 4, 2011
Disposal of quake debris begins... more
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By DANA LIEBELSON
Dr. Strangelove fans had an exciting news cycle last week, with the release of two new reports that focus on the bomb (and tangentially, one on nuclear energy oversight.) First, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded the U.S. has no reliable way to track uranium and plutonium shipped to more than two dozen countries. Then Bloomberg reported that the U.S. Air Force is overstating the number of nuclear arsenals in service. Finally, the Nuclear Regulatory Committee (NRC) released a report asking for immediate reevaluation of the risks posed by earthquakes and floods to reactors. So put on your cowboy hat, here’s a closer look at these reports.
The U.S. has shipped 17,500 kilograms of highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium—material
that could potentially be used for weapons—to 27 countries with which it has peaceful nuclear cooperation agreements. According to the GAO report, the U.S. can only verify the location of about 1,160 kilograms of this material. Call me crazy, but it seems like a bad idea to track nuclear weapons material like Halloween candy.
The GAO report also reveals that the agencies (NRC, Department of State and the Department of Energy) responsible for visiting countries holding the highest proliferation risk quantities of U.S. nuclear material have not done so. In fact, of the 55 visits made between 1994 and 2010, countries only met international security guidelines about half the time.
“This could be a major violation of America’s international treaty obligations” wrote Adam Weinstein, Mother Jones’ national security reporter.
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the Air Force claims that it has 555 ‘Minuteman IIIs,’ which are land-based intercontinental nuclear missiles. However, according to congressional investigators and Air Force documents, 105 of these missiles are disassembled. Several officials pointed to this discrepancy as evidence of a lack of accountability.
Senator Tom Carper (D-Delaware) told Bloomberg, “If the Air Force accounting and inventory systems can't accurately count the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles in its possession, it's fair to question whether the Air Force and other military services can count other, more common and more numerous assets.”
The NRC also released a report last week requesting immediate reviews of seismic and flooding risks at 104 nuclear reactors throughout the country. This report comes about in response to the catastrophic Japan earthquake—and also last month’s East coast quake, which knocked over a couple chairs.
According to the report, knowledge of seismic hazards in the U.S. has evolved to the point where it’s time to reevaluate the designs of existing nuclear power reactors to ensure safety standards are met. Additionally, some plants still rely on “temporary flood mitigation measures”—like sandbagging.
The NRC recommends that their recommendations for regulatory actions be initiated “without delay.” Whether this will actually happen remains to be seen: as POGO’s executive director, Danielle Brian wrote recently: “regulators have been knowingly giving a pass to nuclear operators on 'seismic qualification' - i.e. earthquake preparedness - for years.”
Perhaps these kinds of reports would fly with Dr. Strangelove after all—he did say, “the whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost if you keep it a secret.” Hopefully he was also referring to nuclear transparency—in war and energy.
Dana Liebelson is POGO's Beth Daley Impact Fellow.By DANA LIEBELSON
Dr. Strangelove fans had an exciting news cycle last week, with... more
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Hobbs, N.M. will play host to the Uranium Fuel Cell Conference on Wednesday and Thursday.
U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, R-Hobbs, and New Mexico Secretary of Economic Development Jon Barela will present state and federal viewpoints on the economic impact of nuclear energy.
According to a news release, the event is the first of its kind to feature leaders who can speak on all aspects of the uranium cycle, from mining and exploration to nuclear energy and spent fuel storage.
The event will include a panel discussion on the Fukushima reactor in Japan, which was damaged in the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, with a technical presentation comparing it to the 1979 Three Mile Island incident.Hobbs, N.M. will play host to the Uranium Fuel Cell Conference on Wednesday and... more
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TreeHugger...
Is There A Third Option To Being Just Pro- or Anti-Nuclear?
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY on 03.22.11
Business & Politics
nuclear waste protest photo
photo: Takver/Creative Commons
As the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant shifts to being a mere situation in the headlines, and both pro- and anti-nuclear supporters of various shades of green continue to opine, I have to admit to being conflicted.
Rather than the Japan earthquake and tsunami making me more decided on the issue of nuclear power, it has all just served to muddy to waters for me. Which is unfortunate when you're a writer whose job it is to have an opinion on (seemingly) everything and it's all the better when it's strongly pro or con the issue of the day.
Yesterday the ever-contrary George Monbiot (whose contrariness I often if not always agree with) wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian which at the time of this writing elicited 23 pages (!) of comments. Monbiot used to be against nuclear power but has shifted position as the result of how the reactors at Fukushima fared in the recent disaster.
If A Crappy Old Plant Hit By A Huge Quake Didn't Kill Anyone...
While still favoring a "major expansion" of renewables, and still not being fond of the people running the UK's nuclear power industry (he still "loathes the liars"), Monbiot proposes perspective:
A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.
That is indeed a good perspective to take. As is the fact that the public's knowledge of the effects of radiation is low (not helped along by much of the mainstream media coverage it must be said) and the resultant fear, as George says, "wildly exaggerated".
There's No Guarantee Next Time Won't Kill People
But there's something in me that still wonders if that perspective is not a forced one. Perhaps rather than being a sign of durability, perhaps what happened represented a solid dose of luck as much an anything else. The power plant is still not secured and a post-mortem assessment of the exact chain of events still likely a long ways off.
I've always thought that even if nuclear power is in normal operation safe, and living near one under those conditions does indeed expose you to less radiation than living near a coal-fired power plant (as the chart above clear shows), the effects of the worst-case scenario are too great to not err on the side of caution to the point of opposing nuclear power.
And that's not even getting into more mundane issues of whether it's really low-carbon electricity when you include mining in the equation, the issue disposal of spent fuel, and whether it's wise to be investing in a power source that's so expensive when there are questions about how long we'll be able to keep mining the fuel.
Even if proponents of nuclear power in the environmental movement, from Stewart Brand to our own John Laumer and those in between running the gamut of fame, do have a valid point that compared to more coal power plants and even more natural gas ones, nuclear seems like a good bet for providing electricity and still not continuing to ruin the planet with excess greenhouse gas emissions--even against that, nuclear power just doesn't sit well with me. It somehow seems like more of the same that got us into this mess.
I realize to some that will make me seem like a neo-luddite, but that's far from the case. I just think that when report after report have been released showing how it's technically possible to transition to all renewable energy in a similar time period that it'd take to build all these new nuclear plants, we ought to more seriously consider that.
There's probably a snappier, more boldface, more contrasty way of saying that, but that's not how I feel about it. And frankly, that's not how I think you ought to think about nuclear power either. This is a complex issue, as is everything regarding the environmental problems we're facing, and it shouldn't be simplified to two shades of opinion.
Time to Slow Down and Reassess Our Expectations of Growth
Which is why coming across Bill McKibben's opinion piece, written a few days early than Monbiot's but also in The Guardian was timely. Bill provides a third way to think about nuclear, which also happens to nicely deal with energy and environmental issues more broadly at it gets at what I see as the root causes of all this.
After talking about sea level rise, McKibben writes (emphasis is mine):
We can try to deal with this in two ways. One is to attempt to widen it with more technology. If the Earth's temperature is rising, maybe we could "geoengineer" the planet, tossing sulphur into the atmosphere in an effort to block incoming sunlight. It's theoretically possible. But researchers warn it could do more harm than good, and maybe this isn't the week to trust the grandest promises of engineers, not when they've all but lost control of the highest technology we've ever built, there on the bluff at Fukushima. The other possibility is to try to build down a little: to focus on resilience, on safety. And to do that - here's the controversial part - instead of focusing on growth. We might decide that the human enterprise (at least in the west) has got big enough, that our appetites need not to grow, but to shrink a little, in order to provide us more margin. What would that mean? Buses and bikes and trains, not SUVs. Local food, with more people on the farm so that muscles replace some of the oil. Having learned that banks are "too big to fail", we might guess that our food and energy systems fall into that same category.
Rather than continuing to fall into the same camps of pro- and anti-nuke, how about we step outside that debate and look for solutions that don't depend on ever more growth, that have embedded at their core a concept of appropriate scale?
[CHARTS AVAILABLE BY CLICKING ON ABOVE LINK]TreeHugger...
Is There A Third Option To Being Just Pro- or Anti-Nuclear?
by... more
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By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
A second reactor unit at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan may have ruptured, authorities announced on Wednesday. This is on top of their earlier revelation that the containment vessel of a separate reactor unit had cracked.
As of Tuesday, four nuclear reactors in Japan seem to be in partial meltdown in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami, according to Christian Parenti of the Nation:
One of them, reactor No. 2, seems to have ruptured. The situation is spinning out of control as radiation levels spike. The US Navy has pulled back its aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan, after seventeen of its crew were exposed to radiation while flying sixty miles off the Japanese coast.
But despite three major explosions—at reactor No. 1, then No. 3, then No. 2—the Fukushima containment vessels seem to be holding. (Chernobyl lacked that precaution, having only a flimsy cement containment shell that collapsed, allowing the massive release of radioactive material.)
So, the good news is that only one out of four of the reactors is teetering on the brink of a full meltdown, and engineers might still be able to stave off disaster. The bad news, Parenti explains, is that spent fuel rods on the reactor sites could pose grave health hazards even if the threat of meltdown is averted. Even so-called “spent” rods remain highly radioactive.
The big question is whether the facilities that house this waste survived the earthquake, the tsunami, and any subsequent massive explosions at the nearby reactor. Given the magnitude of the destruction, and the relatively flimsy facilities used to house the spent rods, it seems unlikely that all the containment pools emerged unscathed. Parenti explains:
Unlike the reactors, spent fuel pools are not—repeat not—housed in any sort of hardened or sealed containment structures. Rather, the fuel rods are packed tightly together in pools of water that are often several stories above ground.
A pond at the Fukushima Daiichi plant is overheating, but radiation levels were so high that the Japanese military has postponed a helicopter mission to douse the pond with water.
Journalist and environmental activist Harvey Wasserman tells the Real News Network that the housing the spent rods (a.k.a. nuclear waste) is a chronic problem for the global nuclear industry.
Wasserman told GRITtv that the west coast of the United States has reactors that could suffer a similar fate in the event of a sufficiently large earthquake.
“If I were in Japan, I would at least get the children away from the reactor, because their bodies are growing faster and their cells are more susceptible to radiation damage. I would go out to 50 kilometers and at least get the children away from those reactors,” nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen told DemocracyNow! on Tuesday. At the time he said this, 70,000 residents had already been forced to evacuate their homes, and another 140,000 were ordered to stay indoors.
Mainstreaming anti-contraception
Kirsten Powers, Fox News’ resident self-proclaimed liberal, took to the pages of the Daily Beast recently to make the bizarre case that Planned Parenthood should be de-funded because the 100-year-old organization doesn’t really prevent the half-million abortions that it claims to prevent by supplying millions of clients with reliable birth control. (Powers was forced to concede that a gross statistical error rendered her entire piece invalid.) At RH Reality Check, Amanda Marcotte describes how Powers attempted to repackage fringe anti-contraception arguments for a mainstream audience. At TAPPED, I explain why Planned Parenthood’s abortion-prevention claim is rock solid.
Diet quackery
Unscrupulous doctors are cashing in on the latest diet fad: hormone injections derived from the urine of pregnant women, Kristina Chew notes for Care2.com. Patients pay $1,000 for consultations, a supply human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), and a 500-calorie-a-day diet plan. There is no evidence that hCG increases weight loss more than a starvation diet alone. But paying $1,000 to inject yourself in the butt every day does evidently work up a hell of a placebo effect.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
A second reactor unit at the... more
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http://www.treehugger.com/us-import-radioactive-waste.jpg
A Utah company is promising to tighten nuclear materials handling rules after discovering it took in waste with radioactivity levels higher than allowed.
KSTU reported Friday that Salt Lake City-based Energy Solutions Inc. found 23 drums of material accepted for disposal in Utah exceeded low-level radioactive waste standards.
Company chief executive Val Christiansen says Energy Solutions is troubled by the finding and was taking steps to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Healthy Environment Alliance Utah chief Christopher Thomas says the state shouldn't let the company off the hook. He's calling for a stiff fine, calling it astounding the company didn't know what kind of nuclear waste it took in.http://www.treehugger.com/us-import-radioactive-waste.jpg
A Utah company is... more
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http://dcbureau.org/201101111292/National-Security-News-Service/high-level-nuclear-waste-no-where-to-go.html
Many nuclear power advocates appeared in front of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future in Augusta, Georgia, on Friday in support of a permanent repository for nuclear waste and supported the concept of reprocessing nuclear waste.
Environmentalists opposed reprocessing because there is no permanent waste repository and reprocessing creates more waste. They believe reprocessing wastes taxpayer dollars on special interests.
BRAC went to Augusta because the Department of Energy’s massive nuclear facility, the Savannah River Site, and the Southern Company’s two huge new nuclear power plants under construction are nearby.
During a day-long meeting, the 15-person Commission, launched by President Barack Obama last January, heard from an array of speakers. Most of them criticized the Obama administration’s decision to abandon the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada, which was designed as a permanent repository for 70,000 tons of spent fuel from the 104 commercial reactors located in the United States. “It was a short-sighted decision with devastating consequences,” said U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). He added that South Carolina has paid more than $1.3 billion to “build a hole that we are not going to use” so “we either want our money back or we want to use that hole.”
Graham also said that more nuclear power plants could “create new jobs in America that pay very well.” But “to those who wish to have a Nuclear Renaissance, we will not be able to get there until we come up with a waste disposal plan.” The Senator said he supports reprocessing because he believes it “make sense” and “could be achieved in a reasonable period of time.” He did not address the issue of disposal of nuclear waste created by reprocessing.
Graham praised the Obama administration’s support for the multi-billion dollar Mixed Oxide Fuel (MOX) program at SRS. The goal of this project, authorized in 1999 during the Clinton administration, is to dispose of 36 metric tons of surplus U.S. military weapons grade plutonium by irradiating it and turning it into fuel that can be used in nuclear reactors to produce electricity. Once the plutonium has been irradiated, it can no longer be used in a nuclear weapon without elaborate further reprocessing. This new technology is unproven. Currently commercial reactors in the United States are not designed to use MOX fuel.
“I would say something good about the Obama administration: Secretary Chu has been one of the best Secretaries of Energy I ever have to deal with. The administration, generally speaking, has had a good vision for the development of commercial nuclear power; they have put on the table loan guarantees more robust than under the Bush administration. Secretary Chu has also convinced me that another form of reprocessing, better than what the French, the British and the Japanese do, may be achieved in the next decade,” Graham said. (SRS received one of the largest amounts of Recovery Act funds in the country.) He believes the risk of proliferation from reprocessing is “overstated.”
Speaking on behalf of the Central Savannah River Area Chambers of Commerce, Brian Tucker said, “The federal government’s decision to abandon Yucca Mountain has sent a very bad message” to the local community and has made “SRS a de facto permanent repository.” He also supports the MOX program and believes that “blending down weapons-grade uranium into low enriched uranium suitable for fuel in commercial power reactors” and using it in Tennessee Valley Authority reactors to provide electricity is the “kind of well-executed, innovative, problem-solving technology that we believe can be brought to bear in helping to resolve the pressing issues being addressed by this Commission.”
Manuel Bettencourt, from the SRS Citizens Advisory Board, agreed with the Chamber of Commerce and stressed the fact that SRS has significant resources that could assist in research and development of ways to reprocess nuclear waste. The concept of reprocessing nuclear waste was also supported by Clint Wolfe, the executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, who explained that coal and gas emissions threaten the world’s water and air while nuclear energy “has the potential to provide a clean alternative” and remains “safe.”
In opposition to reprocessing, environmentalist Tom Clements, the Southeast Nuclear Campaign Coordinator for Friends of the Earth who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate from South Carolina on the Green Party ticket last year, told the Commission, “There is really no rush concerning high-level waste. There is time to make the right decision.” According to Clements, “the path forward in a medium term is to secure on-site storage, it’s not recycling or reprocessing. …We are all concerned about future jobs but reprocessing is not a good idea.” Clements raised concerns about proliferation, because reprocessing has been used to create plutonium, the core material for nuclear weapons, and noted that reprocessing will bring more high-level radioactive nuclear waste to South Carolina.
The activist said that the Department of Energy (DOE) is now proposing “a so-called energy park” at SRS and wants to create four experimental nuclear power plants capable of burning radioactive waste for fuel. Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the consortium of private government contractors that operates SRS under contract with the DOE, defends the energy park and says that it could be the potential alternative to Yucca Mountain.
Clements said, “The environmental groups have not been involved in the discussion” of the energy park and “there was no discussion with the public.” He said, “Their (DOE) mission is clean up; they need to get back to that mission.” He added that the mission of the MOX plant was never to use the fuel for purposes like producing electricity. “I think it’s more about money going to special interests than anything else,” he said. “It’s going to be a grand battle” if government decides to push forward with reprocessing. “We don’t want South Carolina to become the new Yucca Mountain.”
Charles Utley, from the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, told the Commission that they should work toward a nuclear-free future for the nation. He said solar and wind power “have a great potential as clean energy sources” that will help ease dependence on foreign oil.
After the testimonies, the public made brief comments. A long line of witnesses pleaded against nuclear power. A student in environmental engineering came to the podium with her one-year-old sister and asked the Blue Ribbon Commission to take into account her sister’s future when making its deliberations.
At the end of the meeting, co-Chairman Brent Scowcroft noted, “There is a feeling in the country that the government keeps changing the rules with Yucca Mountain” and one of the problems the Commission faces is “how to set a system in which people can have confidence it won’t be changed with the next election cycle.”
The Commission’s next hearings will be in New Mexico January 26 through 28, where members will tour the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and hold public meetings in Carlsbad and Albuquerque. The Blue Ribbon Commission is to publish a draft report in mid-2011 and a final report in 2012.http://dcbureau.org/201101111292/National-Security-News-Service/high-level-nuclear-wast... more
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By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
It won’t be long before the world has to confront its diminishing supply of clean water.
“We’ve had the same amount of water on our planet since the beginning of time, ” Susan Leal, co-author of Running Out of Water, told GritTV’s Laura Flanders. “We are on a collision course of a very finite supply and 7.6 billion people.”
What’s worse, private industries—and energy companies in particular—are using waterways as dumping grounds for hazardous substances. With the coal industry, it’s an old story; with the natural gas industry, it’s a practice that can be nipped in the bud.
In many cases, dumping pollutants into water is a government-sanctioned activity, although there are limits to how much contamination can be approved. But companies often overshoot their pollution allowances, and for some businesses, like a nuclear energy plant, even a little bit of contamination can be a problem.
Business as usual
Here’s one troubling scenario. At Grist, Sue Sturgis reports that “a river downstream of a privately-owned nuclear fuel processing plant in East Tennessee is contaminated with enriched uranium.” The concentrations are low, and the water affected is still potable. The issue, however, is that the plant was not supposed to be discharging any of this sort of uranium at all. One researcher explained that the study had “only scratched the surface of what’s out there and found widely dispersed enriched uranium in the environment.” In other words, the contamination could be more widespread than is now known.
Nuclear energy facilities must take particular care to keep the waste products of their work separate from the environment around them. But in some industries, like coal, polluting water supplies is routine practice.
The dirtiest energy
In West Virginia, more than 700 people are suing infamous coal company Massey Energy for defiling their tap water, Charles Corra reports at Change.org. In Mingo County, tap water comes out as “a smooth flow of black and orange liquid.” Country residents are arguing that the contamination is a result of water from coal slurries, a byproduct of mining that contains arsenic and other contaminants, leaking into the water table. Residents believe the slurries also cause health problems like learning disabilities and hormone imbalances, as Corra reports.
Newfangled notions
Even so-called “clean coal,” which would inject less carbon into the atmosphere, is worrisome when it comes to water. The carbon siphoned from clean coal doesn’t disappear; it’s sequestered under ground. For a new clean coal project in Linden, NJ, Change.org’s Austin Billings reports, that chamber would be 70 miles out to sea. As Billings writes:
The plant would be the first of its kind in the world, so it should come as no surprise that the proposal is a major cause for concern among New Jersey environmentalists, fishermen, and lawmakers. According to Dr. Heather Saffert of Clean Ocean America, “We don’t really have a good understanding of how the CO2 is going to react with other minerals… The PurGen project is based on one company’s models. What if they’re wrong?”
In this case, it wouldn’t only be human communities at risk (“Polluted Jersey Shore,” anyone?), but the ocean’s ecosystem.
Frack no!
Coal communities in West Virginia have been dealing with water pollution for decades. But a another source of energy extraction—hydrofracking for natural gas—has only just begun to threaten water supplies. Care2’s Jennifer Mueller points to a recent “60 Minutes” segment that explores the attendant issues: it’s a must-watch for anyone unfamiliar with what’s at stake.
Fortunately, some of the communities at risk have been working to head off the damage before it hits. In Pittsburgh this week, leaders banned hydrofracking within the city, according to Mari Margil and Ben Price in Yes! Magazine. They write:
As Councilman [Doug] Shields stated after the vote, “This ordinance recognizes and secures expanded civil rights for the people of Pittsburgh, and it prohibits activities which would violate those rights. It protects the authority of the people of Pittsburgh to pass this ordinance by undoing corporate privileges that place the rights of the people of Pittsburgh at the mercy of gas corporations.”
Environmentalists in other municipalities, in state government, and in Congress would do well to follow Pittsburgh’s lead.
Mutant fish
Of course, you can’t believe every tale of water contamination you hear. At RhRealityCheck, Kimberly Inez McGuire takes on the persistent myth that estrogen from birth control is making its way in large concentrations into the water supply and leading to mutations in fish.
This simply isn’t true. As McGuire explains, “The estrogen found in birth control pills, patches, and rings (known as EE2) is only one of thousands of synthetic estrogens that may be found in our water, and the contribution of EE2 to the total presence of estrogen in water is relatively small.” Where does the rest of the estrogen come from? Factory farms, industrial chemicals like BPA, and synthetic estrogen used in crop fertilizer. So, yes, the water is contaminated, but, no, your birth control is not to blame.
Greening the US
Stories like these, of environmental pollution by corporations, seem to come up again and again. They’re barely news anymore and so easy to ignore. But it’s more important than ever for environmentalists to fight back against these challenges and push for a green economy that minimizes pollution. The American Prospect’s Monica Potts recently sat down with The Media Consortium to explain the roadblocks to a green economy. If green-minded people want to stop hearing tales like the ones above, these are the obstacles they’ll need to overcome. Watch the video:
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
It won’t be long before the world... more
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Nuclear weapons-grade uranium is now available on the black market in Georgia, according to officials who broke up a smuggling ring in the former Soviet republic
Highly enriched uranium was smuggled from Armenia to Georgia in a lead-lined cigarette packet in March. Two men involved in transporting the substance were arrested in April.
In a closed hearing, Sumbat Tonayan, a former dairy factory owner and Hrant Ohanian, a retired nuclear physicist from a science institute in Armenia, pleaded guilty to smuggling the 90 per cent-enriched uranium from the Armenian capital Yerevan to Tbilisi.
They face 10 years in jail. It remains unclear whether the 18g of uranium contained in the cigarette packet was a sample of a larger shipment, which has yet to be located.Nuclear weapons-grade uranium is now available on the black market in Georgia,... more
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http://dcbureau.org/201010121237/Natural-Resources-News-Service/veteran-hanford-engineer-says-does-multi-billion-dollar-hanford-nuclear-waste-processing-plant-might-not-work-properly-and-has-serious-potential-safety-problems.html
A lead engineer at the $12.3 billion Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation says the Department of Energy – along with lead contractor Bechtel National, Inc. – cannot assure the public that the plant will work properly and safely when it is completed about a decade from now despite public statements to the contrary and $5 billion spent so far.
At risk are the Columbia River as well as the health and safety of people in southeast Washington state.
Dr. Walter Tamosaitis was the research and technology manager and the deputy chief processing engineer for URS Corporation, a subcontractor to Bechtel. Since 2003, Tamosaitis oversaw a $500 million budget covering some of the waste treatment plant’s most crucial design functions.
On July 2, Tamosaitis was escorted out of the building “like an absolute felon,” he said, and stripped of his position after raising a series of safety and operational concerns.http://dcbureau.org/201010121237/Natural-Resources-News-Service/veteran-hanford-enginee... more
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With an assist from FreedomWorks, Mike Lee grabbed Utah's Senate nomination from incumbent Bob Bennett. Now he shows he's not a states' rights kind of guy.
Dick Armey and his political organizing group, FreedomWorks, have been working overtime to convince Tea Party supporters they're invested in the movement's "common sense" approaches on states' rights, strict constitutionalism and protecting Main Street from Wall Street. FreedomWorks' ties to Big Energy run deep, however, and by throwing their weight behind the group's endorsed Utah Senate candidate, Mike Lee, Tea Party adherents are inadvertently backing a candidate who tried to bury 1,600 tons of European nuclear waste in what some call their sovereign state. FreedomWorks and Lee, put simply, are capitalizing on Tea Party anger for their own interests.With an assist from FreedomWorks, Mike Lee grabbed Utah's Senate nomination from... more
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Texas may get nuclear waste from 36 other states, but environmentalists are warning that toxins from the massive site could pollute groundwater, the Associated Press reports.
Waste Control Specialists, the company that runs the site in west Texas, says it will be safe, and many residents welcome the plans because of the new jobs that will result.
Read on-----
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/05/texas-may-get-nuclear-waste-from-36-states/1Texas may get nuclear waste from 36 other states, but environmentalists are warning... more
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Getting up close in the fight against pirates and people trying to stop rich countries from dumping nuclear waste off their coast.Getting up close in the fight against pirates and people trying to stop rich countries... more
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Earlier in the year, plans to store America's nuclear waste inside one of America's most challenging engineering feats, Yucca Mountain, were scrapped due to a lack of federal funding.
The Yucca Mountain project, located in Nevada near the nuclear test sites, had been underway since 1987, when Congress had selected the site as America's nuclear waste repository. To ensure the waste was safely stored, over $9 billion was spent on concrete tunnels and chambers designed to keep waste safe for at least a million years.
One of the most extraordinary aspects of the project saw a five mile U-shaped tunnel was bored into the side of the extinct volcano, through which to transport the material.
While environmentalists may have approved the decision by the White House, it does present the country with several problems; where does the country now store its nuclear waste, what shall happen to the Yucca Mountain complex and more importantly, if the President is seriously about more nuclear plants to wean the country off oil is he expecting them to be waste-free?
To discuss the two sides of the issue are US Infrastructure Online Editor Timon Singh and former senior advisor on Nuclear Nonproliferation matters at the US Department of Energy, Charity Azadian.
Charity Azadian: "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back"
As the familiar saying goes, you can take the Senator (Harry Reid) out of Nevada, but you can't take the Nevada out of the Senator. It is clear that politics is once again trumping science. By allowing politicians, and not the scientific experts, to detail a path forward for Yucca Mountain, this only stalls the progress toward resolving the nation's nuclear waste problem.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 set 31 January 1998, as the deadline for the federal government to begin disposing of used fuel. More than a decade after the deadline, the government has still not settled on a policy for how to do it. The US Department of Energy (DOE) established a Blue Ribbon Commission to explore alternatives to long-term waste storage. The government's ineptitude to begin proper nuclear waste management should be a reason to remove government responsibilities, not remove Yucca from consideration. The Administration's Yucca Mountain policy signals once again that the government cannot be a trusted partner.
Essentially the Administration's policies are schizophrenic. On one hand, President Obama has touted that the Federal Government will guarantee loans for nuclear power plants, and then days later states that he is going to abandon plans for a nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Furthermore, in staying the course with Obama-litic politics that sway to the wind, Energy Secretary Chu testified before Congress that he supported funding on Yucca Mountain, but then a few days later sent a letter to the committee that he would like to retract parts of his testimony, and that he was essentially confused.
Shocking, appalling, or is it? This type of delusional behavior and lack of integrity in our political leaders is unacceptable. And, by allowing politics to trump science at Yucca Mountain, Chu's announcement threatens to stall progress toward resolving the nation's nuclear waste problem.
So should we listen to the science, except when it's inconvenient to well-connected political leaders? If politicians eager to shut down Yucca Mountain are so confident that the science is on their side, why not allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to finish its license review? After, all, it's the NRC's responsibility to determine the technical feasibility of Yucca - even if it has been studied countless times.Earlier in the year, plans to store America's nuclear waste inside one of... more
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President Obama acting on a pledge to support nuclear power, will propose tripling U.S. loan guarantees for new reactors to more than $54 billion. The additional loan guarantees in Obama’s budget are part of an effort to bolster nuclear-power production after the president called for doing so in his State of the Union address.President Obama acting on a pledge to support nuclear power, will propose tripling... more
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Nuclear waste is probably the most dreaded substances in existence, in part because it's proved so difficult to effectively clean up and store. But a stunning new breakthrough has just surfaced that may make cleaning up radioactive waste easier and much more efficient--and the solution takes its inspiration from one of everyone's favorite creepy plants. Researchers have developed a material that opens its pores to let in its intended prey--the radioactive ion cesium--then "snaps shut" to entrap it, according to Science Daily. It's a Venus Flytrap that eats radioactive waste instead of flies.
The flytrap-like material is evidently a snythetic material made from "layers of a gallium, sulfur and antimony compound," and was developed by researchers at Northwestern University.
The radioactive ion cesium, found in nuclear waste, is very difficult to clean up. And that's because the ratio of harmless sodium ions to dangerous radioactive cesium ions is 1,000 to 1. There's tons more sodium than cesium--one scientist on the project even said that looking for the radioactive material in nuclear waste is "like looking for a needle in a haystack." But the material the scientists developed turned out to be extremely adept at removing the cesium from a sodium-heavy solution--thanks to its Venus flytrap-like qualities.
SD explains:
It is, in fact, cesium itself that triggers a structural change in the material, causing it to snap shut its pores, or windows, and trap the cesium ions within. The material sequesters 100 percent of the cesium ions from the solution while at the same time ignoring all the sodium ions.
Which is pretty amazing--a material that can selectively snag and confine only the radioactive ions in nuclear waste could be instrumental in nuclear waste cleanup. Especially since there are over a hundred nuclear power plants across the US keeping their radioactive waste in storage onsite.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/venust-flytrap-snares-radioactive-waste.phpNuclear waste is probably the most dreaded substances in existence, in part because... more
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